Contemporary Philosophy: A Book of Readings

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Philosophy PBOOK

OF

Edited by JAMES

READINGS L. JARRETT

and STERLING

M. McMURRIN University of Utah

HENRY

HOLT

AND

COMPANY

New

York

COPYRIGHT, 1954 BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 54-6607

Omer and

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WALDEMER

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READ

Teachers and Friends

Pare PAL Gs bs

“THE Alfred

WE

WANT,”

wrote

Some anticipation had better be made,

Whitehead,

“is an

under-

too, of the charge of parochialism. We intended at first to include papers by Indian

UNDERSTANDING North

standing of an insistent present.” This volume is for those who feel something of the insistence of philosophy’s present. It is

and Chinese thinkers, but finally this plan was abandoned, though hardly cheerfully,

for those who, without disparaging the

when the difficulties of doing this in a necessarily highly restricted space became insuperable. Nor has justice been done European and Latin American philosophy. In a volume for English-language readers it seemed better to err on the side of generosity toward the writers of Great Britain and the United States. The grouping of the selections is a concession to those who prefer to classify philosophers according to the traditional catalogue of Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, etc.; the classification is often artificial and highly strained, but if it is not taken too seriously, it may prove helpful for many students. Some will prefer to approach the material by way of types of problems, rather than by schools of thought. Here again the classification has sometimes been made with misgivings. Elementary biographical data on authors have been supplied, as well as selected bibliographies. The introductory commentaries have located the authors and their work to give them increased meaning and value in the larger context. The volume has been a cooperative effort throughout, though the introductory comments on Idealism, Logical Empiricism, and Existentialism and Phenomenol-

relevance and the value of the thought of earlier times, smell pedantry in the advice,

heard at least now and again, not to bother with the thinkers of today, since they may,

after all, seem to our great-grandchildren of lesser stature than Plato and Locke and Kant. This collection of essays by thinkers of

our own time will establish no final canon. A comparatively few years hence, some of those whose names today flutter pulses will be remembered only with effort. Which

ones? And which other ones—here is the anthologist’s béte noir—will so grow in the esteem of succeeding decades as to make all who failed to acknowledge their genius appear the dullest of fools? Even now, we as editors make no claim to have

included only the supremest achievements, and more especially do we hasten to ac-

knowledge, with regret and no little embarrassment, the omission of fine productions by splendid minds. We hope, never-

theless, to have produced an interesting and helpful sampler of contemporary philosophy, a book which displays something of the rich scope, the depth, the sharpness, the inspiration, the wisdom, and the wit

of today’s leading philosophical minds. Vil

viii ogy are mainly the work of Mr. McMurrin; those on Realism and Analysis, Pragmatism, and Vitalism, Thomism, and Marxism are mainly the work of Mr. Jarrett. As we have conceived the book, the test

of its merit will be whether it conduces to

PREFACE interest and participation in the living en-

terprise of philosophy. jzL.J2 S. M. M. Salt Lake City, Utah September, 1953

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment

is made to the following publishers, who have kindly

granted permission to reprint copyrighted material: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd.: The N-ture of Thought, by Brand Blanshard, 1941; An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, by Bertrand Russell, 1940; Ideas, by Edmund Husserl, 1931, translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson; Ethics, by Nicolai - Hartmann, 1932, translated by Stanton Coit; and My Philosophy, by Benedetto Croce, 1949, translated by E. F. Carritt. Yale University Press: An Essay on Man, by Ernst Cassirer, 1944; Belief Unbound, by W. P. Montague, 1938; and A Common Faith, by John Dewey, 1934. Harper and Brothers: Human Values, by DeWitt H. Parker, 1931; and Eclipse of God, by Martin Buber, 1952. The Clarendon

Press, Oxford:

and Ethics, by G. E. Moore, 1913. Charles Scribner’s Sons: Reprinted from Scepticism and Animal Faith, by George Santayana; used by permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner’s Sons,

1923. Reprinted frem Reason in Religion by George Santayana; copyright 1905 Ly Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933 by George Santayana; used by permission of the publishers. Constable, London: Scepticism and Antmal Faith, by George Santayana, 1923. The Macmillan Company: Adventures of

Ideas,

by Alfred

North

Whitehead,

1933; and Religion in the Making, by Alfred North Whitehead, 1926. Cambridge University Press: Principia

The Prin-

ciples of Art, by R. G. Collingwood, 1938; Foundations of Ethics, by W. D. Ross, 1939. Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.: Bene-

Mathematica,

Volume

I

by

Alfred

translated from the Italian by Arthur Livingston; and Jacques Maritain: “The Conquest of Freedom,” translated by Harry McNeill and Emanuel Chapman. Both reprinted from Freedom: Its Mean-

North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, second edition, 1935. Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd.: Ethics » and the History of Philosophy, by C. D. Broad, 1952; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1922; Man in the Modern Age, by Karl Jaspers, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, IQ5I.

ing, edited by Ruth Nanda

Macmillan

detto

Croce:

copyright Company, Hutchinson Ltd.: The

“The

Roots

of Liberty,”

Anshen,

1940 by Harcourt, Brace and Inc. and Company (Publishers), Concept of Mind, by Gilbert

and Company,

Ltd., London;

St. Martin’s Press, Inc., New York; Mac-

millan Company of Canada, Ltd.: Philosophical and Literary Pieces, by Samuel Alexander,

edited

by John

Laird,

1927. The Dial Press: The Philosophy of Art, by C. J. Ducasse, 1929.

Ryle, 1949. Oxford University Press: The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell, 1912, ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

x

Basil Blackwell and Mott, Ltd.: “Gods,” by John Wisdom, from Essays on Logic and Language, edited by A. G. N. Flew. The University of Chicago Press: Theory of Valuation, by John Dewey, copyright 1939 by the University of Chicago. University of Pennsylvania Press: “Prob-

lems of Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences,” by Ernest Nagel, from

Science,

Language,

and

Human

Rights, Volume I of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, annual papers, 1952. University of California Press: The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, by Hans Reichenbach, 1951.

Philosophical Library: “Logical Empiricism,” by Herbert Feigl, from Twentieth Century Philosophy, Dagobert D. Runes, editor, 1947; and The Creative Mind, by Henri Bergson, 1946. Victor Gollancz, Ltd.: Language, Truth and Logic, by Alfred J. Ayer, second edition, 1946. Published in the United States by Dover

Publications,

Inc.,

and

in

Canada by Victor Gollancz Limited. Princeton University Press: The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl Popper,

1950. Henry Regnery Company: Existence and Being, by Martin Heidegger, 1949, translated by R. F. C. Hull and Alan Crick.

International Publishers: Selected of Lenin, Volume II, 1943.

Works

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following authors and to the editors of the following journals who have kindly granted permission to quote from copy-

righted works: Mind: “The Refutation of Realism,” by W. T. Stace, 1934.

The Personalist: “The Supreme Continuum,” by Ralph Tyler Flewelling, 1946. A. O. Lovejoy: “The Meanings of ‘Emer-

gence’ and Its Modes,” from Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, 1927. The Philosophical Review: “Causality and

Substance,” by Roy Wood Sellars, 1943; “Experience and Meaning,” by C. I. Lewis, 1934; and “Meaning and Verifi-

cation,” by Moritz Schlick, 1936. The Journal of Philosophy: “The Program

and First Platform of Six Realists,” by Edwin B. Holt, et al., 1910; “A Theory

of Value Defended,” by Ralph Barton Perry, 1931; “The Root Metaphor Theory of Metaphysics,” by Stephen Pepper,

1935; and “The Function of General Laws in History,” by Carl G. Hempel,

1942. Revue Internationale de Philosophie: “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology,” by

Rudolph Carnap, 1950.

CONTENTSBY SCHOOLS GENERAL

INTRODUCTION:

Contemporary Philosophy and Its Recent Past

I. IDEALISM

I

18

Introduction METAPHYsIcs W. T. Stace: The Refutation of Realism. From Mind, Vol. 435 1934. THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

24

Brand Blanshard: The Coherence Theory of Truth. From The Nature of Thought.

32

Locic, SEMANTICs, AND

ScrENTIFIC

MetHop

Ernst Cassirer: A Clue to the Nature of Man: the Symbol. From An Essay on Man. Etuics aND THEORY oF VALUE DeWitt H. Parker: The Analysis of Value. From Human Values. EsrHetics R. G. Collingwood: Art as Language. From The Principles of Art.

38 41

48

PuitosopHy oF RELIGION Ralph Tyler Flewelling: The Supreme Continuum. From The Personalist, Vol. 27, 1946. PuitosopHy

oF History, CULTURE,

Benedetto Croce: The Roots of Liberty. From Freedom: Its Meaning (Ruth Nanda Anshen, ed.). Il.

REALISM

AND

ANALYSIS

Introduction MeErapuysics Samuel Alexander: Artistic Creation and Cosmic Creation. From Philosophical and Literary Pieces. Arthur O. Lovejoy: The Meanings of “Emergence” and Its Modes. From Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy (E. S. Brightman,

ed.).

56

AND SOCIETY

66 78

85

Q2

Bertrand Russell: Language and Metaphysics. From An Inquiry Into TO2 Meaning and Truth. Gilbert Ryle: The Category Mistake in Mind-Body Dualism. From The 106 Concept of Mind. Roy Wood Sellars: Causality and Substance. From The Philosophical Re115 view, Vol. 52, 1943. xi

CONTENTS

Xl THEorY

BY

SCHOOLS 2

oF KNOWLEDGE

Edwin B. Holt, et al.: The Program and First Platform of Six Realists. 124 From The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 7, 1910. Bertrand Russell: Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by De130 scription. From The Problems of Philosophy.

George Santayana: Knowledge Is Faith Mediated by Symbols. From Scep137

ticism and Animal Faith. Alfred North Whitehead: Truth. From Adventures of Ideas. Locic, SEMANTICs,

AND

ScreNTIFIC

146

MrTHop

Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead:

Some Foundations

of

Logic. From Principia Mathematica. Eruics anD THEORY OF VALUE C. D. Broad: Egoism as a Theory of Human Motives. From Ethics and the History of Philosophy. G. E. Moore: Intrinsic Value. From Ethics. Ralph Barton Perry: Value as the Object of Here From The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 28, 1931. W. D. Ross: Foundations of Ethics. From Foundations of Ethics.

154

‘EsTHETICS

C. J. Ducasse: Standards of Criticism, From The Philosophy of Art. David Prall: The Transaction Involved in Esthetic Experience. From Aesthetic Judgment. PuitosopHy oF RELIGION W. P. Montague: God Finite and God Infinite. From Belief Unbound. George Santayana: How Religion May Be an Embodiment of Reason. From Reason in Religion. Alfred-North Whitehead: Truth and Criticism in Religion: From Religion In the Making. John Wisdom: Gods. From Essays on Logic and Language (A. G. N.

Flew, ed.).

Ill.

PRAGMATISM

oa Introduction METAPHYSICS Stephen C. Pepper: The Root Metaphor Theory of Metaphysics. From The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 32, 1935. 258

THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE George Herbert Mead: The Genesis of the Self and Social Control. From The Philosophy of the Present. 266. Locic, SEMANTICS,

AND ScreNTIFIC

Metruop

~C. I. Lewis: Experience and Meaning. From The Philosophical Review, Vol. 43, 1934. 27 Charles Morris: Signs, Semiotic, and the Unification of Science. From Signs, Language and Behavior.

CONTENTS

BY

SCHOOLS

xiii

Etnics anp THrory oF VALUE John Dewey: Theory of Valuation. From International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. 2, 1939. 304 EsTHETICs C. I. Lewis: Esthetic Judgment. From An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. 310

Puitosopuy oF RELIGION John Dewey: Faith and Its Object. From 4A Common Faith. PuiLosopHy

oF History,

CULTURE,

a7

AND SOCIETY

John Dewey: Search for the Great Community. From The Public and Its Problems. poe Ernest Nagel: Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences. From 347 Science, Language, and Human Rights.

361

IV. LOGICAL EMPIRICISM Introduction THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Hans Reichenbach: Predictive Knowledge. Philosophy. Locic, SEMANTICS,

AND

SciENTIFIC

From

The Rise of Scientific 306

METHOD

Rudolf Carnap: Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology. From Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 1950.

377

Moritz Schlick: Meaning and Verification. From The Philosophical Review, Vol. 45, 1936. 390 Ludwig _Wittgenstein: Logic and Meaning. From Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus. 401 Eruics AND THEORY OF VALUE Herbert Feigl: Meanings in Ethical Discourse. From Twentieth Century

Philosophy (Dagobert D. Runes, ed.). PuiLosopHy OF RELIGION Alfred J. Ayer: Critique of Theology. From Language, Truth and Logic. PuitosopHy

oF History,

415 418

CuLtrurE, AND SocIETY

Carl G. Hempel: The Function of General Laws in History. From The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 39, 1942. 423 Karl R. Popper: Has History Any Meaning? From The Open Society and Its Enemies. 433 V.

PHENOMENOLOGY

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

Introduction MerapHysics Martin Heidegger:.What Is Metaphysics? From Existence and Being. Locic, SEMANTICS, AND ScrentTIFIC

441

448

Meruop

Edmund Husserl: The Natural Standpoint and Its Suspension. From Ideas. 459 Eruics anpD THEoRY OF VALUE Nicolai Hartmann: Values as Essences. From Ethics. 466

xiv

CONTENTS

BY

SCHOOLS

Puitosopuy oF RELIGION

Martin Buber: God and the Spirit of Man, From Eclipse of God. PuitosopHy

oF History, CULTURE,

AND

Karl Jaspers: Freedom and History. From Man in the Modern Age. VI.

VITALISM,

THOMISM,

AND

476

SOCIETY

MARXISM

480 486

Introduction TuHeory

oF KNowLEDGE

Henri Bergson: Philosophical Intuition. From The Creative Mind. PuitosopHy

oF History, CULTURE,

AND

490

SOCIETY

V. I. Lenin: The State. From Selected Works of Lenin.

495

Jacques Maritain: The Conquest of Freedom. From Freedom: Its perislae 3 (Ruth Nanda Anshen, ed.). EPILOGUE:

Benedetto Croce: The Final Philosophy. From My Philosophy.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

506 515

516

SON

WEN

S

BYePROBLEMS

MeEtTaPHysics Samuel Alexander: Artistic Creation and Cosmic Creation

85 448

A. O. Lovejoy: The Meanings of “Emergence” and Its Modes Stephen C. Pepper: The Root Metaphor Theory of Metaphysics Bertrand Russell: Language and Metaphysics

258

Gilbert Ryle: The Category Mistake in Mind-Body Dualism

106

Roy Wood Sellars: Causality and Substance

115

W. T. Stace: The Refutation of Realism

g2

102

24

TuHrory oF KNOWLEDGE Henri Bergson: Philosophical Intuition

Brand Blanshard: The Coherence Theory of Truth Edwin B. Holt, et al.: The Program and First Platform of Six Realists George Herbert Mead: The Genesis of Self and Social Control Hans Reichenbach: Predictive Knowledge Bertrand Russell: Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description George Santayana: Knowledge Is Faith Mediated by Symbols

Alfred Porth W/nitehes d/l rath 9 Locic, SEMANTICS, AND

ScIENTIFIC

490 32 124 266 366 130 aot 146

METHOD

Rudolf Carnap: Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology Ernst Cassirer: A Clue to the Nature of Man: the Symbol Edmund Husserl: The Natural Standpoint and Its Suspension C. I. Lewis: Experience and Meaning Charles Morris: Signs, Semiotic, and the Unification of Science Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead: Some Foundations of Logic

Moritz Schlick: Meaning and Verification Ludwig Wittgenstein: Logic and Meaning

377 38 459 277 292

154 390 4o1

ee re

Eruics anD THEORY OF VALUE C. D. Broad: Egoism as a Theory of Human Motives

John Dewey: Theory of Valuation Herbert Feigl: Meanings in Ethical Discourse

Nicolai Hartmann: Values as Essences G. E. Moore: Intrinsic Value

DeWitt H. Parker: The Analysis of Value Ralph Barton Perry: Value as the Object of Interest W. D. Ross: Foundations of Ethics

xv

164 304 415 466 173 4I 183 QI

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Contemporary Philosophy and Its Recent Past J]HE twentieth century was still in diapers when there appeared those ready to characterize it not only as thoroughly simple but also as if it were already past. Not that it need be denied that ours is, say, an “Evolutionary Age,” “The Age of Relativity,” or even “The Atomic Age”; but who today, on taking serious thought, is satisfied with such pat descriptions of this world in which we live, this vastly complicated, bafflingly intricate, almost hopelessly confusing and confused world? Surely the present always seems richly complex; and not only seems, but is. If it is impossible to summarize any past age adequately, it must be doubly impossible to summarize one’s own. And yet who will be forestalled by such impossibilities, single or double? Nothing is more characteristic of the human, Aristotle wrote, than his curiosity, his desire to know even the messiest and most confused situations; and there is no knowing apart from generalizing, categorizing, conceptualizing—in short, simplifying. But to simplify is to oversimplify; hence, to know is, in a sense, to falsify. A pretty paradox. The best we can do is to compromise. Let us proceed in an effort to know ourselves, our own time; but let us guard against a too easy kind of knowledge and

admit in advance that where we oversimplify we err. No intellectual formulas, however complex, can describe and interpret adequately the richness and variety of human culture. Philosophy, of course, is not the whole of any age. But it is an unusually good index to an age. In all times it has intricate and elaborate relations with every branch of learning and with every segment of life. As an enterprise that has numerous associations, philosophy must be known in part by the company that it keeps. It is cultivated in intimate and reciprocal relationship with science, religion, and art; with literature, law, and history, and with morals, politics, and everyday economic and social affairs. Whenever and wherever changes appear in the culture, changes that have important and far reaching effects on the life of society, these are likely to be somewhere reflected in the character of philosophy. And profound changes in philosophy may affect the culture both inwardly and outwardly, from its spiritual quality to its industrial production, Philosophy is at once influenced and influential, an echoer, mocker, modifier, and creator. But if an adequate description of contemporary philosophy demands an appraisal of the culture as a whole, it is also true that such a

2

CONTEMPORARY

description is the key to that appraisal. Philosophy has sometimes been described as the discipline which carries the burden of its past. This is not entirely due to historical literary techniques, inordinate love of the antique, or the peculiarities of the usual philosophical education. It is to be accounted for rather by the nature of the. philosophical problems themselves, which have been so molded by generations of minds that an adequate formulation of them involves their historical orientation. It is one of the interesting and significant

characteristics of twentieth-century philos-

PHILOSOPHY

all arranged statically in an aristocratic hierarchy; that each species occupies a rigidly distinct niche in the vertical order,

and whatever change and process there may be is entirely within the species. Whether this all came about as a result of a busy

week of planning and fabricating by Nature’s Author or whether it was just always this way doesn’t so much matter, perhaps, to this way of thinking; the important thing is that the direction of flow in the order, so to speak, is from top to

bottom, from perfection to complete imperfection, from fullest being to nothing.

ophy that it has made, and continues to make, serious efforts to free itself from the

The topmost link in this chain of being, as

burden of its past. But these efforts have

designated as “God,” “the Prime Mover,”

been on the whole far from successful, and often those very writers who set about to effect the liberation produce new historical analyses of their problems in their enthusiasm to show what they have escaped. At any rate, a comprehension of contemporary thought has much to gain from a recognition of the historical roots of current philosophical problems, and certainly the character of recent and current philosophy can hardly be appreciated unless it is described and understood against a background of history.

Pope and others have called it, whether “The One,” or anything else, is thought to

be either the direct creator of all that is below or its cause and source at least.

Darwin’s voice was not the first to pronounce this world view unacceptable, but

it was by far the most authoritative, because, not content with bare assertion, he

cited evidence, abundant evidence. More positively, the theory of evolution was in part a theory of development from simpler forms to the more complex, though a development not in any obvious sense teleological in character. Here was a tre-

mendous boost for the generalized philoPerhaps no idea of recent centuries has more significantly influenced contemporary philosophy than the theory of organic evolution. Certainly no understanding of the

intellectual history of the past hundred years is possible without some grasp of this great achievement and of its meaning for the ways of thinking about the world. It overthrew, for instance, the conception of

living things that had predominated

for

more than two millennia. What was this conception? Roughly, that men, dogs,

sophical development theories that were already appearing and have since become increasingly common, theories which take change to be a major category, which hold that nothing is as it was or as it will be,

and that a pattern is discoverable in all process. No longer, it seemed, must man, or for that matter anything else, be described as essentially static, produced by

God at a date fairly recent, and made in the beginning as he is now and will forever be. Rather it became apparent that man today

snakes, birds, fish, bugs, trees, flowers, and

is continuous with a very different man of

so on through the entire gamut of life, are

a remote age and even continuous, no

INTRODUCTION doubt, with non-man of a remoter time still. All life changes, species are altered, sometimes minutely and sometimes dras-

tically, and because of quite natural causes. And to this developmental picture of man and his fellow animals, Hegel, Marx, Spencer, and others could add: so, too, the changes in man’s society, his government, his economic institutions—indeed, all the forms and structures of his social living—are neither unreal nor haphazard, but orderly, systematic, according to relatively simple laws whose workings out in the past can be seen with only a slightly greater clarity than their future manifestations. And again for the causal forces operative one need look no further than the world about us.

3 evitability of human progress that has been challenged seriously only in our own day. But perhaps nowhere outside of biology itself was Darwin’s work more effective than in its impact upon the psychological sciences. Just as his notions of man’s descent ac-

commodated themselves to a large view of evolution, so his insistence that man is a proper study of the biologist gave support to the growing tendency to “naturalize” the human soul, for it was man as a thinking, valuing, culture-producing person as well as simply a living being that occupied Darwin. Some, taking advantage of the strongly rooted dualistic tradition, were content to assign man’s body to the scientist (as Descartes, indeed, had done in

And not only does this law-abiding de-

the seventeenth century) so long as his

velopment characterize the recorded history of civilized peoples, the pioneers in

mind or spirit or soul remained the proper

scientific anthropology pointed out; it describes even preliterate groups, whose

religion, anthropology, and the social disciplines in general grounded themselves in psychology, psychology in turn gave increasing attention to. its own physiological foundations. Thinkers like Sigmund Freud became convinced of the possibility

family and tribal organization and whose social habits evolve in regular ways. With the geologist piling up information about changes in the earth’s crust, the astrophysicist developing historical explanations of planetary, solar, and even galactical systems, the cultural anthropologist describing evolution in men’s religious beliefs and practices, and with

intellectual historians proposing theories of how and why ideas themselves undergo change, developmentalism became a ruling attitude. Of other important implications of Darwinism, only a few can be mentioned here: the widespread reorientation of religious

philosophy to conform with the new thesis, the development of theologies of emergence, the cultivation of optimistic philosophies of history inspired by belief in an almost automatic improvement of culture and civilization, a faith in the in-

domain of the theologian. But as ethics,

of a scientific study of man as thinker, knower, and, even more, as a feeling and desiring being. “Even more,” because

surely it must be counted a prime influence of Freud and the Freudians that they destroyed forever any possible suspicion lingering from a more rationalistic age that man’s motivations are exclusively conscious, deliberative, and logically ordered.

Though some today will argue against the extent of personality territory (Freud himself was fond of topographical metaphors) assigned to the Unconscious by the psychoanalytic theorists, it has at least become

foolish to deny that all men act and think and believe and prefer as they do for reasons that cut below those which they advance as the justification for their behavior.

4

CONTEMPORARY

PHILOSOPHY

Some students have gone on to generalize

these differences, implies the principles of

this position to the extreme point of reducing all rational thought to “rationalization” and all valuing to scarcely scrutable urges. Or, to shift momentarily to the viewpoint of another psychological |school, they have insisted that human behavior,

freedom and toleration. And anti-liberals (or at least opponents of this kind of liberalism) have countered that such a theory amounts in the end to defeatism and inaction and nihilism. Such absolutistic move-

like that of mice, can always be accounted for, theoretically, in the more or less mechanistic terms of “conditioning.” But along with these naturalized, individualistic treatments of the mind, or soul, of man are seen again the contributions of the anthropologist and sociologist with their emphasis upon the “cultural patternings” of human activity. Though man may

ments as political communism have tended to identify science with the established,

the certain; whereas political democracy has inclined to the side of relativism, mak-

ing its claim to a scientific character by emphasizing the tentativeness of all empirical knowledge. Nearly everyone wants

to be “scientific,” to claim the support of science, but “science” means things to different people.

different

be fundamentally irrational, the interest-

Now the mention of relativism calls to

ing thing is that living together in a given region with a certain climate and topography and natural resources and neighbors, a group: of such irrational creatures will

mind relativity, Einstein, and the new physics in general. What the evolutionists

among themselves be astonishingly alike

atomic structure have done for the physical

in their beliefs and customs and preferences, and perhaps astonishingly unlike their fellow creatures in different times and places. Thus the standard argument-stopper, “Well, it all depends on your point of view,” may itself presuppose a point of view either individual or social in character. Now one, now the other, is in mind when we speak of “relativism,” though either kind, of course, is to be understood as in opposition to dogmatism, especially in matters of evaluation. Such anti-dogmatism is basic to both the claims for and the charges against political

sciences. Again the greatest single change was a shift from the static to the dynamic. Whereas the classical physics had con-

liberalism: the claim that it is the very em-

material particle have been pushed inward and ever inward, but the world, like an onion, seems to have no core. And in the astronomic direction Einstein has taught us what in another context was already known from the anthropologist: the “point

bodiment of tolerance, and the charge that it is the rottenness of weakness, Liberals have frequently argued that the fact of individual differences in preference and

group differences in mores, along with the principle that there can be no independent, absolutistic position from which to assess

and

geneticists

did

for the

biological

sciences, the theoreticians of relativity and

ceived the world, both microcosmically and macrocosmically, as basically stable and fixed—beneath the fluctuations of matter there was something impenetrably solid, and beyond the measurable motions of the planetary systems there were abso-

lutely determinable spaces and times that guaranteed everything its proper place in the cosmos—the twentieth-century physics dared to ground everything on energy, electrical charges, movement, change, and

temporal relationship. The frontiers of the

of view” must be included in every consideration, for there is no such thing as

INTRODUCTION

5

observation from a fixed and independent

telligible to only a handful of other longhaired geniuses, the term “modern artist” evokes a picture of an equally esoteric ence requires mention here for its impor- - being—but now more insidious than harmtance to recent and contemporary philoless and more absurd than profound— sophic thought, namely mathematics. The painting or sculpturing works impossible creation of the so-called non-Euclidean of meaning. The cacophony of modern geometry by Lobachevski, Bolyai, and music, the unintelligibility of modern

platform; there is no absolute viewpoint. Another area of nineteenth-century sci-

Riemann and the mathematical structuring of logic by Boole and De Morgan laid the foundations for some of the most important philosophical developments of the present time. Of mathematical logic more will be said later; it is necessary here only to point out that the new geometries, complete and internally consistent systems derived in part from premises that contradict the “common sense” axioms of Euclid, made their appearance at that very mo-

ment in intellectual history when speculative philosophers were building vast superstructures on the absoluteness of the Euclidean geometry as a description of real space. In addition to liberating mathematical thought from the ancient authority of Euclid and supplying valuable tools to the physical sciences, this development eventually demanded a reconsideration of fundamental problems in methodology, of the relation between conceptual thought and the world of sense-experience and of the nature of logical and factual truth. The net result has been to raise serious questions as to the legitimacy of important areas of the philosophic enterprise, questions to which every student of contemporary thought must give consideration. Finally, the very mention of relativity theory and of non-Euclidean geometries puts one instantly in mind of a prominent feature of recent movements both in strictly intellectual matters and in the arts:

their difficulty, even their obscurity. If the stock caricature of Einstein is a long-haired mathematician composing formulas in-

poetry, the ridiculous lack of realism in modern

painting and sculpture, the af-

fected and quite uninhabitable buildings of the modern architect, all are dragged before us in such array as almost to convey

the impression that good art and true expired sometime

hundred

seventy-five or even a

years ago. But from a more

sympathetic standpoint one may speak of the complexity, the subtlety, the experimentalism, and the honesty of the art of

our time. T. S. Eliot has insisted that the principal reason why twentieth-century art is difficult lies in the obvious fact that the twentieth century is difficult: the artist tries to interpret his time, but to represent complexity as simplicity is naiveté or stupidity. Part of this growing complexity in the arts is a direct or indirect result of the finer analyses of human and physical nature afforded by the psychoanalyst, the new physicist, and the anthropologist. Particularly in literature, the theater, and painting do we find artists endeavoring to explore the psyche and to reveal the presence there of tensions, ambivalences, and unconscious motivations too often neglected by the artists of other ages. Further, today’s artist is concerned to explore new materials and new forms, both for their intrinsic interest and for their expressive possibilities. But wherever one’s tastes lead him, the characterization of “modern art” as difficult is not likely to be disputed. These various trends, and of course numerous others which cannot be mentioned here, are all reflected in the philoso-

CONTEMPORARY

6

PHILOSOPHY

phy of the recent past and present. But

Hume to Russell, as if to suggest that no

there is also philosophy’s own past, which has to a large degree set the problems for

significant history separates them. There is in fact a continuous movement of Empiricism which links the two, though the movement is meandering rather than straight. There is room for mention of only four in this Empirical tradition: John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Auguste Comte, and Ernst Mach.

today and has contributed solutions or partial solutions that every student of these

problems must consider. *

*

*

Among today’s philosophers are to be found the inevitable Platonists, Aristotelians, Thomists, Spinozists, Leibnizians, Kantians, and so on, but if from the philosophical tradition that extends from the ancient Greeks through the last century, a selection were made of a single thinker predominantly influential on current philosophic thought, David Hume, the eighteenth-century Scotsman, would probably have the strongest claim. Not only is Humean philosophy a source of endless fascination for present-day commentators and historians, but his philosophical position continues to appeal to many as, if not adequate, at least largely tenable; or, to put it negatively but in highly characteristic language, “His philosophy is singularly free from nonsense.” His sceptical attack on rationalistic philosophies, his analysis of the proofs of the existence of God, his distinction between knowledge of the relations of ideas and knowledge by experience, and his effort to reduce empirical formulations to their ultimate data in experience—all exhibit interests, methods, and a general orientation attractive to many in our time. More than any other person of the past, Hume established the spirit and pattern of philosophical analysis. Indeed, a philosopher as eminent as Bertrand Russell says quite explicitly that so nearly was Hume on the right track that one cannot do better than to follow his lead and carry along further

in the same direction. It is, however, misleading to jump from

It is not only as a chief figure in the ethical movement of Utilitarianism and as a contributor to the theory of demo-

cratic freedom that Mill bulks large in nineteenth-century thought, but also as one who worked long and hard on the defense

and explanation of inductive procedures in the production of scientific causal generalization. Mill developed certain canons of scientific method which continue to be cited in virtually all treatments of the subject today, though they now seem to be inadequate statements.:Even mathematics

and deductive logic were thought by Mill to be founded in empirical observation, a position followed by John Dewey but abandoned by Russell and numerous contemporaries in favor of a return, but with a great elaboration and refinement, to Hume’s distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact. Spencer is today a thinker much in eclipse, though he was

a bright light in his own time. Especially did he attempt a complete evolutionary theory, an effort in which he has been followed by not a few since his time, including Henri Bergson, John Dewey, and the so-called emergent evolutionists, Samuel Alexander and Lloyd Morgan. Comte is remembered today principally as an aggressive enemy of the non-scientific in

philosophy and social theory, that is, as a Positivist; and though there are but few

resemblances between his philosophy and that of the Logical Positivists and other scientific Empiricists of the present, the

INTRODUCTION

spirit of his attack has clearly been inherited by the latter. It is in these same groups that the influence of Mach has been felt, due especially to his anticipations of “operationalism” and his advancement

of a rather thoroughgoing phenomenalism that reduces knowledge to statements about sensations, impressions, or ideas.

Although positivistically inclined writers frequently regard the post-Humean excur-

sions of German philosophy as misguided, or at least irrelevant, others not uncommonly maintain that in Immanuel Kant there is a philosophic depth never to be dreamt of in the too meager categories of the sceptic. Strict Kantians cut little figure today, but even among those who find much of Kant’s machinery utterly outmoded and his theory of the workings of the mind unacceptable, more than a few insist that his errors in detail and his metaphysical predispositions by no means discredit his basic insight into the knowledge process. Of especial influence has been his

doctrine of the active mind—that the mind is not merely a recipient of ideas but is always actively creating and organizing in the knowledge process. Kant was enough of a scientist to make full acknowledgment of the place of observation in constructing sound descriptions of the world, but he was

also fully aware that if empirical knowledge alone is admitted, certainty in knowledge must be sacrificed—and he was by no means prepared for such a sacrifice. In the interest of science he wanted certainty, but the certainty of fact, not of tautology, and

he believed he had found it in the principle of the “synthetic a priori,” a principle which, if valid, entitles one to knowledge about the world independently of experi-

ence of the world. Such a knowledge would presumably be certain. Kant defended this important methodological claim by the example of mathematics, but

7 in more recent times it has been severely challenged and is today defended by only a small minority of logicians and methodologists. It was not only in his theory of knowledge that Kant influenced the future. His ethical philosophy is the classical pattern of moral absolutism, of enjoining a categorical demand of duty for duty’s sake in total abstraction from the practical circumstances that define particular moral situations. It is an ethics of rationalism that contrasts vividly with the empirically grounded moral theory of Mill and the

Utilitarians, and though it knows comparatively few followers at present, it figures prominently in every serious discussion of the philosophical problem of the

good life. Finally, mention should be made of Kant’s religious philosophy, for no modern thinker has more significantly affected the course of Protestant thought. Critical of the traditional arguments for God, he gave religion an anthropocentric rather than theocentric orientation, practical rather than theoretical, and made it primarily a

matter of faith rather than knowledge. Though a child of the Enlightenment, in his technical analysis of the limitations of

knowledge Kant laid the philosophic foundations for the Romanticism which was already a force in his own day.

Friedrich Hegel, Kant’s most important successor in German philosophy, has had

an influence sufficiently great to give him a measure of protection from the barrage of

criticism loosed against his philosophy in recent years. Very infrequently in intellectual history has one man come so close to dominating philosophy as did Hegel for several decades in the early nineteenth century. Not only did he and his followers rule the roost in Germany, but later in England there followed in the footsteps of

CONTEMPORARY

8

the master a troop of powerful metaphysicians led by T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Bernard Bosanquet. Their intellectual heirs linger on today, though, to be sure, more in the eddies than in the main stream. Likewise, there was a period in American intellectual history when philosophy just about was Hegelianism. Soon after the Civil War, The Journal of Speculative

Philosophy was begun in St. Louis for the express purpose of popularizing absolute Idealism by translation and interpretation of Hegel’s works. So effective was the effort that by the time John Dewey was doing his graduate work, around 1880, one could avoid being swallowed up in the movement only by a supreme effort. Josiah Royce is no doubt the greatest of the American representatives of the Hegelian tradition—though Royce is far too original a thinker to be dismissed as just a disciple

—and Royce in turn, though somewhat overshadowed by his colorful: colleague, William James, had no mean influence on his Harvard students, many of whom were later to become importantly situated teachers in American colleges and universities. Mention of Dewey makes appropriate the additional comment that no small part of Hegel’s influence must now be reckoned residual, in the sense that there are traces of his ways of thinking in the thought of many of those who, like Dewey, turned with such apparent completeness against the great dialectician. Although the spirit and method of

PHILOSOPHY

the dead elements in Hegel’s system, found the German’s idealistic history least moribund. Many others will no doubt agree. The absolute idealism of Hegel, with its concern for totalities and its general disregard for the reality and worth of the particular and individual, and certainly the parochialism which led him, for instance, to regard the Prussian state as the logical

culmination of history’s political development, have gone by the boards. But his essential theory of process, a scheme of action and reaction, thesis and antithesis, left an indelible mark, most notably on Marxian thought. Here history is described not in terms of ideal processes but as the conflict of social classes, the terms of the conflict determined by economic factors. The temporary victor is supplied a new

enemy,

and again the clash—until

the

dialectic yields the classless society. Marxian social philosophy, in turn, has accelerated its drive enormously since its inception a hundred years ago. Today in both prac-

tical politics and democratic

theory,

while

and nondemocratic

much

energy is

expended to oppose it, the influence and importance of Marxism are at high tide. If Marx took his dialectic from Hegel,

he combined it with a materialism far more deeply interfused in his intellectual milieu. The nineteenth century closed with a resurgence of Materialism, the monistic ontology which holds that the physical matter of things, whatever it may prove to be upon analysis by subatomic physics,

Hegel’s philosophy, which resulted in an

is the single ultimate substratum of all ex-

enormously complicated metaphysical sys-

istence, and it has continued to command a

tem, is in most circles today radically out of favor, his “dialectical” interpretation of history has proved to be one of the found-

large allegiance although challenged with vigor by those who have taken fresh heart

ing ideas

philosopher

of recent

times.

and

statesman

The

Italian

Benedetto

Croce, a writer of very great influence in esthetics, in separating out the living from

from certain implications of recent biology and physics, as, for instance, the Heisen-

berg uncertainty principle. Materialists, ranging from “crass reductionists” and “rampant iconoclasts” to the ultra-refined

INTRODUCTION

5

Santayanas, have tended to advance realis-

against nineteenth-century Rationalism, the

tic epistemologies; the “Critical Realists,”

metaphysical theory that the universe is ordered according to logic and therefore completely amenable to its investigation. Arthur Schopenhauer, Hegel’s contemporary, is popularly tagged as a pessimist, but his pessimism is something more than just a grunting gloom. It is, in fact, a complete metaphysics, a metaphysics which establishes Will, not Reason, at the universe’s foundations. If you will find in

as a notable example, have presupposed or concomitantly developed a materialistic

ontology. Much of the Materialism of recent times owes its development in part to the curious inversion of Hegel’s idealism effected by Feuerbach, Marx, and others,

and it therefore contrasts interestingly as a Hegelian influence with the corresponding British and American Idealism considered above. As a final nod to Hegel, it remains at least to mention his profound influence on historical study, both religious and secular, and upon historiography, as well as the philosophy of history. Indeed, it would be difficult to overestimate the diffused impact of the Hegelian philosophy on the intellectual and practical life of our time. It was not until recently that the influence of another nineteenth-century thinker, the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard, was felt in the Anglo-American world. But however recent, that influence, administering to present theology, philosophy, and psychology a vigorous dosage of Augustinism and Calvinism, has been one of the most profound impacts upon our culture. At least two ideas of Kierkegaard must receive attention: his strong insistence, as against Hegelian rationalism, on concrete individual existence as in every way prior to rational formulation; and his description of the awesome gulf that separates finite man from the infinite God. Not only has

the theistic Existentialism

of the mid-

twentieth century developed directly out of these theses, but atheistic Existentialism

as well, substituting, as in the popular version by Sartre, “nothingness” for “the infinite God.”

But it was not left to the exotic Kierkegaard alone to fashion a full scale revolt

man the key to the larger plan, insisted Schopenhauer, look not to his intellect— his rational, mathematical, logical activity —but to his drive, his instinctive self, his desires, demands, lusts; here is the essential sea upon which logic is but the scudding foam. Such were the bases of Schopenhauer’s pessimism: the world “hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. . . .” But a philosophy which enthrones Will, Voluntarism, is not necessarily either pessimistic or mystical—‘“mystical” because there was about Schopenhauer’s system a somewhat mystical intuitive quality—as the mention of Friedrich Nietzsche at once suggests. According to Nietzsche’s essentially moral philosophy, man’s most important quality is neither his intellect nor his benevolence, but his strength of will,

his will to power. The strong man need not and will not be bound by the prohibitive codes that serve the mass; he will use them but not be subject to them. Such a way of thinking has in our time attracted men by no means uniform in type, like

the Nazis looking for a philosophical grounding for their tyrannical, irrational drives, or Bernard Shaw, D. H. Lawrence, and Strindberg, different as they are, revolting against stifling middle-class traditionalism to proclaim Creativity king. Enrolled under that banner, too, is Henri Bergson, though his greatest barbs are for

10

CONTEMPORARY

use against the apotheosis of science, which, by its very nature materialistic and abstract,

cannot do justice to the spiritual, concrete universe, which is the rea/ universe. The friendship and strong mutual admiration between Bergson and William James has appeared to some inexplicable,

except perhaps by the principle of “attrac-

PHILOSOPHY

sented in the rise of scientific psychology during the last seventy-five years, which, like the emergence in other eras of special disciplines of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and biology, has relieved philosophy of many problems that formerly consumed a large measure of its effort. To be sure, the exact lines of the severance are far

tion of opposites.” However, recollection

from clear and there is still a considerable

of the scientist James’ strong attack upon

amount of philosophical writing on such topics as “mind,” “personality,” “perception,” “motivation,” and “emotion.” But there seems to be an increasing tendency

the reductive, agnostic tendencies of much of the science-ridden philosophy of his time establishes the bond of accord between the two men. Over and over again he proclaimed the danger of closing the door on new truth by adoption of a narrow doctrine of surveillance. The influence on James of the conversation and writing of his friend Charles S. Peirce was quite explicitly avowed by James himself, but not until recently has Peirce come into his own, a fact that springs partially from the somewhat confused and largely unpublished state in which his writings were left. The recent publication of many of his papers has led to a great renewal of interest (the appearance of Peirce clubs, even) in this provocative and versatile mind. Perhaps no person better exemplifies a normative spirit and character and purpose for contemporary philosophy than this model of the philosopher-scientist, who objects strenuously to “seminary philosophy,” insisting on a “laboratory philosophy” that is cultivated in close conjunction with the experimental sciences, a mathematician and logician devoted to logical analysis, a semanticist concerned with meaning and meanings. *

*

*

Today’s philosophy is marked both by

new emphases and de-emphases of interests. A significant de-emphasis is repre-

>

«6

among philosophers themselves to object to aught but an experimental, or at least a carefully controlled: empirical, treatment of such problems. And generally, philosophers now assume that they should draw for their own inquiries upon the rapidly growing body of data and interpretation furnished by their specialized psychological colleagues. William James, as both a great pioneer in the science of psychology and

a profoundly influential and original philosophic mind, continues to show the contemporary student important links be-

tween these fields. Another de-emphasis of recent philosophy is on revealed ethics and theology. The history of American academic philosophy,

for instance, shows the almost complete eclipse and virtual disappearance of the churchman-philosopher. Throughout the eighteenth

and

nineteenth

centuries,

the

typical professor of philosophy was likely to be an ordained minister who took it pretty much for granted that his philosophic writing and teaching would be based solidly on one of the Christian orthodoxies, or would at least not conflict openly with — orthodoxy. Although today many philoso-

phers proclaim

their allegiance

to the

Christian tradition, this tradition must now

be specifically

argued

for

rather

than

assumed; and a great many philosophers,

INTRODUCTION

Il

even among those who profess some sort of theism, pay but scant attention to biblical ethics and much less to the writings of the Church Fathers. The most impressive exception to this generalization is afforded by the Neo-Thomists, mainly Catholic philosophers teaching in parochial

schools, who though they maintain the famous distinction of their master between natural and revealed knowledge, do not of course neglect, but rather generally presuppose for their position, the official Catholic doctrine. Mention should also be made of the rise in our time of a new Protestant orthodoxy, partly stemming from Kierkegaard. Although this movement has attracted far more attention among theologians and psychologists of religion than among philosophers, its reverberations have been strong enough to arouse concern even in the camp of the naturalists, leading them to a vigorous

attack on what they call “the new failure of nerve.” When one thinks of such theologians as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, poets like T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, historians like Arnold Toynbee, and novelists of the stature of Aldous Huxley calling for a reaffirmation of a religious way of life and scoring the atheistic materialism which they closely associate with the confusion and violence of our age, it becomes clear that no one can properly count out the orthodox tradition. Still, the

new orthodoxy thus far does not appear to have made

important gains among

pro-

fessional philosophers. Even where its connections with science have been intimate, philosophy has tradi-

minant of the problems of knowledge. The traditional Judeo-Christian religious orientation of morals has never failed to provoke the value philosophers to a search for the justification of absolutism in their ethical theories. There have been, of course, major instances of philosophical criticism of religion, as instanced in the ancient Epicureans or the analyses of Hume, and in the nineteenth century the development

of philosophy in indifference to religious interest was significantly increased, but it has been in the present century that philosophy has gained a genuine independence. Yet it is an independent philosophy that has, by virtue of its radical criticism, brought religion to a more basic examination of its intellectual foundations that should strengthen rather than weaken

the superstructure.

Much

contemporary

philosophy is cultivated in complete inditference to religion. There is much criticism of religion, especially in its traditional

forms. But today the philosophy of religion enjoys something of a renascence which, whatever its cause, testifies at once to the falsity of those claims that philosophy is necessarily a destroyer of religion and to the truth that critical analysis matures and gives a more genuine profundity to religious thought. That there is now an unprecedented secularism is hardly to be

denied, but the past half-century has witnessed numerous developments in religous philosophy and theology, ranging from more orthodox theism through humanistic and naturalistic theism to pan-

theism, to say nothing of significant anal-

tionally walked hand in hand with religion. The religious quest for a cosmically

yses of the nature of religion in its relation to art and morals, the religious interpretation of history, the problem of

grounded meaning of life has been perhaps the dominant inspiration for meta-

of religious knowledge.

physics. The search for a knowledge of God and the soul has been a major deter-

evil, and the whole question of the claim Finally, mention

though with

some

should be made

cautionary

here,

qualifica-

12

CONTEMPORARY

tions, of the lessening importance of systematic metaphysical systems of the sort associated with such names as Plato,

Spinoza, Hegel, Schopenhauer,

Bradley,

or Royce. To be sure, one immediately thinks of such recent figures as Samuel Alexander and Alfred North Whitehead, but there is a widespread opinion among philosophers that these men, great-minded though they were, were working essentially in a tradition that belongs to the past. Quite certainly there are few such “speculative” systems among the works of the big philosophic names of our time. Replacing in large measure the prescientific psychology and the religious and system-building interests of old, are important new emphases upon logic, methodology, and philosophy of science, and

the virtual invention of the fields of signtheory, philosophy of history and culture, and value-theory. Logic, of course, has been recognized as an important branch of philosophy since Aristotle; but until the middle of the last century, it had seen little development beyond a meticulous refinement. As already indicated, however, developments in mathematics, especially in the higher reaches of algebra, at the hands of such men as De Morgan, Boole, Peano and Peirce, brought it in a comparatively brief time to a new and transformed life. The old classical formula, with its subjectpredicate analysis of propositions and its syllogistic interpretation of inference, has been declared far too narrow and restrictive as a foundation of the totality of logic. It has given way to a more comprehensive base that recognizes the full variety of relational structures and, as “symbolic” logic, employs a complicated symbolism that en-

ables deduction by a mathematical type of calculation, The early work culminated, just before the outbreak of World War I,

PHILOSOPHY

in the monumental Principia Mathematica of A. N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell,

but since then rapid strides have been made, and today logic flourishes as never before, so much so, indeed, that there is — speculation about the possibility of its becoming a separate and independent discipline. The rise of the new formal logic is both the result and the cause of a new rapport

between

mathematics

and _ philosophy,

which fields, after an intimate relationship in the seventeenth century (Descartes and Leibniz, for instance, were

eminent

both

as mathematicians and philosophers), for

the most part went their separate ways through the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries. It would seem that an important determining influence upon cer-

tain directions in philosophy, both with respect to the questions asked and the answers given, is the interest currently

manifest among students of philosophy in mathematics and the mathematically oriented sciences.

Closely related to the rise of the new logic is the special interest, increasingly shown in recent years, in what is now a recognized discipline of philosophy, namely, philosophy of science. The subject matter of this field is readily indicated by typical key concepts: theory, causality, law, probability, classification, and verification. The problems of scientific method are frequently, as of old, made a part of logic, conceived broadly as analysis, to

include

the principles

of methodology

and a concern for the presuppositions of science. Added to the philosophy of science,: moreover, is scientific philosophy, its character determined in large measure

by newer physical concepts, such as prevail in relativity physics and quantum mechanics, very much as the seventeenth-

INTRODUCTION

century classical mechanics of Newton set the pattern for much of the work of scientifically minded philosophers through the nineteenth century. Even the widespread positivistic temper of the present has failed to stifle the passion for synthesis, and cosmologies, therefore, are still being composed, albeit they usually exemplify a caution and an intimate reli-

ance upon the detailed pronouncements of science that were often lacking in their ancestors. Certainly if the new logic signifies a rapport between mathematics and logic, the recognition of the philosophy of science as a distinct branch of the parent discipline indicates an association of scientist and philosopher which, though not unknown in previous history, is especially marked in our time. A thorough acquaint-

ance with the nature of science and its methods and a specialized competence in at least one of the sciences are becoming more common among philosophers, while there is no evidence of a decrease in the number of theoretical scientists who enter, frequently conscientiously and seriously, the philosophic arena. Indeed, it is not a simple matter to set definite boundaries between science and philosophy, and it is clear that such philosophically minded scientists as Einstein, Eddington, Jeans, Planck, and Kohler do not scruple to cross

those boundaries. The theory of signs and signification, popularly known as semantics, but increasingly designated semiotic, can probably make the best claim to being a new division of philesophy, for in spite of interesting and important excursions into the subject by such old masters as Plato, Duns Scotus and John Locke, it is only in recent decades that a widespread effort has been made to define and classify signs and to

differentiate the various factors in the com-

SS

13 municative and expressive processes. Today serious work in semiotic generally recognizes the importance of collaboration among philosophers, psychologists, linguists, anthropologists, and others if the immensely complicated problems of signs and symbols are to receive adequate treatment. But meanwhile some of the more obvious features of language reform have been

seized upon and oversimplified by popularizers whose missionary zeal, while perhaps not without a certain salutary effect, has provoked a reaction in the form of a

disgusted dismissal of the whole subject as “merely faddish,” thus rendering insecure even the solid accomplishments.

Today there is an increasing tendency to recognize “philosophy of history” and “philosophy of culture” as two other closely

related disciplines of philosophy. Although interesting work was done in these fields by eighteenth-century French and British thinkers, the gigantic efforts of Hegel to

fit the processes of scientific, political, economic, artistic, religious, and intellectual achievement into an over-all pattern were especially fruitful in the development of such interests. The Marxian “pan-economism” has, of course, been second to no other position as a winning synthesis, but

the influence of evolutionary theory, of Freudian and Jungian psychological explanation, of the empirical investigations of various “primitive” societies and cul-

tures

by field anthropologists,

and the

epochal accounts of such historians and sociologists as Spengler, Sorokin, and Toynbee, cannot be easily overrated. It the Positivists have insisted that philosophy is really a critique of the language of the sciences, other twentieth-century philosophers have followed Croce’s lead in de-

claring philosophy to be really a kind of history. The present generation is intensely self-

14

CONTEMPORARY

conscious. It has a profound sense of historic importance, a realization that the events of its day may well determine the

course or even the life of civilization for a long time to come. But its acceptance of the historic role is not with the easy con-

fidence and complacent assurance of its predecessors; rather it is faltering and fearful, charged with the anxiety that has become so dominant a characteristic of the present temper. This acute sense of history

is nowhere expressed more clearly than by the numerous works of philosophers, historians, and social theorists devoted to the analysis of the present in its relation to the past and future. And in these philosophies of history, nothing is more obvious than the deep-lying solicitude for the future that has displaced the calm assurance of progress that marked the theories of a half-century ago. For the nineteenth century’s faith in the saving power of science and education, a faith that was given powerful support by the wide increase in political and economic freedom, by the material increase that attended the development of technology and the exploitation of nature, and by the general theory of evolution, has retreated in the face of practical adversity. Various forms of pessimism and near-pessimism in the theory of history give articulate expression to the anxiety of the time. The impact of practical affairs on the course of philosophy is seen again in the rise of the philosophy of culture. With the Orient and Occident facing one another with apprehension, philosophers from both sides of the world have turned with serious attention to the search for grounds

PHILOSOPHY

reveal the structure and character of a culture and permit comparison and contrast adequate for appraisal and understanding. Indeed, one of the major developments of twentieth-century Occidental thought, par-

alleling in proportions the rise of Existentialism or of the philosophy of language, is the awakening of interest in Oriental philosophy. A new cosmopolitanism is growing in academic circles, a cosmopolitanism that is born partly of necessity, but more often of a genuine desire to understand or even embrace the best products of the world’s culture.

Finally in this notice of relatively new branches of philosophy, mention must be made of theory of value or Axiology. Value in the sense of moral goodness, economic worth, or beauty has long been an object of serious study: what Axiologists try to do—and herein is the newness of their endeavor—is to discover the meaning common to all kinds of value. What is

value-in-general? they ask. Where does it reside? What is its relation to human beings? How is it judged? And particularly: Is knowledge of value possible? Among the Pragmatists particularly there has been an intense interest in the extension of the spirit and methods of science to include the area of human value, an interest which

has resulted not only in new analyses of the nature of value, but of the relation of value to fact and of the logical structure of value judgments as compared with factual propositions. The entire question of whether there can be a science of values, either intrinsic or instrumental, has pro-

duced a voluminous

literature and has

claimed much of the attention of philoso- .

for better intercultural understanding and

phers of every school.

agreement. Cultural anthropology, comparative religion, sociology; and logic are

This mention of some new philosophic interests is not in any sense intended to sug-

exploited in the interest of achieving tech-

gest that philosophic energy has been di-

niques of analysis and evaluation that will

verted

from what

some

'

would

consider

-

INTRODUCTION the more established branches of philosophy, such subjects as metaphysics, epis-

15

in the latter two there is at mid-century”

This naturalistic temper has among philosophers as well scientists, who denounce it as and accuse it of being both a

very great interest and activity.

reality and a destroyer of values. Yet most

temology, ethics, and esthetics. Especially

*

*

will

*

comments

to offer an ex-

haustive description of contemporary phi-

losophy. It is only by reading the actual writings of those who have created that philosophy that an understanding or appreciation of its character is to be achieved. But a few final characterizations may

indicate its temper and the quality of its problems. (1) Perhaps nothing describes contemporary thought better than its predominantly naturalistic disposition. Although a new supernaturalism is appearing alongside the old, the naturalism that insists that whatever is to be known, described, or explained must be available to the ordinary processes of human knowledge quite clearly dominates the intellectual scene. It is a naturalism, moreover, which holds that nothing that is in principle capable of investigation by empirical and rational techniques should be allowed the

immunity

of the sacrosanct. Man, both

body and soul, is regarded—far more than in any age since perhaps that of the early Greeks—as an entirely legitimate

object

for

inquiry.

The

revolutionary

work of physical anthropologists, geneticists, and psychologists in their various descriptions of man lights the path of present

philosophical inquiry. Such ideas as the much controverted theories of the unconscious

ment

and

of psychosexual

are influential

that

the

naturalism

of

today, with its rich insights into human

It is, of course, not the purpose of these

introductory

recognize

its critics as among “scientism” distorter of

develop-

determinants

of a

philosophy which attempts to focus attention upon the emotional and other nonintellectual factors operative in the world.

problems and values is quite free from the reductionism and philosophical naiveté of its near ancestor, the materialism of yesterday.

(2) The notions of change, becoming, time, and event are typical features of current thought. Increasingly, the world, including man and society, has been examined historically, developmentally, and described as process rather than as stable entities. The evolutionary theories of Darwin and his followers and the historical dialectic of Marx and the Marxists are only the most dramatic and _ best

known of the numerous

schemes which

make such emphasis. From James’ rejection of consciousness as an entity to Dewey’s concern with learning, growth, and inquiry, Whitehead’s substitution of process for substance, and the “élan vital” of Bergson and Alexander, there is an in-

sistence that change and movement are somehow more primitive and basic than inviolable and immutable objects and things. Whether it deals with the atom, the macroscopic world, the mind of man,

or the institutions of human society, contemporary philosophy seems to insist that change is the order of the day.

(3) In spite of powerful dogmatisms and absolutisms in present society and in recent philosophy, contemporary thought

may be characterized as markedly relativistic in temper. No doubt this is due in considerable measure to the great gains

that have been made in knowledge of times and places other than our own. Certainly

ethnocentrism

has

been

under-

16

CONTEMPORARY

PHILOSOPHY

mined thereby, and with it the traditional

confine the basis of knowledge to sensory

belief that the values of a particular place and time are guaranteed by a cosmic

data. And there is a wide acknowledgment by Empiricists that knowledge by “pure” experience is impossible, that con-

support. Absolutism, which has won most of the victories on the value battlefields of the past, has yielded in the most recent decades to the relativism which defines right and wrong, good and evil, beauty and ugliness as relative to specific contexts.

Already, however, there are signs of a reawakening absolutism in the evidences of social failure and the rise of irrationalism. More important for philosophy, however, is the current overhauling of value theory to determine whether a ground and criteria for evaluation can be found without resort to categorical imperatives and irrational absolutes and without desertion of the particular concrete context of value experience. (4) One of the most persistent interests of philosophy is the problem of method-

ology, which asks the fundamental question of how we know or by what method or methods it is legitimate to make assertions of knowledge. In recent decades methodological questions have received a more concentrated attention than ever before. So much effort has been expended on the refinement of analyses of the basic methods and the arguments adduced in their support that it seems justifiable to say that a methodological consciousness is one of the general characteristics of contemporary thought. Rationalism has _received a considerable overhauling at the hands especially of the Idealists, and intuition has been vigorously defended by the Bergsonians, but it has been largely an age of Empiricism. There are few who refuse to accept the Empirical dictum that knowledge must come from experience. But there is disagreement as to what constitutes experience, not all who call

themselves

Empiricists being willing to

ceptual knowledge involves more than the sensory data.

(5) Perhaps at no time in its long history has philosophy been so intensely concerned with itself as it is today. Essays in definition have abounded, earnest

attempts to provide impressive and persuasive answers to the old poser, “What is

philosophy, anyway?” But recent philosophy has been just as concerned to justify as to explain its ways to man. Philosophic

devotees have suffered from the taunts of their fellow. workers

in the intellectual

vineyards, from feelings of shame that many of their very old problems seem hardly nearer solution today than they were twenty-four hundred years ago, and from feelings of guilt that they should pursue their “impractical” studies in a world torn by war and poverty and disease. Yet very recently these anxieties seem

somewhat

to have

abated,

at least

in those who have found it possible to moderate their expectations of what phi-

losophy can accomplish. Philosophy, the Logical Analysts say, is not all-important —for instance, it is mot queen of the sciences—but as one among many disciplines, tackling problems piecemeal and being content with small, perhaps some-

what technical, advances, philosophy is not unimportant. However, such a severe confinement of philosophy’s role has pro-

voked deep resentment among Idealists and Existentialists, who insist that philosophy today, as in the past, must not

content itself with any lesser goal than the larger vision, the elucidation of wisdom. If its achievements are not gigantic, it is because its aims are so high; but to lower those aims is to betray philosophy’s

INTRODUCTION

opportunity to contribute world’s advance.

17 toward

the

losophies

have

incorporated

and

devel-

oped evolutionary and _ psychoanalytic ideas, but some have rejected them To all that has been said, add the ~ strongly. Materialism and Realism are obvious fact’ that today most philosophers more popular than ever before, but they cannot be assigned simply to a “type.” have not crowded out those who insist Their problems and interests are so that mind and ideas alone are real. It is various and complex, there is so much sophisticated philosophic practice today interpenetration among the various to emphasize linguistic and logical mat“schools,” that no system of cataloguing ters, but some find such occupation a can quite succeed; philosophy in midmark of triviality. Philosophers generally twentieth century cannot be adequately are eager to attain to a kind of scientific respectability in their method and they described. The best one can do is to talk regard scientific concepts and theories as about “much” philosophy or “seemingly especially relevant to the philosophic conspicuous” ideas and developments. For every summary generalization, qualificaenterprise. Yet some feel this to be a misplaced devotion and look to art and tions must be entered to make room for religion for guidance along a more fruitthe divergent ways of thinking, ways which—who knows?—may tomorrow ful course. And so it goes. But there is really no come into their own. Naturalism seems dominant today, but supernaturalisms of way of knowing about philosophy today various kinds are still with us. Many phi- except by reading it first hand.

le bID-E-A-bekioaVi edge and reality may be difficult to distinguish from those of Realism. His value

THE Major traditions of Western thought that describe the enterprise of philosophy as at once an account of the nature and the whole of reality and a quest for the ultimate values, demanding of the philoso-

theory will probably have greater respect for the claims of relativism, and as a meta-

physician he will keep one eye on the latest

pher that he be a spectator of all time and all existence, are continued in contemporary Idealism. As with its eminent ancestors, Plato, Spinoza, and Hegel, Idealism’s

pronouncements of the sciences. His associations, too, are less likely to be as intimate with established religion as formerly

program is conceived usually on a grand scale, its method speculative and synthetic

a naturalistic quality uncommon in earlier years. But fundamentally the Idealist is still

rather than scientific and analytic, inclining toward a dominance of reason or even

a value philosopher who holds, to borrow

and his temper far less transcendental, with

words from Professor Montague, a Realist with an Idealist’s vision, that what is deepest in the human soul is highest in the universe, and that the things that matter most are not ultimately at the mercy of the things that matter least. As with his predecessors, the contemporary Idealist is likely to be a lone wolf among philosophers, building upon the

mystical intuition rather than sensory empiricism. The problems of Idealism are varied and have a wide coverage, em-

bracing all of the traditional departments of philosophy, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, logic, ethics, and esthetics. Its

associations are as numerous as the areas of human thought and activity, religion and morals, law and politics, mathematics and

traditions of his inheritance but with a maximum of individual effort and a mini-

the natural sciences, anthropology and the social studies, history and the humanities. Its pronouncements range from the nature of sense data to the structure of the cosmos. The typical Idealistic philosopher of today does not stand as squarely within a

mum of outward cooperation with his philosophical colleagues, refusing to follow

the path of those who relate their philoso-

school distinctions that has taken place dur-

phy intimately with science and attempt to cooperate in the manner typical of scientists. Unlike them also in their method of piecemeal investigation of specific and ofttimes isolated problems, the Idealist insists on synoptic methods that will in the end

ing the past quarter-century has brought

yield a pronouncement of the totality of -

traditionally Idealistic pattern as did his philosophical forebears of a generation or

two ago. The breaking-down of rigorous

him close to his neighbors on many fronts,

reality. He is jealous of the traditional role

and at times the boundaries are quite obliterated. His method, for instance, is likely

of philosophy as the queen of all knowledge

to be more pragmatic, quite surely more

and autonomy to the sciences. A wide divergence of views prevails

and refuses to sacrifice its independence

empirical, and both his theory of knowl18

INTRODUCTION

ag

among Idealists, both historical and con-

rather than the rule among idealists and

temporary. Indeed, their philosophy must

they are often hard put to defend their

be described less as a body of doctrines to

particulars in the structure of their metaphysics. (2) With the creative activity of the mind in knowing as the key to the nature of things, Idealism describes

which adherence may be expected than as

an ever recurring insight, an attitude of interpretation, that yields new

results in

new situations. It is an error, for instance,

reality in terms compatible with reason,

to describe Idealism entirely in terms of absolutism, for pluralism is a constantly recurring feature of idealistic metaphysics, as with the modern disciples of Leibniz. Or it is hazardous to emphasize ration-

mind, spirit, will, and purpose,

alism

without

caution,

for the idealistic

concern

for the self is frequently

ductive

of

voluntarism.

Schools

pro-

from

pantheism to panpsychism, methods ranging from rigorous rationalism to subjectivistic

both

intuitionism,

objectivistic

and

and

value

the Idealists’ banner. Moreover,

Idealism

has different

theories

subjectivistic

fly

the word

meanings

within

different contexts, a cause of considerable

terminological confusion in philosophical discourse. In epistemology, for instance, it refers to a specific kind of relationship of the knowing subject to the object known, whereas in metaphysics its reference is to the nature of the real. Yet in spite of confusion and diversity, a few fundamental theses are more or

less common to idealistic philosophies and may be taken as generally descriptive ot

their foundations.

(1) Without denying

the reality of the world of ordinary experience or the accuracy of the scientific account of its nature as viewed from the

analysts’ perspective, the Idealist usually insists that the plurality and particularity of the facts as thus experienced and interpreted are, nevertheless,

deceptive and

that a truer picture describes reality as a unified, self-sufficient ground in which every particular thing and event is related to every other in an organic and mean-

ingful whole. Pluralists are the exception

taking a

rigorous and often polemical stand against materialistic or mechanical interpretations of the data of experience. (3) In opposition to naturalistic philosophy that describes goodness and beauty as subjective in character or relative to particular contexts and grounds all value entirely in the human situation, Idealism in its traditional forms asserts an objective continuity of human value with the cosmic structure, an identity of the ultimately real with the ultimately important. Such a cosmic reference of values not only supports the absolutistic tendencies of idealistic ethics, but is the foundation also

of its common claim that value knowledge is possible. It inspires, moreover, the Idealist’s broad interest in moral issues that frequently involves a synoptic concern for the whole of human history and human culture. (4) Finally, the contemporary Idealist, somewhat in common with most modern philosophers, will insist that the real is in some sense a process, rather than a fixed, static whole. But its process will be something of an ana-

logue to the life processes of an organism or the reasoning of mind. Most important, it will be a nonmechanical process that has value and meaningful direction.

Within the broad framework of these, basic theses, Idealists cultivate their methods and arguments with much independence. There is usually a theory of knowledge, derived in large measure from

Berkeley and Kant, which

asserts that

what is known is in some respects, at least,

IDEALISM

20

a product of its being known. Following Hegel, there may be a theory of logic that relates the forms of reason intimately to the structural forms ‘of reality. Quite surely there will be opposition to nominalism in a theory of the ontological reality of universals, and there will be a methodology of knowledge and a concept of truth that guarantee the priority of reason, or perhaps even intuition, over sensory experience, while yet accepting the

only an all-inclusive, self-consistent, harmonious whole can give satisfaction, Bradley. insisted that the Absolute is the only genuine concrete reality. The fragmentary, relative, multiple, and contradictory world of ordinary experience is an appearance that must be dissolved in the unity and wholeness of the Absolute, in which there are no relations and in which

the mind alone can find rest from its searchings.

But

with

edge. At the beginning of the century, Idealism dominated the philosophy of the English-speaking world. On the European continent, and especially in Germany, it had suffered a considerable decline in competition with a more empirically oriented Positivism and Materialism, but in America and England the towering figures of Josiah Royce (1855-1916) at Harvard and F. H. Bradley (1846-1924) at Oxford, both inheritors of the German absolutistic tradition, seemed a guarantee

strong mystical fervor of the type not uncommon among Idealists. In his ethics he opposed hedonism, utilitarianism, and

that Idealism would reign supreme for a long time to come. Bradley’s Idealism, non-theistic and far less personalistic and anthropomorphic than Royce’s in its account of reality, is probably the best representation of recent absolutism in its most rigorous form. It is grounded in a fundamental examination of the principles of logic and the data of knowledge and a reference of these to the nature of the real. “I have assumed,” says Bradley, “that the object of metaphysics is to find a general view which will satisfy the intellect, and I have assumed that whatever succeeds in doing this is real and true, and that what-

ever fails is neither.” Philosophy seeks a knowledge

of reality, as opposed to ap-

pearance, and a conception of the world as a unified whole. Since he believed that

Bradley

his extreme

rationalistic

empiricism

bent,

even

data of the senses as the content of knowl-

generally,

and

evidenced

a

insisted that

truth and beauty are to be sought for their own sake. Royce’s philosophy reflects a deep religious piety and moral conviction and is grounded firmly in the tradition of Christian theism. Like most American expressions of Idealism, it involves a serious effort to satisfy the pluralistic and individualistic temper of American thought without sacrificing the organic unity and

wholeness of the Absolute. In his Gifford Lectures, The

World and the Individual,

Royce struggles to effect some compromise that will place the stamp of ultimate reality upon the individual and guarantee a meaning for his moral struggles and spiritual aspirations. More pluralistic in temper, yet related

to the Hegelian foundations of absolutism, were the philosophies of J. M. E. McTaggart in Britain and George Holmes Howison in America, both of whom in-

sisted on the underived reality of the individual as the foundation of metaphysics. > But whatever its strength at the turn of the century, Idealism has since declined progressively in influence in both

Britain and America. In England its chief

—

INTRODUCTION

21

opponents were Realism and Analytical Philosophy. These more nearly expressed the traditional spirit of British empiricism and were in closer touch with the natural sciences. While Idealism spent _ itself

schools. And in so far as Idealism has in

religion, the decline of that liberalism in recent years has affected it adversely. Much of the strength of Idealism has been in the rigorous foundation in logic which it received at the hands of such philosophers as Royce, Bradley, and Bosanquet. But here too there has been opposition. Contemporary logicians on a wide front now oppose the metaphysical involvements of idealistic logic, just as they oppose the psychological content of pragmatic logic, and insist that logic is a more or less purely formal discipline that in its structure is indifferent to both the nature of reality and the processes of thought. Finally, the careful physiological and psychological analyses of the knowing process that have been made, especially by Realists and Pragmatists,. have progressively threatened the foundations of the Idealist’s traditional claim that reality must in some way be described in terms of mental activity. However, this is not to say that Idealism is a dying philosophy. Far from it. A philosophy that so nearly expresses the ever-present high hopes and aspirations of mankind and is so deep rooted in the cultural tradition as is Idealism may suffer a seasonal eclipse, but there are no grounds for supposing that its day is done. Already there are signs of a new vigor in Idealism, a vigor that increases as the initial force of naturalism and _positivism spends itself. The speculative ideal in philosophy is far from dead and is currently gaining strength as it conforms more nearly to the demands of empirical method. There is an increased interest in the broad problems of history and culture, territory traditionally exploited by the Idealists, and in such specific problems as natural law and_ natural

the

rights. Asin Britain, Idealism in America

largely with the system builders, Realism and Analysis proceeded to new and interesting problems that, while less grand and spectacular, have been the source of a new life and inspiration for philosophy. In America, Idealism has declined before the opposition of naturalistically oriented Pragmatism and Realism and, more re-

cently, Positivism, all of which express the empiricism and scientific temper that largely dominate the present. It is primarily recent and contemporary criticism of rationalism as a temper and method that accounts for the current eclipse of Idealism. Developments in nineteenthcentury and twentieth-century mathematics, logic, and physical science have led to a widespread rejection of the possibility of a deductive metaphysics from axiomatic truths presumed to be descriptions of the world of experience. Idealism, with its concern for large and ultimate ques-

tions that cannot be resolved short of a metaphysical system, has suffered the brunt of this positivistic onslaught. Moreover, the ethics of Idealism, with its characteristic emphasis on categorical imperatives and absolute intrinsic values,

has been countered vigorously by the subjectivism, relativism, and instrumentalism of the utilitarian, pragmatic, empirical forms of value theory that have increas-

ingly dominated

the scene

during the

past half-century. Even the problems of religion that have traditionally lain within the province of Idealism have become the concern, constructive as well as critical, of its opponents among philosophical past

been

associated

with

liberal

IDEALISM

22

has aligned itself with the new

physics

and to some extent with biology in its battle with mechanism, materialism, and naturalism, drawing heavily upon the support of both science and scientists in defense of its basic principle that in the

final appraisal the world proves

to be

something akin to the human mind and soul. Moreover, there is a new religiosity which, though it is related largely to orthodoxy and to Existentialism, promises

eventually to add fuel to the fires of Idealism. And, finally, the failures of society evidenced in war and economic unrest have produced a widespread reaction to the relativistic value philosophy that has predominated in the non-idealistic schools. Objectivistic and relational value theories seriously threaten the subjectivism common in recent years. In the United States, Idealism is cultivated with a religious interest by William Ernest Hocking and Ralph Tyler Flewelling. Both have a broad interest in history and intercultural relations and regard Idealism as a philosophy compatible in principle with their heritage of traditional Christian moral and religious values. Hocking, a student of Royce, is a chief defender of absolutism and of rationalistic methodology, which he intends to correct in conformity with pragmatic and realistic criticism. Flewelling, influenced by his teacher, Borden Parker Bowne, and by the more intently pluralistic metaphysics of the French Idealists,

takes individual

personality as the key

that unlocks the mystery of reality and resolves the paradoxes of metaphysics. Both give values a cosmic reference and describe the cosmos as a divine creative intelligence.

R. F. A. Hoernlé has continued the British tradition of absolutism inherited from Bradley and Bosanquet.

In

Italy,

where

a

revised

form

of

Hegelianism has flourished not only as an academic philosophy but also as an active

determinant

of social

policy, the

philosopher-statesman-historian Benedetto Croce has conceived of reality in terms of spirit and history and has related metaphysics intimately to the practical problem of the achievement of freedom. In Croce’s esthetic theory, where the physical art object is completely subordinated

to the intuitive-expressive act, his Idealism becomes obvious. Following Croce, the British philosopher Collingwood has been concerned largely with problems relating to history and art and presents an Ideal-

ism quite unlike the more orthodox absolutistic type. Another who represents a deviation is the American, DeWitt H. Parker, whose idealistic thought is a continuation of the pluralism of Leibniz and the intense voluntarism of Schopen-

hauer. Parker’s value theory is quite at variance with the typical objectivism and absolutism that is expected of the idealists. W. T. Stace has been a defender of the technical foundations of the idealistic argument and has been somewhat influenced by Hegel. His writings also indicate a possible influence from his studies of

the idealistic and mystical strain of Indian religion and philosophy. However, when he is classified as an Idealist, Stace is certainly not to be described as the usual variety. There is a strong element of

naturalistic humanism

in his philosophy

and a criticism of much that is ordinarily present in Idealism. The recent revival

of metaphysics has received considerable impetus from the work of Brand shard, who has devoted himself

Blanto a

basic analysis of the nature of the knowing

process and its implications for logic and

metaphysics. The German scholar Ernst Cassirer has brought his immense learn-

INTRODUCTION

. ing to the defense of a form of neoKantianism familiar in Germany but not common in America and Britain. From his studies in epistemology and philology, Cassirer has developed a philosophy of symbolic forms which, with its concern

“5 for myth, art, and religion, is quite different in orientation from the logical studies in symbolism current among Positivists or the psychologically grounded studies of some Pragmatists.

Metaphysics ODO

ODVOHDOOQDODOODOHo Ooo QODoovonowoowy

The Refutation of Realism Vveriets PAYOE mind,”

More than thirty years have now elapsed since Professor Moore published

it might

be objected

that the

tion of Idealism.” Therewith the curtain rose upon the episode of contemporary British realism. After three decades perhaps the time is now ripe for the inaugu-

proposition so framed would imply that some entities exist of which God is ignorant, if there is such a being as God, and that it is not certain that all realists would wish to assert this. I think that we can very well leave God out of the discussion.

ration of another episode. And it is but

In front of me is a piece of paper. I

fitting that “The Refutation of Realism” should appear on the same stage as its famous predecessor. I shall not gird at realism because its exponents disagree among themselves as to what precisely their philosophy teaches. But disagreements certainly exist, and

assume that the realist believes that this paper will continue to exist when it is put away in my desk for the night, and when no finite mind is experiencing it. He may also believe that it will continue to exist even if God is not experiencing it. But he must a¢ least assert that it will exist when no finite mind is experiencing

in Mind his famous

they make

article, “The Refuta-

it difficult

for a would-be

refuter to know precisely what is the proposition which he ought to refute. It is far from certain that all idealists would agree that the idealism which Professor Moore purported to refute represented adequately, or even inadequately, their views. And it may be that a similar criticism will be urged by realists against what I shall here have to say. But I must take my courage in my hands. Realists, it

seems

to me,

agree

tion. And therefore to refute that proposition will be to refute realism. In what follows, therefore, when I speak of minds I must be understood as referring to finite minds. Possibly I shall be told that although realists probably do as a matter of fact believe that some entities exist unexperienced, yet this is not the essence of realism.

that

Its essence, it may be said, is the belief

“some entities sometimes exist without being experienced by any finite mind.” This, at any rate, is the proposition which

that the relation between knowledge and its object is such that the knowledge

I shall undertake to I insert the word mula because if I exist without being

in asserting

it. That, I think, is essential to his posi-

makes no difference to the object, so that

refute. “finite” in this forwrote “some entities experienced by any

the object known,

might

whether

exist

without

as a matter

being

of fact it

does so exist or not. But it would seem that there could be

24

METAPHYSICS

25

no point in asserting that entities might exist unexperienced, unless as a matter of fact they at least sometimes do so exist. To prove that the universe might have the property X, if as a matter of fact the universe has no such property, would seem to be a useless proceeding which no

philosophy surely would take as its central contribution to truth. And I think that the only reason why realists are anxious to show that objects are such, and that the relation between knowledge and

object is such, that objects might exist unexperienced, is that they think that this will lead on to the belief that objects actually do exist unexperienced. They

have

been

anxious

to prove

that the

existence of objects is not dependent on being experienced by minds because they wished to draw the conclusion that objects exist unexperienced. Hence I think that I am correct in saying that the essential proposition of realism, which has to be refuted, is that “some entities sometimes exist without being experienced by any finite mind.” Now, lest I should be misunderstood, I will state clearly at the outset that I cannot prove that no entities exist without being experienced by minds. For all I know completely unexperienced entities

may exist, but what I shall assert is that we have not the slightest reason for believing that they do exist. And from this it will follow that the realistic position that they do exist is perfectly groundless and gratuitous, and one which ought not

to be believed. It will be in exactly the same

position as the proposition

“there

is a unicorn on the planet Mars.” I cannot prove that there is no unicorn on Mars. But since there is not the slightest reason to suppose that there is one, it is a proposition which ought not to be be-

lieved.

And still further to clarify the issue, I

will say that I shall not be discussing in this paper whether sense-objects are “mental.” My personal opinion is that this question is a pointless one, but that

if I am forced to answer it with a “yes” or “no,” I should do so by saying that they are not mental; just as, if I were forced to answer the pointless question whether the mind is an elephant, I should have to answer that it is not an elephant. I will, in fact, assume for the purposes of this paper that sense-objects, whether they be colour patches or other sense-data, or objects, are not mental. My position. will then be as follows: There is absolutely no reason for asserting that these nonmental, or physical, entities ever exist except when they are being experienced, and the proposition that they do so exist is utterly groundless and gratuitous, and one which ought not to be believed. The refutation of realism will therefore be sufficiently accomplished if it can be

shown that we do not know single entity exists

that any

unexperienced.

And

that is what I shall in this paper endeavour to show. I shall inquire how we could possibly know that unexperienced entities exist, even if, as a matter of fact, they do exist. And I shall show that there is no possible way in which we could know this, and that therefore we do not know it, and have no reason to believe it. For

the sake

of clearness,

let us

take

once again the concrete example of the piece of paper. I am at this moment experiencing it, and at this moment it exists, but how can I know that it existed last night in my desk when, so far as I know, no mind was experiencing it? How can I know that it will continue to exist tonight when there is no one in the room? The knowledge of these alleged facts is what the realists assert that they possess.

IDEALISM

26

And the question is, Whence could such knowledge have been obtained, and how can it be justified? WhatI assert is that

existence is possible. Thus

it is absolutely impossible to have any such knowledge. There are only two ways in which it

stand-point of theoretical logic, be regarded as a prejudice, not as a wellgrounded theory.” *

could be asserted that the existence of any sense-object can be established. One is by sense-perception, the other by inference

I might therefore adopt the strategy of masterly inaction. But I prefer to carry the war into the enemy’s camp. I propose to prove that no proof of the existence of unexperienced objects is possible. It is clear in the first place that any supposed reasoning could not be inductive. Inductive reasoning proceeds always upon the basis that what has been found in certain observed’ cases to be true will also be true in unobserved cases. But there is no single case in which it has been observed to be true that an experienced object continues to exist when it is not being experienced; for, by hypothesis, its existence when it is not being experienced cannot be observed. Induction is generalisation from observed facts, but there is not a single case of an unexperienced existence having been observed on which

from

sense-perception.

I know

of the

existence of this paper now because I see it. I am supposed to know of the existence of the other side of the moon, which no

one

has ever

various

actual

seen, by inference from astronomical

observations,

that is, by inference from things actually experienced. There are no other ways of proving the existence of a sense-object. Is either of them possible in the present case? 1. Sense-perception. I obviously cannot know by perception the existence of the paper when no one is experiencing it. For that would be self-contradictory. It would amount to asserting that I can experience the unexperienced. 2. Inference. Nor is it possible to prove

by inference the existence of the paper when no mind is experiencing it. For how can I possibly pass by inference from the particular fact of the existence of the paper now, when I am experiencing it, to the quite different particular fact of the existence of the paper yesterday or tomorrow, when neither I nor any other mind is experiencing it? Strictly speaking, the onus of proving that such an inference is impossible is not on me. The onus of proving that it is possible is

upon anyone who asserts it, and I am entitled to sit back and wait until someone comes forward with such an alleged proof. Many realists who know their business admit that no valid inference from an experienced to an unexperienced

Mr. Russell

says, “Belief in the existence of things outside my own biography must, from the

could

be based

the generalization

that

entities continue to exist when no one is experiencing them. And there is likewise not a single known instance of the existence of an unexperienced entity which could lead me to have even the slightest reason for supposing that this paper ever did exist, or will exist, when no one is experiencing it. Sinee inductive reasoning is ruled out, the required inference, if there is to be an inference, must be of a formal nature. But deductive inference of all kinds depends upon the principle of consistency. If P D Q, then we can only prove Q, /f P is admitted. From P D Q, therefore, all that can be deduced is that P and not-Q are inconsistent, and that we cannot hold both 1 Analysts of Mind, p. 133.

METAPHYSICS

27

P and not-Q together, though we

may

hold either of them separately. Hence, if it is alleged that a deductive inference can be drawn from the existence of the paper now, when I am experiencing

known. That any competent idealist ever did use such an argument may well be doubted, but I will waive that point. Mr.

exist when no one is experiencing it, is an internally inconsistent position. But there is absolutely no inconsistency between these two propositions. If I believe that nothing whatever exists or ever did or will exist, except my own personal sensedata, this may be a view of the universe which no one would ever hold, but there is absolutely nothing internally inconsistent in it. Therefore, no deductive inference can prove the existence of an unexperienced entity. Therefore, by no reasoning at all, inductive or deductive, can the existence of such an entity be proved. Nevertheless, arguments have been put forward from time to time by realists which are apparently intended to prove this conclusion. I will deal shortly with those with which I am acquainted. I am not bound to do this, since I have already

Perry’s comment was that the egocentric predicament, as employed by idealists, appeared to imply that from our ignorance of unexperienced entities we could conclude to their non-existence, and that to do so is a fallacy. No doubt such a procedure would be a fallacy. But though Mr. Perry’s argument may refute a supposed idealistic argument, it does not prove anything whatever in favour of realism. It would be a fallacy to argue that, because we have never observed a unicorn on Mars, therefore there is no unicorn there; but by pointing out this fallacy, one does not prove the existence of a unicorn there. And by pointing out that our ignorance of the existence of unexperienced entities does not prove their non-existence, one does nothing whatever towards proving that unexperienced entities do exist. As regards the unicorn on Mars, the correct position, as far as logic is concerned, is obviously that if anyone asserts that there is a unicorn there, the onus is on him to prove it; and that until he does prove it, we ought not to believe it to be true. As

proved that no proof of the realists’ con-

regards the unexperienced

clusion is possible. And for the same reason, if there are any arguments of this kind with which I am not acquainted, I am under no obligation to disprove them. But it will be better to meet at least the most well-known arguments. (a) It was Mr. Perry, I believe, who invented the phrase “egocentric predicament.” The egocentric predicament was supposed to indicate where lay a fallacy

correct position, as far as logic is concerned, is that if realists assert their existence, the onus is on them to prove it; and that until they do prove it, we ought not to believe that they exist. Mr. Perry’s argument, therefore, proves nothing whatever in favour of realism. Possibly all this is admitted and understood by realists. But there seems, nevertheless, to have been a tendency to think

committed

in

that the overthrow of the supposed ideal-

arguing from the fact that it is impossible

istic argument was a very important matter in forwarding the interests of realism. To point out, therefore, that it actu-

it, to its existence

when

no

one

is ex-

periencing it, this can only mean that to assert together the two propositions, (1)

that it exists now, and (2) that it does not

by idealists.

It consisted

to discover anything which is not known to

the

conclusion

that

all things

are

entities, the

IDEALISM

28

ally accomplishes nothing seems desirable. (b) Mr. Lovejoy, in his recent book, The Revolt Against Dualism, argues that we can infer, or at least render probable, the existence of things during interperceptual intervals by means of the law of causation. He writes, “The same uniform causal sequences of natural events which may be observed within experience appear to go on in the same manner when not experienced. You build a fire in your grate of a certain quantity of coal, of a certain chemical composition. Whenever you remain in the room there occurs a typical succession of sensible phenomena according to an approximately regular schedule of clock-time; in, say, half an hour the coal is half consumed; at the end of the hour the grate contains only ashes. If you build a fire of the same quantity of the same material under the same conditions,

leave the room, and return after any given time has elapsed, you get approximately the same sense-experiences as you would have had at the corresponding moment if you had remained in the room. You infer, therefore, that the fire has been burning as usual during your absence, and that being perceived is not a condition necessary for the occurrence of the process.” ? This argument is simply a petitio principit. It assumes that we must believe that the law of causality continues to operate in the universe when no one is observing it. But the law of causality is one aspect of the universe, the unobserved existence of

which is the very thing to be proved. Why must we believe that causation continues to operate during interperceptual intervals? Obviously, the case as regards unexperienced processes and laws is in exactly the same position as the case regarding unexperienced things. Just as we cannot perceive unexperienced things, so we 2The Revolt Against Dualism, p. 268.

cannot perceive unexperienced processes and laws. Just as we cannot infer from

anything which we experience the existence of unexperienced things, so we cannot infer from anything we experience the

existence of unexperienced processes and laws. There is absolutely no evidence (sense-experience) to show that the fire went on burning during your absence, nor is any inference to that alleged fact possible. Any supposed inference will obviously be based upon our belief that the law of causation operates continuously through time whether observed or unobserved. But this is one of the very things which has to be proved. Nor ‘is there the slightest logical inconsistency in believing that, when you first observed the phenomena, unburnt coal existed, that there followed an interval in which nothing existed, not even a law, and that at the end of the interval ashes began to exist. No doubt this sounds very absurd and contrary to what we usually believe, but that is nothing to the point. We usually believe that things go on existing when no one is aware of them. But if we are enquiring how this can be proved, we must, of course, begin from the position that we do not know it, and therefore that it might not be true.

(c) The distinction between sense-data and

our

awareness

of them,

which

was

first emphasised, so far as I know, by Professor Moore, has been made the basis of an argument in favour of realism. Green, it is said, is not the same thing as awareness of green. For if we compare a green sense-datum with a blue sensedatum, we find a common element, namely awareness. The awareness must be different from the green because awareness also exists in the case of awareness of blue, and that awareness, at any rate, is not green. Therefore, since green is not the

METAPHYSICS

29

same thing as awareness of green, green might exist without awareness. Connected with this argument, too, is the assertion

of a special kind of relationship between the awareness and the green. Possibly this argument proves that green is not “mental.” I do not know whether it proves this or not, but the point is unimportant, since I have already admitted

that sense-data are not “mental.” But whatever the argument proves, it certainly does

not prove that unexperienced entities exist. For suppose that it proves that green has

the predicate x (which may

be “non-

mental” or “independent of mind,” or anything else you please), it still can only prove that green has the predicate x during the period when green is related to the awareness in the alleged manner, that is, when some mind is aware of the green. It cannot possibly prove anything about green when no mind is aware of it. Therefore, it cannot prove that green exists when

no mind is aware of it. For the sake of clearness, I will put the same point in another way. Suppose we admit that green and awareness of green are two quite different things, and suppose we admit that the relation between them is r—which may stand for the special relation asserted in the argument. Now it is not in any way inconsistent with these admissions to hold that green begins to exist only when awareness of green begins to exist, and that when awareness of green ceases to exist, green ceases to exist. It may be the case that these two quite different things always co-exist, always accompany each other, and are co-terminous in the sense that they always begin and end

simultaneously, and that while they coexist, they have the relation r, And this will be so whatever the relation r may be. And not only is this supposition that they

always co-exist not at all absurd or ar-

bitrary. It is on the contrary precisely the conclusion to which such evidence as we possess points. For we never have evidence that green exists except when some mind is aware of green. And it will not be asserted that awareness of green exists when green does not exist.

The argument from the distinction between green and the awareness of it, therefore, does nothing whatever towards proving the realist conclusion that some entities exist unexperienced. (d) It has also been argued that if we identify a green or a square sense-datum with our awareness of it, then, since awareness is admittedly a state of mind,

we shall have to admit that there exist green and square states of mind. This argument is merely intended to support the previous argument that a sense-datum is different from our awareness of it. And as it has already been shown that this proposition, even if admitted, proves nothing in favour of realism, it is not necessary to say anything further about the present argument. I will, however, add the following. It is not by any means certain, as is here assumed, that awareness is a state of mind, or indeed that such a thing as a state of mind exists. For the mind is not static, It is active. And what exists in it are acts

of mind. Now the attention involved in being aware of a sense-datum is certainly an act of mind. But it is certainly arguable that bare awareness of a sense-datum (if there is such a thing as dare awareness) would be identical with the sense-datum and would not be an act of mind. For such bare awareness would be purely passive. In that case, the conclusion that

there must exist green or square states of mind would not follow. Moreover, even if we admit that there exist green and square states of mind,

IDEALISM

30 what then? I can see no reason why we should not admit it, except that (1) it is an unusual and unexplored view, and

existence of unexperienced entities. That this is the correct logical position seems to be dimly perceived by many real-

(2) it seems to smack of materialism, although I do not believe that it does

ists themselves, for it is common among them to assert that our belief in unexperienced existences is a “primitive belief,” or is founded upon “instinctive be-

really involve materialism. This shows that the whole argument is not really a logical argument at all. It is merely an attempt to throw dust in our eyes by appealing to the popular prejudices against

gestion is obviously based upon the realization that we cannot obtain a knowl-

(1) unfamiliar views, and (2) material-

edge of unexperienced

ism. It is not possible in the brief space at my disposal to make plausible the suggestions contained in the last two paragraphs. A full discussion of them would be necessary and this I have endeavoured to give elsewhere. In the present place, therefore, I must rely upon the strict logical position, which is, that this argument, since it is merely intended to support argument (c) above, and since argument (c) has already been refuted, proves nothing in favour of realism. By the preceding discussion, I claim to have proved (1) that the existence of an unexperienced entity cannot be known

from perception or from reasoning. Since

by perception,

(2) that it cannot

be

known by reasoning, and (3) that the arguments commonly relied upon by realists to prove it are all fallacies. I think it is not worth while to discuss the possible suggestion that the arguments in favour of realism, although not proving their conclusion rigorously, render that conclusion probable. For what has been shown is that no valid reasoning of any kind can possibly exist in favour of this conclusion. Any conceivable reasoning intended to prove that unexperienced entities exist must, it has been shown, be totally fallacious. It cannot, therefore, lead

even to a probable conclusion. The posttion, therefore, is that we have not even

the faintest reason for believing in the

lief,” or upon “animal faith.’ This sug-

existences

either

this is so, realists are compelled to appeal to instinctive beliefs. Such a weak position seems hardly to

require discussion. A “primitive belief” is merely a belief which we have held for a long time, and may well be false. An “instinctive belief” is in much the same case. An

“instinct,” so far as I know,

some kind of urge to action, not an to believe a proposition. And it is fore questionable whether there are things as instinctive beliefs in any sense,

although,

of course,

no

is

urge theresuch strict

one

will

deny that we have beliefs the grounds of which are only dimly, or not at all, perceived. Certainly the psychology of such alleged instinctive beliefs has not been adequately investigated. And certainly we have no good ground for supposing that an instinctive belief (if any

such exists) might not be false. And if we have such an instinctive or primitive belief in unexperienced existences, the question must obviously be asked

How,

When,

and

Why

such

a

belief arose in the course of our mental evolution.

Will

it be alleged

that

the

amoeba has this belief? And if not, why and when did it come into existence? Or

did it at some arbitrarily determined stage in our evolution descend suddenly upon us out of the blue sky, like the immortal

soul itself?

METAPHYSICS

Is it not obvious that to base our belief in unexperienced existences on such grounds is a mere gesture of despair, an admission of the bankruptcy of realism in

its attempt to find a rational ground for our beliefs? Strictly speaking, I have here come to the end of my argument. I have refuted realism by showing that we have absolutely no good reason for believing in its

fundamental proposition that entities exist unexperienced. Nothing I have said, of course, goes any distance towards proving that entities do not exist unexperienced.

That, in my opinion, cannot be proved. The logically correct position is as follows. We have no reason whatever to believe that unexperienced entities exist. We cannot prove that they do not exist. The onus of proof is on those who assert that they do. Therefore, as such proof is impossible, the belief ought not to be entertained,

any more than the belief that there is a unicorn on Mars ought to be entertained. It is no part of the purpose of this essay to do more than arrive at this negative result. But lest it should be thought that this thinking necessarily leads to nothing but a negative result, or to a pure scepticism, I will indicate in no more than a

31 dozen sentences that there is the possibility of a positive and constructive philosophy arising from it. That positive philosophy I have attempted to work out in detail in another place. Here, I will say no more than the following. Since our belief in unexperienced existences is not to be explained as either (1) a perception, or (2) an inference, or (3) an “instinctive belief,’ how is it to be explained? I believe that it can only be explained as a mental construction or fiction, a pure assumption which has been adopted, not because there is the slightest evidence for it, but solely because it simplifies our view of the universe. How it simplifies our view of the universe, and by what detailed steps it has arisen, | cannot discuss in this place. But the resulting conception is that, in the last analysis, nothing exists except minds and their sense-data (which are not “mental”), and that human minds have, out of these sense-data, slowly and laboriously constructed the rest of the solid universe of our knowledge. Unexperienced entities can only be said to exist in the sense that minds have chosen by means of a fiction to project them into the void of interperceptual intervals, and thus to construct or create their existence in imagination.

Theory of Knowledge owoa D ooo OS Oowo OOD ODO OOO OGOODOOV DOODDB

The Coherence Theory of Truth BRAND

BLANSHARD brought my ideas into the form my ideal

fe think is to seek understanding. And to seek understanding is an activity of

requires, they should be zrue? . . . In our long struggle with the relation of thought to reality we saw that if thought and things are conceived as related only externally, then knowledge is luck; there is no necessity whatever that what satisfies intelligence should coincide with what really is. It may do so, or it may not; on the principle that there are many misses to one bull’s-eye, it more probably does not. But if we get rid

mind that is marked off from all other activities by a highly distinctive aim. This aim ... is to achieve systematic vision, so to apprehend what is now unknown to us as to relate it, and relate it necessarily, to

what we know already. We think to solve problems; and our method of solving problems is to build a bridge of intelligible relation from the continent of our knowledge to the island we wish to include in it. Sometimes this bridge is causal, as when we try to explain a disease; sometimes teleological, as when we try to fathom the move of an opponent over the chess board; sometimes geometrical, as in Euclid. But it is always systematic; thought in its very nature is the attempt to bring something unknown or imperfectly known into a sub-system of knowledge, and thus also into that larger system that forms the world of accepted be-

of the misleading analogies through which this and tern with

relation has been conceived, of copy original, stimulus and organism, lanand screen, and go to thought itself the question what reference to an

object means, we get a different and more hopeful answer. To think of a thing is to get that thing itself in some degree within

the mind. To think of a colour or an emo-

no answer, and if there were, it would be

tion is to have that within us which if it were developed and completed, would identify itself with the object. In short, if we accept its own report, thought is related to reality as the partial to the perfect fulfilment of a purpose. The more adequate its grasp the more nearly does it approxi-

an answer only because it had succeeded in supplying the characteristic satisfaction to

the nature and relations of its objects.

this unique desire. But may it not be that what satisfies thought fails to conform to the real world?

one immanent,

Where is the guarantee that when I have

one hand it seeks fulfilment in a special

liefs, That is what explanation is. WAy is it that thought desires this ordered vision? Why should such a vision give satisfaction when it comes? To these questions there is

mate, the more fully does it realize in itself,

Thought thus appears to have two ends,

32

one transcendent.

On the

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

kind of satisfaction, the satisfaction of systematic vision. On the other hand it seeks fulfilment in its object. Now it was the chief contention of our second book that these ends are one. Indeed unless they are accepted as one, we could see no al-

ternative to scepticism. If the pursuit of thought’s own ideal were merely an elaborate self-indulgence that brought us no nearer to reality, or if the apprehension of reality did not lie in the line of thought’s interest, or still more if both of these held at once, the hope of knowledge would be vain. Of course it may really be vain. If anyone cares to doubt whether the framework of human logic has any bearing on the nature of things, he may be silenced perhaps, but he cannot be conclusively answered. One may point out to him that

the doubt itself is framed in accordance with that logic, but he can reply that thus we are taking advantage of his logicocentric predicament; further, that any argument we can offer accords equally well with his hypothesis and with ours, with the view that we are merely flies caught in a logical net and the view that knowledge reveals reality. And what accords equally well with both hypotheses does not support

either°to the exclusion of the other. But while such doubt is beyond reach by argument, neither is there anything in its favour. It is a mere suspicion which is, and by its nature must remain, without any positive ground; and as such it can hardly be discussed. Such suspicions aside, we can throw into the scale for our theory the impressive fact of the advance of knowledge. It has been the steadfast assumption of science whenever it came to an unsolved problem that there was a key to it to be found, that if things happened thus rather

than otherwise they did so for a cause or reason, and that if this were not forthcoming it was never because it was lacking,

33 but always because of a passing blindness

in ourselves. Reflection has assumed that pursuit of its own immanent end is not only satisfying but revealing, that so far as the immanent end is achieved we are making progress toward the transcendent end as well. Indeed, that these ends coincide is the assumption of every act of thinking whatever. To think is to raise a question; to raise a question is to seek an explanation; to seek an explanation is to assume that one may be had; so to assume is to take for granted that nature in that region is intelligible. Certainly the story of advancing knowledge unwinds as if self-realization in thought meant also a coming nearer to reality.

That these processes are really one is the metaphysical base on which our belief in coherence is founded. If one admits that the pursuit of a coherent system has actually carried us to what everyone would agree to call knowledge, why not take this ideal as a guide that will conduct us farther? What better key can one ask to the structure of the real? Our own conviction is that we should take this immanent end of thought in all seriousness as the clue to the nature of things. We admit that it may prove deceptive, that somewhere thought may end its pilgrimage in frustration and futility before some blank wall of the unintelligible. There are even those who evince their superior insight by taking this as a foregone conclusion and regarding

the faith that the real is rational as the wishful thinking of the ‘tender-minded.’ Their attitude appears to us a compound made up of one part timidity, in the form

of a refusal to hope lest they be disillusioned; one part muddled persuasion that to be sceptical is to be sophisticated; one part honest dullness in failing to estimate rightly the weight of the combined postu-

IDEALISM

34

late and success of knowledge; one part genuine insight into the possibility of surds

entailed, and was entailed by, the rest of the system. Probably we never find in fact

in nature. But whatever

its motives, it is

a system where there is so much of inter-

a view that goes less well with the evidence than the opposite and brighter view. That view is that reality is a system, completely ordered and fully intelligible, with which thought in its advance is more and more identifying itself. We may look at the growth of knowledge, individual or social, either as an attempt by our own minds to return to union with things as they are in their ordered wholeness, or the affirmation through our minds of the ordered whole itself. And if we take this view, our notion of truth is marked out for us. Truth is the approximation of thought to reality. It is thought on its way home. Its measure is the distance thought has travelled, under guidance of its inner compass, toward that intelligible system which unites its ultimate object with its ultimate end. Hence at any given time the degree of truth in our experience as a whole is the degree of system it has achieved. The degree of truth of a particular proposition is to be judged in the first instance by its coherence with experience as a whole, ultimately by its coherence with that further whole, allcomprehensive and fully articulated, in which thought can come to rest.

dependence. What it means may be clearer if we take a number of familiar systems and arrange them in a series tending to such coherence as a limit. At the bottom

would be a junk-heap, where we could know every item but one and still be without any clue as to what that remaining item was. Above this would come a stonepile, for here you could at least infer that what

you would

find next would

be a

stone. A machine would be higher again, since from the remaining parts one could deduce not only the general character of a missing part, but also its special form and function. This is a high degree of coherence, but it is very far short of the

highest. You could remove the engine from a motor-car while leaving the other parts

intact, and replace it with any one of thousands of other engines, but the thought of such an interchange among human heads or hearts shows at once that the in-

terdependence in a machine is far below that of the body. Do we find then in organic bodies the highest conceivable coher-

ence? Clearly not. Though a human hand, as Aristotle said, would hardly be a hand

ex-

when detached from the body, still it would be something definite enough; and we can conceive systems in which even this some-

plicitly what coherence means. To be sure, no fully satisfactory definition can be given;

thing would be gone. Abstract a number from the number series and it would be a

But it is time we defined more

and as Dr. Ewing says, ‘It is wrong to tie

mere unrecognizable x; similarly, the very

down the advocates of the coherence theory to a precise definition. What they are doing

thought of a straight line involves the thought of the Euclidean space in which

is to describe an ideal that has never yet

it falls. It is perhaps in such systems as

been completely clarified but is none the less immanent in all our thinking.’ Certainly this ideal goes far beyond mere consistency. Fully coherent knowledge would be knowledge in which every judgement

Euclidean geometry that we get the most perfect examples of coherence that have

1 Idealism, 231.

been constructed. If any proposition were

lacking, it could be supplied from

the

rest; if any were altered, the repercussions

would

be felt through the length and

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

breadth of the system. Yet even

35

such a

frain from asking demonstration

in the

system as this falls short of ideal system.

physical

Its postulates are unproved; they are independent of each other, in the sense

we refuse to accept less. And such facts may be thought to show that we make no actual use of the ideal standard just described. But however much this standard may be relaxed within the limits of a particular science, its influence is evident in the grading of the sciences generally. It is precisely in those sciences that approach most nearly to system as here defined that we achieve the greatest certainty, and precisely in those that are most remote from such system that our doubt is greatest whether we have achieved scientific truth at all. Our immediate exactions shift with the subject-matter; our: ultimate standard is unvarying.

that none of them could be derived from any other or even from all the others together; its clear necessity is bought by an abstractness so extreme as to have left out nearly everything that belongs to the character of actual things. A completely satisfactory system would have none of these defects. No proposition would be arbitrary, every proposition would be en-

tailed

by the others

jointly

and even

singly,” no proposition would stand outside the system. The integration would be so complete that no part could be seen for what it was without seeing its relation to the whole,

and

the whole

could be understood only through contribution of every part.

the

Ewing

remarks

(Idealism,

in

mathematics

Now if we accept coherence as the test of truth, does that commit us to any con-

2 Coherence can be defined without this point, as Dr.

while

itself

It may be granted at once that in common life we are satisfied with far less than this. We accept the demonstrations of the geometer as complete, and do not think of reproaching him _ because he begins with postulates and leaves us at the end with a system that is a skeleton at the best. In physics, in biology, above all in the social sciences, we are satisfied with less still. We test judgements by the amount of coherence which in that particular subject-matter it seems reasonable to expect. We apply, perhaps unconciously, the advice of Aristotle, and rewhich,

sciences,

231),

makes the case harder to establish. In no mathematical system, for example, would anyone dream of trying to deduce all the other propositions from any proposition taken singly. But when we are describing an ideal, such a fact is not decisive, and I follow Joachim in holding that in a perfectly coherent system every proposition would entail all others, if only for the reason that its meaning could never be fully understood without apprehension of the system in its entirety.

clusions about the nature of truth or reality? I think it does, though more clearly about reality than about truth. It is past belief that the fidelity of our thought to reality should be rightly measured by coherence if reality itself were not coherent. To say that the nature of things may be incoherent, but we shall approach the truth about it precisely so far as our thoughts become coherent, sounds very much like nonsense. And providing we retained

coherence

as the test, it would

still be nonsense even if truth were conceived as correspondence. On this supposition we should have truth when, our thought having achieved coherence, the correspondence was complete between that thought and its object. But complete correspondence between a _ coherent thought and an incoherent object seems meaningless. It is hard to see, then, how anyone could consistently take coherence as the test of truth unless he took it also as a character of reality.

IDEALISM

36

if we knew

that the two

commit us not only to a view about the

had

corresponding

structure of reality but.also to a view about the nature of truth? This is a more

on one side you have a series of elements

difficult question. As we saw at the begin-

elements a, 8, y . . . , arranged in patterns

ning of the chapter, there have been some highly reputable philosophers who have

that correspond, you have no proof as yet

held that the answer to “What is the test

spond. It is therefore impossible to argue from a high degree of coherence within experience to its correspondence in the same degree with anything outside. And this difficulty is typical. If you place the nature of truth in one sort. of character

Does acceptance of coherence as a test

of truth?’ is ‘Coherence,’ while the answer to ‘What is the nature or meaning ot truth?’ is ‘Correspondence.’ These questions are plainly distinct. Nor does there seem to be any direct path from the acceptance of coherence as the test of truth to its acceptance as the nature of truth. Nevertheless there is an indirect path. It

we accept coherence as our test, we must use it everywhere. We must therefore use it to test the suggestion that truth zs other than coherence.

But if we

do, we

shall find that we must reject the suggestion as leading to incoherence. Coherence is a pertinacious concept and, like the well-known camel, if one lets it get its nose under the edge of the tent, it will shortly walk off with the whole. Suppose that, accepting coherence as the test, one rejects it as the nature of truth in favour of some

alternative; and let us

assume, for example, that this alternative is correspondence. This, we have said, is incoherent; why? Because if one holds that truth is correspondence, one cannot intelligibly hold either that it is tested by coherence or that there is any dependable test at all. Consider the first point. Suppose that we construe experience into the most coherent picture possible, rémembering that among the elements included will be such secondary qualities as colours, odours, and sounds. Would the mere fact that such elements as these are co.

herently

arranged

prove

that anything

precisely corresponding to them exists ‘out there’? I cannot see that it would, even

closely

arrangements

patterns.

ay bye ele.) andlon thesotherm

If

serieshob

that the natures of these elements corre-

and its test in something quite different, you are pretty certain, sooner or later, to find the two falling apart. In the end, the only test of truth that is not misleading is the special nature or character that is

itself constitutive of truth. Feeling that this is so, the adherents of correspondence sometimes insist that correspondence shall be its own test. But then the second difficulty arises. If truth does consist in correspondence, no test can

be sufficient. For in order to know that experience corresponds to fact, we must be able to get at that fact, unadulterated

with idea, and compare the two sides with each other. And we have seen in the last chapter that such fact is not accessible.

When we try to lay hold of it, what we find in our hands is a judgement which is obviously not itself the indubitable fact we are secking, and which must be checked by some fact beyond it. To this process there is no end. And even if we

did get at the fact directly, rather than through the veil of our ideas, that would be no less fatal to correspondence. This direct seizure of fact presumably gives us truth, but since that truth no longer consists in correspondence of idea with fact, the main theory has been abandoned. In short, if we can know fact only

through the medium of our own

ideas,

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

the original forever eludes us; if we can get at the facts directly, we have knowledge whose truth is not correspondence. The theory is forced to choose between scepticism and self-contradiction. Thus the attempt to combine coherence as the test of truth with correspondence as the nature of truth will not pass muster

37

by its own test. The result is incoherence. We believe that an application of the test to other theories of truth would lead to a ‘like result. The argument is: assume coherence as the test, and you will be driven by the incoherence of your alternatives to the conclusion that it is also

the nature of truth.

Logic, Semantics, and Scientific Method DO

SBOBDODO

Oo rrwrv DS LOLS LOOOOOE DBOOOQ’OQOQOOWMOL™’LOOHC

A Clue to the Nature of Man: the Symbol ERIN»s

EoCASSTRER being. It has a world of its own because it

lis biologist Johannes von Uexkiill has

written a book in which he undertakes a critical revision of the principles of biology.

Biology,

is a natural

according

science

which

to Uexkill,

has to be

developed by the usual empirical methods —the methods of observation and experimentation. Biological thought, on the

other hand, does not belong to the same type as physical or chemical thought. Uexkiill is a resolute champion of vitalism; he is a defender of the principle of the autonomy of life. Life is an ultimate and self-dependent reality. It cannot be described or explained in terms of physics or chemistry. From this point of view Uexkill evolves a new general scheme of biological research. As a philosopher he is an idealist or phenomenalist. But his phenomenalism is not based upon metaphysical or epistemological considerations; it is founded rather on empirical principles. As he points out, it would be a very naive sort of dogmatism to assume that there exists an absolute reality of things which is the same for all living beings. Reality is not a unique and homo-

has an experience of its own. The phenomena that we find in the life of a certain biological species are not transferable to any other species. The experiences—and therefore the realities—of two different organisms are incommensurable with one another. In the world of a fly, says Uexkull, we find only “fly things”; in the world of a sea urchin we find only “sea urchin things.” From this general presupposition Uexkiill develops a very ingenious and original scheme of the biological world.

Wishing to avoid all psychological interpretations, he follows an entirely objective or behavioristic method. The only clue to animal life, he maintains, is given us in the facts of comparative anatomy. If we know the anatomical structure of an animal species, we possess all the necessary data for reconstructing its special

mode of experience. A careful study of

geneous thing; it is immensely diversified,

the structure of the animal body, of the number, the quality, and the distribution of the various sense organs, and the conditions of the nervous system, gives us a perfect image of the inner and outer world

having as many different schemes and patterns as there are different organisms. Every organism is, so to speak, a monadic

of the organism. Uexkill began his investigations with a study of the lowest organisms; he extended them gradually 38

-

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

to all the forms of organic life. In a certain sense he refuses to speak of lower

or higher forms of life. Life is perfect everywhere; it is the same in the smallest as in the largest circle. Every organism,

even the lowest, is not only in a vague sense adapted to (angepasst) but entirely fitted into (eingepasst) its environment. According to its anatomical structure it possesses a certain Merknetz and a certain Wirknetz—a_ receptor system and an effector system. Without the cooperation and equilibrium of these two systems the organism could not survive. The receptor

system by which a biological species receives outward stimuli and the effector system by which it reacts to them are in all cases closely interwoven. They are links in one and the same chain which is described by Uexkiill as the functional circle (Funktionskreis) of the animal. I cannot enter here upon a discussion of Uexkiull’s biological principles. I have merely referred to his concepts and terminology in order to pose a general question. Is it possible to make use of the scheme proposed by Uexkiill for a description and characterization of the human world? Obviously this world forms no exception to those biological rules which govern the life of all the other organisms. Yet in the human world we find a new characteristic which appears to be the distinctive mark of human life. The functional circle of man is not only quantitively enlarged; it has also undergone a qualitative change. Man has, as it were, discovered a new method of adapting himself to his environment. Between the receptor system and the effector system, which are to be found in all animal

species, we find in man a third link which 1See Johannes von Uexkiull, Theoretische Biologie (2d ed. Berlin, 1938); Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (1909; 2d ed. Berlin, 1921).

METHOD

39

we may describe as the symbolic system. This new acquisition transforms the whole of human life. As compared with the other animals man lives not merely

in a broader reality; he lives, so to speak, in a new dimension of reality. There is an unmistakable difference between organic reactions and human responses. In

the first case

a direct and

immediate

answer is given to an outward stimulus; in the second case the answer is delayed. It is interrupted and retarded by a slow and complicated process of thought. At first sight such a delay may appear to be a very questionable gain. Many philosophers have warned man against this pretended progress. “L’>homme qui médite,” says Rousseau, “est un animal dépravé”: it is not an improvement but a deterioration of human nature to exceed the boundaries of organic life. Yet there is no remedy against this reversal of the natural order. Man cannot escape from his own achievement. He cannot but adopt the conditions of his own life. No longer in a merely physical universe, man lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, and religion are parts of this universe. They are the varied threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of human experience. All human progress in thought and experience refines upon and strengthens this net. No longer can man confront reality immediately; he cannot see it, as it were, face*to face. Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man’s symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium. His

40

IDEALISM

situation is the same in the theoretical as in the practical sphere. Even here man

whole field. It is a pars pro toto; it offers us a part for the whole. For side by

does not live in a world of hard facts, or

side with conceptual language there is an

according to his immediate needs and desires. He lives rather in the midst of

emotional language; side by side with logical or scientific language there is a language of poetic imagination. Primarily language does not express thoughts or

imaginary emotions, in hopes and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in his fan-

tasies and dreams. “What

disturbs and

alarms man,” said Epictetus, “are not the things, but his opinions and fancies about the things.”

From the point of view at which we have just arrived we may correct and enlarge the classical definition of man. In spite of all the efforts of modern irration-

alism this definition of man as an animal rationale has not lost its force. Rationality is indeed an inherent feature of all human

activities. Mythology itself is not simply a crude mass of superstitions or gross de-

lusions. It is not merely chaotic, for it possesses a systematic or conceptual form.? But, on the other hand, it would be impossible to characterize the structure of myth as rational. Language has often been identified with reason, or with the very source of reason. But it is easy to

see that this definition fails to cover the 2 See Cassirer, Die Begriffsform im mythischen Denken (Leipzig, 1921).

ideas, but feelings and affections.

And

even a religion “within the limits of pure reason” as conceived and worked out by Kant is no more than a mere abstraction, It conveys only the ideal shape, only the shadow, of what a genuine and concrete religious life is. The great thinkers who have defined man as an animal rationale were not empiricists, nor did they ever intend to give an empirical account of human nature. By this definition they were expressing rather a fundamental moral imperative. Reason is a very inadequate term with which to comprehend

the forms of man’s cultural life in all their richness and variety. But all these forms are symbolic forms. Hence, instead of defining man as an animal rationale, we should define him as an animal symbolicum. By so doing we can designate his specific difference, and we can understand the new way open to man—the way to

civilization.

Ethics and Theory of Value DODD

OOOOO DCO] OO]

HO

DOOD

OOOH

DODO

The Analysis of Value DEWITT

H. PARKER

‘ke in order to find materials for a definition, we look about us for instances of value, we seem to find them in various parts of our world. In the outer world, values appear to exist in articles of use and consumption, like railroads and bread; in the inner world, in such things as good intentions; between the two worlds, in works of art and other objects which we call beautiful; and in either world, in noble and kindly acts. Unreflective persons, as well as certain philosophers,’ accept this seeming location of values as real; they believe that values are actually present in such things as those mentioned, and in the parts of the world where these things are. Value, they think, is a property of things, like any other property, belonging to them of their own right, in accordance with their own individual natures. The bread 7s useful, the intention 7s good, the statue zs beautiful, the deed is noble. It is no more mysterious —that is, it is no more of a problem— for things to have value than for them to have size or shape or color. And if they can have any of these properties independent of an observer, they can have value independently. Just as we find shape in the statue, and color in the rainbow, so we find beauty there; or just as we

discover a certain size and shape in a railway carriage, so we discover utility.

A very little reflection shows, however, that this naive view of value is untenable. For the railway system and the bread have

no value except in relation to the human needs which they satisfy; “good intentions” are not good unless they result in acts which fulfill human purpose; works of art get their beauty from the satisfactions of the imagination which they provide; and no deed is noble or kindly unless it furthers the interests of men; in every case where we seem simply to find value in things, we discover that the value is not there except in relation to the satisfaction of need, of desire. And in many cases, not only is the value of the thing dependent upon the existence of this relation to desire, but the thing itself has been created by desire. This is obvi-

ously true of all utilities and works of art. There are, of course, numerous things, like the air we breathe, which desire has

not created, but which nevertheless have value; yet their value also depends upon relation to desire and satisfaction, for the air would have no value if either there were no organisms interested in breathing it or people interested in having them breathe it. The value which things appear to have is, therefore, not their own; they do not possess it of their own right, but

1 For example, John Laird, A Study of Realism, Chap. VII (1920).

41

IDEALISM

42

borrow it from the satisfactions of desire which they provide. When things to serve desire, they lose. their value, we must look for value not in the themselves, but in the desires and factions which they promote. The possibility remains that value

cease hence things satismight

exist both in the inner world of satisfaction and in the outer world of things as well, namely, in some sphere that spanned them both. Beauty is the best example of this possibility, and I think we can be safe in assuming that if this is not possible in the case of beauty, it is not possible in any case. For beauty seems to exist both within me who feel its beauty and also out there in the work of art | am enjoying. The beauty of the statue of Aphrodite is the beauty which I feel, yet it is she out there in the marble who is beautiful. But once more analysis shatters illusion; for the Aphrodite that is beautiful is a goddess, who, if not made of our mortal flesh, is assuredly not made of stone. As goddess, she belongs to the world of imagination, not to the physical world, and even the shape of gleaming white within which she seems to dwell is

beautiful only as it pleases the beholder. ... The beauty of works of art consists of satisfactions of desire through fictions blended with sensuous shapes of color or sound within the mind, and its seeming existence in the physical world is an example of illusory projection, like the illusion that Eva LeGallienne is Hilda in the Master Builder or that the man you see when you look at yourself in the mirror is there behind its surface. Far from proving the objectivity of value, or even its neutrality as between the observer and

the physical thing, beauty

is the best

example of its subjectivity, for in the case of beauty the very objects to which value is ascribed are fictions and sensory shapes

that have no existence without the mind. The failure to see this is owing to the confusion

between what I shall call the

“esthetic object”—Aphrodite in her shape of gleaming white—which does not exist outside the mind, and what I shall call the “esthetic instrument’—the block of marble, which is a_ physical thing, possessed of some sort of existence in-

dependent of the observer. Now, clearly, it is the esthetic object that is beautiful, and beautiful because it offers man satisfaction, while the esthetic. instrument is —only an instrument. If therefore we did not know it in any other way, we should know, because of their

universal

dependence

on

desire,

that values belong wholly to the inner world, to the world of mind. The satisfaction of desire is the real value; the thing that serves is only an instrument. Not the bread, but the appeasement of hunger; not the physical “work of art,” but the satisfactions of the imagination which it provides are values; and, correspondingly, not the stone that I stumble over, but my stumbling is evil. A value is always an experience, never a thing or object. Things may be valuable, but they are not values. We project value into the external world, attributing it to the things that serve desire, just as we project sense qualities there, as if things were themselves independently colored or sweet or shrill, but the value resides in the mind, even as color and sound and taste reside there. We should, therefore, distinguish between value as an attribute and value as an experience, between valuable and value, with the understanding that the. experience is primary and the attribute a projected derivative. It is convenient to speak of things as Aaving value, but it must not be forgotten that this is only a facon de parler; things do not really have

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

value; they only borrow value from the satisfactions

corresponding.

Hence

we

could not define value, as has been proposed, as “any object of any interest,”* but rather, perhaps, as the satisfaction of any interest in any object. This view of value receives confirmation from cases of variation in the value attributed to objects corresponding to variations in our judgments or perspectives upon them, without any variation in the objects themselves. This is well illustrated by the transvaluation of values wrought in the recognition scenes of the Greek drama,

as in CEdipus

or Electra, where

the situation of the persons in the play remains the same, but their knowledge of the situation changes. The change of value due to change of perspective may amount to complete annihilation of the value, as shown in one of Hardy’s Wessex Tales, where the husband in the story, having discovered a picture of his dead wife’s lover, takes one of the children on

his knee, and comparing the child with the photograph, says, “Henceforth you are nothing to me.” Having established its locus in mind, we are ready for an analysis of value. We shall find that value is a fact of exceeding complexity. First, every value depends, as we have seen, upon the existence of something variously called appetition, wish, desire, interest—a fact which some psychologists are loath to admit, but which they always end by admitting under another name. Being basic to all experience,

desire is difficult to describe,

yet we may perhaps venture to characterize it as “impulse towards a goal’”—be-

havioristic descriptions, while adequate to the bodily accompaniments of desire, omit the fact of desire itself, unless they intro2R. B. Perry, The Chap. V.

General

Theory

of Value,

43

duce it surreptitiously. In man at least there are normally no blind impulses; every impulse is at least vaguely aware of its goal, of what will satisfy; it is enlightened by an idea of an end. Even so elementary an impulse as hunger contains an idea regarding its own appropriate fulfillment. Such an idea is as much a part of desire as the drive behind it. We may therefore distinguish, while we recognize

that

we

cannot

separate,

two

aspects

within every wish or desire—impulse, which is the “go,” and expectation, containing a proposition stating what would

satisfy, which sets the goal or “objective.” * Thus if hunger is the impulse, the proposition “TI shall eat bread” is the goal or objective. Moreover, desire normally contains a concept or image of an object and a judgment upon it, because impulse is concerned with or directed upon an object. Man is not simply hungry, he is hungry for food; he has love or hate for this man or this woman; his desires, and hence his values, are outward looking; he

pictures the thing that he wants. And the objects of desire are not merely brought before the mind in conception or imagination, but are explicitly or implicitly judged to be such as to satisfy desire, to be valuable. The food is judged to be good or delicious, the woman lovely. Apparent exceptions are the values of imagination —of dream, art, play, and religion, where desire has no object in the real world; but in such cases desire has nevertheless its object, which I shall call a “substitute object”—the image seen in a dream, the imagined baby embodied in the doll, the Goddess Aphrodite represented in 3 Compare Professor R. B. Perry’s distinction between “governing propensity” and “anticipatory response,” O.C. Chap. VII, and Plato’s analysis of desire in the Philebus, 33-36.

IDEALISM

44

rare cases of value without corresponding valuable objects. One of the most interesting examples is music.* When we listen to music desires are now aroused, now satisfied, but the desires are not desires for anything or the satisfactions, satisfactions in anything. The sounds heard are not the objects of these desires any more than words that express longing are the objects longed for; they are expressions, embodiments of desire, not objects of desire. In music, desires are objectless; we desire, but desire nothing, and are satisfied, but satisfied over nothing. In the musical experience, there are also no explicit objectives or goals; desire

grocer’s wagon that brings it to the house are means-objects. Usually there is a whole series of such means-objects, after all of which comes the end-object. Yet, as has often been pointed out, the means-objects themselves are also end-objects of related interests, as the oven is an end-object for the man who makes it, and the wagon is an end-object for the man interested in driving it. Desire is only the basis of value; value itself does not exist until desire is being satisfied. Now satisfaction ‘is no instantaneous or eternal fact, but a process in time, a duration, an action. The goal or objective of desire is not the object of desire, but action upon the object. Thus it is not food that is sought in hunger, but the eating of the food; in love, not the friend, but the conversing or playing with the friend; in the cognitive interests, not the mere presence of the object, but the active characterizing of it in judgment. But furthermore, satisfaction is not

has not formulated whether it is tending

limited to the actual appeasement of the

or what would satisfy it. This is what Schopenhauer meant when he described music as pure will, apart from intellect. This fact, even though it be a rare fact, that there are values without corresponding valuable objects, is sufficient to refute the view that value is the object of in-

impulse through action upon its object; it is no mere running down of a drive; for it contains, in addition, an anticipation of appeasement, an imaginative foretaste of the attainment of the goal. This is true even of the most primitive satisfactions of man. The satisfaction of hunger is not the simple appeasement of an organic craving, but a realization in imagination of the pleasures of dining, which may accompany the whole process of eating. Anticipation thus provides an ideal component in all satisfaction. A standard or “ideal” is a formulation of such anticipations. We may, therefore,’ distinguish within each satisfaction a component which is the appeasement of the

the marble, and the like. In these cases, the

conceived or imagined object and the object of desire coincidé, while in most cases they obviously fall apart—the conception or image belonging to the mind, and the object to the world beyond the mind, It is notable, however,

that there exist

terest. Of the objects concerned in value two types are usually distinguished, meansobjects and complementary or end-objects. End-objects are the objects immediately concerned in the satisfaction of desire, while means-objects are instrumentalities either for making end-objects or for bringing them into an appropriate relation to desire. So bread is an end-object, while

the oven in which it is baked and the 4 See the author’s Principles of Aesthetics, p. 175 (1920).

impetus of the impulse through action, and a component which is the anticipation of appeasement. The appeasement of

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

impulse in action is the focus, as it were, of the satisfaction; but around it lies like a penumbra the anticipation of appeasement.

Sometimes one, sometimes

another

of these factors in satisfaction predominates, But value is not a process that arises and maintains itself only in the present of the individual. On the contrary, it brings into operation his entire past. On the surface of man’s momentary delights there are projected satisfactions out of the past, so that each satisfaction is no mere surface, but a thickness, a volume of satisfaction. Every stage in the process of satisfaction leaves a residuum of satisfaction which is conserved to enrich the next stage; and each instance of the satisfaction of an impulse revives something of all past instances. In each new love man experiences something of all his former loves, as in every satisfaction of hunger there survives something of the suckling’s first delights. Every value contains, therefore, echoes out of the past, and itself provides new oyertones of new values in the future. A value is.a harmonic system, like a tone sounding with all its partials, Through the imaginative anticipation of satisfaction, we enjoy before we have enjoyed; through memory we enjoy after we have enjoyed; and every joy contains a before and an after joy. It follows from the role played by imagination in value— by anticipation and memory—that value does not pertain to the terminus of the experience, to consummation alone, but to the entire process of desire-seeking-

fulfillment. Finally, every value contains an ingredient of pleasure; for as desire is satisfied, pleasure arises. This has been questioned on the ground that there are satisfactions, like those of tragedy or of morbid compulsions, which are unpleasant; but a subtle

45

analysis shows that even in such cases there is pleasure on the whole; the unpleasantness arising from the frustration of subordinate accompanying impulses. In other words, so far as there is satisfaction of impulse there is pleasure; so far as there is frustration there is displeasure. In the case of the compulsion, the doing of the act brings pleasure because it satisfies a subconscious

desire, but in so far as the act

frustrates “conscience” or the “sense of decency” it causes displeasure; and the latter may be so overwhelming that the ingredient of pleasure is overlooked. Pleasure is not, as hedonists have claimed, identical with value; it is only one factor in value. Value is the complex experience of satisfying desire with all the complexity involved in that process; it includes pleasure, but cannot be identified with pleasure. A thing cannot be equated to one of its fac-

tors. Besides pleasure, certain organic complexes of sensation, called emotions, which are inextricably bound up with impulse, its satisfaction or frustration, are involved in value; but these again cannot by them-

selves be identified with value. Thus far in our account of values, that character which some have thought to be most distinctive of them, namely their normative character, has been seemingly overlooked. Only if man had a single interest, or if they all lay on a level in his mind, would our description be adequate. But in man there is, as Pascal said, un ordre du coeur,” and upon this order the normative character of values depends. Many, perhaps most values in the end, are functions, not only of desire but of choice, for in doing anything a man must refrain from doing something else within the 5 Pascal,

Pensées,

Premiere

Partie,

Article

X.

“Lesprit a unordre, qui est par principes et démonstrations; le coeur en a un

autre.”

IDEALISM

46

range of possible acts for him. Now choice

ness. There are, therefore, two senses of

involves, in. addition to the alternatives presented, some interest,+let us say of “higher” order, for the sake of which one alternative is preferred to the other. Just as there is no value apart from desire, so there is no “relation of betterness” between values except in terms of an interest that compares them. For consider a homely ex-

the word “good”—good in the generic sense of value or valuable, and good in the specific sense of normatively, including morally, “good,” and two corresponding

senses of the term “bad” or “evil.” There is, therefore, no difference in kind

between standard or ideal values and other values. Standard values are selected values;

ample, my choice of tea against coffee.

the standard methods that serve them are

Such

selected procedures; in the large sense of

a choice, like all choices, is not a

choice between

objects as such, but be-

tween the values corresponding to the objects. Only first choices can be purely naive and objective; every subsequent choice, and

that means practically all adult choices, are between the satisfactions anticipated from the objects. In the example under discussion, choice will be determined either in terms of my interest in a maximum of pleasure or in terms of my interest in health. The tea will be judged to be either more pleasant or more healthful. Or consider the case of the ambitious young man confronted with the alternative of attend-

ing his class in night school or going to a moving picture. If he decides in favor of night school, his choice will probably be determined either by the interest of higher order which we call “ambition,” or by the interest which we call “duty,” which is really love in some one of its forms—in this case, perhaps love of the aged mother he is supporting, or love of wife and children.

Any impulse that fits in with an impulse of higher order is a “good” impulse, while any impulse that conflicts. with such an impulse is “bad.” The good interest is a selected interest, and apart from an interest that selects, good in this sense is meaningless. Even the rejected or “bad” impulse is still valuable, only not so valuable as the “good” impulse. The sting of the bad impulse is the charm it keeps despite its bad-

the term, they are choices. The standard forms of legal procedure have been chosen through a long process of selection from alternative methods; classic art has been chosen from innumerable competing works; the approved way of conducting business has prevailed over the older method of haggling; even the standards of correct thinking as embodied in the principles of logic have been selected, if we may trust Lévy-Bruhl ® and his followers, from pre-logical modes of thought; in general, standard or “good” form is selected form. Moreover,

the alternative modes

of

behavior, which are rejected in favor of the standard forms, are themselves valuable. The method of doing business by haggling was entertaining to both buyer and seller, and adjusted price to individual purse; the works from which the classical were selected, while not the best, are still beautiful in their way; imaginative modes of thinking serve many an emotional need not served by reason; there would be no incentive to act against the conventions of society were there no value in doing so. The difficulty of maintaining standards has no other source than the competition of other values. Every act, even the most atrocious that has ever been performed, is performed for some reason, and therefore has its value to the one who perpetrates it. It follows that the dualism in human nature, which ® Lévy-Bruhl,

Primitive

Mentality

(1923).

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

Plato was perhaps the first to recognize in his symbol of the charioteer driving two steeds, the one noble, the other ignoble, is not a dualism between an absolute, or.

standard, good and evil, but between different orders of value.

Not only does the acceptance of a standard depend upon the existence of a corresponding desire, but its very validity also. To tell me that “I ought” is either to appeal to an existing interest of “higher order” or to endeavor to create such an interest. It is senseless to uphold a standard as binding upon people who have no desire for the sort of action which it proposes or are incapable of realizing, in the imagination at least, the values which it pictures. The person who advocates a standard as valid for other people must create its validity for them by creating the corresponding desires and values. If he

claims validity for it independent of desire, he clearly forgets the only thing which gives it whatever validity it now possesses, namely, his own passionate advocacy and desire. The reformer is like the artist who has a dream of beauty not seen by other men; until he creates in their minds a will like his own, with a compulsion in the imagination like his own, his ideal remains a mere dream. The theory of “eternally valid values” leaves no room for creation

in the moral sphere. The “feeling of oughtness” and the judgment that I ought are expressions of the

47

“will” or “go” of a system of tendencies to action in competition with some impulse of “lower order” which it is trying to bring within its scope. We should never feel that we ought were there not such a system operating within us in the direction in which, as we say, we ought to move. Suggestions to action which cannot in

some way lay hold of these “system-desires” are never accepted by us as standards for our behavior. For some ulterior purpose we may pretend to accept them, but in our hearts we do not. There is, therefore, no “ought” without presupposition, the presupposition of a system of desires. What I

ought to do is what such a system wants to do. The fact that the system may have been built up in me by other persons—as is notably the case with “duty”’—does not alter the logic of the situation; for however built up, a system of interests is an interest, and my own. In the end, there is nothing that a man so much wants to do as his duty. The traditional, and often anonymous,

character of many standards masks their foundation in values, and causes all the difficulties of the novice and the overwise in the study of ethics. Owing to its anonymity, it is oftentimes hard to trace a standard to the experiences of value of actual persons; many standards out of the past have lost obvious footing, and seem either too august or too trivial for human desire. Yet however difficult to recover, there is an interest and a value at the bottom of every one of them.

Esthetics DOD

OODBODOOVOD ODOC DOOQOORO OOo oowemD

Art as Language R. G. COLLINGW T. oK ELETON W. can answer the question: “What kind of a thing must art be, if it is to have the two characteristics of being expressive and imaginative?’ The answer is: ‘Art must be language.’ The activity which generates an artistic experience is the activity of consciousness. This rules out all theories of art which place its origin in sensation or its emotions, i.e., in man’s psychical nature: its origin lies not there but in his nature as a thinking being. At the same time, it rules out all theories which place its origin in the intellect, and make it something to do with concepts. Each of these theories, however, may be valued as a_ protest against the other; for as consciousness is a level of experience intermediate between the psychic and the intellectual, art may be referred to either of these levels as a way of saying that it is not referable to the other. The artistic experience is not generated out of nothing. It presupposes a psychical, or sensuous-emotional, experience. By an illegitimate comparison with craft, this psychical experience is often called its ‘matter’; and it is actually transformed, somewhat (but not exactly) as a raw material is transformed, by the act which generates the artistic experience. It is transformed from sense into imagination,

OOD

OF (A “THEORY or from impression into idea. At the level of imaginative experience, the crude emotion of the psychical level is translated into idealized emotion, or the so-called esthetic emotion, which is thus not an emotion pre-existing to the expression of it, but the emotional charge on the experience of expressing a given emotion, felt as a new colouring which that emotion receives in being expressed. Similarly, the psycho-physical activity on which the given emotion was a charge is converted into a controlled activity of the organism, dominated by the consciousness which controls it, and this activity is language or art. It is an imaginative experience as distinct from a merely psychophysical one, not in the sense that it

involves nothing psycho-physical, for it always and necessarily does involve such elements, but in the sense that none these

elements

survive

in

their

of

crude

state; they are all converted into ideas and incorporated into an _ experience which as a whole, as generated and presided over by consciousness, is an imaginative experience. This imaginative activity, as the ac-

tivity of speech, stands in a twofold relation to emotion. In one way it expresses an emotion which the agent, by thus ex-

pressing it, discovers himself to have been

ESTHETICS

49

feeling independently of expressing it. uttering certain words and phrases; the This is the purely psychical emotion habit of making certain kinds of gesture, which existed in him before he expressed _ together with the kinds of audible noise, it by means of language, though of coloured canvass, and so forth, which course it had already its appropriate these gestures produce. psychical expression by means of involThe artistic activity which creates these untary changes in his organism. In habits and constructs these external recanother way it expresses an emotion ords of itself, supersedes and jettisons which the agent only feels at all in so them as soon as they are formed. We far as he thus expresses it. This is an commonly express this by saying that art emotion of consciousness, the emotion bedoes not tolerate clichés. Every genuine longing to the act of expression. But expression must be an original one. Howthese are not two quite independent ever much it resembles others, this resememotions. The second is not a_ purely blance is due not to the fact that the general emotion attendant on a_ purely others exist, but to the fact that the emogeneral activity of expression, it is a quite tion now being expressed resembles individual emotion attendant on the in- emotions that have been expressed before. dividual act of expressing this psychic The artistic activity does not ‘use’ a ‘readyemotion and no other. It is thus the made language,’ it ‘creates’ language as psychic emotion itself, converted by the it goes along. Once we have got rid of a false conception of ‘originality,’ no obact of consciousness into a corresponding jection to this statement arises from the imaginative or esthetic emotion. fact that one linguistic expression is often very like another. There is nothing in creation which favours dissimilarity be2. ART PROPER AND ART FALSELY tween creatures as against similarity. But SO CALLED the by-products of this creative activity, The esthetic experience, or artistic ready-made words and phrases, types of activity, is the experience of expressing pictorial and sculptural form, turns of musical idiom, and so forth, can be ‘used’ one’s emotions; and that which expresses as means to ends; and among these ends them is the total imaginative activity there cannot be counted the expressing of called indifferently language or art. This emotion, because expression (unless art is is art proper. Now, in so far as the after all a craft) cannot ever be an end activity of expression creates a deposit to which there are means. of habits in the agent, and of by-products Thus the dead body, so to speak, of the in his world, these habits and by-products esthetic activity becomes a repertory of become things utilizable by himself and materials out of which an activity of a others for ulterior ends. When we speak different kind can find means adaptable of ‘using’ language for certain purposes, what is so used cannot be language itself, to its own ends. This non-esthetic activity, in so far as it uses means which were for language is not a utilizable thing but a pure activity. ... Language in once the living body of art, galvanizing these into an appearance of life which itself cannot be thus denatured; what can be is the deposits, internal and external, makes it seem as if their spirit had after’ left by the linguistic activity: the habit of all not left them, is a pseudo-esthetic

IDEALISM

50 activity. It is not art, but it simulates art, and is thus art falsely so called. In itself it is not art, but (because it uses means to a preconceived end) craft. All craft... is aimed ultimately at producing certain states of mind in certain persons. Art falsely so called is, therefore, the utilization of ‘language’ (not the

living language which alone is really language, but the ready-made ‘language’

which consists of a repertory of clichés) to produce states of mind in the persons upon whom these clichés are used. These states of mind (since the activity we are considering is an entirely reason-

able one) are of course produced for a sufficient reason. And they are produced with the consent of the person who is being acted upon, so that in the last resort it is he that is the judge of this reason. To whatever kind of state of mind they belong, it must be (a) one capable of being

thus produced, (6) produced either as an end in itself or as means to some further end. (a) There is no way by which any one person can produce in another either an act of will or an act of thinking. When we say that one person ‘makes’ another think or act, we mean at most that he holds out inducements to act in such a way; but that will not do here. What one person can produce in another is emotion. (6) If the emotion produced is one

which the person in whom it is produced welcomes for its own sake, that is, as pleasant, the producing of it is amusement. If he welcomes it as a means to some

further end, that is, as useful, the

producing of it is magic. These things are not bad art. They are merely something else which may be and

often is mistaken for it. The bipolarity in virtue of which an act of thought may be

well done or ill done... is a differ-

entiation within that activity itself, a dialectical

relation

to its own

or opposition

essential

structure;

belonging it cannot

be reduced to a distinction between the activity in question and some _ other activity. If one activity A is mistaken for

another, B, the making of the mistake testifies to a bipolarity in the act of thought which thus mistakes it, but not to a bipolarity in B. So a person who mistakes amusement for art is doing his

thinking badly, but that about which he makes the mistake is not bad art. What he is doing is to mistake the clichés or corpses of language used in this business

for language

itself. The

difference

be-

tween the things thus confused is like the difference between a living man and a dead man; the difference between good art and bad art is like the relation between two living men, one good and the other

bad. Nor are these things a kind of raw material out of which art is made by infusing into them the spirit of the esthetic consciousness. I have said repeatedly that such an infusion is always possible; but if we consider more closely what that statement means,

that tion such ing

we shall see it to mean

not

amusement or magic is a precondiof art, but that a person engaged in occupations may, in addition to beengaged in them, turn to the very

different work of expressing the emotions which an occupation of this kind gives him, If, for example, a_portrait-painter who has been asked to produce a good likeness of a sitter, instead, or in addition, paints a portrait expressing the emotions which

the sitter arouses

in him, he will

produce not a commercial portrait or potboiler, but a work of art. As a pot-boiler, the picture cannot ever become a work of

art. It can only become a work of art by ceasing to be a pot-boiler.

ESTHETICS

51

The point is important, because I have

ble kind of means to that end. But that is

ventured to assert that most of what generally goes by the name of art nowadays is not art at all, but amusement. Now, a reader might very well say: “This amusement art is surely, after all, only art at a low level; or at any rate, something con-

not the point in question. We are talking not about the necessity for magic, but about whether magic, by some dialectic inherent in itself, will develop, if heartily pursued, into art. The answer is that it

taining in itself the living germs of art.

A certain confusion of mind on this subject is very common at the present

If we want to know, therefore, how to escape from the situation described (for I admit the correctness of the description) into one in which genuine art is being

produced, or produced more frequently and of higher quality, the answer is that we must go ahead with our amusement trade and insist on doing it better. Or, if amusement art does not promise such development, let us concentrate on magical art. Let us by all means cease to be merely amusing; let us have instead an art designed to stimulate emotions valuable for practical life; for instance, an art dedicated to the service of communism. At the same time, let us insist on doing our communistic art really well, and out of that endeavour we shall find ourselves developing a new art properly so called.’ Such a reader would be simply cherishing illusions. He would be in effect confusing the relation between art and not art with the relation between good art and bad art. I say this with no hostility whatever towards magical art in general, or in particular towards an art inspired by the wish to inculcate communistic sentiments. On the contrary, I have insisted that magic is a thing which every community must have; and in a civilization that is rotten with amusement, the more magic we produce the better. If we

will not.

time among persons who are anxious to help in creating both a better art and a better political system. In connexion with their desire for a better art, they have rejected the notion, current in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that what makes a work of art is not its subject-matter, but its technical qualities, with the corollary that a genuine artist

should be quite indifferent to his subjectmatter, and should care about it only to the extent of choosing one which will give him scope for a display of his artistic powers. As against this view, they hold that no artists can produce a fine work of art whose subject-matter he does not take seriously. On this they ate absolutely right. What they are saying is what I have said myself when I said that the emotion expressed by a work of art cannot be merely an ‘esthetic emotion,’ but that this so-called esthetic emotion is itself a translation into imaginative form of an emotion which must pre-exist to the activity of expressing it. It is an obvious corollary of this, that an artist who is not

furnished,

independently

of being

an

artist, with deep and powerful emotions will never produce anything except

shallow and frivolous works of art. It is clear, then, on my own premisses,

were talking about the moral regeneration

that an artist with strong political views

of our world, I should urge the deliberate creation of a system of magic, using as its vehicles such things as the theatre and the profession of letters, as one indispensa-

and feelings will be to that extent better qualified to produce works of art than one

without. But the question is, what is he to do with these political views and feelings?

IDEALISM

52 If the function of his art is to express them, to make a clean breast of them, because unless he can do this he cannot discover to himself or others what they are, he will be turning them into art. But if he begins by knowing what they are, and uses his art for the purpose of converting others to them, he will not be feeding his

art on his political emotions, he will be stifling it beneath them. And by going on to stifle it harder and harder he will not be getting nearer to being a good artist. He will be getting farther away. He may be doing good service to politics, but he will be doing bad service to art. There is only one condition on which a man can simultaneously do good service to politics and to art. It is, that the work of exploring and expressing one’s political emotions should be regarded as serviceable to politics. If there is any kind of political order whose realization involves the use of the muzzle, no one-can serve that kind and at the same time serve art.

own part, and that this effort may either more or less successful.

I am not raising the question whether it is true, as the Greeks

ART

AND

BAD

thought, that there

are natural kinds, and that what we calli a dog is something that is trying to be a dog. For all my present argument is concerned, either that view may be true (in which case dogs can be good or bad in themselves), or the alternative view may be true, that the idea of a dog is only a

way in which we choose to classify the things we come across, in which case dogs can be good or bad only in relation to us. I am only concerned with good and bad works of art. Now, a work of art is an activity of a certain kind; the agent is trying to do something definite, and in that attempt he may succeed or he may fail. It is, moreover, a conscious activity; the agent is not only trying to do something definite, he also knows what it is that he is trying to do; though knowing here does not necessarily imply being able

3. GOOD

be

to describe,

since

to describe

is to

generalize, and generalizing is the func-

ART

tion

The definition of any given kind of thing is also the definition of a good thing of that kind: for a thing that is good in

of the

intellect,

and

consciousness

does not, as such, involve intellect. A work of art, therefore, may be either

its kind is only a thing which possesses

a good one or a bad one. And because the agent is necessarily a conscious agent, he

the attributes of that kind. To call things good and bad is to imply success and failure. When we call things good or bad not in themselves but relatively to us, as when we speak of a good harvest or a bad

necessarily knows which it is. Or rather, he necessarily knows this so far as his consciousness in respect of this work of art is uncorrupted; for we have seen .. . that there is such a thing as untruthful or

thunderstorm,

corrupt consciousness.

the success

or

failure

im-

plied is our own; we mean that these things enable us to realize our purposes, or prevent us from doing so. When we call things good or bad in themselves, the success or failure implied is theirs. We are implying that they acquire the attributes of their kind by an effort on their

Any theory of art should be required to show, if it wishes to be taken seriously, how an artist, in pursuing his artistic labour, is able to tell whether he is pursuing it successfully or unsuccessfully: how, for example, it is possible for him

‘to say, ‘I am not satisfied with that line;

ESTHETICS let us try it this way ... and this way ...and this way... there! that will do.’ A theory which pushes the artistic experience too far down the scale, to a point below the region where experience has the character of knowledge, is unable to meet this demand. It can only evade it by pretending that the artist in such cases is acting not as an artist, but as a critic and even (if criticism of art is identified with philosophy of art) as a philosopher. But this pretence should deceive nobody. The watching of his own work with a vigilant and discriminating eye, which decides at every moment of the process whether it is being successful or not, is not a critical activity subsequent to, and reflective upon, the artistic work, it is an integral part of that work itself. A person who can doubt this, if he has any grounds at all for his doubt, is presumably confusing the way an artist works with the way an incompetent student in an artschool works; painting blindly, and waiting for the master to show him what it is that he has been doing. In point of fact, what a student learns in an art-school 1s not so much to paint as to watch himself painting: to raise the psycho-physical activity of painting to the level of art by becoming conscious of it, and so converting it from a psychical experience into an imaginative one. What the artist is trying to do is to express a given emotion, To express it, and to express it well, are the same thing. To express it badly is not one way of expressing it (not, for example, expressing it, but not selon les régles), it is failing to express it. A bad work of art is an activity in which the agent tries to express a given emotion, but fails. This is the difference between bad art and art falsely so called....In art falsely so called

53 there is no failure to express, because there is no attempt at expression; there is only an attempt (whether successful or

not) to do something else. But expressing an emotion is the same thing as becoming conscious of it. A bad work of art is the unsuccessful attempt to become conscious of a given emotion: it is what Spinoza calls an inadequate idea of an affection. Now, a consciousness which thus fails to grasp its own emotions is a corrupt or untruthful consciousness. For its failure (like any other failure) is not a mere blankness; it is not a doing nothing; it is a misdoing something; it is activity, but blundering or frustrated activity. A person who tries to become conscious of a given emotion, and fails, is no longer in a state of sheer unconsciousness or innocence about that emotion; he has done something about it, but that

something is not to express it. What he has done is either to shirk it or dodge it: to disguise it from himself by pretending either that the emotion he feels is not that one but a different one, or that the person who feels it is not himself, ‘but someone else: two alternatives which are so far from being mutually exclusive that in fact they are always concurrent and correlative. If we ask whether this pretence is conscious

or unconscious,

the answer

is,

neither. It is a process which occurs not in the region below consciousness (where it could not, of course, take place, since consciousness is involved in the process itself), nor yet in the region of consciousness (where equally it could not take place, because a man cannot literally tell himself a lie; in so far as he is conscious of the truth he cannot literally deceive himself about it); it occurs on the threshold that divides the psychical level of experi-

IDEALISM

54

ence from the conscious level. It is the malperformance of the act which converts what is merely psychic (impression) into

what is conscious (idea). The

corruption

of

consciousness

in

virtue of which a man fails to express a given emotion makes him at the same time unable to know whether he has expressed it or not. He is, therefore, for one and the same reason, a bad artist and a bad judge of his own art. A person who is capable of producing bad art cannot, so far as he is capable of producing it, recognize it for what it is. He cannot, on the other hand, really think it good art; he cannot think that he has expressed himself when he has not. To mistake bad art for good art would imply having in one’s mind an idea of what good art is, and one has such an idea only so far as one knows what it is to have an uncorrupt consciousness; but no one can know this

except a person who possesses one. An insincere

mind,

so far as it is insincere,

has no conception of sincerity. But nobody’s consciousness can be wholly corrupt. If it were, he would be in a condition as much worse than the most complete insanity we can discover or imagine, as that is worse than the most complete sanity we can conceive. He

would suffer simultaneously every possible kind of mental derangement, and every bodily disease that such derangements can bring in their train. Corruptions of consciousness are always partial and tem-

porary lapses in an activity which, on the whole, is successful in doing what it tries to do. A person who on one occasion fails to express himself is a person quite accustomed to express himself successfully on other occasions, and to know that he is doing it. Through comparison of this occasion with his memory of these others, therefore, he ought to be able to see that

he has failed, this time, to express himself. And this is precisely what every artist is

doing when he says, “This line won’t do.’ He remembers what the experience of expressing himself is like, and in the light of that memory he realizes that the attempt embodied in this particular line

has been a failure. Corruption

of con-

sciousness is not a recondite sin or a re-

mote calamity which overcomes only an unfortunate

or

accursed

few;

it is a

constant experience in the life of every artist, and his life is a constant

and, on

the whole, a successful warfare against it. But this warfare always involves a

very present

possibility of defeat; and

then a certain corruption becomes

invet-

erate. What we recognize as definite kinds of bad art are such inveterate corruptions of consciousness. Bad art is never the result of expressing what is in itself evil, or what is innocent perhaps in itself, but in a given society a thing inexpedient to be publicly said. Every one of us feels emotions which, if his neighbours became aware of them, would make them shrink from

him

with

horror:

emotions

which,

if he became aware of them, would make

him horrified at himself. It is not the expression of these emotions that is bad art. Nor is it the expression of the horror they excite. On the contrary, bad art arises when instead of expressing these emotions we disown them, wishing to think ourselves

innocent

of the

emotions

that

horrify us, or wishing to think ourselves too broad-minded to be horrified by them. Art is not a luxury, and bad art not a thing we can afford to tolerate. To know ourselves is the foundation of all life that develops beyond the merely psychical level of experience. Unless consciousness does its work successfully, the facts which it

offers to intellect, the only things upon

ESTHETICS

55

which intellect can build its fabric thought, are false from the beginning. truthful consciousness gives intellect firm foundation upon which to build;

of community depends for its very existence A on honest dealing between man and man, a the guardianship of this honesty being a- vested not in any one class or section, but

corrupt corisciousness forces intellect to build on a quicksand. The falsehoods

in all and sundry, so the effort towards

which

come corruption of effort that has to be ists only but by language, whenever utterance and every

an

untruthful

consciousness

im-

poses on the intellect are falsehoods which intellect can never correct for itself. In so far as consciousness is corrupted, the very

wells of truth are poisoned. Intellect can build nothing firm. Moral ideals are castles in the air. Political and economic systems

are mere cobwebs. Even common

sanity

and bodily health are no longer secure. But corruption of consciousness is the same thing as bad art. I do not speak of these grave issues in order to magnify the office of any small section in our communities which arrogates to itself the name of artists. That would

be absurd.

Just as

the life of a

expression of emotions, the effort to overconsciousness, is an made not by specialeveryone who uses he uses it. Every gesture that each one

of us makes is a work of art. It is important to each one of us that in making them, however much he deceives others, he should not deceive himself. If he deceives

himself

in this matter,

he has

sown in himself a seed which, unless he roots it up again, may grow into any kind of wickedness, any kind of mental disease, any kind of stupidity and folly and insanity. Bad art, the corrupt consciousness, is the true radix malorum.

Philosophy of Religion ODOHO cs covorovrowrmn> osc DOO IDBODHDPHOHOHOVHOQOHODOD

The Supreme Continuum

RALPH TYLER FLEWELLING how

has conspired to make it, the making has

necessary to the concept of a continuum is the attendant assumption of an exist-

W. have

frequently

considered

added to your skill and to your artistic concepts, and you might make a hundred more and better. Immanence and tran-

ence of some kind which does not pass

scendence come together in personality and nowhere else. It is peculiar to creative effort. The superlative union of immanence and transcendence is called for in the Creative Force, Energy, Elan, God, or whatever works within the time-order of evolution. This interpretation is all the more necessary if we are to conceive the atom as an event, as the physicists now define it. The world everywhere, both in its physical and in its spiritual aspects, presents us with constant change, life, growth, and movement, but change could mean nothing to any subject incapable of transcendence in some degree. A succession of events displaying the presence of an evolving purpose, covering millennia of years, demands a super-subject of experience, both immanent and transcendent, a Supreme Continuum, or God. There is no other prospect of cosmic

with the fleeting events of the series. The synthesis of before and after, the correlation of past, present, and future demands

a self-referring subject of the vanishing experiences. Personality is the inalienable fact in any continuum. When we come to the continuum of world creation, or to

that which is so visualized in the doctrine of evolution, we are compelled by consistency to assume the presence of a selfconscious intelligence which existed before the beginning, and which foresaw the culmination of the process. It may be considered to have been immanent in the process, but it must also have been transcendent above the process. If, at this point,

we are challenged on the ground of entertaining contradictory notions, it will be sufficient to point out that immanence, united with transcendence is a portion of the experience of every creative person. The picture you paint is an expression oi your innermost self, if it has the mark of genius about it. It speaks of your education, your reaction to life, or form, or color, in a way peculiar to you. You may be said truly to be immanent in the work. But as a person you are also transcendent of it. It is not you. While your personality

explanation. Unless this is reached, we must abandon altogether the theory of evolution, and with it a great field of

scientific hypothesis. As the scientist Hermann Weyl in The Open World (p. 28) 3 has indicated, the ultimate answer

to all

being lies outside of knowledge in God alone. 1 Yale University Press.

56

PHILOSOPHY THE

ABSOLUTE

OF

RELIGION

57

AND

THE FINITE

philosophy and in theology. The notion of the Absolute is scarcely indigenous to

The full meaning and implication of _ Christian philosophy or theology, but is, the change from materialistic monism in rather, an inheritance from Greek science, and from spiritualistic monism in thought. As the Greek materialists from theology, is not yet apparent to many, Democritus onward endowed us with a perhaps not completely apparent to any materialistic monism, so, Plato and Plopresent-day thinker, but the readjustments tinus, with their roots in the Oriental for which it calls are very great. Matertphilosophy of the Hindu, and of Zoroasalistic monism has worked itself into a ter, gave us the concept of a spiritualistic dogma, which if consistent, with its own Absolute. In the Orient, undisturbed by premises,

denies

the

existence

of mind,

Western realism, the outcome

of the doc-

spirit, and God. Spiritualistic monism, on the other hand, if logically consistent, must consider the whole objective world an illusion. If one is to cling to monism, there is no choice between the two alternatives, and one is impaled on one or the other horn of the dilemma. In popular thought, the gap between them is bridged by a form of words, an ambiguity which bears within it a contradiction. In materialism, absolute reality is a back-lying substance, or noumenon that throws off qualities, but is in essence forever unknowable. Spiritualistic monism places reality in an inconsistently personal Absolute, which stands apart from the world of its creation, since the natural is considered the violent enemy of the supernatural. Now, “Absolute” is one of those extreme words that cannot be used without blunting its meaning. Etymologically

trine of the Absolute was the search for Nirvana, in which personality should be swallowed in oblivion, and this because the Indian thinkers had little difficulty in

it means:

omniscient and omnipresent, utterly holy. We have not often paused to ask how these terms could be invariably true in a moral world of freedom and change. As a matter of fact, any Absolute would be-

“free

from

all relations,’

en-

tirely unconditioned. Since we live in a world of relations, and can know nothing and express nothing of that which is un-

related, any use we make of the term that can carry an earthly meaning, will have within it a contradiction. Any way we take it, our Absolute becomes a relative, or related absolute, and, in spite of the incongruity, this has become the common usage of the term. This ambiguity leads to serious results, both in

thinking away the objective world. In the Occident, the Indian concept has lingered

in spite of the involved paradox. It could not have survived among us had not the original implication of the term Absolute become subtly changed in usage, and we did not think deeply enough to seize the inconsistency. Any spiritualistic Absolute must include the world of matter, either as a pantheistic demi-urge, or as an illusion and non-entity. Western thought has never been able to make the complete break with the world of objects. What the Western thinkers have meant by the Absolute was that it is a term of perfection to describe a Being, infinitely more powerful, wise, and great than we

can

think,

come limited and related by the very act of creating the world of time and sense. Above all, if such a world were characterized by the possibility of moral freedom, the creative Absolute could not avoid responsibility. If this thought gives us theological jitters, it will be well to

IDEALISM

58 recall that the deeper fact of the Incarna-

his soul, but the dream of moral perfec-

tion was a self-limitation, and anyone who

tion is never absolute, being conditioned

believes in the deity of Jesus should have

by the temporary understandings of each individual.

no difficulty in believing that self-limitation is one of the leading characteristics of the Divine Person. Creation is the

PRE-PROTOPLASMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

expression of one’s self, and the making of the world would be an act of voluntary self-limitation. The possession of personality by an Absolute is impossible, and if we are to cling to the extreme idea, the Hindu philosophy presents the correct

philosophical conclusion. To be like the Absolute, would be to become completely

depersonalized, unhuman, unrelated to the world of sorrow and experience. The assumption

of the deity of Jesus is at

utter variance

with

a consistent

doctrine

of the Absolute. An immutable God could have neither part nor lot in a world of change. If we are determined to cling to our thought of God as an Absolute we must dismiss the notion that he created

the world, bears any relation to it, has any interest in it, or could be incarnated in a historical figure. To give over the extreme dogma of an Absolute is not to consider unessential, the struggle after such perfection as the human mind can conceive, or the human will can achieve. Our human _ limitations bar us from understanding of Absolute perfection. The comprehension of perfection grows with human attainment, and it never appears what we shall yet be. In a way somewhat analogous, the mathematician must hold to the concept of infinity, though he never quite reaches it, in order

that he may arrive at the very relative and practical results that the aim for infinity achieves. The complete devotion of the

If we

are to consider the world

as

divinely created, and physical evolution as an expression of a divine order, we should frankly ask ourselves, where in physical creation the Divine first begins to manifest itself. In examining this problem, modern physics lends an emphasis to spiritualistic philosophy in describing

materiality as the result of activity, as nothing but activity, which we interpret in the terms of common understanding. Immaterial forces or energies by their activities provide us with the notions of mass and extension, something as the

grip of an electric current seems like a heavy hand laid upon us if our hands complete the circuit. How this immaterial force can give us the impression of matter, or how the immaterial can hook up with the material is a great mystery, inexplicable from the materialistic standpoint, but

a common enough experience. Your very immaterial

choice

of courses

of action,

acts upon the brain, nerve, and muscle, to lift from the table the heavy volume you hold in the air. You may admit it is inexplicable, but you have to admit it

as a fact of experience in spite of all the behaviorists can say. A world, made up of energies, a world of events working

toward a goal such as the creation of the planet, earth, and the preparation of it

which he is aware is essential to his best

for animal life, we must assume exhibits the presence from the beginning, of an element which was something other than matter, or atoms. This inner urge of the

effort. To attempt less than this is to lose

primeval atom can no more be identified

religious man to the fullest perfection of

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

with the purpose that created it than the artist can

be altogether

identified

with

the picture he conceives and paints. We must posit a psychic presence in the atom, urging to an activity foreseen not by the atom but present in the Divine Purpose, even as the cells of your brain and the muscles of your arm are not themselves cognizant of your purpose,

but are only obedient to it. The scope of action is greatly extended when we come to the cell. Before this tiny bit of protoplasm could come into being, there must have been pre-protoplasmic consciousness. The physical elements of the cell can be easily determined, for they exist throughout nature. Though we match the exact chemical constituents we have never made a cell. Here is a synthesis of atoms, endowed not only with force and direction, but with an organism and sentience. The psychic element is here intensified, for we have clearly that which no combination of chemical elements has, of itself, ever produced,

nor

do we

have

any

reason

for

assuming that it could be produced without the intervention of intelligent purpose.

This hidden power of life shows urges of extension, of adjustment to environment, a beginning of individuality, which is to seize upon the atomic world and compel it to do its bidding. The cell masters the atom, to the fulfilment of its own life processes, with a growing contingency

that betokens

at

least

a

limited

self-

consciousness. The cell has the power of refusing what is not in keeping with its own functioning, as the kelp of the shallows gathers up iodine from its ocean

habitat. As we ascend in the order of life we find a growing freedom or contingency in the power of the parts of the organism to assume the work of injured

parts, in pursuit of the good of the whole.

59 THE UNIVERSE AN ORGANIC CONTINUUM The

characteristic

of a continuum,

as

Anaxagoras once pointed out, is that it cannot be cut up into unrelated parts or discontinuities. The materialistic assump-

tion has misled us into thinking that the way to complete knowledge is by a more and more copious dissection of a reality that is in essence a continuum. Atoms

have given way to corpuscles, particles to electrons, protons, neutrons, negatrons, and an array of “rays” ever more complicated, in an effort to chase down reality

to its substantial lair. Now what seemed so substantial as functioning threatens to vanish into thin is a truth of discontinuity, of it can never present either the or the most important truth. what they are because of their

continuum air. There course, but whole truth Things are relations to

the whole. This is the fact that is emphasized in the scientific description of reality as an event in a space-time continuum. The reason this description now strikes us as a novelty is because we have been treating the various parts of a relational world as if their chief importance

lay in an existence independent of relationship. The most important reality in respect to any existence or event, is its relationship to the rest of reality, and

this must include also the being of God. No fact can abide by itself alone. To assume that we can know anything without knowing its relations, is to abrogate knowledge and make explanation impossible. The universe must be seen from the beginning as one indivisible whole, a seamless fabric, in which every part owes its existence and reality to every other part. A change in one position implies a change in the whole garment of

IDEALISM

.

60

reality. This truth finds illustration in the

case of the living cell which propagates by division. The original cell divided itself into two, and these into four, so that

had none perished by disease or accident, all must have ceased together for lack of sustenance. But that original life of the first cell survives in all living cells in an immortality of life. As cellular life, it is indeed able to reverse the processes of entropy, the running down of energy, and by reason of its power over the atomic world, to increase the store of experienceable force. But with all its contingency, the cell is held in close limitations. It can exist and grow only by the most exacting cooperation with the remainder of the universe. It can preserve

its own identity for its fleeting moment of activity through realizing its relationship and responsibility to the rest of the cosmic process. Thus the tiniest. atom and cell have their part to play in cosmic history, are related to all that has gone before, and to all that is yet to come.

The notion of a divided time and a divided world has been calamitous in human history, and more than calamitous in the field of religion. Provincialism, parochialism, nationalism, so direct in their appeal to selfishness, have shut our eyes to the dangers of a divided world. Neither province, parish, nor nation; neighborhood, family, nor individual, can live profitably in exclusion from the rest of the world. Narrow profit shuts out the

larger good, not only for general prosperity but for the individual as well. In other words, we can have no profit without sharing. Our highest good is to be found in the general good. In the field of religion our parochialisms have set us quarreling over state-

tions of righteousness. In these deeper matters we are essentially agreed, yet because of incidental matters we refuse to recognize each other’s goodness. The fact most often overlooked is that to God every human being must be inexpressibly dear. Every effort of the most forlorn or debased, to find the way to a better life,

and a living communion with God must be viewed by the Father of all with a

divine outpouring of solicitude and love. Yet we criticize such attempts because they do not quite accord with our own, and look at efforts after God, outside our own communion or religion as demonic in character. In a universe which is itself an organic continuum, there is room for every diversity, because each is in its own way the expression of the common

life and spirit. The Great Unity is to be found not in slavish likenesses, but in a common desire to know and to do the will of God. Unity of purpose and of love is possible with diversity of points of view. “Wide is the world but love more wide,” and it can break down all barriers of race, nationality, or religion. THE

SUPREME

CONTINUUM

In spite of our endeavors to distinguish ourselves from all others by a sort of isolationism, this is not our strongest impulse. Every person hits upon moments

in which he recoils in horror from the thought of being left entirely alone. Not only is this terror the bugbear of our

childhood, it is the unbearable thought of old age. Our hope and prayer is for something

abiding,

to which

we

may’

cling in faith as a refuge from the kaleidoscopic shifting of human fortune. While the materialist seeks this perma-

ments of opinion rather than over facts;

nence and security in a world of matter,

over forms of worship, rather than ques-

with a desperate struggle thus to satisfy

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

61

his deepest longings, the spiritualist seeks

tion on which God and man can meet.

permanence and security in the spiritual reality of a Supreme Continuum. If our previous considerations are true, the psychic and spiritual consciousness which has entered into the evolutionary process is the source of all created existence.

The relation between God and man is necessarily expressed in terms of human value. If the relation cannot be thus expressed, no relation between God and man can be established. The charge of carries no anthropomorphism serious weight. The heart of theism lies in the assertion of the existence in God of moral and spiritual qualities, and these are meaningless apart from a free personality making moral choices. Nor does this fact justify the ungrounded assumption of the opponents of theism, that man makes his God out of his own recognized qualities, creating him in his own image. Man builds his conception of God at the behest of ideals and dreams which he finds dimly foreshadowed in himself, but this idealism and this dreaming would be impossible to any creature which did not draw its sources from the Divine. It is the Spirit of God which moves upon the face of the waters of man’s tempestuous moral sea. In this way, every effort after the understanding of God, and of obedience to His will, may be seen as embodying an expression of the Divine Spirit. The universality of the quest, and its supreme source should form a rallying point for sympathetic understanding among men of all religions. We should begin to pay less heed to differences of theological opinion, which is after all an attempt to give a philosophical explanation for experiences that are inexplicable to reason, and we should center our emphasis on the “fruits of the spirit,” love, joy, peace, truth, and righteousness. It is a divinely inspired unrest which leads man to set forth a conception of God, but it is a point of view which springs out of the whole of life’s needs, values, relations, and possibilities. Such thoughts would not arise but by the inspiration of the

While

the materialist

contents

himself

with the merely objective and physical,

the spiritualist

lays hold

of the very

springs of life. As sentient life rises in the scale of being above atomic life, so the spiritual self-realization of persons is participation in the supreme reality. As the lower order of being must follow the lines laid down for it, and the animal world enjoys a greater but restricted freedom, so in the scale of man’s life we arrive at a new landingplace, the realm of moral freedom. True indeed, he must on the physical side pay respect to his atomic self, and in the sentient realm be influenced by animal impulses, but on the level of his moral and spiritual selfhood he may attain freedom. Through his reflective powers and his devotion to the highest he may become, with God, a cocreator of a spiritual universe, thus realizing his own identity with the Supreme Continuum on the highest plane of his activity. This capacity for unity with the Divine Purpose is the highest privilege, and forms the supreme possibility, of the person. Putting one’s self into harmony

with the will of God is nothing less than putting one’s self into harmony with the whole universe, physical and spiritual. For the individual, it means that he takes hold upon the deeper resources of life, has the universe

behind

his efforts, and

be-

comes in the truest and largest sense the vehicle of divine inspiration. If this seems to some too anthropomorphic, as bring: ing God down to man’s aspirations, we must remember that it is the sole condi-

IDEALISM

62

Divine. Not only would a God devoid of

spired Greek bard who sang: “In Him

human

we live and move and have our being.” Such truths apply to a living God but could not be said of a God forever static, completed, unmoved, and immutable. Is such a conception of God incom-

relations be meaningless and im-

potent, but we must find him related to the world through the possession of those qualities which are characteristic of life

and personality. This fact finds expression in the Hebrew term, “the living God.” Jesus carried the concept a step farther in the phrase, “the God of the living,” implying a closeness of contact and relation with all living beings, and bringing the conclusion of immortality,

patible with that absoluteness of power and perfection which we demand of the Supreme Being? Does the readaptation of the Divine to the moral exigencies of men

in the cooperative

moral

struggle

not

at least for all such as find themselves

imply a limited, and therefore an imperfect God? The question immediately loses

living in God. Furthermore, continuity of creative and moral purposes implies that

its force when we reflect that if there is limitation it is self-limitation. Self-limita-

God could not be of the pantheistic order,

tion is the principal characteristic of the highest power and_ perfection. The strongest ruler is not he who rules by violence and fear, but he who rules by

a dissolving, resolving, panorama of existence, but a center of personal and enduring self-identity in whom are focussed both immanence and transcendence. If a living God is the only adequate concept for a living world, we must apply to it the import of life. To live means constantly and continuously to improvise, to readapt to ever-changing conditions in a world of freedom, to continuously create. In a world of growing moral ideals, the concept of a living God implies that he is continually adapting himself to the needs,

achievements, and understandings of men, working in cooperation with them toward moral and spiritual goals for the world, but with a pace necessarily slowed up by man’s wilfulness and sin. The victory of moral achievement through the cooperative willing of men must be held a joyous part of the Divine experience if God is to be thought of as having sympathetic relation with men. Man may thus become

a partaker in the divine joy. Human life, and all life, becomes a portion of the divine consciousness. There is literal truth in the expressions: “Not a sparrow

shall fall to the ground

without

your

Father”; and in that of the divinely in-

conviction

and example in the govern-

ment of free men. The despot is not the real sovereign, but he who through righteous judgments attracts men’s voluntary obedience. If we balk at the thought of God accommodating himself to man’s needs, we cannot consistently hold to the incarnation of God in Christ, for the Incarnation means just

that. If the cooperation of God in the moral effort of man is a voluntary selflimitation in the interest of a worthy purpose to lead man to his own love of righteousness,

such

self-humiliation

as

may be required, becomes the high mark

and glory of the divine character.

As

John Donne once wrote of God: Thou

has contracted

thine immensity,

and shut Thyself within Syllables, and accepted a name from us. Perfect freedom is achieved only when it is infilled and dominated by selfrestraint, and the supreme lesson of the life of Jesus seems to be that rigorous self-restraint in the interest of spiritual

PHILOSOPHY

RELIGION

63

and moral achievement is not foreign to, nor unworthy of, the character of God. The end in view; the spiritual regeneration of the world, is possible only through the voluntary choice of the good by free moral beings. To achieve that most delicate of tasks without compulsion would be the most perfect of ideals. Self-limitation for the sake of a greater end in view, spells moral character in man or God. Such self-limitation in pursuit of moral purposes, while it implies changing content in the divine experience, because of

of freedom, the reality of moral volition,

man’s

freedom,

does

OF

not

necessitate

im-

perfection in the divine character, only incompleteness of experience. A mother’s love might be conceived as perfect at every stage of her child’s growth, but her experience of motherhood is being completed more and more with each day, taking on a continually changing content. Of inexpressible moment to her, are the child’s responses to her love and guidance, and the content of her love-experiences grows with the intellectual and moral achievement of the child. Such a lifehistory is essential to any experience of a continuum, and is what is meant by life. In life, while it is a sign of incompleteness, growth is not a sign of imperfection, nor of weakness, but of increasing power. Growth is valuable and desirable to a morally incompleted world, and perhaps also to a living God, if the moral perfecting of the creatures of his love is of any moment to the divine experience. Having said this much we must always remember that we can conceive God only through the medium of our human limitations, and we must not impose our tem-

poral and spatial restrictions on a being capable of transcending them in the highest degree. The concept of God as living, however, is of supreme importance to the spiritual progress of humanity. The fact

carries with it the corollary of a living participating God. If there is a living God who is a participator in our moral struggles, the content of whose living experience is contributed to by the faithfulness

and love of his children we are ushered into a world of spiritual realities. As moral character is ever a matter of free choice, and can never be a matter of compulsion, so it appears that the spiritual regeneration of the world waits upon the cooperative efforts of God and man. A new meaning is given to the conception of ourselves as co-workers together with God. We are placed in an uncompleted world which is not so much a creation as something in process of creation. Only so much has yet been created, as is necessary to provide the field and ground for moral achievement. Man himself is not yet made but is in the making. The Earth has scarcely yet begun to yield the powers still latent within it, waiting until man shall have achieved a self-mastery which will make him a safe custodian of power. God cannot himself alone build the world of his contemplation, because to build it without the cooperation of free moral beings would be to miss altogether the purpose of creation. The world He contemplates is to be a man-God world of persons, and man must join Him in the building of it. If man fails, God fails, and he has placed his faith in us in vain. The willing toil and sacrifice of men, the spiritual achievement won by sweat and blood, these form the imperishable foundations of “the City of God.” Founded on the prophets and martyrs, the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Man proves his divine sonship at last by loving and working in unison with God. Such a God cannot be conceived in the

IDEALISM

64 terms of the ancient and modern

Deists,

as static, Absolute, or absentee. He must be seen as maintainitg and upholding, continuously creating, the order of relations which constitutes the cosmos. Matter is not independent of Him, natural law is but the uniformity of his free activity, life is a manifestation of his purposive presence, upon him all is momentarily dependent for its existence. The fact is that

He did not more create the world in past

provides the strongest impetus for communal

action,

and

an

integration

with

the physical world which is of the highest importance. So long as he seeks principally selfish preferment and_ personal privilege, he is impotent. The moment he emerges into the larger area of unselfish devotion, he has immediately at his back the powers of the universe itself. In the

conscious service of God comes that detachment which is perfect freedom. Hav-.

time than that He 7s creating it under the temporal and spatial form. Space is the established relation between things

ing no “ax to grind,” no fear nor threat can move him from the path of duty. He

made necessary for the development of

lated to the Supreme Continuum, and knows that his work cannot ultimately fail. Since his insight is not warped by the lust of personal advantage, he feels him-

personality, and time is the condition of moral development. He lives and His life is manifested in ceaseless creative activity,

and this immanent and transcendent God survives the welter of time and change through the possession of an enduring self-consciousness and _ self-direction. Either God is a Person, a Supreme Con-

tinuum, or that lonely and solitary pilgrim of the spirit, man, alone of all created things, possessing the consciousness of freedom and moral responsibility, but with his sense of failure mingled with undying hope, is the greatest God there is. But in such case there is no meaning, no explanation for a cosmic order. To accept himself as the highest God is also

against the nature of man. MAN’S

PLACE IN THE CONTINUUM

SUPREME

It is evident that in creative power, ability to act in intelligent and voluntary cooperation with the Supreme Continuum, man occupies an exalted and unique place in the universe. In his search after the Divine Will he finds an integration of his own higher powers, a new

unity with all like-minded

men

which

discovers himself in the divine order, re-

self a part of that ongoing force which cannot suffer permanent defeat until the object of evolution is achieved. The con. sciousness of unity with the Divine Will enables “one to chase a thousand, and

two to put ten thousand to flight.” Such power lies in the assurance of a righteous

cause. The consciousness of continuity with the Supreme Power within and behind the universe is the great need of our day. Society suffers from individualism, an isolationism which cuts itself off from the general progress in the selfish search for personal advantage at the expense of others. The demand of the times is for the re-integration of these separated egos into a renewed consciousness of their continuity with the life-process. Our task is to make men appreciative of their relation to the eternal order which is here and now, which cannot be separated either from the future or the past. Eternity is not of tomorrow more than it is of today. What we achieve of spiritual values here and now,

is the essence of our spiritual existence forever, the foundation upon which alone

PHILOSOPHY

OF

65

RELIGION

can be erected the realities of future life.

able to speak of him as the least of created

In the Supreme Continuum alone can we realize our brotherhood with all mankind,

things, in a mock humility, losing him in

the communion of the saints. A realization of the place that each is privileged to take in the range of cosmic life raises man to a position of new grandeur and importance. No more with any consistency, shall we be

infinite spaces filled with cosmic dust. As a reflective person, endowed with creative powers,

he

himself

becomes

the

raison

d'etre of being, to the exact degree in which he realizes himself in the Supreme Continuum.

Philosophy -of History, Culture, and Society FDBDBDBDWDDDY DO OOOHOOQOQHq OOOO LO OOO LS CO cer PorvroownrnL>

The Roots of Liberty BENE DEI

O CROCE Now the one alternative to freedom that is being practically suggested in our day cannot be regarded as offering any such promise. It is the alternative of violence, and violence, in whatever name it be exercised, whether of race or country or proletariat, can have no status as morality. Violence contains within itself none of those energies that enhance civilized human living. It is capable at best of expanding in a very problematical future the physical living of a few individuals, while narrowing the physical living of all others.

|Betas can see, everybody admits, that in the period since the beginning of the Great War the love of freedom has sensibly weakened throughout the world, while the idea of freedom has progressively lost its clarity. Liberal systems that were once regarded as solidly established have collapsed in many countries, and everywhere and in general liberal convictions have been shaken, liberal enthusiasms have

cooled, toward

people have grown lukewarm an ideal of freedom that has

ceased to fill hearts, inspire conduct, and

Violence

give direction to outlooks on the future. It should nevertheless be apparent to everybody that this so-called decadence of the liberal idea, or, as others say, this crisis that at present confronts it, is a strange

may

punch to the floor and

silence a person, for instance, who is trying to solve a problem in mathematics, but no one will claim that the silence thus brutally obtained will provide the solution for the mathematical problem. All we shall have will be a man on the floor and a problem still pending—it will pend till some mathematician is allowed to speak and solve it. Hence the barrenness in terms of thought, science, art, civic virtues, human

sort of decadence, a strange sort of crisis,

in that it is illumined by no flash of a new ideal that is to subsume, replace, outmode the old, in that no new order is put forward to replace the order that is being at-

tacked or overthrown. The liberal ideal is a moral ideal, expressing an aspiration toward a better humanity and a higher civilization. The new ideal that is to triumph should, therefore, present itself with promise of a newer, richer, deeper humanity and civilization.

relations, that systems

based

on

violence.

—or on what amounts to the same thing, on authority—commonly show. Every-

thing sound and productive that still survives or flourishes in them in the directions mentioned, survives and flourishes either

66

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

through the survival of free minds or through the persistence of acquired habits. But these latter gradually weaken for lack

SOCIETY

67

marck combined with the theories and the

through the passing of the human beings who possess them. Meanwhile none of the

influence of Marxian socialism to discredit the ideal of freedom, and the lives of the peoples turned in predominantly economic and material directions, though liberal constitutions were kept and in fact

new formulas or ideals is allowed to de-

proved very serviceable to the new mate-

fend itself in orderly discussion, to justify itself by critically tested arguments, by interpretations of history, in a word by perspicacious, cautious, sober research. It

rialism. This historical development, which has not yet ended and in fact is probably in its most acute stage, I have examined elsewhere, and from the point of view just mentioned; but if I were to summarize its significance in a single sentence I might say that it lies in the anguish and the travail incident to the growth of a new religious faith, and to the quest for such a faith on the part of humanity or at least on the part of the civilized peoples. The old religions have worn out before the religion of freedom has spread widely enough abroad and taken a sufhciently firm hold. Not only has the religion of freedom failed to translate itself into conviction and accepted opinion in the masses —clothing itself meantime in more or less of a myth, as inevitably happens. Even among the educated the religion of freedom has not attained such a solid the-

of sustenance

and

replenishment

and

is forced to drone its arid mechanical assertions over and over again, without varlations, without proofs, without elaborations, deriving such animation as it can from an accompaniment of threats. There is talking in plenty, there is much brandishing of clubs and swords; but while scorn and ridicule are heaped upon it, the ideal of freedom stands substantially intact and intangible, since it can be overthrown and replaced only by a better and sounder ideal —and such an ideal cannot even be conceived. Our experience of the present world, therefore, can lead only to one conclusion: that the so-called crisis of liberalism is not the crisis of any particular ideal—as, for instance, of the ancient polis as compared with imperial forms of government, or of feudalism as compared with absolute monarchy, or of absolute as compared with constitutional monarchy, and so on; but a crisis of the ideal itself. It is a bewilder-

oretical elaboration as to render it impregnable to attacks frontal or treacherous. But we should not lose heart on that account, we should not give way to pessimism—pessimism is by definition inco-

ment, a degeneration, a corruption, a per-

herent and profitless. We have no reason

version, of the moral sense, of that moral enthusiasm which ennobles the individual life and glorifies the history of humanity, marking the latter off into its great periods. How this degeneration has come about is made clear enough by history, and the history more particularly of the period following 1870, when the policies, the pronouncements, and the whole spirit of Bis-

despondently to resign ourselves to a new aeon-long era of barbarism such as a number of apocalyptic writers of our day foresee and foretell—such fancies, like all structures of the imagination, have their empty possibility, they have no certainty whatever. We should not lose heart in the first place because it is the lot and the duty of man to work on and fight on. But then again human society has lived through

68

IDEALISM

other periods when moral sentiments have waned and materialisms have waxed triumphant, and in every such case it has recovered through a spontaneous rekindling of enthusiasm and idealism, through an ever reblossoming spiritual exuberance, through the words and the examples of apostles aflame with the religious spirit who sooner or later have recaptured the ears of men. As regards our scholars and

thinkers of the present time, it is their task to keep the concept of freedom precise and clear, to broaden it and work out its philosophical foundations. That is the contribution that may properly be required of us

in the many-sided struggle that is laid upon us to resurrect the ideal and restore

life under freedom. There are those who smile at this sort of contribution and doubt its necessity and its utility. The tree of theory, we are told

in the words of the poet, is gray, while the tree of life is green. We are told that ideas and arguments do not create the passion or the flaming resolve that alone counts in practice. But the notion that thought and action are separate things, that they are indifferent to each other and without

influence

upon

each

other, is a

hasty judgment based upon superficial observation. In the living and concrete spiritual act the two terms stand perfectly united. The act of thought is at the same time an act of willing, since it derives from nothing less than a moral urge, from the torment, the pain, the necessity, of removying an impediment to the flow of life; and it eventuates in nothing else than a new disposition of will, a new attitude and demeanor, a new manner of acting in the practical field. A thinker who does not

suffer his problem, who does not live his thought, is not a thinker; he is a mere elocutionist, repeating thoughts that have been thought by others. Rarely enough, to

be sure, has the thinker statesman,

the warrior,

also been the

or the leader

of

parties or peoples; but that fact depends on the specification of human activities, each of which, for that matter, evolves in its particular sphere but with an outlook upon life as a whole. Within its sphere, the labor of speculation does not stand cut off

from life; rather it gathers there the energy that it requires for functioning in the world at large; and it so functions not merely by communicating the logical processes involved in it to those who accept

it, rethink it in compendious form, and make it their own, but also and very particularly through the fact that in many people conclusions that are products of the thinker’s labor are transmuted into axioms, commonplaces, proverbs and, stripped of the proofs that justify them, become articles of faith and trusted guides

of conduct. So the educated and the so-called ruling classes are formed. Without such classes no human society has ever been able to endure and their strength is the strength of society as a whole. There is, to be

sure, a class now large, now very large, that lives on from day to day indifferent to moral questions and to problems of public life, devoting neither thought nor attention to them and speaking, when it speaks, only to voice its satisfactions or dissatisfactions in respect of its needs and comforts. Such are the so-called “masses,” to whom a demagogic romanticism ascribes mysterious and mystical virtues and pays a worship corresponding. The potency of ideas being at its minimum among the uneducated, it is certainly not. to be expected that the truths that are discovered by thinkers and become part of the common patrimony of civilization

should

be easily carried

down

to the

masses. But we must nevertheless do our

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

best to educate them, and enable them on

the one

hand

to replenish

the ruling

classes with fresh forces, new workers, new members; and on the other to bring themselves progressively into harmonious accord with the educated. Whenever and wherever this is not possible the masses must be handled with the political wisdom that the special case requires, in order to prevent them from ruining the conquests that society has made—in other words, from ruining civilization. Civilization has been ruined a number of times in the course of history, but always, sooner

or later, now with more, now with less difficulty, the dismantled dikes have been repaired and the stream has resumed its regular flow. For a full and clear discussion of the philosophical theory of freedom, three aspects, or levels, had better be kept distinct. Under the first aspect, freedom may be regarded as the force that creates history —indeed this is so truly its real and proper function that one might say, in a sense somewhat different from the Hegelian, that history is the history of freedom. In fact, everything the human being does or creates is done or created freely— actions, political institutions, religious con-

ceptions, scientific theories, the productions of poetry and art, technical inventions, instruments for increasing wealth and power. Illiberal systems, as just in-

SOCIETY

69

the historian. So in civic history all those things that are done under constraint, even though they may help to some extent to meet individual needs of patronage, livelihood, or comfort, belong to physiological living and not to the moral or civic living which they fraudulently ape. Periods of suppressed or oppressed liberty contribute to the general productivity of history only in so far as the suppression or oppression cannot be and never is absolute and complete, since the very violence of the oppression provokes multifarious reactions in an opposite direction. On the one hand, therefore, we often see oppressors inclined to favor or promote labors of freedom, not because they like the freedom, indeed the reverse, but because they come to see that for the particular social or political systems that they have instituted, whatever these may be, they need certain services and certain kinds of support. They cannot, for instance, dispense

with

doctors,

engineers,

scientists,

or writers; and, soon discovering that such experts cannot be produced by mechanical processes, they find themselves obliged to leave them more or less free in their training and in the prosecution ot their work. On the other hand we always observe efforts and activities on the part of an opposition, now overt and talkative,

are of anything truly new or original and

now secret and silent, but which are never lacking and which to some extent fertilize the barren present and attenuate its despair by planting seeds for a more or less immanent future. If human affairs did not develop in this manner, ages of oppression would be altogether sterile— they would be periods of death and not of life, or at least of no civilized living— they would represent vacuums in the historical process. Such a thing is un-

therefore devoid of esthetic reality, are thrust aside and ignored by the critic or

thinkable and that it does not take place is evidenced by the little or much that

dicated,

are

barren.

Their

counterfeit

achievements have the traits of the socalled imitations, or artificial reworkings, of poetry and art, which retrace through more or less grotesque or repulsive recombinations poems or paintings that

already exist, and which, devoid as they

IDEALISM

70

ages which for one reason or another are considered ages of oppression have nevertheless produced, and even more emphatically by the joyous resilience

which spreads abroad in the succeeding ages, which must -therefore have been prepared for by the earlier and so after a fashion have existed in them. The historian looks at things and judges them otherwise than people who are in the thick of the fight and feel all its passions, whether these be the oppressors who gloatingly imagine they have stamped out liberty or the oppressed who mourn liberty as dead and would fain resurrect her. The historian knows that the issue in the struggle is never whether freedom

shall live or die—freedom,

after

all, being naught else but humanity, a humanity that is at war with itself. He knows that the question always is of a more or a less, of a more rapid rhythm or a slower rhythm, and ‘that the contrasting beliefs just mentioned are illusions, mistaken impressions, reflecting the share which the opponents of freedom and the lovers of freedom severally have in the struggle. Under its second aspect, on its second level, freedom is thought of not as the force that creates history but as a practical ideal which aims to create the greatest possible freedom in human society and therefore to overthrow tyrannies and oppressors and establish institutions, laws, ethical systems, that will successfully uphold it. If one plumbs this ideal to the bottom one finds it in no sense. different or distinguishable from conscience and moral behavior, and one observes that the will to freedom as conscience expresses the sum and the synthesis of all the moral virtues and of all the definitions which have been given of ethics. However

variously these may describe the moral

ideal—placing it now in respect for one’s neighbor, now in the general welfare, now in an enhancement of the spiritual life, now in a striving for a better and better world, and so on—they all agree on one thing: on a resolve that freedom shall triumph over the obstacles that rise in its path and over the aversions that beset it, and give full expression to its life-creating power. When we go to the rescue of a

person who is ill and quiet or lessen his pain, we are striving, in effect, to restore

a source

of activity,

in other words

a

source of freedom, to society. When we educate a child, we aim to make of him a

person able to go his own way as a free autonomous being. When we detend the just against the unjust, the true against the false, we do so because the unjust and the false represent servitude to passion and to mental

inertia, whereas

the true

and the just are acts of freedom. Altogether inappropriate, therefore, is the fear, nay the terror, that some people manifest when it is proposed to foster or recognize the full and unlimited freedom of the human being. Their thoughts turn at once to the abuses that the wicked,

the criminal, the insane, the young and inexperienced, may make of unlimited freedom—as though to control or to help those sorts of people there were no moral judgments and condemnations on the part of society, no

penal sanctions,

sanatoria,

asylums, schools, and the like, on the part of the State. They ignore or pretend to ignore the fact that when we speak of the need of freedom we are thinking strictly and exclusively of ways of facilitating the activities of people who are neither wicked nor criminal nor insane nor inexperienced and immature, and not of ways of facilitat-

ing the excesses of people who are subject in one way or another to bestial unrestraint, madness, childishness, ignorance, or the

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

like. It should be clear that only with the former in mind do we assert that all obstacles that are set in the way of free

activity are harmful to human society. Since, as we have seen, the liberal ideal is one and the same with conscience, that ideal in one form or another and to a greater or lesser degree exerts its influence in all ages and cannot therefore be re-

garded as a historical phenomenon that appears at a certain moment, endures for a certain length of time and then, like all historical phenomena, wanes and disappears. It is of course true that, as we commonly say, the liberal ideal is a product of modern times, that it had its beginnings in the seventeenth century and reached its full blossoming in the first half of the nineteenth. In strict exactness,

however, we could not say that the sense of freedom or the ideal of liberty originated and developed during that period or any other particular period. What we should say is that during that period people became strongly and growingly conscious of the essential character of freedom and of its status as a supreme principle. That perception had not been so easy in earlier periods, because of the prevalence of transcendental conceptions, and the strings of commandments and prohibitions ordained on high which went with transcendental systems and were upheld against dissenters by punishments and persecutions, now of Protestants by Catholics, now of Catholics by Protestants, and so on. But with the end of the religious wars and the advent of religious tolerance people began to see the importance of not suppressing unpopular ideas but of meet-

ing them with opposite ideas. This liberty gradually brought all other liberties in its train, till the principle that underlay and upheld them all was finally perceived

SOCIETY

71

in its completeness. Thus a higher, more comprehensive ideal made its way to triumph, breaking through beliefs in the transcendental, subsuming, replacing them, warming, enlightening, reshaping the soul of the modern man, which is a very different soul from the soul of the medieval or ancient man. This was a movement of moral liberation and of moral ascension. To imagine, after the fashion of the economic-interpretationists and their imitators, that it can be explained by the simultaneous rise of an

economic

social

class,

the

bour-

geoisie, and the rise of capitalism, industry, and free commercial competition, in other words to regard it as an economic phenomenon, is to misunderstand it altogether. Nor, really, are we any better served by attempts, such as have been made, to explain it as a strictly psychological derivation from a Calvinistic concept of vocation or mission. This deliberate, self-conscious aspiration for freedom as a supreme and fundamental good exerted a tremendous influ-

ence upon the generations of men who witnessed and provoked 1830, 1848, and 1860. In those days, and indeed long afterwards, it seemed to be a permanent acquisition of the human spirit, an abiding conquest of civilization. Now, as we have seen, it is the sentiment that has faltered and weakened to a greater or lesser extent in all parts of the present world, Under a third aspect, on a third level, one may think of freedom in terms of the process by which the ideal of freedom and the aspiration to freedom have been worked into a philosophical concept and brought under a general conception of reality that defines and justifies them; and here we perceive the intimate connections that subsist between the history

IDEALISM.

72

of the theory of freedom and the history

phies the one least qualified to provide a

of philosophy which has so strongly influenced, as it is stilk influencing, the former.

philosophical justification of the ideal and

During the long period when

meta-

physical, transcendental philosophies prevailed in Europe, the concept of freedom as the law of life and history did not find

the place that rightfully belonged to it, and it experienced no end of difficulty and labor in making its way forward. Even when the sense of freedom was very keen it was a matter of feeling and conduct rather than of theory. Now, one might ask, what was needed in order that the ideal of freedom might find larger reference and support in a philosophy? The need, evidently, was that the same negation of the transcendental that liberalism was making in the practical field it should also make in the logical field and in more and more comprehensive form. Philosophy, in other words, had to be a philosophy of absolute immanentism, an immanentism of the spirit and therefore not naturalism and not materialism, and not, either, a dualism of spirit and nature but an absolute spiritualism. Moreover, since the spirit is a dialectic of distinctions and oppositions, since the spirit is perpetual growth, perpetual progress, philosophy had to be absolute historicism. Such a conception was very far indeed from ways of thinking in the country

where the ideal of freedom found its first

the practice of freedom.

To measure the full scope of this deficiency one has only to glance again at John Stuart Mill’s famous treatise On

Liberty. Of the author’s sincere libertarian faith there can be no slightest doubt. But what cheap, what ignoble arguments

he is provided with by his concepts of public welfare, happiness, wisdom, opportuneness,

human

frailty! In view of this |

last, Mill argues, as long as. men are what they are, we had better allow free play to differing individual opinions and traits, provided their exercise involves no harm to one’s neighbor! To wretched and fallacious reasonings of this type we owe a widespread belief

that liberalism is identical with utilitarian individualism, with “social atomism,” as Hegel said, and that it regards the State as a mere instrument for helping individuals in their quest for comforts and pleasures. If at all, one might identify liberalism

viewing attaining therefore, requiring

with

moral

individualism,

the State as an instrument for a nobler plane of living and in the light of that assumption, the individual to love it, serve

it, and if need be die for it. Unfortunately,

in thinking along that line, not even the concept of the individual is analyzed critically enough. Utilitarian theory continues to substantialize the individual as a monad, to naturalize him as a physical person to be respected and guaranteed as a physical person; whereas the individual should be resolved into the individuality

and noblest expressions, and was so embodied in institutions and in public and private morals as to supply most stimulating examples to the rest of the world. English philosophy in those days was what it was to remain for two centuries

of doing, into the individuality of the act, in other words into the concreteness of

more

universality.

or

less:

sensistic,

utilitarian,

em-

pirical, and, in the religious field, agnostic and possibilistic. The first-born offspring of liberalism was therefore of all philoso-

Lack of definiteness in the moral ideal and superficial conceptions of history have

meantime led people to drowse fondly in

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

beliefs of a rosy progressive assumed

that such

things

AND hue. It is

as

elections,

parliaments, and free discussion have once and for all opened to mankind a royal road, a chemin de velours, \eading to

higher and higher levels of existence, ever more abundant comforts, ever greater wealth and power, a steadily increasing culture and refinement, a greater and greater splendor of civilization. On that theory the day of harsh conflicts and cruel devastations is supposed to be over. There are to be no more wars and revolutions, no further danger of relapses to lower forms of political and social living. There may be some slight disturbance, but in the end everything will be smoothed out in agreements arrived at through good-humored conference. Actually, achievement of the moral ideal requires unremitting effort and vigilancy on our part. We are obliged continuously to reachieve with our labor and with our sufferings all that we have inherited from those who have gone before us. The course of history—the “education of the human race,” as Lessing called it—advances over roads that are rough and rugged, roads that are broken by precipices and pitfalls and strewn with killed and wounded. Just as the course of history never ends in a finer and static condition of happiness, so it is never able to signboard and utilize a way of progress that is safe and sheltered from all mishap. All the worst in the worst past can always return. But we should remember it will always return under new

conditions and,

for that very reason, once we have again mastered it, we will find that it has lifted

us to a higher and nobler plane. The epic of history stands closer to the tragedy than

to the idyl. The fact that people have not grasped

this truth, the fact that they so readily suc-

SOCIETY

73

cumbed to fatuous optimism, is the main cause of the pessimism and the lack of confidence that prevail so widely in the

world today. The world is indeed beset by difficulties, but instead of thinking of these as natural aspects of the individual life and of history as a whole, as manifestations so to say, of life’s eternal rhythm, instead of ridding themselves of their illusions and correcting their childish errors, such people adopt the easier course of dropping the ideal itself—in other words, the ideal of freedom—by swiftly denying it, only to be left in a sort of stupor where they fall prey to one or another of the political forms that are provided in a whirling dance about us. In another direction, in Germany, philosophy had gone far beyond sensism, hedonism, utilitarianism, empiricism, and

associationism, but in the major philosophical systems ancient metaphysical and theological elements survived among new

and original ideas. The tendency, therefore, was to subject the idea of freedom to pre-established

historical

schemes

and,

in the political field, in view of the weakness of the liberal tradition in German life, to. smother it under the idea of the State, which in turn was conceived as a sort of personified abstraction possessing many of the attributes and attitudes of the Hebrew God. Worse

yet, in the second

half of the

nineteenth century, Darwinism and evolutionism came to the fore and the liberal

ideal began to be justified with concepts deriving from such doctrines as the struggle for existence or the survival of the fittest, and from the habit of thinking of men as mere animals. Therewith the dialectic, the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, the alternating victories and defeats, the progressive solutions, which liberalism had regarded as part and parcel of its

IDEALISM

74 spiritual conception of life, gave way to picturings and admiring descriptions of

even renounces and betrays its ideal to fall in with the current that it once com-

wild beasts clawing at, one another and devouring and destroying one another. The fact that a theory gives an inadequate or inappropriate account of a thing by no means implies that the thing is not

bated. And meantime false ideas, mistaken opinions, mendacious histories, step | forward as though to deliver an unflattering obituary for the liberty that is reported dead or to inscribe a condemnatory

enjoying a fulsome and exuberant pros-

epitaph upon her waiting tomb. At such

perity, so long as the vital force that is at work within it is vigorous and inspiring. Often excellent paintings, poems, or sculptures are produced by men who hold fantastic, conventional, or outmoded theories on art, and acts of the highest morality and nobility are performed quite unpretentiously by men who profess the crudest and most hardhearted materialisms. For a person to act in one way and think in another involves, of course, incoherence and lack of balance. There are such cases, however, and we see that there must be, once we remember that we reach coherence through our incoherences, we attain our balance from our frequent stumblings. The fiery and fruitful development of liberalism in England and all over Europe in the nineteenth century dashed the absolutisms

to earth, liberated

oppressed peoples from foreign dominions and united them into great states. It created a supple form of living that enjoyed an intense interchange among the nations of economic but also of moral, intellectual, and esthetic values. It is in no way surprising that the theory of liberty, meantime,

should have

groveled on the wretched planes just described. A Cavour was so deeply and devoutly inspired by the ideal of freedom that in him the word and the deed seemed a living theory, so that nothing more was needed. But that is not the case when the practical urge has weakened, when the vision is veiled or is growing dim, when action falters, draws back, or

times

it becomes

imperative

to have

a

truly adequate theory of freedom. As he stands dawn things scatter

waiting for the practical revival to again the thinker should start going in his own field, he should the clouds that are gathering above

it and bring clear skies back into the domain of thought. The time when freedom is dead or dying in others is the time when she should resume the weaving of her tapestry before the thinker’s mind. This reconsideration of the problem of freedom,

this construction

tion of the foundations

or reconstruc-

of the theory of

liberty, should also help us to correct a number of mistaken impressions that more directly affect the life of our times.

One

of these

regards

the relationship

—not very adequately understood —between

“moral

liberalism,”

as yet

liberalism

proper, and “economic liberalism,’ or free trade. This is not a relationship of cause and effect, of principle and consequence, of premise and conclusion, It is a relationship of form and matter. The economic life becomes matter as compared with conscience, and matter are the various systems that economic life proposes—free trade, protectionism, monopoly, planned economic economy,

autarchy, and the like. No one of these systems can claim moral status as against the other, since they are all economic and non-moral and can each, in the various situations that eventuate in history, be either adopted or rejected by the moral

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

man. The same may be said of property systems, capitalistic, communistic, or otherwise, which are necessarily variable and can never be fixed on by reference to

any moral law. It might seem possible to fix on one or the other of them with reference to some dream of a general and permanent state of comfort or welfare. But such a dream would not only be utopian. Intrinsically it would have nothing to do with ethics. Morals envisage no impossible state of individual or general comfort. They are exclusively concerned with an excelsius. Another mistaken notion comes to us

from

the opposite

direction—not

from

laissez faire and free trade, but from the communists. This is the distinction that is drawn between a “legal” or “formal” or “theoretical” freedom and an “actual” or “real” freedom. The first sort of freedom is the one that was allegedly bestowed upon the peoples by the Revolution of 1789 and which has been made deceptive and unreal because it has not been accompanied by the second and, worse yet, has been used as a pretext to resist propaganda or action for the second. On careful examination, freedom of the first sort, the allegedly “legal” or “formal” freedom, turns out to be the real and actual freedom—freedom as a _ moral principle and therefore the only freedom. The other sort, which is called “actual” and “real,” is not freedom at all, but just a name for a communist and equalitarian system of economic organization. The fact that the two things have, with revolting callousness to facts, been subsumed under one concept by exponents ot the economic interpretation of history is just another instance of the obtuseness

which

that school

of thought

has en-

couraged towards everything pertaining to the spiritual and moral life.

SOCIETY

75

It cannot be argued, in rebuttal, that the communist ideal, as merely economic, is, among the various possible or plausible ideals, adapted to certain conditions and more or less permanent in relation to them. The communist system, to begin with, is very improperly called a system of “equality” and “justice,” but that is not the point here. What we must reject is the assertion that represents that system of economic organization as the foundation, and liberty as the pinnacle, of the social

edifice. Liberty is not dependent on any particular economic

of the two

system, or on either

systems here contrasted.

It

calls all systems to the bar of judgment and accepts or rejects any or all according to the case. If, therefore, one insists in the face of the facts on conceiving the relationship upside down, there is nothing to do except to begin by founding the equalitarian economic order, without reference to freedom and consent, and resorting to violence. Then, in line with the principle that states are upheld by the same forces that create them, one can

only go on and uphold the equalitarian order by violence and suppress freedom. The’ truth of this contention is so obvious from the standpoint of reason and logic that it would hardly be necessary to seek a verification of it in the facts. Yet the verification has been supplied, and in no doubtful terms, by a number of the so-called proletarian dictatorships of our time. These systems can pretend to establish liberty in their written constitutions. They cannot achieve it in the fact, any more than they can divest themselves of their dictatorial character—divest themselves, that is, of their actual selves. As in the case just mentioned, therefore, the real relationship is the reverse one: first and fundamental, freedom, which judges, accepts, or rejects either or any system

IDEALISM

76 of economic organization according as the latter shows itself to be morally the

of the proximus ardet Ucalegon. But then again such policies are definitely un-

more salutary and thereby economically

healthy to the sense that a people must

the more advantageous in the conditions supplied at the given historical moment. One might touch briefly, also, on a third misapprehension which comes to us not from the battle of conflicting economic systems but from the more strictly political field, the field of diplomacy.

There we find a formula of “nonintervention,” which decks itself out in a halo of liberalism and declares humble deference to the rights particular countries have of freely working out their problems and fighting out their domestic quarrels even by civil war. In the background of such propositions lurks a very important truth, the truth that the government of a given country is in duty bound to consider the vital interests entrusted to it and to concern itself with the affairs of other countries only as these affect those interests in line of prospect or menace, advantage or harm. This

truth,

however,

is never

the

pre-

have of itself. This sense cannot

be satis- ,

fied by the mere idea of power. It has to — be re-enforced by a persuasion that the power is beneficial to humanity—otherwise the country shrinks into a sort of cynical selfishness that works against the country itself. In the light of this truth a friend and co-worker

of mine?

saw

fit, with

reason, to accuse the English sense dom of narrowness, in that the seem to conceive of liberty as a personal, or national possession

own,

not.as

a universal

some

of freeEnglish private, of their

human

value

which it is their duty to spread abroad and with which the destinies of their own liberties are necessarily bound up.

This reluctance—a very understandable reluctance—to embrace and apply an active international morality rests in part on historical memories—memories of the Crusades,

for

instance,

which

were

so

idealistic in their dreams and so unidealistic in their realities and which anyhow failed; memories of certain Catholic crusades, which were so unwisely undertaken by the Spain of the Hapsburgs; or memories of the religious wars, which laid Europe waste, drowned a continent in blood, and ended not in the victory of one faith or the other, but in a return to

dominant consideration with those who use the formula. The pious respect that is professed for the self-determination of the peoples must be classed with the political hypocrisies. The principle is evidently not applied, and is in fact inapplicable, to the so-called backward or uncivilized peoples and cannot be applied, either, to peoples who fall into temporary conditions of civic inferiority. The interests that the given government is called upon to protect all by itself cannot be conceived in terms of an exclusive and

a general outburst of rationalism and illuminism before which both Catholicism and Protestantism gave ground. This reluctance tends, at any rate, to

abstract particularity. All countries

par-

lose sight of the fact that morality, and

ticipate in the common life of Europe, or of the world. To refuse to consider the moral vicissitudes of peoples beyond one’s own country’s frontiers involves, first of all, exposing one’s country to the danger

the ideal of freedom which is the political expression of morality, are not the prop-

the cuius regio eius religio, followed by

erty of a given party or group, but a value 2 Omodeo, review of Fisher’s History of Europe, La Critica, Vol. XXXVI (1938).

HISTORY,

that

CULTURE,

is fundamentally

and

AND

universally

human, to diffuse and enhance which all of us must devote our efforts of good will

in the ways that are most appropriate to the given case and which political wisdom must advise and guide. No people will be truly free till all peoples are free.

I confess that I am not a little alarmed at the scant attention, if any at all, that is being paid to the problem of freedom in the philosophical literature of our time, and at the little interest that is being shown in the vicissitudes and destinies of freedom throughout the world. One can say the same, for that matter, of literature in general—of the drama, of the novel, of historical writing. This is just the opposite of what went on during the first half of the nineteenth century, though it should be going on even more intensely today when the liberties which were then won are in danger of being lost and of having to be won again. Actually, philosophy and literature seem to be indifferent to the distress of those who love our sacred heritage of freedom and fear its passing.

Philosophy

is turning back to the old

and faraway problems of the schools, and literature to irrelevant sentiments and impulses; when indeed both philosophy

SOCIETY

77

and literature are not being placed at the service of adversaries of the liberal ideal in an effort to construct a body of doctrine that will help the oppressions that are being exercised and the various attempts

that are being made

to brutalize

the

world. For my part, for some two decades I have been trying to revive interest in the subject of freedom through a number of philosophical or historical treatises; and in the course of those labors I have been impressed by the relatively imperfect state in which the doctrine of liberty has been left by thinkers of the past. The lightness of the armor, the ancientness and inadequacy of the weapons, with which they provided freedom may in_ part account for the ineffectiveness of the defense that it has made against the sur-

prises and attacks that have of late been hurled upon it. I have therefore set down here a few of the outlines of a doctrine of freedom that seem to me essential; but I cannot end these pages without observing that the subject has so many and such varied aspects, that it intertwines with so many of the greatest problems of life and history, as to require all the energy and talents that any number of scholars can devote to it.

Howes Avlede IVI AUN Dheawineube red hs:

Near the beginning of the century two philosophers on either side of the Atlantic, one near the end of his distinguished and varied career, the other making his debut, roughed out the shape of a new and important version of an old _ philosophy, Realism. They were the American, William James, and the Englishman, G. E. Moore. James, best known for his bold psychological studies and his championing of Pragmatism, in a volume entitled Essays in Radical Empiricism, set out to revitalize the great tradition of Locke, Hume, and Mill by establishing Empiricism on a stoutly realistic foundation instead of a phenomenalistic one. No ‘doubt Locke was right-headed in his attack upon innate ideas and his insistence upon our knowing only what we have learned. No doubt either that those who followed him were well justified in emphasizing the centrality of experience and of debunking any clear distinction between primary and secondary qualities, but how unfortunate it was that this Empiricism led in the case of Bishop Berkeley to locating the whole universe within minds and in the case of Hume to doubting whether we can escape what Santayana has called “a solipsism of the present moment.” Hume had shown that a substantial Mind was every bit as questionable as a_ substantial Material World; and without any home, how could impressions

and ideas, after all, be quite

real? That the question was terribly disturbing can be seen by examining the almost frantic efforts of the Germans, beginning with Kant, to regain a substantial, dependable, and largely knowable universe, but in doing so to depart from the science-oriented Empiricism of the British. James now proposed to be radically empirical. Psychological introspection seems to show that experience is not a succession of discrete ideas or impressions or feelings, but a continuous flow, a stream of consciousness. Reflection discriminates

within

this stream,

arrests

the flow, abstracts, and comes up with things and terms and classes and selves which it then tries to get back into relation with each other. But what is the nature of this relation? Mental? Arbiin reality? James trary? Unfounded answer is that “the relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves.” From

this he concludes, “The parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe

needs,

in short,

no

extraneous

trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure.” (Preface to The Meaning of Truth) On this theory, matter does not turn out to be really only

INTRODUCTION

79

mental content, nor do ideas show up as pale, ghostly images of the real world. Matter and mind are equally real and not basically separated. Reality is neutral; only in certain contexts is it marked off,

now as mental or spiritual, now as material or bodily. Ralph Barton Perry, a student and young colleague of James, published in the Journal of Philosophy in the year of his teacher's death a_ strong, closely reasoned attack upon Idealism, entitled “The Ego-Centric Predicament.” His argument was that it is plainly illegitimate to infer anything at all about the character of the world from the undeniable fact that whatever is experienced is experienced by somebody. Idealists are wont to argue that whatever is known

is,

by virtue of its very relation to a knower, mental, but Perry replied that though one cannot escape his own ego and somehow know or experience _perfectly “objectively,” this fact in itself says nothing whatsoever about the object of knowledge,

nothing about whether it is spiritual or material. All the possibilities remain open. But if this central argument for Idealism is shown to be empty, no reason remains for adopting what must seem to most thinkers a highly implausible view. In the same year, 1910, there appeared a manifesto of New Realism or NeoRealism, “The Program and First Platform of Six Realists.” Perry was a signer along with W. P. Montague, another student of James, from whom they took the key idea of “neutral monism” and the

correlative idea of knowledge being presentational rather than representational; that is, that we know reality directly and immediately, not just inferentially and symbolically. A mind perceives its environment in something of the way a searchlight plays over a field: it goes right

out there. A theory which takes the mind out from under the hat and makes it coextensive with its content boldly out-

‘flanks

solipsism,

but

runs

into

some

trouble in explaining error. What is it to perceive a lake that isn’t a lake if the mind really encompasses its object? One of the Realists, Edwin

Holt, bravely an-

swered that illusions and other “errors” must exist just as objectively and truly as anything else, but though this indeed afforded an out, few of his fellow Realists cared to follow along. Perhaps this difficulty more than any other stimulated the formation of a rival group within the realist camp. In 1920, George Santayana, R. W. Sellars, A. O. Lovejoy, and several others brought out Essays in Critical Realism. Here was a revival in modern dress of the old representative Lockean

Realism, where a basic

distinction is made between the ultimate object of knowledge and the immediate object or means of knowledge, the symbol, the idea. What we have directly before the mind is a datum which is, at least typically, causally produced by the thing itself. I look at a book on my desk. There is a-real physical object with numerous properties, which object, by processes described by the physicist and physiologist, arouses in my mind that through which I base my claims to know. It is easy enough to think how there can be misinterpretation or misjudgment of the data thus caused (e.g., all that glitters is not gold); hence error. The trouble, of course, is the

old one: if all the mind ever has directly before it are data which claim to be symbols, how can one really be sure that there is anything symbolized; perhaps the Idealists are right. Santayana’s answer that what is required is an act of “animal faith” was not entirely satisfying to his colleagues, but they perhaps were never

REALISM

80

quite able to improve Meantime

new

on this device.

realisms were

develop-

ing in England, often along quite parallel lines

to

those

followed

in the

United

States. Fully as much as William James was the progenitor of twentieth-century Realism in America, G. E. Moore fathered a similar school of thought in Great Britain. Again like James, Moore has the distinction of having pioneered a second important philosophical venture,

Analysis. In 1903, Moore, who had received his philosophic training at Cambridge, along with Bertrand Russell, and

among those principal teachers were the idealists brought

McTaggart and James Ward, out “The Refutation of Ideal-

ism.” His argument, which partly anticipates that of Perry seven years later, made a distinction between the act of perception and the object of perception. A large part of the trouble, Moore argued, lies in the word “sensation,” which fuses and confuses sensing with what is sensed. The sensation of blue and the sensation of yellow are alike in being instances of consciousness, but unalike qualitatively.

Yet the burden of the idealist position seems to be that the object of consciousness is a content of that consciousness in

the same way that we commonly think of blue belonging

to a corn

flower.

Once

one sees that the object is quite distinct from the conscious act of apprehending, the idealist argument collapses. I am as directly aware of the existence of material things in space as of my own sensations; and what I am aware of with re-

gard to each is exactly the same—namely that in one case the material thing, and in the other case my sensation does really exist. The question requiring to be asked about

material things is thus not: What reason have we for supposing that anything exists corresponding to our sensations? But:

AND

ANALYSIS

What reason have we for supposing that material things do not exist, since their existence has precisely the same evidence as that of our sensations? This does not disprove an absolute scepticism, of course, but only shows that since an Idealist will presumably want to admit the existence of other minds, for instance, he has in making that admission no better grounds than he would have for admitting the existence of independently existing material things. It cannot be pretended that this article served a coup de grace to the idealist school—such stout writers as Hoernlé, Carr, Bosanquet, and Bradley continued

relatively undaunted—but

it perhaps can

be claimed to mark the ending of the ascendency which Idealism had enjoyed in England at least through the latter part of the nineteenth century. Much the greater part of twentieth-century British

philosophy has been rather solidly realistic, though Realism has in England as in America taken different forms, the two most prominent being similar in the two

countries,

but in England

less clearly

distinguished into two camps. A very great deal of English philosophy in this century has been epistemological and very much of the epistemology has concerned itself with the problem of the nature and

status of sense data and the problem of the nature and test of truth.

Among

those who

have taken

sense

data to be quite distinguishable from the

external objects which they symbolize, the employment of some form of the ancient

correspondence

theory

of truth

has been popular. Some have held that a true idea or datum corresponds to, in the

sense of mirroring or at least being structurally similar to, its object, but Sellars prefers to say that truth is present when

“the object is revealed in the idea-content.”

INTRODUCTION

Since

the modern

81

realist

movement

grew up, as has been indicated, to combat Idealism, it may be characterized as deny-

ing that all reality is spiritual or mental and denying that there is any necessary

dependence of things upon the knower. “Realism” as a philosophical label has other meanings of which we will note two:

(1) the theory (in clearest opposition to “Nominalism”) that universals (ea. redness, justice) have a real existence apart from the sort of things which may embody qualities and apart from know-

ing minds,

(2) a value theory to the

effect that values have a real status in the universe, independent of interest, desire, knowledge, or valuation. (See the article

by N. Hartmann, Section V.) At least in their full-fledged form, both these kinds of Realism are likely to be disavowed by the sorts of Realists represented in the present section. But those who roughly agree epistemologically and ontolegically on a realist position do not by any means agree in their religious, esthetic, political, or ethical philosophies. For instance, in

value theory, Epistemological Realists like Moore,

Ross,

Cohen,

and

Perry

are

far

apart. Perry has given an especially full exposition and defense of the theory that generic value can be defined as “any object of any interest.” Moore and Ross (in their different ways) have insisted that there is something unique, irreducible, and undefinable about at least one of the key value terms. Cohen has mainly concerned himself with another aspect of the problem, the logic of value judgments.

abashedly :describing some as indicating the presence and others the absence of “good taste.” Again in religious matters, our Realists are scarcely of a mind. Montague leans far in the direction of what would seem to many a more characteristically idealistic position without ever deserting his realistic epistemology. Whitehead is particularly concerned with giving God a metaphysical function in the Aristotelian tradition; whereas Santayana espouses a genteel and highly uncrass atheism. Wisdom characteristically opens up certain psychological-semantic questions when he turns to the subject of gods, Another important way in which those we have called “Realists” disagree is in their attitudes toward metaphysical systems. Perhaps most members of the group have avoided any such thing, yet Samuel Alexander and Alfred North Whitehead are cosmologists somewhat in the SpinozaHegel-Bradley tradition. Whitehead, after collaborating with Bertrand Russell in the production of the great Principia Mathematica, went on to construct a metaphysics in which the hand of the mathematician and physicist was clearly apparent. Samuel Alexander, on whom the impact of Darwin and Spencer was clearer than that of relativity theory and quantum mechanics, erected in Space, Time and Deity a full-scale theory accounting for the emergence from a SpaceTime foundation of matter, life, mind, with the process continuing on toward Deity. Alexander was joined in his in-

Neither is there any standard esthetic

terest in “Emergent Evolutionism” by the

theory to go along with Realism. Ducasse’s subjectivistic relativism is perfectly consonant with but is not entailed by a realistic position. Prall, quite as consistently, is inclined to stress the qualitative difference among esthetic experiences, un-

Americans, A. O. Lovejoy and R. W. Sellars, neither of whom, however, was a system-builder. When all this is said about the variety within the group, one can go on very roughly to characterize Realists as on the

82

whole tough-minded, likely to be interested in the sciences, unlikely to be theists or believers in immortality, strongly inclined to regard morals as mundane, dis-

inclined to mysticism. Such a characterization would fit, too, those who today are most frequently called “Analysts,” many of them the very

same men who are classified as Realists. Analysis is the second movement, as was mentioned above, to have been launched by G. E. Moore. But to call it a “movement” is perhaps to get off to a bad start, because the group of philosophers who are currently referred to as Analysts, Logical Analysts, British Analysts, or even Cambridge Analysts (presently the greatest concentration seems to be in Oxford) are somewhat uneasy about being labeled and categorized. As A. G. N. Flew has written of the group, in a collection of their papers appropriately titled Essays in Logic and Language, “Though they may be wrong in this—guilty of a peculiarly vicious sort of parochialism—most of these do not think of themselves as members of any school or movement; but simply as philosophers.” Withal, they have their own notions about what philosophy properly is and they act accordingly; herein is their chief characteristic. But what is the right way to philosophize? We are started toward an answer by the very first words in Moore’s very first book, Principia Ethica. It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer. He goes on to suggest that philosophers, instead of answering yes or no to

REALISM

AND

ANALYSIS

questions which are raised, ought to scrutinize the questions, to see whether there

are not

really several

questions

(with

different answers) compressed into one. If such a scrutiny were carefully carried on—and this is proper philosophy— “many of the most glaring difficulties and disagreements in philosophy would disappear.” Bertrand Russell, who more than anyone else has influenced Moore, who has had an enormous impact on Analysis generally, and who is himself perhaps to

be listed as both Realist and Analyst, points in the final pages of his A History of Western Philosophy to “logical analysis” as, at last, a philosophical movement for which one can entertain high hopes. He writes: Philosophers who make logical analysis the main business of philosophy . . . confess frankly that the human intellect is unable to find conclusive answers to many questions of profound importance to mankind, but they refuse to believe that there is some ‘higher’ way of knowing, by which we can discover truths hidden from science and the intellect. For this renunciation they have been rewarded by the discovery that many questions formerly obscured by the fog of metaphysics, can be answered with precision, and by objective methods which introduce nothing of the philosopher’s

temperament except the desire to understand. Again, Gilbert Ryle, a leader among Analysts, has written: I conclude . . . that there is, after all, a sense in which we can properly inquire and even say ‘what it really means to say so and so.’ For we can ask what is the real form of the fact recorded when this is concealed or disguised and not duly exhibited by the expression in question. And we can often succeed in stating this fact in a new form of

INTRODUCTION

words which does exhibit what the other failed to exhibit. And I am for the pres-

ent inclined to believe that this is what philosophical analysis is, and that this is the sole arid whole function of philosophy. Professor John Wisdom of Cambridge, a close follower of Ludwig Wittgenstein, has pithily expressed the analytic commitment in these words: “Every philosophical question, when it isn’t half asked, answers itself; when it is fully asked, answers itself.” It will be apparent from these quotations that Analysis is close kin to Logical Empiricism. Both are almost fanatically interested in clarity, both are greatly concerned with logic, both focus attention upon language, both eschew metaphysical system building, and both have strong interests in science and mathematics; the latter interest is especially apparent in the writings of C. D. Broad. But that these two groups are nevertheless distinct can be shown by a brief look at the career of Wittgenstein, a figure of very great importance in recent philosophy. Wittgenstein, who was for a short time a student

of Moore and for a much longer time a student of Russell, brought out in England in 1922 a strange volume entitled Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which in an almost mystically oracular way laid down the law about what is meaningful and what is not—and ended by pronouncing that it itself was not! Philosophy was

virtually destroyed in the final epigram, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one

must be silent,” for all meaningful discourse is properly to be located within either the empirical or the formal sciences. This book was hugely influential, particularly on those who were to constitute the Viennese Circle, but the author himself

did not remain with the Circle or within

83 Positivism. Although he published next to nothing throughout the rest of his life, Wittgenstein continued to exercise his influence through his students at Cambridge and a small but devoted band of followers. More and more his interests shifted away from formal logic and the exact sciences and mathematics to the data of ordinary language. He and his pupils largely discarded symbolic logic (so often touted by Positivists as the answer to all philosophers’ prayers) as so highly artificial and abstract as to be of small worth, and substituted for it a kind of “logic of language.” The constant question came to be, “What do people mean when they say ...?” And the answers which came were

elaborate,

metaphorical,

and

anec-

dotal. A favorite device is the inventing of a little story which illustrates by analogy (an analogy that is then painstakingly analyzed for its faithfulness and its unfaithfulness) the expression under examination. Analysts tend to regard the Positivists as somewhat narrow, Philistine, and dogmatic, too inclined to take mathematical

physics as the model for all disciplines and too ready to throw out as “nonsense” whatever they cannot accommodate to their model. The analysts in their turn have come to avoid charges of meaninglessness and nonsensicality: the great trouble is not lack of meaning—so their position might be put—but too much meaning, confusing complexity. Like the nondirective counselors in psychology, they insist that if only the issues which puzzle men are clarified (not merely dismissed as pseudo-questions), the answers will come without pontificating; like the literary New Critics, they emphasize explication of the text. 1—In 1953, a posthumous work, Philosophical Investigations, clearly revealing the “late Wittgenstein,” was brought out.

84

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ANALYSIS

School or no school, on today’s philosoph-

almost contemptibly trivial, an evaluation

ical scene they show up importantly and at the moment seem to be gaining in prestige and influence, for instance in America, where at the University of Michigan, Cornell, and elsewhere their methods and attitudes figure prominently. Yet to many their approach to philosophy seems

expressed, for instance, by Rudolph Metz when, writing of Moore and his followers,

he says that in their philosophizing, “We have an excessive critical and analytical process of decomposition which leads finally to the complete atomizing and pulverizing of problems.”

Metaphysics Artistic Creation and Cosmic Creation SAMUEL ALEXANDER II odRie digression has been long, but it has removed from the work of creative imagination the last trace of accidental elements; that product is a material thing of speech or instrumental sounds or solider pigments or stone, dyed through and through with meanings, and these meanings sustained and supplied by the appreciating mind. With this conclusion we can proceed by the help of analogy to the cosmic problem. But what might seem to the hasty glance the natural application of the analogy, to suppose a creator, spiritual and more than man, fashioning a material which he finds or even creates from himself, is in reality to misuse the analogy by exploiting its accidental features and neglecting the essence. The essence of the work of art is that in it creative mind and the material are indissolubly fused. That this fusion is the meeting of two separate beings, the man who creates and the material which receives from him its form, is indeed vital to the artistic

situation,

biology, instinct was so long misunderstood as proceeding from explicit purpose. Closer inspection, freed from the anthropomorphic pathetic fallacy, or showed that below the level of strict purpose there was something which simulates purpose, or of which purpose is an explicit form, which is nothing more than the prearrangement by which one step in a complex of movements prepares, and flows continuously into, the next. We may call such purposiveness if we choose unconscious purpose, but we only substitute a phrase. But when we have learnt that actions may conduce to an end which is not foreseen, we cease to gape at the exceeding skill of animals lower than ourselves and still more to suppose them endowed with these powers by an all foreseeing Creator; we adopt the modester and not less reverent method of seeking to understand them and their place in nature. The hardest thing is to understand that which is simple. We may and must approach it from the complex. But if

but arises from

we identify the simple with the complex

the finitude both of the creator and his material. Now the use of an analogy lies in its relevance; it misleads if it is not adapted to the new situation in which it is employed. It was from such neglect that, to take an illustration from psychology or

we miss the sense of both. We use our knowledge of the complex rightly in interpreting the simple when we discount the circumstances which make it complex. And this is difficult and requires some pains.

85

REALISM

86 In applying the analogy of the arts to the world we must then discount the finitude of the partners in the transaction,

AND

ANALYSIS

purpose at the other. There is no creator

of it except itself; but it is the creator of all finites that come into being within it.

and when we do this the application of

But to say that the world has no Creator

the analogy is exactly counter to the notion of a mind or spirit which precedes

is not to say that it has no God. On the

the world and creates it. For in the first place the infinite, being infinite, can have nothing outside itself upon which to work

as an artist works on his material. On the other hand what is vital to art is not, in

this connection, the separateness of the artist and his work before the work is done, but their fusion when the artistic product is achieved. Strip off, then, the finitude involved in art; we must look, then, to the world in its simplest expression, and there we find something which corresponds to the essence of art, the complete fusion in it of something that corresponds to mind and something that corresponds to material. To be stricter, we find rather something in which there is no fusion at all except metaphorically and by legitimate analogy; something which is anterior in thought to fusion, but in which thought can detect these different aspects. It is itself uncreated but is merely there. In it, as in a matrix, are formed the

finite things which are said to be created and to have a beginning, which acquire a semi-independent existence, like crystals in the mother liquid in which they are deposited. It is, in the old phrase, cause of itself, causa sui, self-created. But though uncreated, it is creative, in the sense that

these crystals or embryos grow within its womb; and it must contain in itself some

principle or character which is manifested in this growth. It has creativeness comes to finites which possess we should expect to gradations between mechanical action at

no purpose, but its fruition in certain true purpose, and find, as we do, what appears as one end and true

contrary the whole hierarchy of things cries out for a form of created existence beyond what is hitherto created, and the whole universe regarded as engaged in producing this higher form of existence is God. God’s deity, then, is created; but the whole world is divine as being big with this created quality, and God, there-

fore, though not the Creator of the Universe, is, so far as he is identical with the Universe, creator of all the beings within it. Such is the true application of creation in the arts by analogy to cosmic creation, and it is just the opposite of what might seem at first blush the natural application of it. There is no room for any spirit which precedes the world, not even to say as Goethe does, in that metaphysical poem about the birth of colour in the Zuleikah book of the Westéstlicher Divan, that it lay in the eternal bosom of God; there is but the universe itself, whose name in one aspect of it is God. But such a simplification removes also, or at least helps us better to withstand, the temptation to ask for the origin of the world from something other than itself, a temptation against which, as I said, the philosopher is no more proof than the unphilosopher. For we who ask the question are products of the process of creation, and we dare not speak of the universe in terms of its parts. But if we think of the world as primordially a spirit, and not less of a spirit than ourselves but more

of one, as we necessarily

do if we indulge in such descriptions as I have named, we are not securing simplicity, but only interpreting the simple

METAPHYSICS

87

by the complex. We merely substitute for the complex human spirit which we know another complex spirit which we do not know. It is as if we were to seek simplicity in our lives and habits, not by dispensing with unnecessaries but by returning to staining our skins with woad or living on roots and cooking our game in a cave. We only vary our accidentals, choosing a more inconvenient form of them, which we imagine simpler. But the Universe in its basal character is fundamental to every form of product which grows up within it, and if we try to get down to fundamental simplicity it must not be in terms of the mind we know. The simple world may still contain its analogue to mind, but that mind will be more and not less elementary than ours. If we thus bear in our thoughts that we are units in the outgrowth of the fundamental stuff of the world, we shall accept that world as above our questioning, like Shakespeare in Matthew Arnold’s sonnet: “Others

abide

our

question,

thou

art

free.” We may question of ourselves and all other created things, but the world itself is subject to none of our ideas but is the source of them. The only question, then, that is left for the metaphysician is of what nature is this primordial world which literally underlies the universe we know; which is no

fancied

Absolute

that, bare

itself of

all natural qualities, blossoms out into them as its appearances; which is being itself, and neither cause nor substance nor one nor many nor things, but contains numbers and causes and things within itself, as real features or parts of itself and not merely as emitted from itself into precarious appearance. The answer to this question is open to much doubt. It has been suggested that the stuff of the world is space-time itself, which physicists hold

to be no mere receptacle of things, no mere form of mind but something quasiphysical. And I have dared to think that the matter which the physicists postulate in addition is not fundamental but itself a growth within space-time. Such a stuff may also be described as motion; happily or not I must not judge, for at least this primordial motion is not the motion of material particles, which is derivative. Motion, understood as the primordial stuff, is what change becomes if you strip from change the notion of some quality which is replaced by some other quality. Rather the name is used to indicate that passage of nature of which Mr. White-

head speaks, and to insist that the stuff of things is events and groups of events, not something fixed and resting but something which contains in itself a principle of unrest. As the work of art is the fusion of spirit and matter in finite ingredients, so

within

this space-time, which

is below

fusion, there is an element which corresponds to spirit and one which corresponds to matter, and these are respectively time and space. Time is, as it were, the mind to the body which is space. Or since we are helping ourselves out to describe the simple by the complex (though without the fallacies which pictorial imagination introduces) let us rather say that in spirit and body as we know them, whether in an organism or in the new creation by man which art supplies, spirit is the time, and body or material the space element in these highly developed creations of the world process. Our life is the time of our body, which is the space of our life; only for brevity’s sake I have to omit the qualifications which are needed to make this proposition true. Space and time are, however, indissoluble ingredients of the one reality which

88

REALISM

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ANALYSIS

is space-time, and neither has an existence independent of the other. Each involves

gether within the stuff of the world which

the other. Though I cannot make good this statement here, it is in keeping with the recent physical conceptions; and it serves me in passing on to two points of

describing the creator in the language of the creature. It germinates into the infinite variety of things in all their grades of de-

the first importance. One of them I have already indicated. Since space cannot be without time, it follows that all stable things, which we are apt to regard as fixed things which may undergo changes, are but groups of motions or changes; that as a river preserves its form while in reality it is a stream of changing matter, so the material and other things which crystallise within the matrix of spacetime are but groups of motions which preserve their form. So far as regards the living organism this would be readily accepted, and certainly by those who have felt the force of Mr. J. S. Haldane’s account, based on the processes of respiration which he describes summarily in his work Organism and Environment (Yale Press, 1917), of how the structure and constitution of one part of the system depends upon the needs of the other parts. “The structure,” he says, “is only the appearance given by what seems at

first to be a constant

flow of specific

material beginning and ending in the environment (p. 99).” The stress lies here on the word “flow.” Extend this notion downwards from organic to material things (which Mr. Haldane would per-

haps not be willing himself to do) and you have the conception of things, whether living or not, as stable configurations, as a whole of movements or, if you care to use organic terms, of functions. The second point is less obvious and more contentious, but it is to my mind not

less clear. The primordial world which is without parts breaks up into parts held to-

I must not call the one stuff, for fear of

velopment. This impulse of creativeness I call the nisus of the universe, borrowing an idea from Spinoza and agreeing, as I think,

with the spirit though not all the details of Mr. Bergson’s élan vital. This nisus not only leads to the formation of things and to the sustainment of them, but impels the world

forward

towards

new

creations,

bringing forth the new out of the bosom of the old. It creates chemical bodies and keeps up their form by the stability of their functions; but also, and this is perhaps more striking, drives on “the chemic lump,” in Emerson’s words, to “ascend to man.” Now this nisus is the element of time in the primordial world, its principle of mobility and restlessness. Yet lest it should be thought that space is something upon which time works and that time is the creator, we remind ourselves that time

could do nothing, could not even be, except for space; which is thus also creative

for it is not without the element of transition, and space by itself is but the totality

of events considered without their movement. This nisus is no effort on the world’s part to extend its bounds; such a notion is unthinkable, for the universe is boundless;

but a ceaseless impulse to produce parts and alter the grouping of events into things. Things, we have seen, are clusters of events; and the world’s nisus sustains some of these clusters and produces others new by fresh combinations which it strikes out in the heat of its desire. Ill

The discussion of this topic would lead me too far. But I may endeavour here to

METAPHYSICS remove a possible misconception. This primordial world of space-time is not the dance of atoms imagined by Epicurus or Lucretius, Atoms are a late and complex product of history, manufactured articles in a sense different from that of Clerk Maxwell in his famous phrase. They have long since been displaced in physics by something more elementary, and shown to be comparable to stellar systems, which may even in their internal coherence seem to adumbrate organic life. They suggest

afhnity with higher creations, and that afinity would, if what I have conjectured is true, stretch downward to more primitive creations and even to space-time itself and its spatio-temporal component events, which have in them all, in time some forecast of mind and in space of matter. I mention this because it bears upon a prejudice entertained by so many, to which in particular Lord Balfour has given so distinguished an expression, that only ordinary theism can account for the values of beauty, goodness, and truth. The prejudice against our descent from apes which was provoked by the Darwinian theory no longer exists; we are even proud that we are so much better than our fathers. But it is replaced by this new prejudice or is

revived in it under a different form, Half the repugnance that is felt to the affiliation of values with a world which did not already imply them is removed by removing the fancied antithesis of the mechanical or material and the spiritual. The mechanical is penetrated with time which is the predecessor of mind, and the mechanical is not opposed to life so much as that it is simpler, more uniform, and of more routine a character; so that the functions of life

when they harden into custom recede into the material order, as the mental in turn hardens: with custom into the physiological and unconscious. As elements of the world

89 which are not included in the mere material order arise and introduce the begin: ning of freedom, the automatic life of matter is replaced by the less simple life, or living beings, and new elements of freedom enter further with the life of spirit. For my own part I believe that, in the end, a theistic conception of God’s deity is demanded by the facts of nature. But to hold that value demands a theistic creator

appears to me to rest upon leaving the no. tions both of a theistic creator, with design and reason, and of value as well, in the obscurity of neglected analysis. The connection of God with his created world is left vague admittedly, and that of value at least is surrounded with the nimbus ot emotional fervour which treats examination of it as a depreciation of its real worth. We forget that value is a human in. vention, not in the sense of an artificial product, but of an effluence of man’s nature, and if the body is descended from the apes so may value be rooted in organic analogies. A successful genealogy of value would no more alter its preciousness or sacredness than material objects were altered, as Berkeley pointed out, by his proposal to treat them as ideas. If value were not an expression of man’s whole nature, in its relation to its environment both natural and social, something might be said for an appeal to some divine forethought and wisdom. But the impulse to do, to learn, and to create, are parts of the human equipment; the values are but the discovered scale of the embodiment of these impulses in judgments of act, in knowledge, and in creative art. Moreover when they are considered in relation to the history of the animal man, they are seen not to be unique things in the world, but foreshadowed.

Natural se-

lection is particularly made the stone of stumbling in the attempts to regard value

REALISM

go

AND

ANALYSIS

The exact share of natural selection in nat-

result of man’s purposes is something which he never purposed. “Nothing,”

ural history has now become controversial. But so far is natural selection from being

foreseen as the unforeseen.” But we do

as, like other things, historical and evolved.

says Victor Hugo, “needs so much to be

incompatible with value that value is rather

not foresee it; we hardly foresee what can

one way of describing an essential feature of natural selection. For value always rejects unvalue and is established by that process. And it is precisely by that rejection that, so far as natural selection holds in nature, organic forms are stabilised under their conditions of value. Natural

be foreseen, else how could the statesmen

selection is in fact the history of value in the organic world. How much farther down it extends, what analogues it has in the mere material world, it would perhaps

be presumptuous to attempt to say. But in the organic world, every time that a variety excels its rivals in the struggle it so far establishes an infra-human value. This does not mean that beauty and truth and still less right are made by force. Might is not right; that half-truth has brought down a great nation; pray God it may not bring down another. But right is might; only, because that proposition is so easily misapprehended, it were better replaced by the less pointed one, that right is what is suited to prevail in the judgments of men. And if we have faith that the world works out its salvation and not its destruction, we shall be apt to believe that what so prevails is rooted in the nature of things, including men. At least if it is not so, we act as if it were

of Versailles have forgotten the Nemesis that dogged the career of Napoleon, and forgotten the treatment of the Southern

States after the Civil War by the Northern States of America? And since the unforeseen is not foreseen but happens, we attribute it to Providence. -But the procedure of the artist, if rightly interpreted above, may teach us that there the work is not

foreseen,

but the artist

is driven

on from behind by his excitement and reveals to himself in the end the consummation of his desire. So far as he does not forecast exactly the product itself, his action is blind. If revelation depends on a purpose partly blind where there is real purpose, why should we shrink from the

idea that the so-called blind action of matter or of living creatures below man’s level may produce a form of existence, as they do, higher than or at least other than themselves? The adjective blind is in fact a misnomer. Matter is blind to what succeeds matter; but so are we to what shall succeed us. Yet each grade of existence has the vision which is relative to its estate: the animal which does not foresee its end is not blind to the means by which the end will inevitably come.

so; and if the pursuit of this faith leads

From the relative vision of matter, tread-

to our extinction, value will perish with us.

considering the

ing its accustomed round, may arise the relative prevision of man. Neither does the appearance in the world of design, by which creatures do not so much secure their ends as subserve the ends. of other living things, require an all-foreseeing purpose in a_ prevenient

analogy of the arts. Providence is, in the main, the name for the fact that the

God. Hardly any can have escaped the reflection that since the higher organisms

The marks of providence and design in nature and in man which are thought to demand a provident and_all-purposing

creator of the world do not weaken but rather

enhance

follow ultimately

the

conclusions

from

which

METAPHYSICS

91

can live only by making use of the lower ones, only those higher beings maintain stability for which the lower are apparently created. Here once more we dare not gape at the wonders of purpose, but ask its lineage. When we do so we discover that it arises out of failure and is

removed by success. It means not preordainment but the want of it. When animal

misses

his “end”

purposes,

and,

when

gations of material atoms do not exhibit purpose that may be because their complexity is insufficient to admit plasticity, and they require for sustainment no degree of freedom.

the

he tries, in his

excess of uneasiness, random or undirected movements, impelled thereto by the compulsion of his nature not to rest till the end is secured. The dog learning to carry his stick through railings is the familiar example, improved so often by American psychologists by delicate problems set to other and less appealing creatures, rats and mice and cats. Within the limits of their plasticity animals can vary their habitual instinctive acts. Suppose, now, the advent of genuine ideas as in man. The devices which the animal strikes out in the urgency of his desire become

capable of ideas of maladjustment is to place it in its descent from animal purposiveness and to suggest that, if aggre-

crowned

with success, subside and lay the foundation for other purposes. Thus purpose is one and the highest form of the consequence of failing adaptation, and it is the method under such circumstances of successful adaptation. It remains, therefore, as true as when it was said by Spinoza that to attribute an all-foreseeing purpose to God is to attach to him not perfection but defect. To accept purpose as the attendant in a conscious being

If these considerations are sound, artistic creation, so far from being the prototype of cosmic creation, is itself a late product in the growth within the universe of the various levels of existence in which the nisus of space-time takes effect; is an incident in the life of the highest existence known to us. The questions which are raised by the stratification of the world of finites into levels,

which, in Mr. Lloyd Morgan’s phrase “emerge,” I must not discuss here, having, indeed, done so elsewhere. I add only the remark that the conception of the nisus, which cannot be supposed to cease with the attainment of man, points to a higher form of existence and suggests an alternative theism. Instead of the vague notion which misinterprets the analogy of artistic creation of a theistic creator which works from behind with _intelligence and purpose, it substitutes the notion of a higher being or phase of being, itself a cosmic product, the idea of which impels the possessors of that idea forwards, and in that sense draws them on from in front.

REALISM

g2

AND

ANALYSIS

The Meamnes of “Emergence” and Its Modes ARTUR

O: LOVE OY,

There is an old and persistent tendency in the human mind to conceive of the causal relation as rationally explanatory, and, therefore, to assimilate it, vaguely or explicitly, to the logical relations of in-

clusion, implication, or equivalence. That “there cannot be more in the effect than there is in the cause” is one of the propositions that men have been readiest to accept as axiomatic; a cause, it has been supposed, does not “account for” its effect, unless the effect is a thing which the eye

of reason could somehow discern im the cause, upon a sufficiently thorough analysis. This antipathy to the notion of an absolute epigenesis has left its mark deep and wide upon the history of thought; it appears, indeed, at the very outset of Western speculation in the struggles of the physiologers with the supposed difficulty of admitting qualitative change. Two of the later episodes in the history of what may be named the preformationist assumption about causality may _perti-

nently be remembered here. The first is the doctrine of most mediaeval European metaphysics that all the “perfections,”

or

positive

attributes,

of the creatures must be possessed by the First Cause—even though it was found necessary to assert with equal emphasis that that Cause and its creatures have no attributes in common. In this theological form the preformationist principle implied an addition to the empirically known sum of reality; it left undiminished the abundance and diversity of

nature and did not exclude quantitative

and qualitative change from the natural order, but placed behind these a supersensible cause in which all this abundance and diversity were declared to be in some fashion antecedently or eternally con-

tained. Since this way of construing the assumption meant no simplification of the universe for our understanding, it was not serviceable to natural science. But in

the seventeenth century there began to develop a conception which, while it fulfilled the same assumption, did so in a significantly different way—the conception, namely, of natural events as combinations or rearrangements of relatively simple, pre-existent entities, of which the

total number

or quantity

remains

in-

variant, and of each of which the qualities and laws of action remain the same through all the combinations into which it may enter. By this mechanistic conception of causation there is nothing substantive in the consequent which was not in the antecedent, and the supposed paradox of epigenesis is thus avoided. But in this second form the preformationist assumption implied a program of reduction or simplification; it was in its essence a scheme for abating the difference of things. For if complexes contain

nothing

(except their patterns)

not al-

ready in their simple components, rerum

cognoscere causas means learning to see in the complex nothing but its beggarly elements—the and meager qualities limited repertoire of the simple, merely multiplied a certain number of times.

Scientific explanation becomes equivalent

METAPHYSICS to

mathematical

93

analysis;

and

if the

method is universalized, all philosophy, in Hobbes’s phrase, becomes “nothing but addition and subtraction.” But many complex things have properties not convinc-

ingly describable as multiples of the properties of the simple things through the combination of which they arise; and thus the notion of observed causal processes as

rearrangements of the unchanging, while formally denying that there is “more” in the effect than there is in the cause, never-

theless seemed to imply that there is less in the cause than is apprehended in the

effect.

The

mechanistic

conception

es-

caped this paradox only through its conjunction with another feature of most seventeenth-century and subsequent

philosophy; its plausibility at the outset and ever since has been wholly dependent upon its association with some form of psycho-physical dualism. By means of this all that considerable part of the data of experience, together with the phenomenon of experiencing itself, which seemed plainly irreconcilable with the principle of quantitative and qualitative constancy could conveniently be assigned to the side of the “merely subjective.” The eventual triumphs of that principle in modern science were made _ possible through the restriction of its literal application to the physical order, after that order had first been carefully purged of the classes of facts most recalcitrant to such application. I have recalled these historical commonplaces because they lead up to the

first of a series of distinctions which I wish to propose. The phrasing of the question laid down for our discussion implies, and most judicious readers of recent English and American philosophy, I suspect, feel, that the now modish terms

“emergence”

and

“emergent

evolution”

stand in some

need of clarification. In

current use their meanings are various and usually vague; and though it may be recognized that they point towards some real and important philosophical issues, the precise nature of those issues, their relations to one another, and the logical

procedure suitable for dealing with them have not yet, perhaps, been formulated quite so clearly and methodically as could be wished. It is, therefore, towards such preliminary definition, discrimination, and correlation of problems that I shall

chiefly attempt to contribute. While some opinions on certain of the issues themselves will be expressed, it must be with the brevity that is indistinguishable from dogmatism; and the primary purpose of this paper is merely to offer some prolegomena to any future discussion of “emergence.” What is needed, however, is not an extreme narrowing of the signification of the general term. In this case, as often in philosophical terminology, it is better to leave to the generic term a meaning so broad as to appear vague, and to approach precise definitions and clear-cut issues by progressively distinguishing species within the genus. “Emergence,” then (or “epigenesis,’ which would be a much more appropriate word), may be taken loosely to signify any augmentative or transmutative event, any process in which there

appear effects that, in some one or more of several ways yet to be specified, fail to conform to the maxim that “there cannot be in the consequent anything more than, or different in nature from, that which was in the antecedent.” And the first distinction which it is essential to make, in reducing this vague general notion to something more definite and discussable,

is between

whatI shall call

the theses of the possibility of general and

REALISM

94

AND

the actuality of specific emergence, theses

gressively

antithetic

must have pre-existed in, and been com-

respectively

to the first and

second sorts of preformationism.t To affirm the possibility of general emergence is to reject the preformationist assumption formally and absolutely, and therefore to deny the validity of any argument from it to the existence of a metempirical cause or causes which somehow pre-contain “all that is in the effects.” But to many this

assumption apparently still has. the force of an axiom, and the argument in question, therefore, figures conspicuously: in some recent discussions of our theme. Thus Taylor repeats the scholastic maxim: “The principle e nihilo nihil fit,” he writes, “is fundamental to all explanation”; and it is therefore “true that no

cause can contribute to its effect what it has not to give. The full and ultimate cause of every effect in a process of evolution will have to be found not simply in the special character of its recognized antecedents but in the character of the eternal which is at the back of all development. And this must contain’—though “in a more eminent manner”— “all that it bestows, though it may contain much more.” ” Boodin has recently built a highly original superstructure upon the same ancient foundation; for the main argument of his interesting volume on Cosmic Evolution appears to be, in brief, that philosophy must “explain” the seeming emergence of novelty in the course of evolution, that “causality from behind cannot account for more than there is in the antecedents,” and that therefore the higher forms of being which are pro1 The adjectives “general” and “specific” are not free from ambiguity; the former here means “predicable of the whole, but not necessarily of every part,” the latter, ‘‘predicable of some part or parts, but not necessarily of the whole.” 2 A. E. Taylor, Evolution in the Light of Modern Knowledge (1925), p. 460.

attained

ANALYSIS

in terrestrial

history

municated through ready-made “energypatterns” from, some other part of the universe,—the “evolution of new levels” being “obviously” impossible, since it would be tantamount to “something coming from nothing.” * The issue here is not only the most fundamental one in our topic but one of the crucial issues in all philosophy. If we really know that an absolute or gen-

eral emergence

is impossible

we know

something very curious and important about the universe. But the proof of its impossibility usually offered I find unconvincing for numerous reasons, of

which a few may be briefly indicated. The universal all that declared of three eternal

cause or set of causes in which is in the (temporal) effects is to be pre-contained must be one things: a temporal prius, or an which contains the temporal

effects as its parts, or an eternal extraneous to those effects. If taken in the first of these senses, the asumption on which

the argument rests cannot, of course, mean that the effects themselves are in the cause; it can only mean either (a) that the effects collectively do not differ either qualitatively or quantitatively from the prius—that is to say, that they are either mere repetitions of it, or else that they differ only in some relational property which is regarded as unimportant, such as the arrangement or distribution of the qualities and components present in the cause; or (b) that they are never of higher metaphysical rank or excellence than the cause, This latter is what the supposed axiom seems often to reduce to; the “lower”

we

are told, can

come

from the

“higher,” but not the “higher” from the 3 J. E. Boodin op. cit., (1925), pp. 44, 67, 82,

96-98, ror and passim.

METAPHYSICS

95

“lower”; the stream of being cannot rise higher than its source. But—though this will seem to some a hard saying—neither of these forms of the preformationist assumption appears to be justified by anything better than a prejudice—an idol of the tribe, at best. The supposed axiom lacks self-evidence, and though there are

some,

there are no cogent, reasons

for

postulating it. Concerning the qualitative and quantitative relations of two existents of different dates we have no a priori knowledge. It is entirely conceivable that temporal reality as a whole is not only augmented, but attains higher’ levels, within any finite time which we may choose to consider; and there are some to whom this evidently seems the more satisfying thing to postulate. Certainly, if consistently carried out, metaphysical preformationism has less edifying and cheering implications than are sometimes attributed to it. If the sum of being and the sum of realized value are constant— and unless they are either constant or diminishing the pretended axiom is false, and there zs at times an absolute emergence—then the whole movement and travail of the creation is but a barren shuffing-about of the same pieces; an increase or ascent in one region must be simultaneously compensated by an equivalent decrease or decline elsewhere; the more the universe changes, the more

it is the same

thing. If, however, the

“Cause” is conceived as a supratemporal totality which contains the temporal effects, the impossibility of general emergence

undeniably

follows;

an

“eternal”

cannot grow or improve. But such a conception implies the true inclusion of a real succession in a totum simul; and no

ingenuity has ever succeeded in showing this to be other than a self-contradiction. This aside, since the temporal world is

still admitted

to be in some

sense

real,

the whole of that world may in that same sense conceivably differ at different moments in the number of its elements or in their value. Finally, if the Cause by which “all that is in the effects” is said to be possessed is conceived as an eternal that does no¢ contain those effects within its being—which I take to be the orthodox scholastic view—the same difficulties present

themselves

as in the first case,

to-

gether with some additional ones. The notion of an existent which at once is alien to all succession or change, and yet is the efficient cause of a series of temporal changes, is, to say the least, elusive; and the supposition that that cause must “possess” all that is in the temporal effects

seems

not

only

gratuitous—the

same

venerable prejudice as before—but also self-contradictory. None of their distinctive qualities can be predicable of it, ex-

cept in a sense so eminent as to be no sense at all. And even if the qualities were the same,

their “communication”

to the

effects would mean the emergence of additional existence instances of those qualities, unless they were at the same time lost by the Cause. And in any case, there is nothing in this last form of the argument which would preclude emergence in the world in which alone, by hypothesis, change occurs at all. There is, then, no valid @ priori argument against the possibility of general (which, of course, does not necessarily mean perpetual) emergence to be drawn from the notion of causality. The subject is one on which we have no means of arriving at objective conclusions, unless it be through more or less probable inferences from experience. It may be -suggested that reasons for regarding general emergence as impossible (or meaning-

REALISM

96

less) are to be found in the experimental data upon which the special theory of relativity is based. An examination of the sufficiency of those data as grounds for such a conclusion cannot be attempted in the time at my disposal. The thesis of specific emergence means denial of the second form of preformationism; it is the assertion on empirical grounds of the occurrence, among the

phenomena investigable by science, of events which are not mere rearrangements of pre-existent natural entities in accordance with laws identical for all arrangements of those entities. It is to be

observed that the reality of specific emergence is usually asserted by those who declare general or absolute emergence to

be inconceivable.

This

combination

of

views is, at least on the face of it, logically possible, since the denial of qualitative and quantitative constancy in certain empirically observable changes does not of

itself forbid the supposition of an ulterior general cause of whose relation to the entire series of changes the supposed axiom about causality would hold good; and the combination is natural, because

there is a radical incompatibility of temper between the two types of preformationism. On the other hand, if such a compensatory general cause is excluded, any instance of specific emergence, however slight, would obviously imply also general emergence, an augmentation of the total sum of things. The opposition in certain scientific quarters to current doctrines of specific emergence seems. to be

due in no small part to the same feeling

AND

ANALYSIS

definitely the question of the tenability

of this historic assumption, common

to

and potent in both traditional theology and mechanistic science, in spite of their , mutual antipathy. Agreeing in what they deny, doctrines of specific emergence may differ in two respects in what they affirm: in their accounts, namely, of the occasions of emergence, and of the types of actual emergents. In the first regard we must first of all distinguish between indeter-

minist

and

determinist .theories.

The

former declare that there are instances of emergence which are reducible to no causal law; no fixed occasions can be formulated upon which they invariably occur. The hypothesis of “undetermined evolution” to which Professor Driesch has referred is, I take it, a theory of this sort; but it is undesirable to define this as the only or the “strict” sense of “emergent evolution.” The determinist kind of theory declares that whenever certain specific occasions appear a specific variety of emergent uniformly arises. The general nature of these occasions may be variously conceived. One abstractly possible sort would consist merely in intervals in the proper time of one or another physical system; but the most widely current hypothesis on the matter—the so-called theory of creative synthesis—finds the chief, if not the only, occasions of emergence to consist in the formation of special

integrations

of matter

and

(or)

energy. The question what, in fact, these occasions

are,

must,

of course,

depend

as is expressed in the scholastic principle —the feeling that there would be something queer and illogical about a universe in which substantive increments popped into existence. The chief significance of

upon the character of the emergents which can be shown really to arise. Before’ raising this question of fact it is useful to consider what types of emergent there conceivably may be—what, in other words, are the ways in which it is possible

our

to think

problem

is, then,

that

it raises

of a consequent

as differing

METAPHYSICS

97

positively, otherwise than in the rearrangement of the same elements, from its causally necessary antecedent. In distinguishing these. modes of possible emergence I shall—in order to gain brevity by combining two definitions—put the enumeration in the form of a statement of the meaning of emergent evolution, that term in general here signifying the occurrence as a feature of the evolutionary

adjectives

process of any of the modes of emergence.

number of instances, not explicable by transfer from outside the system, of any one or more types of prime entity common to both phases.

“

.

”

An “emergent evolution” may, then, be said to have taken place if, upon comparison of the present phase (called

Ph.N), of earth-history

though

to

entities

without

already

those

present,

accidents,

in

Ph.A. (3) Particular entities not possessing all the essential attributes characteristic of those found in Ph.A, and having distinctive types of attributes (not merely configurational) of their own. (4) Some

type or types of event or process irreducibly different in kind from any occur-

ring in Ph.A. (5) A greater quantity, or

(say that since

In the enumeration of types of possible

the appearance of homo sapiens) with any

emergence included in this definition, the most significant point is the contrast between the first, which may be called functional, and the remaining four, which may be called existential, emergence. Several writers have recently declared that

prior phase (called Ph.A), there can be shown to be present in Ph.N any one or

more of the five following features lacking in Ph.A. (1) Instances of some general type of change admittedly common to both phases (e.g., relative motion ot particles), of which instances the manner of conditions of occurrence could not be described in terms of, nor predicted from, the laws which would have been sufficient for the description and (given the requisite determination of the variables) the prediction of all changes of that type occurring in Ph.A. Of this evolutionary emergence of laws one, though not the only conceivable, occasion would be the production, in accordance with one set of laws, of new local integrations of matter, the motions of which, and therefore of their component particles, would there-

any attempt to prove the reality of the

laws emergent.in the sense defined. This

first mode is subject (for familiar reasons, inherent in the notion of a “law,” which need not be recalled here) to an intrinsic logical limitation. Our inability, they remark, at any given time to discover, or even conceive of the general nature of, any single law or set of joint laws from which all the motions of matter in its differing integrations would be deducible, is not conclusive proof that no such law is formulable; “within the physical realm it always remains logically possible,” Broad has said, “that the appearance of emergent laws is due to our imperfect knowledge of microscopic structure or to mathematical incompetence.” This non

first mode differs from the others in that

possumus

it implies no quantitative variability of the prime or irreducible existents (other than relations) in the system under con-

itself conclusively established; but as there

upon

conform

to vector,

i.e., directional,

sideration. (2) New qualities and, especially, classes of qualities

(e.g., the so-

called secondary qualities) attachable as

does not seem

to me

to be

is no time to give reasons, I shall not here challenge it. Even supposing it true, it would not follow that the emergence of laws can be said to be improbable. Such emergence would, to be sure, imply the

REALISM

98

AND

ANALYSIS

impossibility of a complete unification of

which, however,

science; and there is for this reason, we are often told, a decisive methodological presumption against it. But here we must distinguish between heuristic rules and propositions of fact. It is the business of the scientific investigator to look for identities of law in seemingly diverse

logically as it looks—obvious

phenomena, and to find as many of them as he can;

it is not

the business

of the

philosopher to assume a priori that nature must to an indefinite degree lend itself to the gratification of this ambition. Though rigorous and conclusive proof of the first mode of emergence be impossible, the hypothesis of its occurrence seems to me to be patently the more probable in the present state of our knowledge. But with these cursory dogmatizings I leave to others the question of functional emergence, in order to consider somewhat less summarily that of existential emergence. ; Concerning this the first thing to remark is that an attempt to prove it is not subject to the same general logical disability said to inhere in any argument for emergent laws. An existential emergent would be a quality, or a thing or event possessing distinctive non-configurational qualities, which was found in the subsequent and not in the prior phase of some causal process; and its presence in the one case and absence in the other would be facts determinable either by observation or by inference from observed data. Where observation of both phases is possible the proof of existential emergence can be direct and virtually complete, as in the case of the qualitative changes (whether they be “objective” or “sub-

jective”) incident to chemical synthesis, which have long been recognized, under a different terminology, as examples of such emergence, This simplest instance—

is not quite so simple

and com-

monplace though it is, has a crucial importance which some writers on the subject do not appear to realize; for it alone suffices to show that there can be no general and decisive theoretical presumption against other hypotheses of existential emergence, that nature is assuredly no affair of mere rearrangements. In less simple but philosophically more consequential and controversial cases, the argument for existential emergence may involve somewhat complex and difficult reasonings, and therefore attain a less high degree of probability; but even in these cases, to which I shall shortly return, the difficulty is of a kind different from, and less fundamental than, that said to infect all reasonings concerning emergence of laws. With the distinction between functional and existential emergents in mind we are also in a position to deal with the commonest general or antecedent objection brought against theories of specific emergence. The objection was raised, in differing terms, by several participants in the recent discussion of the subject by the English philosophical societies. To characterize an effect as “emergent,” it is urged, is to give up the attempt to “explain” it; and since science cannot give up this attempt, the characterization can have, at best, no more than a provisional validity, as a way of admitting that cer-

tain things have not as yet been completely “explained.” Now, what sort of explanation is it that these critics desiderate in theories of emergence? “Causal . explanation” in the empirical sense—the assumption that every event follows upon some other nach einer Regel, the “determinism of the experimentalist” —is, as we have seen, entirely compatible with the

METAPHYSICS

99

belief in emergence. The sort of explanation which specific emergence, or emergent evolution, would exclude, is simply that demanded by the second form of preformationism—the conception of an event as neither (a) manifesting any law, or mode of uniform behavior nor (b) containing any existent, not found in the antecedent phase of the sequence to which it belongs. To maintain then, that everything is “explicable,” in the sense incongruous with emergence, is to raise a definite, though by no means simple, question of fact; it is to imply, for example, that, barring mere summations or rearrangements, there is to be found in the present phase of terrestrial history

tempt to show that everything in E zs describable in the same terms as some class of entities, events, or qualities in Ph.A; to this

end he may employ either of two methods, which may be termed the reductive and the retrotensive; ie., he may either (1)

seek by analysis to reduce E to the same descriptive terms as are sufficient for certain events, etc., admittedly found in

Ph.A; or (2) admitting that E has the

initio, all specific hypotheses of existential

characters attributed to it by the assertor of emergence, he may maintain that these characters were already present in the earlier phase—in other words, must be supposed to be present in all phases—of the process. The general logical nature of the problem being thus formulated, we may consider a particular hypothesis of existential emergence, which I hold tobe true. It is nowise original, being substantially the same as the theory to which Broad has given the name of “emergent materialism” —though that designation seems to mea veritable Jucus a non lucendo. According to this hypothesis, both the third and fourth modes of emergence —1.e., emergence of new types of entities and of new kinds of event or process— have appeared in evolution, in the form, but only in the form, of what may be called “trans-physical” emergence. By this

emergence by a priori assumptions of this sort being excluded, both assertors and deniers of any such hypotheses must address themselves to the analysis of definite empirical data. The assertor must (if the question be that of emergent evolution) point out some type of observable entity, event, or quality—call it E—existent in Ph.N which does not appear to be adequately describable in the same terms as would describe any entity, event, etc., which we can with probability suppose to have existed in Ph.A. The denier must at-

formation of certain complex and _lateevolved integrations of living matter, when acted upon by certain forms of radiant energy, of psychical events and psychical objects. An example of a psychical event is an act of awareness. By psychical objects I mean individual entities empirically existent, having extension and certain other of the properties commonly called psychical, but differing from true physicai objects in that they do not conform to the laws of physics, have individually only

no

existence

whatever—no

quality,

type

of entity, or kind of process—which could not already have been discerned by a scientific angel observing the cold-gaseousnebula stage of the development of our solar system. This proposition cannot be said to have a high degree of prima facie plausibility; and its truth cannot be assumed @ priori merely because it is one of the two conceivable ways of satisfying the demand for a special type of socalled “explanation” which is not practically indispensable to science. Wholesale attempts to rule out, ab

I mean

the production,

as effects of the

REALISM

100

an ephemeral existence, have collectively no quantitative or numerical constancy,

have no direct dynamical relations with one another, and are grouped into “private” sets, i.e., each is accessible only to an act of awareness of an_ individual organism. Examples of such entities are

sensa

and

images,

both

delusive

and

veridical. In other words the “generative theory of sensa,” recently defended by a

number of writers, is a part of the hypothesis of existential emergent evolution | am presenting. The initial cases of transphysical emergence were followed by a

further evolution of the same type, conditioned upon the formation of new and still more complex integrations of matter and (or) energy, and the process thus far apparently culminates in the cognitive and affective functions of the human organism. To the plain man, and to some men of science, these theses will, I dare say, seem rather obvious, and not much in need of defence. But in philosophy they manifestly raise numerous highly controversial issues. The existential emergence they assert is attacked chiefly from two sides, and by the two methods already defined; the reductive method is at present represented by behaviorism,* the retrotensive mainly by pan-psychism, or the mind-stuff theory. The behavioristic argument I shall not here examine; the view that both the act and the content of awareness, when I

apprehend an object distant in space or

AND

ANALYSIS

to the immediate objects of awareness, but not to the act of awareness; the former, it declares, are simply parts of the physical world, and, if emergent at all, are at any rate not trans-physical emergents. This contention is assuredly deserving of serious discussion; but the reasons for rejecting it are too complex to

be presented here. The attempts of panpsychists to escape from the admission of trans-physical emergence seem plainly to be due, in part, to the influence of an

attenuated, vestigial form of the ancient pseudo-axiom mentioned at the outset; while it is not necessarily maintained by them that specific emergence is impossible

in principle or nonexistent in fact. They apparently feel that a causal antecedent cannot be so very different in nature from its effect as a physical event is from a mental one. Thus the author of a recent admirably lucid defence of the mind-stuff theory remarks that “discontinuity in evolution would be a baffling and unintelligible phenomenon,” and declared that the mind-stuff theory alone “gives us a universe without such unintelligible breaches.” “If a mind is simply a brain regarded from the _ outside, .. . the gradual evolution of a brain zs the gradual evolution of a mind”; thus “there is no need to postulate any discontinuity in evolution to account for the appearance upon the scene of minds, of consciousness, of

qualities.” Yet the same writer tells us that “the units” of mind-stuff “which

time, are adequately describable as present changes of the relative position of .molecules under my skin, really seems to me to be itself adequately describable by

make up our mental states” and also our

Broad’s

ever, an important contemporary doctrine

constituting a group of units that function together, or the fact of their being in such

which would apply the reductive method

and such a position in space and time,

*A behaviorist might without inconsistency admit functional while denying existential emergence.

is a fact about them, not an aspect of their psychic being.” Nor do they possess

epithet, “silly.” There is, how-

brains

“are

not

aware

of anything—

neither of anything else nor of themselves. They

just

exist; ...the

fact

of their-

METAPHYSICS

Ior

any of (at least) the secondary qualities.

loses his memory, the blow is wholly irrelevant to the amnesia, which is evolution,’ brains are formed, that causally explicable, if at all, solely by the “awareness,’ and therewith qualities, thoughts he was thinking before he was make their appearance.’ This, however, is hit. This doctrine does not appear to me to strain at an emergent gnat and swallow to lie within the bounds of serious disan emergent camel. The cognition of cussion. The retrotensive method, thereexternal objects and their relations, which fore, not only gratuitously extends to the is somehow achieved through the brain, whole of nature a concomitance for which is not the sum of the atomic, non-cognithere is probable evidence only in a tive sentiencies supposed to inhere in its special class of cases; it also either falls component particles; and it is therefore no short of its objective or else implies immore “accounted for” by the assumed possible consequences. sentiency of those particles than it is by We have, therefore, abundant reason to their motion, It is as blankly different and believe that in the history of our planet discontinuous a new fact as anything there have occurred genuine new births of could be. So little, at best, can be accomtime, a sheer increase and diversification plished by the retrotensive method that and enrichment of the sum of things it is not surprising to find in some recent here. And no reason, except an arbitrary pan-psychism a tendency to invoke the pseudo-axiom, can be given for assuming -aid of the reductive, i.e., to describe the that this has been merely a cosmical game higher. mental functions in somewhat of beggar-my-neighbor. On the other vaguely behavioristic terms. But _ behand, we have no empirical reasons for haviorism does not, by becoming vaguer, asserting—and serious reasons for doubtbecome more convincing. ing—that a similar process is the general Another attempt to employ the retrule throughout the physical universe, or rotensive method for: avoiding the adthat the higher emergents occur at all mission of trans-physical emergence is to frequently in space and time. Yet, even be seen in the parallelistic form of emerthough no knowledge which we possess gent evolutionism, the view that psychoconcerning evolution justifies that generphysical “duality of nature does not arise alized or cosmic meliorism which now so in the course of evolutionary advance, it widely does duty for a religion, there is there ab initio,’ but that emergence nevertheless lies before our terrestrial race occurs (in just what modes is not very in its own little corner of the world a clear) in the psychical as well as the future which, if dim with uncertainties physical sense, though in each independand beset with perils, is not necessarily ently. Such a view, however, appears to devoid of possibilities immeasurably traninvolve the general doctrine, at once conscending all that the past has brought fused and incredible, that physical events forth. There perhaps yet remain to mancan have no causal relation to mental kind, we are told, some thousand million ones—which implies that sensations are not due to physical stimuli, and that if a years; if it be so, before this long day ends it is possible that, besides all that man’s man, after receiving a blow on the head, laboring reason may achieve, there may It is only when, “as a product of organic

5 Drake, Mind and Its Place in Nature (1926),

PP. 97-100, 241-243.

yet emerge out of the latent generative

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102

potencies of matter, as there quite certainly have emerged before our strange planetary history, news and richer forms

AND

ANALYSIS

of being, such as no prescience of ours could foresee and no contrivance of ours

create.

Language and Metaphysics BERTRAND In the present consider whether

chapter I propose to anything, and, if so,

what, can be inferred from the structure

of language as to the structure of the world. There has been a tendency, especially among logical positivists, to treat language as an independent realm, which can be studied without regard to non-linguistic occurrences. To some extent, and in a limited field, this separation of language from other facts is possible; the detached study of logical syntax has undoubtedly yielded valuable results. But I think it is easy to exaggerate what can be achieved by syntax alone. There is, I think, a discoverable relation between the structure of sentences and the structure of the occurrences to which the sentences refer. I do not think the structure of non-verbal facts is wholly unknowable, and I believe that, with sufficient caution, the properties of language may help us to understand the structure of the world. With regard to the relation of words to non-verbal facts, most philosophers can be divided into three broad types: A. Those who infer properties of the world from properties of language. These are a very distinguished party; they include Parmenides, Plato, -Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, and Bradley.

RUSSELL B. Those who maintain that knowledge is only of words. Among these are the Nominalists and some of the Logical Positivists. ; C. Those who maintain that there is knowledge not expressible in words, and use words to tell us what this knowledge is. These include the mystics, Bergson, and Wittgenstein; also certain aspects of Hegel and Bradley. Of these three parties, the third can be dismissed as self-contradictory. The second comes to grief on the empirical fact that we can know what words occur in a sentence, and that this is not a verbal fact, although it is indispensable to the verbalists. If, therefore, we are confined to the above three alternatives, we must make the best of the first. We may divide our problem into two parts: first, what is implied by the correspondence theory of truth, in the measure in which we have accepted this theory? Second, is there anything in the world corresponding to the distinction between different parts of speech, as this appears in a logical language? As regards “correspondence,” we have been led to the belief that, when a proposition is true, it is true in virtue of one or more

occurrences

which

are

called

its

METAPHYSICS

103

“verifiers.” If it is a proposition containing no variable, it cannot have more than one verifier. We may confine ourselves to this case, since it involves the whole of the problem with which we are concerned, We have thus to inquire whether, given a sentence (supposed true) which contains no variable, we can infer anything as to the structure of the verifier from that of the sentence. In this inquiry we shall presuppose a logical language. Consider first a group of sentences which all contain a certain name (or a synonym for it). These sentences all have something in common. Can we say that their verifiers also have something in common? Here we must distinguish according to the kind of name concerned. If W is a complete group of qualities, such as we considered in the last chapter, and we form a number of judgments of perception, such as “W “W

is bright,”

is red,” “W etc.,

these

is round,”

all have

one

single verifier, namely W. But if I make a number of true statements concerning a given shade of colour C, they all have

different verifiers. These all have a com mon part C, just as the statements have a common part “C.” It will be seen that here, as in the last chapter, we are led to a view which, syntactically, is scarcely distinguishable from the subject-predicate view, from which it differs only in that it regards the “subject” as a bundle ot compresent qualities. We may state what has just been said as follows: given a number of subject-predicate sentences expressing judgments of perception, such as “this is red,” if they all have the same subject they all have the same verifier, which is what the subject designates; if they all have the same predicate, the

verifiers all have a common part, which is what the predicate designates. This theory is not applicable to such a sentence as “A is to the left of B,” where

“A” and “B” are names for two parts of

my visual field. So far as “A” and “B” are

concerned,

we

considered

this sen-

tence sufficiently in the last chapter. What I now wish to examine

what, if anything,

is the question:

is common

to the

verifiers of a number of different sentences of the form “A is to the left of B”? The question involved is the old question of “universals.” We might have investigated this question in connection with predicates—say “red is a colour,” or “high C is a sound.” But since we have explained the more apparently obvious subject-predicate sentences—e.g. “this is red”—as really not subject-predicate sentences, we shall find it more convenient to*discuss “universals” in connection with relations. Sentences—except object-words used in an exclamatory manner—require words other than names. Such words, generically, we

call “relation-words,”

including

predicates as words for monadic relations.” The definition, as explained in Chapter VI, is syntactical: a “name” is a word which can occur significantly in an atomic sentence of any form; a “relationword” is one which can occur in some atomic sentences, but only in such as contain the appropriate number of names. It is generally agreed that language requires relation-words; the question at issue is: “what does this imply as_regards_ the verifers of sentences?” A “universal” may be defined as “the meaning (if any) of a relation-word.” Such words as “if” and “or” have no meaning in isolation, and it may be that the same is true of relation-words.

REALISM

104 It may be suggested (erroneously, as I think and shall try to prove) that we need not assume universals, but only a set of stimuli to the making of one of a set of similar noises. The matter is, however, not quite straightforward. A defender of universals, if attacked, might begin in this way: “you say that two cats, because they are similar, stimulate the utterance of two similar noises which are both instances of the word ‘cat.’ But the cats must be really similar to each other, and so must the noises. And if they are really similar, it is impossible that ‘similarity’ should be just a word. It is a word which you utter on certain occasions, namely, when there is similarity. Your tricks and devices,” he will say, “may seem to dispose of other universals, but only by putting all the work on to this one remaining universal, similarity; of that you cannot get rid, and therefore

you might as well admit all the rest.” The question of universals

is difficult,

AND

ANALYSIS

seen directly and when it is far from the

centre of the field. In fact, however, this makes very little difference. We cannot escape from the fact that visual positions — form a two-dimensional series, and that

such series demand dyadic asymmetrical relations. The view we take as to colours makes no difference in this respect. It seems that there is no escape from admitting relations as parts of the nonlinguistic constitution of the world; similarity, and perhaps also asymmetrical relations, cannot

be

explained

away,

“or” and “not,” as belonging

like

only to

speech. Such words as “before” and “above,” just as truly as proper names “mean” something which occurs in objects of perception. It follows that there is a valid form of analysis which is not that of whole and part. We can perceive Abefore-B as a whole, but if we perceived it only as a whole we should not know whether we had seen it or B-before-A. The whole-and-part analysis of the datum

not only to decide, but to formulate. Let

A-before-B

us consider “A is to the left of B.” Places in the momentary visual field, as we have seen, are absolute, and are defined by relation to the centre of the field of vision. They may be defined by the two relations right-and-left, up-and-down;

leaves out “before.” In a logical language, therefore, there will be some distinctions of parts of speech which correspond to objective distinctions. Let us examine once more the question asymmetrical relations are whether needed as well as similarity; and let us take, for the purpose, “A is above B,” where “A” and “B” are proper names of events. We shall suppose that we perceive that A is above B. Now it is clear, to begin with a trivial point, that we do not need the word “below” as well as the

these

relations,

at

any

rate,

suffice

for

topological purposes. In order to study momentary visual space, it is necessary to keep the eyes motionless and attend to things near the periphery as well as in the centre of the field of vision. If we are not deliberately keeping our eyes motionless, we shall look directly at whatever we notice; the natural way to examine a series of places is to look at each in turn, But if we want to study what we can see at one moment, this method will not do, since a given physical object, as a visual datum, is different when it is

word

yields only A and

“above”;

either

alone

B, and

suffices.

I

shall therefore assume that our language contains no word “below.” The whole percept, A-above-B, resembles other percepts

C-above-D,

E-above-F,

etc.,

in

a

manner which makes us call them all facts of vertical order. So far, we do not

METAPHYSICS

105

need a concept “above”; we may have merely a group of similar occurrences, all _ called “vertical orders,” i.e., all causing a hoise similar to “above.”

So far, we can

do with only similarity. But now we must consider asymmetry. When you say “A is above B,” how does your hearer know that you have not said “B is above A”? In exactly the same way

as you know that A is above B; he perceives that the noise “A” precedes the noise “B.”

Thus the vital matter is the distinction between

A-first-and-then-B,

then-A; or, in writing, between

B-first-andAB

and

BA. Consider, then, the two following shapes: AB and BA. I want to make it clear that I am speaking of just these, not of others like them. Let S, be the proper name of the first shape, S, that of the second; let A, ,A, be the proper names of the two A’s, and B,, B, of the two B’s. Then S,, S, each consist of two parts, and one part of S, is closely similar to one part of S,, while the other part is closely similar to the other part. Moreover, the ordering relation is the same in both cases. Nevertheless, the two wholes are not very similar. Perhaps asymmetry could be explained in this way: given a number of A’s and a number of B’s, arranged in pairs, the resulting wholes fall into two classes, members of the same class being closely similar to each other, while members

of

different classes are very dissimilar. If we give the proper names S,, S, to the following two shapes: AB and BA, then it is obvious that S, and S, are very similar, and so are S, and S,, but S, and

S, are not very similar to S, and S. (Observe that, in describing S, and S,, we shall have to say: S, consists of A, before B,, S. consists of B, before A,.) Perhaps in this way it is possible to explain

asymmetry in terms of similarity, though the explanation is not very satisfactory. Assuming that we can, in the above manner or in some other, get rid of all universals except similarity, it remains to be considered whether similarity itself

could be explained away. We will consider this in the simplest possible case. Two patches of red (not

necessarily of exactly the same shade) are similar, and so are two instances of the word “red.” Let us suppose that we are being shown a number of coloured discs and asked to name their colours—say in a test for colour-blindness. We are shown two red discs in succession, and each time we say “red.” We have been saying that, in the primary language, similar stimuli produce similar reactions; our theory of meaning has been based on this. In our case, the two discs are similar, and the two utterances of the word “red” are similar. Are we saying the same thing about the discs and about the utterances when we say the discs are similar and when we say the utterances are similar? or are we only saying similar things? In the former case, similarity is a true universal; in the latter case, not. The diffculty, in the latter case, is the endless regress; but are we sure that this difficulty is inseparable? We shall say, if we adopt this alternative: if A and B are perceived to be similar, and C and D are also per-

ceived to be similar, that means that AB is a whole of a certain kind and CD is a whole of the same kind; 1.e., since we do

not want to define the kind by a universal, AB and CD are similar wholes. I do not see how we are to avoid an endless regress of the vicious kind if we attempt to explain similarity in this way. I conclude, therefore, though with hesitation, that there are universals, and not merely general words. Similarity, at

REALISM

106

least, will have to be admitted; and in that case it seems hardly worth while to adopt elaborate devices.for the exclusion of other universals. It should be observed that the above argument only proves the necessity of the word “similar,” not of the word “similarity.” Some propositions containing the word “similarity” can be replaced by equivalent propositions containing the word “simi lar,”

while

others

cannot.

These

latter

need not be admitted. Suppose, for example, I say “similarity exists.” If “exists” means what it does when I say “the President of the United States exists,” my statement is nonsense. What I can mean may, to begin with, be expressed in the statement: “there are occurrences which require for their verbal description sentences of the form ‘a is similar to }.’” But this linguistic fact seems to imply a fact about the occurrences described, namely the sort of fact that is asserted when I say “a is similar to b.” When I say “similarity exists,” it is this fact about

AND

ANALYSIS

the world, not a fact about language, that I mean to assert. The word “yellow” is necessary because there are yellow things, the word “similar” is necessary because there are pairs of similar things. And the similarity of two things is as truly a non-

linguistic fact as the yellowness of one thing. We have arrived, in this chapter, at a result which has been, in a sense, the goal of all our discussions. The result I have in mind is this: that complete metaphysical agnosticism is not compatible with the maintenance of linguistic propositions. Some modern philosophers hold that we know much about language, but nothing about anything else. This view forgets that language is an empirical phenomenon like another, and that a man who is metaphysically agnostic must deny that he knows when he uses a word. For my part, I believe that, partly by means of the study of syntax, we can arrive at considerable knowledge concerning the structure of the world.

The Category Mistake in Mind-Body Dualism CIBER TR ik (1) THE

OFFICIAL

DOCTRINE

with

minor

reservations,

to

its

main

articles and, although they admit certain There is a doctrine about the nature “theoretical difficulties in it, they tend to, and place of minds which is so prevalent assume that these can be overcome withamong theorists and even among laymen out serious modifications being made to that it deserves to be described as the the architecture of the theory. It will be oficial theory. Most philosophers, psyargued here that the central principles of chologists and religious teachers subscribe, the doctrine are unsound and conflict with

METAPHYSICS

107

the whole body of what we know about minds when we are not speculating about them.

The — official

doctrine,

which

hails

chiefly from Descartes, is something like this. With the doubtful exceptions of idiots and infants in arms every human being has both a body and a mind. Some would prefer to say that every human being is both a body and a mind. His body and his mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body his mind may continue to exist and function. Human bodies are in space and are subject to the mechanical laws which govern all other bodies in space. Bodily processes and states can be inspected by external observers. So a man’s bodily life is as much a public affair as are the lives of animals and reptiles and even as the careers of trees, crystals and planets. But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws. The workings of one mind are not witnessable by other observers; its career is private. Only I can take direct cognisance of the states and processes of my own mind. A person therefore lives through

two collateral histories, one

con-

sisting of what happens in and to his body, the other consisting of what happens in and to his mind. The first is

public, the second private. The events in the first history are events in the physical world, those in the second

are events

in

the mental world. It has been disputed whether a person does or can directly monitor all or only some of the episodes of his own private history; but, according to the official doctrine, of at least some of these episodes he has direct and unchallengeable cog nisance.

In

consciousness,

self-conscious-

ness and introspection he is directly and

authentically apprised of the present states and operations of his mind. He may have great or small uncertainties about concurrent and adjacent episodes in the physical world, but he can have none about at least part of what is momentarily occupying his mind. It is customary to express this bifurcation of his two lives and of his two worlds by saying that the things and events which belong to the physical world, including his own body, are external, while the workings of his own mind are internal, This antithesis of outer and inner is of course meant to be construed as a metaphor, since minds, not being in space, could not be described as being spatially inside anything else, or as having things

going on spatially inside themselves, But relapses from this good intention are common and theorists are found speculating how stimuli, the physical sources of which are yards or miles outside a person’s skin, can generate mental responses inside his skull, or how decisions framed inside his cranium can set going movements of his extremities. Even when “inner” and “outer” are construed as metaphors, the problem how a person’s mind and body influence one another is notoriously charged with theoretical

difficulties.

What

the mind

wills,

the legs, arms and the tongue execute; what affects the ear and the eye has something to do with what the mind perceives; grimaces and smiles betray the mind’s moods and bodily castigations lead, it is hoped, to moral improvement. But the actual transactions between the episodes of the private history and those of the public history remain mysterious, since by definition they can belong to neither series. They could not be reported among the happenings described in a_person’s autobiography of his inner life, but nor

REALISM

108

could they be reported among those described in some that person’s

one else’s biography of

overt

career.

They

can

be

AND

ANALYSIS

public physical world can the mind of one person make a difference to the mind of

another. The mind is its own. place and in

inspected neither by introspection nor by laboratory experiment. They are theoreti-

his inner life each of us lives the life of a ,

cal shuttlecocks. which are forever being bandied from the physiologist back to the

hear and jolt one another’s

psychologist

the workings of one another’s minds and inoperative upon them.

and

from

the psychologist

back to the physiologist. Underlying this partly metaphorical representation of the bifurcation of a person’s two lives there is a seemingly more profound and philosophical assumption. It is assumed that there are two

different

kinds

of existence

or

status.

What exists or happens may have the status of physical existence, or it may have the status of mental existence. Somewhat as the faces of coins are either heads or tails, or somewhat as living creatures are either male or female, so, it is supposed, some existing is physical existing, other existing is mental existing. It is a necessary feature of what has physical existence that it is in space and time; it is a necessary feature of what has mental existence that it is in time but not in space. What has physical existence is composed of matter, or else is a function of matter; what has mental existence consists of consciousness,

or else is a function of consciousness. There is thus a polar opposition between mind and matter, an opposition which is

often brought out as follows.

Material

objects are situated in a common field, known as “space,” and what happens to one body in one part of space is mechanically connected with what happens to other bodies in other parts of space. But mental happenings occur in insulated fields, known as “minds,” and there is, apart maybe from telepathy, no direct causal connection between what happens in one mind and what happens in another. Only through the medium of the

ghostly Robinson Crusoe. People can see, bodies, but

they are irremediably blind and deaf to

What sort of knowledge can be secured of the workings of a mind? side, according

to the

On the one

official

theory,

a

person has direct knowledge of the best imaginable kind of the workings of his own mind. Mental states and processes are (or are normally) conscious states and processes, and the consciousness which irradiates them can engender no illusions and leaves the door open for no doubts. A person’s present thinkings, feelings and willings, his perceivings, rememberings and imaginings are intrinsically “phosphorescent”; their existence and _ their nature are inevitably betrayed to their owner. The inner life is a stream of consciousness of such a sort that it would

be absurd to suggest that the mind whose life is that stream might be unaware of what is passing down it. True, the evidence adduced recently by Freud seems to show that there exist channels tributary to this stream, which run hidden from their owner. People are actuated by impulses the existence of which they vigorously disavow; some of their thoughts differ from the thoughts which they acknowledge; and some of the

actions which they think they will to perform they do not really will. They are thoroughly gulled by some of their own. hypocrisies and they successfully ignore

facts about their mental lives which on the official theory ought to be patent to

them. Holders of the official theory tend, however,

to

maintain

that

anyhow

in

METAPHYSICS

normal circumstances a person must be directly and authentically seized of the present state and workings mind.

of his own

Besides being currently supplied with these alleged immediate data of consciousness, a person is also generally supposed to be able to exercise from time to time a

special kind of perception, namely inner perception, or introspection. He can take a (non-optical) “look” at what is passing in his mind. Not only can he view and scrutinize a flower through his sense of sight and listen to and discriminate the notes of a bell through his sense of hearing; he can also reflectively or introspectively watch, without any bodily organ of sense, the current episodes of his inner life. This self-observation is also commonly supposed to be immune from illusion, confusion or doubt. A mind’s reports of its own affairs have a certainty superior to the best that is possessed by its reports of matters in the physical world. Senseperceptions can, but consciousness and introspection cannot, be mistaken or confused. On the other side, one person has no direct access of any sort to the events of the inner life of another. He cannot do better than make problematic inferences from the observed behaviour of the other person’s body to the states of mind which, by analogy from his own conduct, he supposes to be signalised by that behaviour. Direct access to the workings of a mind is the privilege of that mind itself; in default of such privileged access,

the workings of one mind are inevitably occult to everyone else. For the supposed

arguments

from

bodily

movements

similar to their own to mental workings

similar to cheir own would lack any possibility of observational corroboration. Not unnaturally, therefore, an adherent of the

109 official theory finds it difficult to resist this consequence of his premisses, that he has no good reason to believe that there do exist minds other than his own. Even if he prefers to believe that to other human bodies there are harnessed minds not unlike his own, he cannot claim to be able to discover their individual characteristics, or the particular things that they undergo and do. Absolute solitude is on this showing the ineluctable destiny of the soul, Only our bodies can meet. As a necessary corollary of this general scheme there is implicitly prescribed a special way of construing our ordinary concepts of mental powers and operations. The verbs, nouns and adjectives, with which in ordinary life we describe the wits, characters and higher-grade performances of the people with whom we have to do, are required to be construed as signifying special episodes in their secret histories, or else as signifying tendencies for such episodes to occur. When someone is described as knowing, believing or guessing something, as hoping, dreading, intending or shirking something, as designing this or being amused at that, these verbs are supposed to denote the occurrence of specific modifications in his (to us) occult stream of. consciousness. Only his own privileged access to this stream in direct-awareness and introspection could provide authentic testimony that these mental-conduct verbs were correctly or incorrectly applied. The onlooker,

be he teacher,

critic, biographer

or friend, can never assure himself that his comments have any vestige of truth. Yet it was just because we do in fact all know how to make such comments, make them with general correctness and correct them when they turn out to be confused or mistaken, that philosophers found it necessary to construct their theories of the

REALISM

110

nature and place of minds. Finding mental-conduct concepts being regularly and effectively used, they properly sought

to fix their logical geography. But the logical geography officially recommended would entail that there could be no regular or effective use of these mentalconduct concepts in our descriptions of, and prescriptions for, other people’s minds. (2) THE ABSURDITY OF THE OFFICIAL DOCTRINE Such in outline is the official theory. I

shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.” I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a category-mistake. It represents the facts of mental life as if

they belonged

to one

logical type or

category (or range of types or categories), when they actually belong to another. The dogma is therefore a philosopher’s myth. In attempting to explode the myth I shall probably be taken to be denying wellknown facts about the mental life of human beings, and my plea that I aim at doing nothing more than rectify the logic of mental-conduct concepts will probably be disallowed as mere subterfuge.

I must first indicate what is meant by the phrase “Category-mistake.” This I do in a series of illustrations. A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks “But where is the University? I have

AND

ANALYSIS

seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But

I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University.” It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, labora-

tories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their coordination is understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University,

to speak,

that

is, as if “the

University” stood for an extra member ot the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as

that to which the other institutions belong. The same mistake would be made by a child witnessing the march-past of a division, who, having had pointed out to him

such

and

such

battalions,

batteries,

squadrons, etc., asked when the division was going to appear. He would be supposing that a division was a counterpart to the units already seen, partly similar to them and partly unlike them. He would be shown his mistake by being told that in watching the battalions, batteries and squadrons marching past he had been watching the division marching past. The march-past was not a parade of battalions,

batteries, squadrons and a division; it was . a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons of a division. One more illustration. A foreigner watching his first game of cricket learns what are the functions of the bowlers, the

METAPHYSICS

Iil

batsmen, the fielders, the umpires and

ture and the Church of England. But he

the scorers. He then says “But there is no

still becomes

one left on the field to contribute the

questions about the connections between the Church of England, the Home Office and the British Constitution. For while

famous element of team-spirit. I see who

does the bowling, the batting and the

embarrassed

when

asked

wicket-keeping; but I do not see whose role it is to exercise esprit de corps.” Once more, it would have to be explained that he was looking for the wrong type of thing. Team-spirit is not another cricketing-operation supplementary to all of the other special tasks. It is, roughly, the keenness with which each of the special tasks is performed, and performing a task keenly is not performing two tasks. Certainly exhibiting team-spirit is not the same thing as bowling or catching, but nor is it a third thing such that we can say that the bowler first bowls and then exhibits team-spirit or that a fielder is at a given moment either catching or displaying esprit de corps. These illustrations of category-mistakes

the Church

and the Home

institutions,

the

have a common feature which must be noticed. The mistakes were made by

say why he could not come across him in

people who did not know how to wield the concepts University, division and team-spirit. Their puzzles arose from inability to use certain items in the English vocabulary. The theoretically interesting categorymistakes are those made by people who are perfectly competent to apply concepts, , at least in the situations with which they are familiar, but are still liable in their abstract thinking to allocate those concepts to logical types to which they do not belong. An instance of a mistake of

this sort would be the following story. A student of politics has learned the main differences between the . British, the French

and

the American

Constitutions,

and has learned also the differences and connections

between

the Cabinet,

Parlia-

ment, the various Ministries, the Judica-

British

Office are

Constitution

is

not another institution in the same sense

of that noun. So inter-institutional rela. tions which can be asserted or denied to hold between the Church and the Home Office cannot be asserted or denied to hold between either of them and the British Constitution. “The British Constitution” is not a term of the same logical type as “the Home Office” and “the Church of England.” In a partially similar way, John Doe may be a relative, a friend, an

enemy or a stranger to Richard Roe; but he cannot be any of these things to the Average Taxpayer. He knows how to talk sense in certain sorts of discussions about the Average Taxpayer, but he is baffled to the street as he can come across Richard Roe. It is pertinent to our main subject to notice that, so long as the student of politics continues to think of the British Constitution as a counterpart to the other institutions, he will tend to describe it as a mysteriously occult institution; and so long as John Doe continues to think of the Average Taxpayer as a fellow-citizen, he will tend to think of him as an elusive insubstantial man, a ghost who is everywhere yet nowhere. My destructive purpose is to show that a family of radical category-mistakes is the

source

of the double-life

theory.

The

representation of a person as a_ ghost mysteriously ensconced in a machine derives from this argument. Because, as is true, a person’s thinking, feeling and purposive doing cannot be described solely in

REALISM

I1I2

AND

ANALYSIS

the idioms of physics, chemistry and physiology, therefore they must be de-

of minds as the effects of other non-spatial workings of minds. The difference be-

scribed in counterpart idioms. As the. human body is a complex organised unit, so the human mind must be another complex organised unit, though one made of

tween the human behaviours which we describe as intelligent and those which we

a different sort of stuff and with a different

sort

of structure.

Or, again, as

the

human body, like any other parcel ot matter, is a field of causes and effects, so the mind must be another field of causes and effects, though not (Heaven be

praised)

mechanical

causes

and effects.

(3) THE ORIGIN OF THE CATEGORY-MISTAKE One of the chief intellectual origins of what I have yet to prove to be the Cartesian category-mistake seems to be this. When Galileo showed that his methods of scientific discovery were competent to provide a mechanical theory which should cover every occupant of space, Descartes found in himself two conflicting motives. As a man of scientific genius he could not but endorse the claims of mechanics, yet as a religious and moral man he could not accept, as Hobbes accepted, the discouraging rider to those claims, namely that human nature differs only in degree of complexity from clockwork. The mental could not be just a variety of the mechanical. He and subsequent philosophers naturally but erroneously availed themselves of the following escape-route. Since mental-conduct words are not to be construed as signifying the occurrence of mechanical processes, they must be construed as signifying the occurrence of non-mechanical processes; since mechanical laws explain movements in space as the effects of other movements in space, other laws. must explain some of the non-spatial workings

describe as unintelligent must be a difference in their causation; so, while some movements of human tongues and limbs are the effects of mechanical causes, others must be the effects of _non-mechanical causes, i.e., some issue from movements of particles of matter, others from workings of the mind. The differences between. the physical and the mental were thus represented as differences inside the common framework of the categories of “thing,” “stuff,” “attribute,” “‘state,” “process,” “change,” “cause” and “effect.” Minds are things, but different sorts of things from bodies; mental processes are causes and effects, but different sorts of causes and effects from bodily movements. And so on. Somewhat as the foreigner expected the University to be an extra edifice, rather like a college but also considerably different, so the repudiators of mechanism represented minds as extra centres of causal processes, rather like machines but

also considerably

different

from

them.

Their theory was a para-mechanical hypothesis. That this assumption was at the heart of the doctrine is shown by the fact that

there was from the beginning felt to be a major theoretical difficulty in explaining how minds can influence and be influenced by bodies. How can a mental process, such as willing, cause spatial movements like the movements of the tongue? How can a physical change in the optic nerve have among its effects a mind’s perception of a flash of light? This notorious crux by itself shows the logical mould into which Descartes pressed his

theory of the mind. It was the self-same

{

METAPHYSICS

113

mould into which he and Galileo set their mechanics. Still unwittingly adhering to the grammar of mechanics, he tried to avert disaster by describing minds in what

was merely an obverse vocabulary. The workings of minds had to be described by the mere negatives of the specific de-

scriptions given to bodies; they are not in space, they are not motions, they are not modifications of matter, they are not accessible to public observation. Minds

are not bits of clockwork, they are just bits of not-clockwork. As thus represented, minds are not merely ghosts harnessed to machines, they are themselves just spectral machines. Though the human body is an engine, it is mot quite an ordinary engine, since some of its workings are governed by yanother engine inside it—this interior governor-engine being one of a very special sort. It is invisible, inaudible and it has no size or weight. It cannot be taken to bits and the laws it obeys are not those known to ordinary engineers. Nothing is known of how it governs the bodily engine. A second major crux points the same moral. Since, according to the doctrine, minds belong to the same category as bodies and since bodies are rigidly governed by mechanical laws, it seemed

to many

theorists to follow that minds

must be similarly governed by rigid nonmechanical laws. The physical world is a deterministic system, so the mental world must be a deterministic system. Bodies cannot help the modifications that they undergo, so minds cannot help pursuing the careers fixed for them. Responsibility, ‘choice, merit

and

demerit

are

therefore

inapplicable concepts—unless the compromise solution is adopted of saying that the laws governing mental prc-esses, unlike those governing physical processes,

have the congenial attribute of being only rather rigid. The problem of the Freedom of the Will was the problem how to reconcile the hypothesis that minds are to be described in terms drawn from the categories of mechanics with the knowledge that higher-grade human conduct is not of a piece with the behaviour of machines. It is an historical curiosity that it was not noticed that the entire argument was broken-backed. Theorists correctly assumed that any sane man could already recognise

the

differences

between,

say,

rational and non-rational utterances or between purposive and automatic behaviour. Else there would have been nothing requiring to be salved from mechanism. Yet the explanation given presupposed that one person could in principle never recognise the difference between the rational and the irrational utterances issuing from other human bodies, since he could never get access to the postulated immaterial causes of some of their utterances. Save for the doubtful exception of himself, he could never tell the difference between a man and a Robot. It would have to be conceded, for example, that, for all that we can tell, the inner lives of persons who are classed as idiots or lunatics are as rational as those of anyone else. Perhaps only their overt behaviour is disappointing; that is to say, perhaps “idiots” are not really idiotic, or “lunatics” lunatic. Perhaps, too, some ot those who are classed as sane are really idiots. According to the theory, external observers could never know how the overt

behaviour

of others is correlated

with

their mental powers and processes and so they could never know or even plausibly conjecture whether their applications of mental-conduct concepts to these other people were correct or incorrect. It would

REALISM

114

AND

ANALYSIS

our characterisations of persons and their performances as intelligent, prudent and

junctive propositions embodying them. Thus a purchaser may say that he bought a left-hand glove and a right-hand glove, but not that he bought a left-hand glove, a right-hand glove and a pair of gloves. “She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair” is a well-known joke based

virtuous

on the absurdity of conjoining terms of

then be hazardous

or impossible for a

man to claim sanity or logical consistency even for himself, sinceshe would be debarred from comparing his own_ performances

with those of others. In short,

or as stupid, hypocritical and

cowardly could never have been made, so

different types. It would have been equally

the problem of providing a special causal

ridiculous to construct the disjunction “She

hypothesis to serve as the basis of such diagnoses would never have arisen. The question, “How do persons differ from machines?” arose just because everyone already knew how to apply mental-conduct concepts before the new causal hypothesis was introduced. This causal hypothesis could not therefore be the source of the criteria used in those applications. Nor, of course, has the causal hypothesis in any degree improved our handling of those criteria. We still distinguish good from bad arithmetic, politic from impolitic conduct and fertile from infertile imaginations in the ways in which Descartes himself distinguished them before and after he speculated how the applicability of these criteria was compatible with the principle of mechanical causation. He had mistaken the logic of his problem. Instead of asking by what criteria intelligent behaviour is actually distinguished from non-intelligent behaviour, he asked “Given that the principle of mechanical causation does not tell us the difference, what other causal principle

came home either in a flood of tears or else in a sedan-chair.” Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine does just this. It maintains that there exist both bodies and

will tell it us?” He realised that the problem was not one of mechanics and assumed that it must therefore be one of some counterpart to mechanics. Not unnaturally psychology is often cast for just this role. When two terms belong to the same category, it is proper to construct con-

minds; that there occur physical processes

and mental processes; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements. I

shall argue that these and other analogous conjunctions are absurd; but, it must be noticed, the argument will not show that either of the illegitimately conjoined propositions is absurd in itself. I am not, for example, denying that there occur mental processes. Doing long division is a mental process and so is making a joke. But I am saying that the phrase “there occur men-

tal processes” does not mean the same sori of thing as “there occur physical processes,” and, therefore, that it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two. If my argument is sucessful, there will follow some interesting consequences. First, the hallowed contrast between Mind and Matter will be dissipated, but dissipated not by either of the equally hallowed absorptions of Mind by Matter or

of Matter by Mind, but in quite a different way. For the seeming contrast of the two ° will be shown to be as illegitimate as would be the contrast of “she came home in a flood of tears” and “she came home in a sedan-chair.” The belief that there

is a polar opposition between Mind and

METAPHYSICS

115

Matter is the belief that they are terms of

the same logical type.

It will also follow that both Idealism and Materialism are answers to an improper question. The “reduction” of the material world to mental states and processes, as well as the “reduction”

of men-

tal states and processes to physical states and processes, presuppose the legitimacy of the disjunction “Either there exist minds

or there exist bodies (but not both).” It would be like saying, “Either she bought a left-hand and a right-hand glove or she bought a pair of gloves (but not both).” It is perfectly proper to say, in one logical tone of voice, that there exist mirids and to say, in another logical tone of

voice, that there exist bodies. But these expressions do not indicate two different species of existence, for “existence” is not a generic word like “coloured” or “sexed.” They indicate two different senses of “exist,” somewhat as “rising” has different senses in “the tide is rising,” “hopes are rising,” and “the average age of death is rising.’ A man would be thought to be making a poor joke who said that three things are now rising, namely the tide, hopes and the average age of death. It would be just as good or bad a joke to say that there exist prime numbers and Wednesdays and public opinions and navies; or that there exist both minds and bed

bodies.

Causality and S ubstance

ROY WOOD SELLARS I shall use the term physical realism as an indication of my position. It is, I may point out, a shortened expression for critical realism and evolutionary naturalism taken together. Thus it symbolizes the integration of epistemology and ontology of which I have spoken. Physical

realism is a post-Humian position. Much of its effort has had to do with the escape from subjectivism and phenomenalism.

of course, imply that any particular science need greatly concern itself about this philosophical completion, but that

the culture of the time cannot and will not ignore it. Modest as a philosopher must be in this age of science and technology, I would, nevertheless, suggest that the development of science as a whole is

affected by its basic assumptions. It is doubtful that science is as completely self:

As a physical realist it is my thesis that

sufficient as it was led in the nineteenth

scientific knowledge, that is, empirical, and not formal or purely mathematical,

knowledge, is highly probable knowledge

century to regard itself. The position adopted here signifies that being (what exists) has categorial char-

or disclosure about what exists, and that its facts and theories inexorably involve an ontology for their reference and philosophical meaning. This view does not,

acteristics which are disclosed in the categorial meanings operating in senseperception, self-awareness, and the sciences, and that it is the job of basic

REALISM

116

AND

ANALYSIS

and to

only those who identify empirical knowl-

clarify them. It will, perhaps, be remembered that, in my book, Evolutionary Naturalism, 1 argued’ that categorical meanings have a natural, empirical origin and an ontological reference and significance. While recognizing the value of Kant’s stress upon categories as against

edge with a direct intuition of reality and do not grasp the manipulations and comparisons involved who are surprised by this descriptive spreading out which emphasizes chronologies, predictions, iacts, and laws. Let it be remembered that neither the past nor the future exists and it will be realized that the actual cannot be reduced to a mere present event. At least, so it seems to me; and that is one reason why I am led to explore such categories as substance and _potentiality. These must, however, be so conceived that they harmonize with modern scientific knowledge. — It is not too much to say that many of the paradoxes of philosophy and much of the misunderstanding of the nature of such things as moral decision result from this refusal to correlate scientific knowledge with ontology. Thus causation has been thought of as a push by a nonexistent past and-moral choice has been

philosophy

Hume’s

to apprehend

them

scepticism, I criticized

his ex-

treme innatism and his phenomenalism. I still regard this contrast’ as basic and fruitful. In other words, I am not one of those who would throw common-sense categories away in a nonchalant fashion as do those who have the virus of logical apriorism in: their veins. I simply regard myself as more adequately empirical: than Hume’s atomism and sensationalism permitted him to be and far more so than those who hover between sensationalism and conventionalism. In my opinion, then, knowledge, being, and the categories, are both causally and formally connected. They are reciprocally elucidating. Being without © categorial characteristics is scarcely thinkable; and in knowledge-claims, being is characterized through categorial meanings.In this fashion all three are tied together. So much in the way of perspective. °

.

°

.

.

The critical realist—for whom

.

empiri.

cal knowledge is a mediated affair— recognizes that science is likely to con-

conceived,

curiously enough,

as an event

succeeding other events and not, more deeply, as.an activity of the whole organic self. This contrast between event and activity seems to me intriguing. May it not in some measure correspond to the different perspective of scientific knowledge and ontology? Why so many philosophers should ignore such fascinating topics is a marvel to me. But, so long as epistemology and ontology are ignored or kept from their fruitful interaction by positivism and pragmatism, such will be

tain some measure of epistemic translation in its facts and laws. Thus the past does not exist in nature while it is dated and described in human knowledge. There is something hypothetical in laws in so far as they set up conditions. I suggest that such terms as space-time, change, event, probability, and fact, can only be properly accounted for and understood in

seunt causality, immanent causality, and emergent causality. These distinctions will be situational in character but also qualli-

the light of an adequate ontology. It is

tative. I shall attempt to give the notion

the case. By

linking

causality

with

substance,

taken in a dynamic or activistic sense, I’

shall be led to distinguish between tran-

METAPHYSICS of

emergence

a

117 rational

ontological

of these

activities

concern

themselves,

ground. It is my thesis that the ontological categories are intrinsically related and that each fades to the extent it is taken from its connection with the others. The

would hold, with self and things rather than with sensations and feelings. Here is where denotative realism makes a pro-

ontological situation, as I see it, is analo-

For many reasons, some of which were connected with his views of space and time, Kant turned his back upon physical

gous to what the logicians call entailment. It is as though substance were a super-

found

difference

to epistemic

analysis.

ordinate category which found implica-

realism and embraced a phenomenalism

tion and expression in subordinate ones such as causality, activity, potentiality, space, and time. In other words, these subordinate categories are adjectival in nature and expose the dynamic and structural nature of substance. Certainly, one reason for the historical desiccation of the category of substance was its abstraction from these subordinate categories. Only in this fashion did it become “something I know not what” or the reflection of the subject-predicate form. Even the idealist’s substitution of self or person for it represents in part this désiccation. We shall, in fact, see that self-awareness is a significant source of the proper apprehension of the category of substance, though it must be taken in the

for which knowing was a structing, Hence, though more aware than Hume meanings, he did not give significance.

context

of emergence

naturalism. Since Hume—and

or

that

evolutionary is one

of his

recognized glories—no discussion of causality can get intelligently under way without attention being paid to the epistemic side. How do we apprehend this category? And why, and by what right, do we apply it both to ourselves and the things around us? Kant drove these further questions home. Now I take all categories, from the epistemic side, to be gradually apprehended concepts grasped within experience. And I further suppose such appre-

hension

not to be arbitrary but to be

based upon traits of cognitional and conational, or practical, experience. Both

|

kind of conhe was even of categorial them realistic

Now I take substance to be a category to whose full conception all our knowledge of self and things is necessary. It is to me analysable in the sense that any adequate conceptual apprehension of it involves such meanings as endurance, activities, potentialities, causality, etc. As I see it, such conceptual apprehension is mediated by all relevant knowledge of a generic sort. I doubt that the category of substance excludes even space and time when these are grasped as categorial meanings and not merely equated with scientific measurements. In short, substance is an abstract, but internally com-

plex, concept, and to brush it aside as a mere projection of the subject-predicate linguistic form seems to me the height of absurdity. In order that we may keep our promised integration of epistemology and ontology let us try to see how this approach to substance through both self

and things affects the interpretation of this category. It is clear that we must distinguish between the generic characteristics of substance and the specific characteristics which

distinguish

one

level

of

nature

REALISM

118

AND

ANALYSIS

from another, I take it that new capacities

causality shares an analogous fate and,

emerge which are yet compatible with the generic ones of endurance, potentiality, dynamism, and causal capacity. And it is my hypothesis that organization is the clue to such emergence. I shall have more

with it, the rational basis of induction. It is, I believe, the strategic role of philoso-

to say of this point later when I study emergent causality. At present I am primarily interested in clarifying the difference between the knowledge of self and the knowledge of things. I have argued that the categorial meanings apprehended in the concept of substance develop in the situation where we pass back and forth between senseperception and self-awareness. There is control and countercontrol, action and reaction. It is likewise clear that the body

itself helps in this linkage of the two. The body is a thing as well as the embodiment of the self. For each individual there is an ultimate epistemological difference, which he assumes

for other selves, that is, that he is

outside of other things and can only get revelatory messages from them while he is participating in the activity of its own

body-self. It is the organic self which desires, feels, judges, makes decisions. The data used in knowing the self are expressions of its activity. Nowhere else

in nature has the individual the same privileged position. And, of course, it is rationally quite understandable. We should, therefore, expect the inorganic world to be more opaque in the sense

that we are limited in its case to the

phy to emphasize the significance of a naturalistic approach to the organic self. Here we are dominated by the thought of an enduring, highly organized, and active substance which we are and by the conviction that our experiences of feeling,

thinking and deciding are one with, and expressions of, such substantial activities. Here is the perspective of empirical realism as against phenomenalism. My break with Hume should now be evident. It is at once epistemological and ontological;

and the two are inseparable though distinguishable. It rests on the thesis that empirical knowledge involves a directed claim to disclose a world which is conceptually apprehended as substantial. Because Hume ignored, or rejected, this framework and thought of. knowledge as an affair of sensory givenness, his treat-

ment of substance and causality was inevitable. °

e

.

°

.

.

The category of substantivity has no similitude to the pictorial eleatic conception of matter of the nineteenth century. We must recognize that our knowledge of physical entities is very abstract; and yet that there is nothing in its texture which conflicts with duration and agency and extensity, primary requirements of substantivity. It is in terms of these requirements that scientific concepts of space, time, quantity, and causality, can

kind of descriptive knowledge disclosed by sensory data. The result is what I called an epistemological translation, or spreading out, especially marked as regards scientific space and time, and a tendency to feel a trifle bewildered by the category of substance itself. It is not

called their descriptive spreading out comprehended. Duration and agency disclose themselves in our experience in terms of time. And the operations of remembering, anticipating, and dating,

surprising,

spread

therefore, to find that even

be rationally understood and what I have

out

our

knowledge

of

events,

METAPHYSICS which are cognized facts in nature. We recognize not themselves realities the agency, or activity,

119 about activities that events are but presuppose of that which

durationally exists. Many of the paradoxes of time could have been avoided had this ontological basis for time been grasped. The present in contrast to the past and the future is only more actual

in the sense that it refers to the actual activities of enduring substances. It does not then mean a stretch of time but the source and basis of time. Such is the only meaning I can give to the haunting sense of an absolute now. Does it not express our belief that the universe, as substantial, is a field of coexistential activities? But science develops concepts in relation to techniques of measurement; and so scientific time without a categorial setting has no meaning to assign to absolute simultaneity. The theory of relativity expresses the discovery of this fact. This analysis illustrates what I mean by a philosophical supplementation of science by giving it a categorial setting. Now much the same sort of operation must be applied to causality, as used in science, to make it ontologically adequate. It is clear that the past cannot push the

present, rather that the activity of an agent in its relation or field brings something to pass. Moral decision does not represent a push from a no-longer-existing past. It is an act of self-decision, of moral agency. We must be on our guard, as I have indicated, against a static epistemic spread or else we confuse knowledge with

being. What,

then, do causal

laws

mean? Factually, a routine in nature; nomically, the potency for a determinate kind of activity.

Developments in modern physics are obviously away from eleaticism and from the kind of transeunt causality character-

istic of the so-called mechanical view of the world. In field-theory transeunt causality seems to me to be a phase of the immanent causality of the field. And yet physical substances, such as electrons and protons, indicate a center of activity of a dominantly relational sort. It is only as

these combine to secure a new wholeness and substantiality that immanent causality begins to emerge as something more localized and specific to be set over against transeunt causality. In a very real sense these become correlatives, It is at the level of atoms and molecules that the idea of emergence gains its first definite applicability, though there are hints in physics of the emergence of matter from energy. But what is really implied by emergence? Surely, in order to become rational, it must secure an ontological status and be linked with substance and causality. To me it seems most plausible to connect it, as evolutionary naturalism does, not with natural piety but with causality. The fact of emergence must be explained in terms of the synthetic. rise of higher-order substances or functionally unified continuants. We must take relations and organization seriously as characteristics of

WAtures, < .». Suppose we put it in this fashion: emergence is an expression of an emergent causality which should be conceived as an activity of synthesizing upon the basis of a prior level of transeunt and immanent causality. As a term it points to the transition from transeunt to immanent causality, for it refers to the operations which make possible a higher level of substance and immanent causality. It is concerned with the genesis of what Locke called “real essences” and I would prefer to call complex constitutions. Transeunt causality involves a re-

REALISM

120

ceiving from outside, immanent causality an activity dominantly internal, emergent causality the process of integration into a new whole. There is, so far as I can see, nothing mysterious and unfactual about such an interpretation. What follows? The Aristotelian must relinquish his fixed natural kinds and his eternal forms together with his vitalistic apparatus of potency and act. Activity must be intrinsic to a substance as a whole and not to some postulated factor in it. And it must pass along the lines of relations and organization. It is foolish to create abstracta called universals and then

seek to project them

into nature.

The

ratio essendi is the reverse. Ross suggests that Aristotle was moving in a more Ionic direction in the later books of his Metaphysics. 1 think he would have moved still further in that direction were it not for his teleological astronomy and his unwillingness to think in evolutionary terms. What we need today is a materialization

of Aristotelianism. I shall have something more to say about this when I come to discuss functional teleology. It was along these lines I was thinking in Evolutionary Naturalism. With all due respect for those great thinkers, Lloyd Morgan and S. Alexander, it has been my conviction that the first was too

AND

ANALYSIS

tionary substantialism alone show promise of making the idea of emergence rational. It is clear that the fact of emergence must be distinguished from the ground of emergence much as the fact of evolu-

tion is distinguishable from the method of evolution.

And

here it seems

to me

that two basic points must be noted. The first may be stated thus: New properties do not emerge; what emerges are new substances. The second point concerns the

kind of unity brought about by emergent causality and finding expression in im manent causality. Strictly speaking, of course, properties do not emerge; it is the newly constituted

substance which does so. Properties are not adjectival entities which float around mysteriously or come from nowhere in a mysterious fashion, nor are they entities stuck on to an inert substratum as Locke at his worst suggested. Properties are laws to the effect that, if certain conditions be fulfilled, certain facts can be noted. Thus is such that it will boil under water

specified conditions. Science seeks to understand such a property by attention to the energy-structure of the molecule. Properties must express the constitution of the substance or complex of substances of which they are properties. Locke, quite

phenomenalistic in his epistemology and

obviously, had something like this in mind

sO.

when he talked of real essences. His epistemology was not realistic enough and his ontology too obscure.

was

induced

to

fall

back

in

his

ontology on an Activity with a capital A. Substantialism would have avoided this separation. Activity would

have been ot

What,

then, shall we

mean

by. the

the material substances themselves. And emergence could not escape a mysterious

constitution of a substance? It is clearly something which can emerge through

air in S, Alexander just because he had

that kind

no substance in which emergent causality

emergent

could operate. New qualities just emerged as factually as new colors apparently

points toward

the other, toward

quiver into being in the sky. No; I be

nated, togetherness. The active economy

lieve that empirical

of a substance expresses its constitution;

realism

and

evolu-

of activity causality.

we

In one

have

called

direction

genetic potentialities;

it

in

a unified, or concate-

METAPHYSICS

121

and its constitution depends upon the unified togetherness of its constituents. Once grant an active, or dynamic, nature to

which, I think, must be extended downward to simpler substances. Here, again, I would suggest that

substance and it follows that we must think in terms of equilibria, wholeness,

ontology throws light upon, and supple-

and dominance. As I see it, immanent causality must be

correlated with a type of togetherness in which causality is in some degree under the control of the constitution of a sub-

stance.

In this situation

a part-whole

relation is asymmetrical with a whole-part relation. There is, so far as I can see, no

a priori way of determining the tightness of the unity involved in higher-order substances. The economy here is so definitely temporal as well as spatial. It is interesting to note that what is apparent at the level of organisms has been shown by physics to apply, in terms of included

rhythms, to the microscopic world. Such an outlook signifies the activity and duration in we should expect that substance would have

inseparability of substance. And a higher-order rhythms of a

longer temporal span than the included ones. How could it be otherwise? To deny it would be to deny the existence of the constituted unity of the new whole. What I am driving at is that a higherorder substance must have both spatial and temporal unity. Without both we would have but atomism. Another point: the temporal unity is inseparable from the spatial spatial constitution, and the constitution, not being inert, depends upon the temporal rhythms. Only as space and time are taken in this

fashion

are

they compatible

with

the

underlying durational activity of a substance. The general economy of a substance demands the essential inseparability of structure and function. It seems that

biologists

have long realized

this fact,

ments, epistemology. To the extent that science neglects the categorial setting of its facts it is in danger of a thinness in its interpretation, Its theoretical structure is unable to give meaning to its facts, A materialistic substantialist like myself feels

that scientific knowledge about substances in their relations gets added meaning when we grasp it as knowledge about the economies of such substances in their spacial and temporal dimensions. In the strict sense physical time is always local and reflects a durational rhythm. And such rhythm is determined by the economy and constitution of the enduring substance. Such is the source and basis of time. Only by such an approach can, it seems to me, the traditional paradoxes be

escaped. We get a sense of on-moving durational activity unattainable by mere eventism. Materialistic substantialism differs from Aristotelian substantialism in its stress upon relations, upon emergence, and upon enduring constitution. It does not look upon form as either artistically imposed or vitalistically presupposed. Hence it is more Ionic and refuses to dichotomize a substance into form and matter, actuality and potency. And yet it is grateful to the Stagirite for the suggestive handling of change and continuity. | take it, also, that only in terms of endur.

ing substances with dynamic constitutions expressible in economies can we under stand powers, aptitudes, habits, and dispositions. All this becomes empirical and obvious at the level of human beings. To human

nature,

human

beings, belong powers

or

the

constitution

of

and apti-

REALISM

122

tudes. And

so complex is its economy

that aptitudes. may remain latent or may be developed. Again, the direction of the economy of a human being may activate a disposition or leave it dormant. Only in

AND

ANALYSIS

illumination rather than as a substance. Here we have a basic categorial problem. It is intrinsic to an activity and is isomorphic with it; but the activity is itself an expression of the activated substance. It is

terms of emergence and complexification

the old question of the inseparability of

can this be understood. The self is no simple thing but involves an involution of organization within organization. Both

structure and function in the economy of any system. It is my opinion that we must take endurance and accumulation

external and internal knowledge indicate

seriously and always regard the mindbrain as that which furnishes the matrix and medium of consciousness. In this

such a complicated pattern of endurance. For any emergent view consciousness or togetherness-in-experiencing is of criti-

fashion I am too much of a substantialist

cal importance. This primary fact must

to be a panpsychist.

be approached both genetically and functionally. The functional interpretation, while tremendously significant, does not seem to me particularly baffling. From this point of view consciousness must be conceived as a qualitative dimension of the activity. of the self expressive of, and significant for, the functional togetherness

The genetic, or evolutionary, approach to the fact of consciousness turns for me on the above status of consciousness. Quite clearly, it is to be correlated with

of the brain-mind. It would* seem

that

here—and here alone—do we have empirical verification of functional wholeness. At least, this is the case if we take introspection as truer James’s than Hume’s form of mental atomism. And I take it that psychology has been moving in this direction. Since emergent causality implies both substantial and functional wholeness, we have here a confirmation of the theory. And, as I have so frequently pointed out, here by the very nature of the situation can the individual have some measure of inside information about a high-level substance. There is nothing about external knowledge, which is very abstract and descriptive, which conflicts with this quite obvious fact. I feel that consciousness must be correlated with the activity of a very complicated and enduring substance. It is for this reason

that we all tend to think of it as an

rather complicated functions. And

it is

something which appears and disappears with the passage from latency to activation. By its very nature we have nothing to contrast it with. It stands to me as an indication that being always has an intrinsic nature, that it is mot qualitatively vacuous, to use Whitehead’s term. The

best our reason can do—it seems to me— is to ground consciousness in this basic qualitativeness of all substance. Here is

its emergent

potentiality.

We

cannot

inspectively trace it in a genetic way, for the last term alone is open to inspection.

But I can see no reason to assume a complete discontinuity. Consciousness, as I see it, is adjectival, expressive, intrinsic to functional activity. If emergent causality signifies the generation of higherorder substances we must expect basic novelties.

I must turn in conclusion to the question of teleology. My logical path is already indicated. An enduring wholeness with an immanent causal economy implies the rejection of eleatic mechanism, Science is already moving away from

METAPHYSICS

123

pictorial notions based on molar happenings. The field, relations, tensions, equilibria, become relevant terms. But evolutionary substantialism would emphasize immanent causality as the locus of any-

thing akin to purpose. It is important to get rid of dominance by mensurational time and to stress what I have called the source and basis of time. The more there is of immanent causality, the more important in the economy becomes functioning and its expression, order. It will be recalled that I asserted that all agency is durational like substance itself; that is, there are no mathematical instants in nature, no such existential dis-

continuity as Descartes supposed. It follows that any subsystem has its native

durational

act in relation

to its environment.

But to the extent there is self-direction there is escape from blindness and chance. As I see it, the brain-mind is an organ for the highest type of self-direction. Let me now state in conclusion some of the principles which any philosophy of nature should explore:

(1) The

category

of causality

must

be put in its ontological context, which is

that of substantive being both endurant and spatial. (2) Properly understood, categories involve one another. (3) Aristotelianism

must

be _ pro-

foundly modified by a shift which re-

conceived as temporal as well as spatial. The nature of a high-order substance involves activities so related that one spreads into another. It is this ordered packing of tendencies, habits and dispositions like an organic spring that accounts for ordered and integrated behavior. Purpose can be understood only on the background of durational organization, Events flow out from such an economy much as music takes its origin from a record, only here the connection is brought about externally by means of a needle sliding from one indentation to another. What I am arguing for is a teleology of self-direction rather than a teleology of finalism, a teleology intrinsic to an

places a vitalistic form by an immanent organization.

which

is both

must

must

be

economy

rhythm. Wholeness

I am not forgetting that such immanent causality must be adjusted to the play of transeunt causality, for the organism

spatial

and

temporal. In such immanent causality traditional ideas of pushes from the past or pulls from the future are transcended.

A high-order substance makes

its own

time in terms of its economy. In all this

(4) Realistic empiricism with the recognition of categorial meanings represents a more adequate epistemology than phenomenalistic empiricism. (5) Relativity is epistemic and not ontological.

(6) The basis and source of time is activity within and between substances. (7) There are three main causality, transeunt, emergent,

manent. (8) Properties emerge

by themselves

enduring types of and im-

do not

but higher-order substances

do.

(9) Consciousness is the only “natural isolate” we can be acquainted with. It shows that deing has a qualitative dimension.

(10) Immanent

causality is self-direc-

tional. Mind is the highest level of such

functional, self-directional teleology.

Theory of Knowledge OOO

DOODOVODVOOOODVDO OOOO OOOO OOoeowrl—m—>

The Program and First Platform

of Six Realists EDWy Rawex

is famous

UN®8 HOLL

for its disagree-

ments, which have contributed not a little

towards bringing it into disrepute as being

cal.

fied, and a way opened for real progress, that the undersigned have come together,

unscientific, subjective, or temperamental. These disagreements are due in part, no doubt, to the subject matter of philosophy,

deliberated, and endeavored to reach an agreement. Such cooperation has three fairly distinct, though not necessarily successive stages: first, it seeks a statement of

but chiefly to the lack of precision and uni-

fundamental

formity in the use of words and to the lack of deliberate cooperation in research. In

secondly, it aims at a program of construc-

having these failings philosophy still dif-

these principles and doctrines; finally, it endeavors to obtain a system of axioms, methods, hypotheses, and facts, which

fers widely from such sciences as physics and chemistry. They tend to make it seem mere opinion; for through the appearance of many figurative or loose expressions in

principles

and

doctrines;

tive work following a method founded on

have been so arrived at and formulated that at least those investigators who have cooperated can accept them as a whole. After several conferences the undersigned have found that they hold certain

the writings of isolated theorists, the impression is given that philosophical problems and their solutions are essentially personal. This impression is strengthened by the fact that philosophy concerns itself with

doctrines in common.

Some of these doc-

emotions, temperaments, and taste. A con-

trines, which constitute a realistic platform,

spicuous result of this lack of cooperation, common terminology, and a_ working agreement as to fundamental presuppositions is that genuine philosophical prob-

they herewith publish in the hope of carrying out further the program stated above. Each list has a different author, but has been discussed at length, revised, and | agreed to by the other conferees. The six

lems have been obscured, and real philosophical progress has been seriously hindered.

lists, therefore, though differently formulated, are held to represent the same doc-

It is therefore with the hope that by cooperation genuine problems will be re-

trines, By conferring on other topics, by interchange of ideas, and by systematic criti-

vealed, philosophical thought will be clari124

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

cism of one another’s _ phraseology, methods, and hypotheses, we hope to develop a common technique, a common terminology, and so finally a common doctrine which will enjoy some measure of that authority which the natural sciences possess. We shall have accomplished one of our purposes if our publications tempt other philosophers to form small cooperative groups with similar aims. Edwin B. Holt, Harvard University. Walter T. Marvin, Rutgers College. W. P. Montague, Columbia University. Ralph Barton Perry, Harvard University. Walter B. Pitkin, Columbia University. E. G. Spaulding, Princeton University.

1. The entities (objects, facts, etc.) under study in logic, mathematics, and the physical sciences are not mental in any usual or proper meaning of the word “mental.” 2. The being and nature of these entities are in no sense conditioned by their being known. 3. The degree of unity, consistency, or connection subsisting among entities is a matter to be empirically ascertained. 4. In the present stage of our knowledge there is a presumption in favor of pluralism. 5. An entity subsisting in certain rela-

tions to other entities enters into new relations without necessarily negating or altering its already subsisting relations. self-consistent

or

satisfactory

logic (or system of logic) so far invented countenances the “organic” theory of

knowledge or the “internal” view of relations.

7. Those who assert this (anti-realistic) view, use in their exposition a logic which

is inconsistent with their doctrine. EDWIN

II

_ 1. Epistemology is not logically fundamental. 2. There are many existential, as well as non-existential, propositions which are logically prior to epistemology.’ 3. There are certain principles of logic which are logically prior to all scientific and metaphysical systems. One of these is that which is usually called the external view of relations. 4. This view may be stated thus: In the

proposition, “the term a is in the relation R to the term 3,” aR in no degree constitutes 5, nor does Rb constitute a, nor does

R constitute either @ or 8.

I

6. No

125

B. HOLT.

1Some of the principles of logic are logically prior to any proposition that is deduced from other propositions. The theories of the nature of knowledge and of the relation of knowledge to its object are for this reason logically subsequent to the principles of logic. In short, logic is logically prior to any epistemological theory. Again, as theories of reality are deduced and are made to conform to the laws of logic they too are logically subsequent to logic; and in so far as logic is logically present in them it is itself a theory or part of a theory of reality. 2 The terms knowledge, consciousness, and experience found in common sense and in psychology are not logically fundamental, but are logically subsequent to parts at least of a theory of reality that asserts the existence of terms and relations which are not consciousness or experience. E.g., the psychical is distinguished from the physical and the physiological. Now idealism has not shown that the terms knowledge, consciousness, and experience of its epistemology or of its theory of reality are logically fundamental or indefinable, nor has it succeeded in defining them without logically prior terms that are elsewhere explicitly excluded from its theory of reality. In short, idealistic epistemologists have

borrowed

the terms

knowledge,

con-

sciousness, and experience from psychology, but have ignored or denied the propositions in psychology that are logically prior. In other words, episte-

mology

has not

thus far made

itself logically

independent of psychology nor has it freed itself logically from the common-sense dualism of psychology. On the contrary, epistemology from Locke until to-day has been and has remained,

least, a branch of psychology.

in part at

REALISM

126

5. It is possible to add new propositions

epistemological

AND idealism

ANALYSIS which

denies

without

that things can exist apart from an ex-

thereby requiring any* modification of those bodies of information. 6. There are no propositions which are (accurately speaking) partly true and partly false, for all such instances can be logically analyzed into at least two propositions one of which is true and the other false. Thus as knowledge advances only two modifications of any proposition of

perience of them, or independently of the cognitive relation. 3. The point at issue between realism and idealism should not be confused with the points at issue between materialism and spiritualism, automatism and interactionism, empiricism and rationalism, or

to some

bodies of information

the older knowledge are logically possible; itican bevxejected -as~falseyor: it ¢can pbe analyzed into at least two propositions one of which is rejected. As corollaries of the foregoing: 7. The nature of reality cannot be inferred merely from the nature of knowledge. 8. The entities under study in logic, mathematics, physics, and many other sciences are not mental in any proper or usual meaning of the word mental. g. The proposition, “This or that object is known,” does not imply that such object is conditioned by the knowing. In other words, it does not force us to infer that such object is spiritual, that it exists only as the experiential content of some mind, or that it may not be ultimately real just as known. WALTER T. MARVIN. Il I. The Meaning of Realism. 1. Realism holds that things

known

may continue to exist unaltered when they are not known, or that things may pass in and out of the cognitive relation without prejudice to their reality, or that the existence of a thing is not correlated with or dependent upon the fact that anybody experiences it, perceives it, conceives it, or is in any way aware of it. 2. Realism is opposed to subjectivism or

pluralism and absolutism. Il. The Opposition to Realism. Among the various classic refutations of realism the following fallacious assumptions and inferences are prominent: 1. The Psychological Argument: The mind can have for its direct object only its own

ideas or states, and external

ob-

jects, if they exist at all, can only be known indirectly by a process of inference, of questionable validity and doubtful utility. This principle is fallacious because a knowing process is never its own object, but is rather the means by which some other object is known. The object thus known or referred to may be another mental state, a physical thing, or a merely logical entity. 2. The Intuitional Argument: This argument stands out most prominently in

the philosophy of Berkeley. It has two forms. The first consists of a confused identification of a truism and an absurdity. The truism: We can only know that objects exist, when they are known. The absurdity: We know that objects can only exist when they are known. The second form of the argument derives its force from a play upon the word idea, as follows: Every “idea” (meaning a mental process or state) is incapable of existing apart from a mind; every known entity is an “idea” (meaning an object of thought); therefore, every known entity is incapable of existing apart from a mind. It is to the failure to perceive these

THEORY

OF

127

KNOWLEDGE

fallacies that idealism owes its supposedly axiomatic character. 3. The Physiological Argument: Because the sensations we receive determine what objects we shall know, therefore the objects known are constructs or products of our perceptual experience. The fallacy here consists in arguing from the true premise that sensations are the ratio cognoscendi

of the

external

world,

to

the

false conclusion that they are therefore its ratio fiendi or essendi. Ill. The Implications of Realism 1. Cognition is a peculiar type of relation which may subsist between a living being and any entity. 2. Cognition belongs to the same world as that of its objects. It has its place in the order of nature. There is nothing transcendental or supernatural about it. 3. The extent to which consciousness pervades nature, and the conditions under which it may arise and persist, are questions which can be solved, if at all, only by the methods of empiricism and _naturalism. W. P. MONTAGUE. IV 1. The object or content of consciousness is any entity in so far as it is responded to by another entity in a specific manner exhibited by the reflex nervous system. Thus physical under certain

nature, for example, is, circumstances, directly

present in consciousness. In its historical application, this means that Cartesian dualism and the representative theory are false; and that attempts to overcome these by reducing mind and nature to one another or to some third substance, are gratuitous. 2. The specific response which determines an entity to be content of consciousness does not directly modify such

entities otherwise than to endow them with this content status. In other words, consciousness selects from a field of entities which it does not create. In its historical application, this implies the falsity of Berkeleian and _postBerkeleian idealism in so far as this asserts that consciousness is a_ general ratio essendi. 3. The response which determines an entity to be content may itself be responded to and made content in like manner. In other words, the difference between subject and object of consciousness is not a difference of quality or substance, but a difference of office or place in a configuration. In its historical application, this implies the falsity not only of the Cartesian dualism, but of all idealistic dualisms that, because they regard subject and object as non-interchangeable, conclude that the subject is either unknowable, or knowable only in some unique way such as intuitively or reflexively. 4. The same entity possesses both immanence, by virtue of its membership in one class, and also transcendence, by virtue of the fact that it may belong also to indefinitely many other classes. In other words,

immanence

and _ transcendence

are compatible and not contradictory predicates. In its historical application, this implies the falsity of the subjectivistic argument from the ego-centric predicament, 7.e., the argument that because entities are content of consciousness they can not also transcend consciousness; it also implies that, so far as based on such subjectivistic premises, the idealistic theory of a transcendent subjectivity is gratuitous. 5. An entity possesses some relations independently of one another; and the ignorance or discovery of further relations

REALISM

128

does not invalidate a limited knowledge of relations. In its historical plies the falsity of lute idealism that all of an entity’s

applications, the contention it is necessary relations in

this imof absoto know order to

know any of its relations, or that only the whole truth is wholly true. 6. The logical categories of unity, such

as homogeneity,

consistency,

coherence,

AND

ANALYSIS

1. One identical term may stand in many relations. 2. A term may change some of its relations to some other terms without thereby

changing all its other relations to those same or to other terms. 3. What relations are changed by a given change of relation

cannot

always

be deduced merely from the nature of either the terms involved or their rela-

interrelation, etc., do not in any case imply a determinate degree of unity.

tion.

Hence

object without a subject” -is pure tautology. It is confessedly a description of

the degree of unity which

the

4. The hypothesis that “there can be no

world possesses can not be determined logically, but only by assembling the results of the special branches of knowledge. On the basis of such evidence, there is a present presumption in favor of the

the cognitive situation only; and it says, in effect, that everything experienced is experienced. It becomes significant only

hypothesis that the world as a whole is

assumption

less unified than are certain of its parts. In its historical application, this implies that the great speculative monisms, such as those of Plato, Spinoza, and certain modern idealists, are both dogmatic

above given, are false. This assumption,

and contrary to the evidence.

self. 5. In no body of knowledge, not even in evidences about the nature of the knowledge relation, can we discover that possible knowledge is limited or what its limits may be. 6. Entities are transcendent to the so-

RALPH

BARTON

PERRY.

V The realist holds that things known are not products of the knowing relation nor essentially dependent for their existence or behavior upon that relation. This doctrine has three claims upon your acceptance: first, it is the natural, instinctive belief of all men, and for this, if for no other reason, puts the burden of proof

upon those who would discredit it; secondly, all refutations of it known to the present writer presuppose or even actually employ some of its exclusive implications; and, thirdly, it is logically demanded by all the observations and hypotheses of the natural sciences, including psychology. Involved more or less intimately in a realistic view are the following:

by

virtue

of

the wholly

that

unwarranted

doctrines

1, 2, and

3,

however, is fatal to the idealist’s supposed discovery,

inasmuch

as

it means

that

there can be no true propositions. In conceding this, the idealist refutes him-

called

“knowing

mind”

or

“conscious-

ness” only as a term is to the relations in which it may stand, viz., in two radically different manners: first, as the term is not identical with the particular relation in which it stands, so too a thing in the knowledge relation is not the relation itself; secondly, as the term may enter into

or go out of a particular relation, with- ° out thereby being changed essentially or destroyed, so too can an object of knowledge exist prior to and after its entrance into or removal from the knowledge relation.

Transcendence

thus

means,

in the

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

129

first place, distinctness and, in the second place, functional independence. 7. There

may

be axiomatic

truths or

intuitive truths, But the fact that a truth belongs to either of these classes does not make it fundamental or important for a theory of knowledge, much less for a theory of reality. Like all other truths, it too must be interpreted in the light of other relevant truths. 8. Though terms are not modified by being brought into new contexts, this does not imply that an existent cannot be changed by another existent.

WALTER

B. PITKIN.

those. systems which are opposed to realism can be shown to presuppose this “internal view,” but this view can be

shown to be self-contradictory and to presuppose the “external view.” 3. That position which is based in part on the acceptance and the consistent use and development of the implications of these logical doctrines which are presupposed as a condition for any position be-

ing stated, argued, and held to be true, has, thereby, a strong presumption created in favor of its truth.‘ 4. There is at least one logical doctrine and one principle which are ultimately

presupposed by any system which is held

VI 1. Realism, while admitting the tautology that every entity which is known is in relation to knowing or experience or consciousness, holds that this knowing, etc., is eliminable, so that the entity is known as it would be if the knowing were not taking place. Briefly, the entity

to be true. That doctrine is the “external view” of relations, and the principle is that truth is independent of proof, although proof is not independent of truth. The first of these means, briefly: 5. (1) That both a term and a relation are (unchangeable) elements or entities; (2) that a term may stand in one or in

is, in its being, behavior,

many

and

character,

independent of the knowing. This position agrees with common sense and with science in holding (1) that not all entities are mental, conscious, or spiritual, and (2) that entities are knowable without being known. 2. The fact that terms are in the cognitive relation does not imply that the terms are mutually dependent on, or capable of modifying, either each other or the relation, any more than this dependence, etc., is implied for any two terms in any

other relation. The proposition that there is this dependence,

“internal

view”

etc., constitutes

of relations.*

Most

the

of

3 To hold the “internal view” means, in my opinion, to hold that, in order that a relation may relate, the relation must either (1) penetrate its terms, or (2) be mediated by an underlying (transcendent) reality. From the penetration there is deduced (a) modification, or (4) similarity, or

relations

to one

or many

other

terms; and (3) that any of these terms and that some of these relations could be absent or that other terms and relations could be present without there being any resulting modification, etc., of the remaining or already present terms or rela tions. 6. By this “external view” it is made logically possible that the knowing proc(c) the generation of a contradiction. Cf. my paper, “The Logical Structure of Self-refuting Systems,” Phil. Review, XIX, 3, pp. 277-282. 4Such a system I hold to be realism, its chief feature being the interpretation of the cognitive relation in accordance with the “external view.” This “external view” can be held to be true quite consistently with itself, and is in this sense, I hold, self-consistent, as is also, in my opinion, realism. Accordingly I hold further that realism is not a merely dogmatic system, and that, as self-consistent, it refutes and does not merely contradict certain opposed systems which, as based on the “internal view,” are self-refuting.

AND

REALISM

130

ess and its object should be qualitatively dissimilar. (Cf. 1.) 7. The principle (sees4) means, that, while on the one hand no proposition is so certain that it can be regarded as exempt from examination, criticism, and the demand for proof, on the other hand, any proposition, if free from self-contradic-

tion, may be true (in some system). In this sense every proposition

is tentative,

even those of this platform. Corollary—It is impossible

to get a

ANALYSIS

really is in some respects without its being known in all respects and without the other entities to which it is related being

known, so that knowledge can increase by

accretion. consciousness,

g. Knowing,

etc.,

are

facts to be investigated only in the same way as are other facts, and are not necessarily more important than are other facts.

10. The form,

position stated in this plat-

which

is a

position

concerning

criterion, definition, theory, or content for the concept “absolute” by which it can be absolutely known or proved that any

knowing as well as other things, can apply to itself, as a special instance of knowledge, all its own propositions about

criterion, definition, theory, or content

knowledge.°

1s

absolutely true, 7.e., is more than tentative.

The most that can be claimed for such a criterion, etc., is that it may be absolutely true, although not proved to be. 8. Any entity may be known as it

EDWARD

GLEASON

SPAULDING.

5] hold that for this reason

the position here

stated is self-critical, and that it is this which distinguishes it from a large class of historical systems, notably phenomenalism, subjective and objective idealism, and

absolutism.

Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description BERFRAN D RUSSELE In the preceding chapter we saw that there are two sorts of knowledge: knowledge of things, and knowledge of truths.

In this chapter we shall be concerned exclusively with knowledge of things, of which in turn we shall have to distinguish two kinds. Knowledge of things, when it is of the kind we call knowledge

by acquaintance, is essentially simpler than any knowledge of truths, and logically independent of knowledge of truths, though it would be rash to assume

that human

beings

ever,

in fact, have

acquaintance with things without at the same time knowing some truth about them. Knowledge of things by description, on the contrary, always involves, as

we shall find in the course of the present chapter, some knowledge of truths as. source and ground. But first of all must make clear what we mean “acquaintance” and what we mean “description.”

its’ we by by

We shall say that we have acquaintance

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge of

truths. Thus in the presence of my table I am acquainted with the sense-data that make up the appearance of my table— its colour, shape, hardness, smoothness, etc.; all these are things of which

I am

immediately conscious when I am seeing and. touching my table. The particular shade of colour that I am seeing may have many things said about it—I may say that it is brown, that it is rather dark, and so on. But such statements, though they make me know truths about the colour, do not make me know the colour itself any better than I did before: so far as concerns knowledge of the colour itself, as opposed to knowledge of truths about it, I know the colour perfectly and completely when I see it, and no further knowledge of it itself is even theoretically possible. Thus the sense-data which make up the appearance of my table are things with which I have acquaintance, things immediately known to me just as they

131 “such-and-such sense-data are caused by a physical object.” There is no state of mind in which we are directly aware of the table; all our knowledge of the table is

really knowledge of truths, and the actual thing which is the table is not, strictly speaking, known to us at all. We know a description, and we know that there is just one object to which this description applies, though the object itself is not directly known to us. In such a case, we say that our knowledge of the object is

knowledge by description. All our knowledge, both knowledge of things and knowledge of truths, rests

upon acquaintance as its foundation. It is therefore important to consider what kinds of things there are with which we have acquaintance. Sense-data, as we have already seen, are

knowledge. Such as it is, it is obtained

among the things with which we are acquainted; in fact, they supply the most obvious and striking example of knowledge by acquaintance. But if they were the sole example, our knowledge would be very much more restricted than it is. We should only know what is now present to our senses: we could not know anything about the past—not even that there was a past—nor could we know any

through acquaintance with the sense-data that make up the appearance of the

truths about sense-data, for all our knowledge of truths, as we shall show,

are. My knowledge of the table as a physical object, on the contrary, is not direct

table. We have seen that it is possible,

demands acquaintance with things which

without absurdity, to doubt there is a table at all, whereas

whether it is not

are of an essentially different character from sense-data, the things which are

possible to doubt the sense-data. My knowledge of the table is of the kind which we shall call “knowledge by de-

sometimes called “abstract ideas,” but which we shall call “universals.” We have therefore to consider acquaintance with

scription.” The table is “the physical object which causes such-and-such sense-data.” This describes the table by means of the

other things besides sense-data if we are

sense-data. In order to know anything at all about the table, we must know truths connecting it with things with which we

have acquaintance: we must know that

to obtain any tolerable adequate analysis of our knowledge. The first extension beyond sense-data to be considered is acquaintance by memory. It is obvious that we often remember what we have seen or heard or had otherwise

REALISM

132 present to our senses, and that in such cases we are still immediately aware of what we remember, in spite of the fact

that it appears as past and not as present. This immediate knowledge by memory is

the source of all our knowledge concerning the past: without it, there could be no knowledge

of the past by inference,

since we should never know that there was anything past to be inferred.

The next extension to be considered is acquaintance by introspection. We are not only aware of things, but we are often aware of being aware of them. When I see the sun, I am often aware of my seeing the sun; thus “my seeing the sun” is an

object with which I have acquaintance. When I desire food, I may be aware of my desire for food; thus “my desiring food” is an object with which I am acquainted. Similarly we may be aware of our feeling pleasure or pain, and generally of the events which happen in our minds, This kind of acquaintance, which may be called self-consciousness, is the source of

all our knowledge of mental things, It is obvious that it is only what goes on in our own minds that can be thus known im-

mediately. What goes on in the minds of others is known to us through our perception of their bodies, that is, through the sense-data in us which are associated with their bodies. But for our acquaintance with the contents of our own minds, we should be unable to imagine the minds of others, and therefore we

could never ar-

tive at the knowledge

that they have

minds. It seems natural to suppose that self-consciousness is one of the things that distinguish men from animals: animals, we may suppose, though they have acquaintance with sense-data, never become aware of this acquaintance. I do not mean that they doubt whether they exist, but that

AND

ANALYSIS

they have never become conscious of the

fact that they have sensations and feelings, nor therefore

of the fact that they, the

subjects of their sensations and feelings, exist. We have spoken of acquaintance with the contents of our minds as se/f-consciousness, but it is not, of course, consciousness of our se/f: it is consciousness of particular

thoughts

and

feelings.

The

question

whether we are also acquainted with our bare selves, as opposed to particular

thoughts and feelings, is a very difficult one, upon which it would be rash to speak positively. When we try to look into our-

selves we always seem to come upon some particular thought or feeling, and not upon the “I” which has the thought or feeling, Nevertheless there are some rea-

sons for thinking that we are acquainted with the “I,” though the acquaintance is hard to disentangle from other things. To make

clear what

sort of reason

there is,

let us consider for a moment what our acquaintance with particular thoughts really involves. When I am acquainted with “my seeing the sun,” it seems plain that I am ac-

quainted with two different things in relation to each other. On the one hand there is the sense-datum which represents the sun to me, on the other hand there is that which sees this sense-datum, All acquaintance, such as my acquaintance with the sense-datum. which represents the sun, seems obviously a relation between the person acquainted and the object with

which the person is acquainted. When a case of acquaintance is one with which I can be acquainted (as I am acquainted. with my acquaintance with the sensedatum representing the sun), it is plain that the person acquainted is myself. Thus, when I am acquainted with my seeing the sun, the whole fact with which I am ac-

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

133

quainted is “Self-acquainted-with-sensedatum.” Further, we know the truth “I am acquainted with this sense-datum.” It is hard to see how we could know

this truth, or

even understand what is meant by it, unless we were acquainted with something which we call “I.” It does not seem necessary to suppose that we are acquainted with a more or less permanent person, the same to-day as yesterday, but it does seem as though we must be acquainted with that thing, whatever its nature, which sees

the sun and has acquaintance with sensedata. Thus, in some sense it would seem we must be acquainted with our Selves as opposed to our particular experiences. But the question is difficult, and complicated arguments can be adduced on either side. Hence, although acquaintance with ourselves seems probably to occur, it is not wise to assert that it undoubtedly does

occur. We may therefore sum up as follows what has been said concerning acquaintance with things that exist. We have acquaintance in sensation with the data of the outer senses, and in introspection with the data of what may be called the inner sense—thoughts, feelings, desires, etc.; we have acquaintance in memory with things which have been data either of the outer senses or of the inner sense. Further, it is probable, though not certain, that we have acquaintance

with Self, as that which

is

aware of things or has desires towards things. In addition to our acquaintance with particular existing things, we also have acquaintance with what we shall call universals, that is to say, general ideas, such as whiteness,

diversity, brotherhood,

and so on. Every complete sentence must contain at least one word which stands for a universal, since all verbs have a mean-

ing which is universal. We shall return to universals later on, in Chapter IX; for the present, it is only necessary to guard against the supposition that whatever we can be acquainted with must be something particular and existent. Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a univer-

sal of which

we

are aware

is called a

concept. It will be seen that among the objects with which we are acquainted are not in-

cluded physical objects (as opposed

to

sense-data), nor other people’s minds. These things are known to us by what I call “knowledge by description,” which we must now consider. By a “description” I mean any phrase of the form “a so-and-so” or “the so-and-so.” A phrase of the form “a so-and-so” I shall call an “ambiguous” description; a phrase of the form “the so-and-so” (in the singular) I shall call a “definite” description. Thus “a man” is an ambiguous description, and “the man with the iron mask” is a definite description. There are various problems connected with ambiguous descriptions, but I pass them by, since they do not directly concern the matter we are discussing, which is the nature ot our knowledge concerning objects in cases where we know that there is an object answering to a definite description, though we are not acquainted with any such object. This is a matter which is concerned exclusively with definite descriptions. I shall therefore, in the sequel, speak simply of “descriptions” when I mean “definite descriptions.” Thus a description will mean any phrase of the form

“the so-and-so” in the singular. We shall say that an object is “known

by description” when we know that it is “the so-and-so,” i.e.. when

we know

that

there is one object, and no more, having a certain property; and it will generally

REALISM

134

AND

ANALYSIS

be implied that we do not have knowledge of the same object by acquaintance. We know that the man with the iron

Common words, even proper names, are usually really descriptions. That is to

mask existed, and many propositions are known about him; but we do not know

using a proper name correctly can generally only be expressed explicitly if we

who he was. We know that the candidate

replace the proper name by a description. Moreover, the description required to express the thought will vary for different

who gets the most votes will be elected, and in this case we are very likely also acquainted (in the only sense in which one can be acquainted with some one else) with the man who is, in fact, the candidate who will get most votes; but we

do not know which of the candidates he is, i.e., we do not know any proposition of

the form “A is the candidate who will

say, the thought in the mind of a person

people, or for the same person at different times. The only thing constant (so long as the name is rightly used) is the object to which the name applies. But so long as this remains constant, the par-

ticular description involved usually makes no difference to the truth or falsehood of the proposition in which the name appears.

get most votes” where A is one of the candidates by name. We shall say that we have “merely descriptive knowledge” of the so-and-so when, although we know that the so-and-so exists, and although we may possibly be acquainted with the object which is, in fact, the so-and-so, yet we do not know any proposition “a is the so-and-so,” where @ is something with which we are acquainted. When we say “the so-and-so exists,” we mean that there is just one object which is the so-and-so. The proposition “@ is the so-and-so” means that a has the property so-and-so, and nothing else has. “Mr. A. is the Unionist candidate for this constituency” means “Mr. A. is a

son with whom he was acquainted. In this case, if he made a judgement about himself, he himself might be a constituent of the judgement. Here the proper name has the direct use which it always wishes to have, as simply standing for a certain object, and not for a description of the object. But if a person who knew Bismarck made a judgement about him, the

Unionist

for this constituency,

case is different. What this person was

and no one else is.” “The Unionist candidate for this constituency exists” means “some one is a Unionist candidate for this constituency, and no one else is.” Thus, when we are acquainted with an

acquainted with were certain sense-data which he connected (rightly, we will suppose) with Bismarck’s body. His body, as a physical object, and still more his

candidate

object which is the so-and-so, we know

Let us take some illustrations. Suppose

some

statement

Assuming

direct

made

about

Bismarck.

that there is such a thing as

acquaintance

with

oneself,

Bis-

marck himself might have used his name

directly to designate the particular per-

mind, were only known as the body and the mind connected with these sense-data.

that the so-and-so exists; but we may know that the so-and-so exists when we are not acquainted with any object which

That is, they were known by description. It is, of course, very much a matter of

we

appearance will come into a friend’s mind when he thinks of him; thus the description actually in the friend’s mind is

know

to be the so-and-so,

and

even

when we are not acquainted with any object which, in fact, is the so-and-so.

chance which characteristics of a man’s

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

135

accidental. The essential point is that he

thing with which we are acquainted—

knows that the various descriptions all apply to the same entity, in spite of not

usually a testimony heard or read. Apart from the information we convey to others, apart from the fact about the actual Bismarck, which gives importance to our judgement, the thought we really have contains the one or more particulars in-

being acquainted with the entity in question. When we, who did not know Bismarck, make a judgement about him, the description in our minds will probably be some more or less vague mass of historical knowledge—far more, in most cases, than is required to identify him. But, for the sake

of illustration,

let us

assume that we think of him as “the first Chancellor of the German Empire.” Here all the words are abstract except “German.” The word “German” will, again, have different meanings for different people. To some it will recall travels in Germany, to some the look of Germany on the map, and so on. But if we are to obtain a description which we know to be applicable, we shall be compelled, at some point, to bring in a reference to a particular with which we are acquainted. Such reference is involved in any mention of past, present, and future (as opposed to definite dates), or of here and there, or of

what others have told us. Thus it would seem that, in some way or other, a description known to be applicable to a particular must involve some reference to a particular with which we are acquainted, if our knowledge about the thing described is not to be merely what follows logically from the description. For example, “the most long-lived of men” is a description involving only universals, which must apply to some man, but we can make no judgements concerning this man which involve knowledge about him beyond what the description gives. If, however, we say, “The first Chancellor of the German Empire was an astute diplomatist,” we can only be assured of the truth of our judgement in virtue of some

volved,

and otherwise

consists

wholly

of

concepts. All names of places—London, England, Europe, the Earth, the Solar System— similarly involve, when used, descriptions

which

start

from

some

one

or

more

particulars with which we are acquainted. I suspect that even the Universe, as considered by metaphysics, involves such a connexion with particulars. In logic, on the contrary, where we are concerned not

merely with what does exist, but with whatever might or could exist or be, no reference to actual particulars is involved. It would seem that, when we make a statement about something only known by description, we often intend to make our statement, not in the form involving the description, but about the actual thing described. That is to say, when we say anything about Bismarck, we should like, if we could, to make the judgement which Bismarck alone can make, namely, the judgement of which he himself is a constituent. In this we are necessarily defeated,

since the actual

Bismarck

is un-

known to us. But we know that there is an object B, called Bismarck, and that B was an astute diplomatist. We can thus describe the proposition we should like to affirm, namely, “B was an astute diplomatist,” where B is the object which was Bismarck. If we are describing Bismarck

as “the first Chancellor of the German Empire,” the proposition we should like to affirm may be described as “the proposition asserting, concerning the actual object which was the first Chancellor

REALISM

136

AND

ANALYSIS

Empire, that this object

is this: Every proposition which we can un-

was an astute diplomatist.” What enables

derstand must be composed wholly of con-

us to communicate in spite of the varying descriptions we employ is that we know there is a true proposition concerning the actual Bismarck, and that however we may vary the description (so long as the description is correct) the proposition described is still the same. This proposition,

stituents with which we are acquainted.

of the German

which is described and is known

to be

true, is what interests us; but we are not acquainted with the proposition itself, and

do not know iz, though we know it is true, It will be seen that there are various stages in the removal from acquaintance with particulars: there is Bismarck to people who knew him; Bismarck to those who only know of him through history; the man with the iron mask; the longestlived of men. These are progressively further removed from acquaintance with particulars; the first comes as near to acquaintance as is possible in regard to another person; in the second, we shall still be said to know “who Bismarck was’; in the third, we do not know who was the man with the iron mask, though we can know many propositions about him which are not logically deducible from the fact that he wore an iron mask;

in the fourth, finally, we know nothing beyond what is logically deducible from the definition of the man. There is a similar hierarchy in the region of universals. Many universals, like many particulars, are only known to us by description. But here, as in the case of: particulars, knowledge concerning what is

known

by description

is ultimately

re-

ducible to knowledge concerning what is known by acquaintance. The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions

We shall not at this stage attempt to answer all the objections which may be urged against this fundamental principle. For the present, we shall merely point out that, in some way or other, it must be possible to meet these objections, for it is scarcely conceivable that we can make a judgement or entertain a supposition without knowing what it is that we are judging or supposing about. We must attach some meaning to the words we use, if we are to speak significantly and not utter mere noise; and the meaning we attach to our words must be something with which we are acquainted. Thus when, for example, we make a statement

about Julius Caesar, it is plain that Julius Caesar himself is not before our minds, since we are not acquainted with him. We have in mind some description of Julius Caesar: “the man who was assassinated on the Ides of March,” “the founder of the Roman Empire,” or, perhaps, merely “the man whose name was Julius Caesar.” (In this last description, Julius Caesar is a noise or shape with which we are acquainted.) Thus our statement does not mean quite what it seems to mean, but means something involving, instead of Julius Caesar, some description of him which is composed wholly of particulars and universals with which we are acquainted.

The chief importance of knowledge by description is that it enables us to pass beyond the limits of our private experience. In spite of the fact that we can only

know truths which are wholly composed of terms which

we have experienced

in

acquaintance, we can yet have knowledge by description of things which we have

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

137

never experienced. In view of the very narrow range of our immediate experience, this result is vital, and until it is

understood, much of our knowledge must remain mysterious and therefore doubtful.

Knowledge Is Faith Mediated by Symbols GEORGE

SANTAYANA

In the claims of memory I have a typical instance of what is called knowledge. In remembering I believe that I am taking cognizance not of a given essence but of a remote self here

existence, so that, being my-

and

now;

I can

consider

and

describe something going on at another place and time. This leap, which renders knowledge essentially faith, may come to seem paradoxical or impossible like the leap of physical being from place to place or from form to form which is called motion or change, and which some philosophers deny, as they deny knowledge. Is there such a leap in knowing? Am I really here and now when I apprehend some remote thing? Certainly, if by myself I understand the psyche within my body, which directs my outer organs, reacts on external things, and shapes the history and character of the individual animal that bears my name.,In this sense I am a physical being in the midst of nature, and my knowledge is a name for the effects which surrounding things have

upon me, in so far as I am quickened by them, and readjusted to them. I am cer-

tainly confined at each moment to a limited space and time, but may be quickened by the influence of things at any distance, and may be readjusting. myself

to them. For the naturalist there is ac-

cordingly no paradox in the leap of knowledge other than the general marvel of material interaction and animal life. If by myself, however, I meant pure spirit, or the light of attention by which essences appear and intuitions are rendered actual, it would not be true that I am confined or even situated in a particular place and time, nor that in considering things remote from my body, my thoughts are taking any unnatural leap. The marvel, from the point of view ot spirit, is rather that it should need to be planted at all in the sensorium of some living animal, and that, being rooted there, it should take that accidental station for its point of view in surveying all nature, and should dignify one momentary

phase of that animal life with the titles of the Here and the Now. It is only spirit, be it observed, that can do this. In themselves all the points of space-time are equally central and palpitating, and every phase of every psyche is a focus for actual readjustments to the whole universe. How then can the spirit, which would seem to be the principle of universality and justice, take up its station in each of these atoms and fight its battles for it, and prostitute its own light in the service of that desperate blindness? Can reason do nothing better than supply the eloquence

138

of prejudice? Such are the puzzles which spirit might find, I will not say in the leap of knowledge, but in the fatality which links the spirit to a material organ so that, in order to reach other things, it is obliged to leap; or rather can never reach other things, because it is tethered to its startingpoint, except by its intent in leaping, and cannot even discover the stepping-stone on

which it stands because its whole life is the act of leaping away from it. There is no reason, therefore, in so far as knowledge is an apanage of spirit, why knowledge should not bathe all time and all existence in an equal light, and see everything as it is, with an equal sympathy and immediacy. The problem for the spirit is how it could ever come to pick out one body or another for its cynosure and for its instrument, as if it could not see save through such a little eye-glass, and in such a violent perspective. This problem, I think, has a ready answer, but it is not one that spirit could ever find of itself, without a long and docile apprenticeship in the school of animal faith. This answer is that spirit, with knowledge and all its other prerogatives, is intrinsically and altogether a function of animal life; so that if it were not lodged in some body and expressive of its rhythms and relations, spirits would not exist at all. But this solution, even when spirit is humble enough to accept it, always seems to it a little disappointing and satirical. Spirit, therefore, has no need to leap in order to know, because in its range as spirit it is omnipresent and omnimodal. Events which are past or future in relation to the phase of the psyche which spirit expresses in a particular instance, or events which are remote from that psyche

in space, are not for that reason remote from spirit, or out of its cognitive range: they are merely hidden, or placed in a

REALISM

AND

ANALYSIS

particular perspective for the moment, like the features of a landscape by the hedges and turns of a road. Just as all essences are equally near to spirit, and equally fit and easy to contemplate, if only a psyche with an affinity to those essences happens to arise; so all existing things, past, future, or infinitely distant, are equally within the range of knowledge, if only a psyche happens to be directed

upon

them,

and

to choose

terms,

however poor or fantastic, in which to describe them. In choosing these terms the psyche creates spirit, for they are essences given in intuition; and in directing her action or endeavour, backward or forward,

upon

those

remote

events,

she

creates intent in the spirit, so that the given essences become descriptions of the things with which the psyche is then busied. But how, I may ask, can intent distinguish its hidden object, so that an

image, distorted or faithful, may be truly or falsely projected there, or used to describe 1t? How does the spirit divine that there is such an object, or where it lies? And how can it appeal to a thing which is hidden, the object of mere intent as to a touchstone or standard for its various descriptions of that object, and say to them, as they suggest themselves in turn: You are too vague, You are absurd, You are better, You are absolutely right? T answer that it does so by animal presumption, positing whatsoever object instinct is materially predisposed to cope

with, as in hunger, love, fighting, or the expectation of a future. But before developing this reply, let me make one ob- servation. Since intuition of essence is not knowledge, knowledge can never lie in an overt comparison of one datum with another datum given at the same time; even in pure dialectic, the comparison

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

is with a datum believed to have been given formerly. If both terms were simply given they would compose a complex essence, without the least signification. Only when one of the terms is indicated by intent, without being given exhaustively, can the other term serve to define

the first more fully, or be linked with it in an assertion which is not mere tautology. An object of faith—and knowledge is one species of faith—can never, even in the most direct perception, come within the circle of intuition. Intuition of things is a contradiction in terms. If philosophers wish to abstain from faith, and reduce themselves

to

intuition

of the

obvious,

they are free to do so, but they will thereby renounce all knowledge, and live on passive illusions. No fact, not even the fact that these illusions exist, would

be, or would

ever

ever have been, anything

but the false idea that they had existed. There would be nothing but the realm of essence, without any intuition of any part of it, nor of the whole: so that we should

be driven back to a nihilism which only silence and death could express consistently; since the least actual assertion of it, by existing, would contradict it. Even such acquaintance with the realm

of essence as constitutes some science or recognisable art—like mathematics or music—lies in intending and __ positing great stretches of essence not now given, so that the essences now given acquire significance and become pregnant, to my vital feeling, with a thousand things which they do not present actually, but

which I know where to look for eventu ally, and how to await. Suppose a moment ago I heard a clap of thunder, loud

and prolonged, but that the physical shock has subsided and I am conscious of repose and silence. I may find some difficulty, although the thing was so recent,

xo? in rehearsing even now the exact volume, tone, and rumblings of that sound; yet I know the theme perfectly, in the sense that when it thunders again, I can say with assurance whether the second crash was longer, louder, or differently modulated. In such a case I have no longer an intuition of the first thunder-clap, but a memory of it which is knowledge; and I can define on occasion, up to a certain

point and not without some error, the essence given in that particular past intuition. Thus even pure essences can become objects of intent and of tentative knowl.

edge when they are not present in intuition but are approached and posited indirectly, as the essences given on another particular occasion or signified by some particular word. The word or the occasion are natural facts, and my knowledge is focussed upon them in the first instance by ordinary perception or conception ot nature; and the essence I hope to recover is elicited gradually, imaginatively, perhaps incorrectly, at the suggestion of those assumed facts, according to my quickness of wit, or my familiarity with the conventions of that art or science. In this way it becomes possible and necessary to learn about essences as if they were things, not initially by a spontaneous and complete intuition, but by coaxing the mind until possibly,

at

the

end,

it beholds

them

clearly. This is the sort of intuition which is mediated by language and by works of

fine art; also by logic and mathematics, as they are learned from teachers and out of books. It is not happy intuition of some casual datum: it is laborious recovery, up to a certain point, of the sort of essence somebody else may have intuited. Whereas intuition, which reveals an essence directly, is not knowledge, because it has no ulterior object, the designation of some essence by some sign does con.

REALISM

140

AND

ANALYSIS

vey knowledge, to an intelligent pupil, of what that essence was. Obviously such

a dogmatic sort, I mean to the assertion that the very notion of knowledge is ab-

divination

surd. One assumption is that knowledge

of essences present

elsewhere,

so that they become present here also, in so far as it is knowledge, is trebly faith. Faith first in the document, as a genuine natural fact and not a-vapid fancy of my own; for instance, belief that there is a book called the Bible, really handed down from the ancient Jews and the early Christians, and that I have not merely dreamt of such a book. Faith then in the significance of that document, that it means some essence which it is not; in this instance, belief that the sacred writers were not merely speaking with tongues but were

signifying some intelligible points in history and philosophy. Faith finally in my success in interpreting that document correctly, so that the essences it suggests to me now are the very essences it expressed originally: in other words, the belief that when I read the Bible I undérstand it as it was meant, and not fantastically. I revert now to the question how it is possible to posit an object which is not a datum, and how without knowing positively what this object is I can make it the criterion of truth in my ideas. How can I test the accuracy of descriptions by referring them to a subject-matter which is not only out of view now but which probably has never been more than an object of intent, an event which even while it was occurring was described by me only in terms native to my fancy? If I know a man only by reputation, how. should I judge if the reputation is deserved? If I know things only by representations, are not the representations the only things I know? This challenge is fundamental, and so long as the assumptions which it makes

are not challenged in turn, it drives critics of knowledge inexorably to scepticism of

should be intuition: but I have already , come to the conclusion that intuition 1s not knowledge. So long as a knowledge is demanded that shall be intuition, the issue can only be laughter or despair; for if I attain intuition, I have only a phantom object, and if I spurn that and turn to the facts, I have renounced intuition. This assumption alone suffices, therefore, to disprove the possibilityof knowledge. But in case the force of this disproof escaped us, another assumption is at hand to despatch the business, namely, the assumption that in a true description—if we grant knowledge by description—the terms should be identical with the constituents of the object, so that the idea should look like the thing that it knows. This assumption is derived from the other, or is a timid form of it; for it is supposed that I know by intuiting my idea, and that unless that idea resembled

the object I wish to know, I could not even by courtesy be said to have discovered the latter. But the intuition of an idea, let me repeat, is not knowledge; and if a thing resembling that idea happened

to exist, my intuition would still not be knowledge of it, but contemplation of the idea only. Plato and many other philosophers, being in love with intuition (for which alone they were perhaps designed by nature), have identified science with certitude, and consequently entirely condemned

what I call knowledge (which is a form of animal faith) or relegated it to an inferior position, as something merely. necessary for life. I myself have no passionate attachment.

to

existence,

world

for the intuitions

rather

than

and

value

this

it can

suggest,

for the wilderness

of facts

THEORY

OF

that compose

it. To turn away

141

KNOWLEDGE from

it

may be the deepest wisdom in the end. What better than to blow out the candle,

and to bed! But at noon this pleasure is premature. I can always hold it in reserve, and perhaps nihilism is a system— the simplest of all—on which we shall all agree in the end. But I seem to see very clearly now that in doing so we should all be missing the truth: not indeed by any false assertion, such as may separate us from the truth now, but by ignorance dumb ignorance—a dumb which, when proposed as a solution to actual doubts, is the most radical of errors,

since it ignores and virtually denies the pressure of those doubts, and their living presence. Accordingly, so long as I remain awake and the light burning, that total dogmatic scepticism is evidently an impossible attitude. It requires me to deny what I assert, not to mean

what I mean,

and (in the sense in which seeing is believing) not to believe what I see. If I wish, therefore, to formulate in any way my actual claim to knowledge—a claim which life, and in particular memory, im-

poses upon me—I must revise the premisses of this nihilism.

For I have been

led to it not by any accidental error, but

by the logic of the assumption that knowledge should be intuition of fact. It is this presumption that must be revoked. Knowledge is no such thing. it is not intramental nor internal to experience. Not only does it not require me to compare two given terms and to find them similar or identical, but it positively excludes any intuitive possession of its ob-

ject. Intuition subsists beneath knowledge, as vegetative life subsists beneath animal life, and within it. Intuition may also supervene upon knowledge, when all I have learned of the universe, and all my concern for it, turn to a playful or a hyp-

notising phantom; and any poet or philosopher, like any flower, is free to prefer intuition to knowledge. But in preferring intuition he prefers ignorance. Knowl. edge is knowledge because it has compulsory objects that pre-exist. It is incidental to the predicaments and labour of life; also to its masterful explorations and satirical moods, It is reflected from events as light is reflected from bodies. It expresses in discourse the modified habits of an active being, plastic to experience, and capable of readjusting its organic attitude to other things on the same material plane of being with itself. The place and the pertinent functions of these sev. eral things are indicated by the very attitude of the animal who notices them; this attitude, physical and practical, determines the object of intent, which discourse 1s about. When the proverbial child cries for the moon, is the object of his desire doubtful? He points at it unmistakably; yet the psychologist (not to speak of the child

himself) would have some

difficulty in

recovering exactly the sensations and and images, the gathering demands fumbling efforts, that traverse the child’s mind while he points. Fortunately all this fluid sentience, even if it could be described, is irrelevant to the question; for the child’s sensuous experience is not his objéct. If it were, he would have attained it. What his object is, his fixed gaze and outstretched arm declare unequivocally. His elders may say that he doesn’t know what he wants, which is probably true of them also: that is, he has only a ridiculously false and inconstant idea of what the moon may be in itself. But his attention is arrested in a particular direction, his appetition flows the same way; and if he may be said to know anything, he knows there is something there which he

REALISM

142 would

like to reach,

which

he would

like to know better. He is a little philosopher; and his knowledge,

if less diver-

sified and congealed, is exactly like science. The attitude of his body in pointing to the moon, and his tears, fill full his little mind, which not only reverberates to this physical passion, but probably observes it: and this felt attitude :dentifies the object of his desire and knowledge in the physical world. It determines what particular thing, in the same space and time with the child’s body, was the object of that particular passion. If the object which the

AND

feel for a moment

ANALYSIS

exactly as the child

feels in looking at the moon: and I may know that I know his feeling, and very likely he too will know that I know it, and we shall become fast friends. But this rare adequacy of knowledge, attained by dramatic sympathy, goes out to an object which in its existence is known very indirectly: because poets and religious visionaries feel this sort of sympathy with all sorts of imaginary persons, of whose existence and thoughts they have only in-

tuition, not knowledge. If I ask for evidence that such an object exists, and is not an alter ego of my private invention,

body is after is identified, that which the

I must appeal to my faith in nature, and

soul is after is identified

to my conventional

too:

no

one, I

suppose, would carry dualism so far as to assert that when the mouth waters at the sight of one particular plum, the soul may be yearning for quite another.

The same bodily attitude of the child identifies the object in the discourse of an observer. In perceiving what his senses are excited by, and which way his endeavour is turned, I can see that the object of his desire is the moon, which I too am looking at. That I am looking at the same moon as he can be proved by a little triangulation: our glances converge upon it. If the child has reached the inquisitive age and asks, ‘““What is that?” I understand what he means by “that” and am able to reply sapiently, “That is the moon,” only because our respective bodies,

in one

common

space,

are

dis-

coverably turned towards one material object, which is stimulating them simultaneously. Knowledge of discourse in other people, or of myself at other times, is what I call literary psychology. It is, or may be, in its texture, the most literal and adequate sort of knowledge of which a mind is capable. If I am a lover of children, and a good psycho-analyst, I may

assumption that this

child and I are animals of the same species, in the same habitat, looking at the same moon, and likely to have the same feelings: and finally the psychology of the tribe and the crowd may enable me half to understand how we know that we have the same feelings at once, when we actually share them. The attitude of the child’s body also identifies the object for him, in his own subsequent discourse. He is not likely to

forget a moon that he cried for. When in stretching his hand towards it he found he could not touch it, he learned that this

bright good was not within his grasp, and he made a beginning in the experience of

life. He also made a beginning in science, since he then added the absolutely true

predicate “out of reach” to the rather questionable predicates “bright” and “good” (and perhaps “edible”) with which his first glimpse had supplied him. That active and mysterious thing,. co- °

ordinate with himself, since it lay in the same world with his body, and affected it—the thing that attracted his hand, was

evidently the very thing that eluded it. His failure would have had no meaning

THEORY

OF

143

KNOWLEDGE

and would have taught him nothing—

the environment, and guiding a single ac-

that is, would not have corrected his instinctive reactions—if the object he saw and the object he failed to reach had not been identical; and certainly that object was not brightness nor goodness nor excitements in his brain or psyche, for these are not things he could ever have attempted or expected to touch. It is only things on the scale of the human senses and in the field of those instinctive reac-

tion, will report upon a single object. Even when one sense brings all the news

tions which sensation calls forth, that can

be the primary objects of human knowledge: no other things can be discriminated at first by an animal mind, or can interest it, or can be meant and believed

in by it. It is these instinctive reactions that select the objects of attention, designate their locus, and impose faith in their existence. But these reactions may be modified by experience, and the description the mind gives of the objects reacted upon can be revised, or the objects themselves discarded, and others discerned instead. Thus the child’s instinct to touch the moon was as spontaneous and as con-

I have, its reports will change from moment to moment with the distance, variation, or suspension of the connection between the object and my body: and this

without any relevant change in the object itself. Nay, often the very transformation of the sensation bears witness that the object is unchanged; as music and laughter, overheard as I pass a tavern, are felt and known to continue unabated, and to be no merriment of mine, just because they fade from my ears as I move away.

The object of knowledge

being that

designated in this way by my bodily attitude, the aesthetic qualities I attribute

to it will depend on the particular sense it happens to affect at the moment, or on the sweep and nature of the reaction

which it then calls forth on my part. This

heterogeneous sensations of light and of

diversity in signs and descriptions for a single thing is a normal diversity. Diversity, when it is not contradiction, irritates only unreasonably dogmatic people; they are offended with nature for having a rich vocabulary, and sometimes speaking a language, or employing a syntax, which they never heard at home. It is an innocent prejudice, and it yields easily in a

disappointment.

of

generous mind to pleasure at the wealth

sense or of discourse, by which the child

of alternatives which animal life affords. Even such contradictions as may arise in the description of things, and may truly demand a solution, reside in the implication of the terms, not in their sensuous or rhetorical diversity: they become contradictory only when they assign to the

fident at first as his instinct to look at it,

and the object of both efforts was the same, because the same external agency aroused them, and with them the very These

various terms

described the object under whose attrac-

tions and rebuffs he was

living, were

merely symbols to him, like words.

An

animal naturally has as many signs for an object as he has sensations or emotions in its presence. These signs are miscellaneous essences—sights, sounds, smells, contacts, tears, provocations—and they are al-

ternative or supplementary to one another, like words most

diverse

in different senses,

sight, if summoned

such

languages. as

smell

The and

to the same point in

object contrary movements

or contrary

effects, not when they merely exhibit its various appearances. Looking at the moon, one man may call it simply a light in the sky; another, prone to dreaming awake, may call it a virgin goddess; a more. ob-

REALISM

144 servant person, remembering that this luminary is given to waxing and waning, may call it the crescent; and a fourth, a full-fledged astronomer, may say (taking the esthetic essence before him merely for a sign) that it is an extinct and opaque

spheroidal satellite of the earth, reflecting

AND

ANALYSIS

actuality. The terms of astronomy are essences no less human and visionary than those of mythology; but they are the fruit of a better focussed, more chastened, and

more

prolonged

attention

turned

upon

what actually occurs; that is, they are kept closer to animal faith, and freer

the light of the sun from a part of its

from pictorial elements and the infusion

surface.

of reverie. In myth, on the contrary, in tuition wanders idly and uncontrolled; it makes epicycles, as it were, upon the re-

All these descriptions

envisage

the same object—otherwise no relevance, conflict, or progress could obtain among them. What that object is in its complete constitution and history will never be known by man; but that this object exists in a known space and time and has traceable physical relations with all other physical objects is a fact posited from the beginning; it was posited by the child when he pointed, and by me when I saw

him point. If it did not so exist and (as sometimes happens) he and I were suffering from a hallucination, in thinking we were pointing at the moon we should be discoverably pointing at vacancy: explora-

tion would eventually satisfy us of that fact, and any bystander would vouch for it. But if in pointing at it we were pointing to it, its identity would be fixed without more ado; disputes and discoveries concerning it would be pertinent and soluble, no matter what diversity there might be in the ideal essences— light, crescent, goddess, or satellite— which we used as rival descriptions of it while we pointed. I find that the discrimination of essence brings a wonderful clearness into this subject. All data and descriptions—light, crescent, goddess, or satellite—are equally essences,

terms

of human

discourse,

in-

existent in themselves. What exists in any instance, besides the moon and our various reactions upon it, is some intuition, expressing those reactions, evoking that essence, and lending it a specious

flex arc of perception; the moonbeams bewitch some sleeping Endymion, and he dreams of a swift huntress in heaven. Myth is nevertheless a relevant fancy, and genuinely expressive; only instead of be-

ing guided by a perpetual fresh study of the and

object posited

encountered

by animal

in action,

it runs

faith into

marginal comments, personal associations, and rhetorical asides; so that even if based originally on perception, it is built upon principles internal to human discourse, as are grammar,

rhyme, music, and morals.

It may be admirable as an expression of these principles, and yet be egregiously false if asserted of the object, without discounting the human medium in which it has taken form. Diana is an exquisite symbol for the moon, and for one sort of human

loveliness; but she must not be

credited with any existence over and above that of the moon, and of sundry short-skirted Dorian maidens. She is not other than they: she is an image of them,

the best part of their essence distilled in a poet’s mind. So with the description of the

moon given by astronomers, which is not less fascinating; this, too, is no added object, but only a new image for the

moon known even to the child and me. The space, matter, gravitation, time, and

laws of motion conceived by astronomers are essences only, and mere symbols for the use of animal faith, when very en-

THEORY

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KNOWLEDGE

lightened: I mean in so far as they are alleged to constitute knowledge of a counter in action; for if astronomy is content to be a mathematical exercise without any truth, an object of pure intuition, its terms and its laws will, of course, be ultimate realities, apart from what happens to exist: realities in the realm of essence. In the description of the natural world, however, they are mere symbols, mediating animal faith. Science

the function of names; they may become signs, if discourse is intelligent and can recapitulate its phases, for the things sought or encountered in the world. The truth which discourse can achieve is truth in its own terms, appropriate description: it is no incorporation or reproduction of the object in the mind. The mind notices and intends; it cannot incorporate or reproduce anything not an intention or an intuition. Its objects are no part of itself even when they are essences, much

at any moment may recast or correct its

less when they are things. It thinks the

conceptions (as it is doing now) giving them a different colour; and the nerve of truth in them will be laid bare and made taut in proportion as the sensuous and rhetorical vesture of these notions is stripped off, and the dynamic relations of events, as found and posited by material exploration, are nakedly recorded. Knowledge accordingly is belief: belief in a world of events, and especially of those parts of it which are near the self,

self-forgetful attention which I have been calling intuition; and if it is animated, as it usually is, by some ulterior interest or pursuit, it takes the essences before it for messages, signs, or emanations sent forth to it from those objects of animal faith, and they become its evidences and _ its description for those objects. Therefore any degree of inadequacy and originality

world

which

I must

bow

tempting or threatening

to and en-

it. This belief

is native to animals, and precedes all deliberate use of intuitions as signs or descriptions of things; as I turn my head to see who is there, before I see who

it

is. Furthermore, knowledge is true belief.

It is such an enlightening of the self by intuitions arising there, that what the self imagines and asserts of the collateral

thing, with which it wrestles in action, is actually true of that thing. Truth in such presumptions or conceptions does not imply adequacy, nor a_ pictorial identity between the essence in intuition and the constitution of the object. Discourse is a language, not a mirror. The images in sense are parts of discourse, not parts of nature: they are the babble of our innocent organs under the stimulus of things; but these spontaneous images,

like the sounds of the voice, may acquire

essences, with that sort of immediate and

is tolerable in discourse, or even requisite,

when the constitution of the objects which the animal encounters is out of scale with his organs, or quite heterogeneous from his possible images. A sensation or a theory, no matter how arbitrary its terms (and all language is perfectly arbitrary), will be true of the object, if it expresses some true relation in which that object stands to the self, so that these terms are not misleading as signs, how. ever poetical they may be as sounds or as pictures. Finally, knowledge is _ true beliet grounded in experience, I mean, controlled by outer facts. It is not true by accident;

it is not

shot

into

the air on

the chance that there may be something it may hit. It arises by a movement of the self sympathetic or responsive to surrounding beings, so that these beings become its intended objects, and at the same

REALISM

146

AND

ANALYSIS

time an appropriate correspondence tends to be established between these objects and the beliefs generated under their influence. In regard to the original articles of the

that anything is going on. It is involved

animal creed—that there is a world, that there is a future, that things sought can be found, and things seen can be eaten— no guarantee can possibly be offered. I am sure these dogmas are often false; and

be at work (as I am) to disturb me or

perhaps the event will some day falsify them all, and they will lapse altogether.

directions, now in the scope of its survey, now in its accuracy, now in its depth of local penetration. The ideal of knowledge is to become natural science: if it trespasses beyond that, it relapses into intuition, and ceases to be knowledge.

But while life lasts, in one form or an-

other this faith must endure. It is the initial expression of animal vitality in the sphere of mind, the first announcement

in any pang of hunger,

of fear, or of

love. It launches the adventure of knowledge. The object of this tentative knowledge is things in general, whatsoever may awake my attention. The effort of knowl. edge is to discover what sort of world this disturbing world happens to be. Prog-

ress in knowledge lies open in various

Truth ALFRED.NORTH Section I, Truth and Beauty are the great regulative properties in virtue of which Appearance justifies itself to the immediate decision of the experient subject. The justification determines its status in the immediate occasion. The subjective form of the prehension can include immediate emphasis or attenuation, and it

can include purpose of prolongation into future or purpose of exclusion. Truth and Beauty are the ultimate grounds for emphasis and for prolongation. Of course the present can be sacrificed to the future, so that Truth or Beauty in the future can be the reason the

for the immediate

Section which

attenuation

Ii, Truth applies

to

of either.

is a qualification Appearance

alone.

WHITEHEAD Reality is just itself, and it is nonsense to

ask whether it be true or false. Truth is the conformation of Appearance to Reality. This conformation may be more or less, also direct or indirect. Thus Truth is a generic quality with a variety of

degrees and modes. In the Law-Courts, the wrong species of Truth may amount to perjury. For example, a portrait may be so faithful as to deceive the eye. Its very truthfulness them amounts to deception. A reflexion in a mirror is at once a truthful appearance and a_ deceptive appearance. The smile of a hypocrite is deceptive, and that of a_ philanthropist may be truthful. But both of them were truly smiling. Section III, The notion of Truth can be

THEORY

OF

147

KNOWLEDGE

generalized, so as to avoid any explicit

about one of the facts involves knowledge

reference to Appearance. Two objects may be such that (1) neither may be a component of the other, and (2) their

about

composite natures may include a common factor, although in the full sense of the

term their ‘essences’ are different. The two objects can then be said to have a truth-

relation to each other. The examination of one of them can disclose some factor belonging to the essence of the other. In other words, an abstraction can be made and some elements of the complete pattern can be omitted. The partial pattern thus obtained will be said to be abstracted from the original. A truth-relation will be said to connect the objective contents of two prehensions when one and the same identical partial pattern can be abstracted

from both of them. They each exhibit this same partial pattern, though their omitted elements involve the differences which belong to their diverse individualities. Plato uses the term “participation” (né0céis) to express the relation of a

composite

fact to some

partial pattern

which it illustrates. Only he limits the notion of the partial pattern to some purely abstract pattern of qualitative elements, to the exclusion

of the notion

of

concrete particular realities as components in a composite reality. This limitation is

misleading.

Thus

we

will speak of a

pattern as possibly including concrete particulars among its patterned elements. With this enlargement of meaning, we can say that two objective contents are united in a truth-relation when they severally participate in the same pattern. Either illustrates what in part the other is. Thus they interpert each other. But if we ask what is meant by “truth,” we can only answer that there is a truthrelation when two composite facts partici-

pate in the same pattern. Then knowledge

the

other,

so

far

as

the truth-

relation extends. ' The truth-relation as realized in experience always involves some element of Appearance. For the separate prehensions of the two composite facts have been integrated so that the two objects stand in the unity of a contrast with each other. There is an intuition of a limited identity of pattern involved in the contrast of the diverse essences. In virtue of this identity there is a transference of subjective form from the feeling of one object to that of the other. What is appropriate to one is appropriate to the other. The intuitive recognition of “that

is so” is the subjective form including in itself justification of its own transference from the object on one side of the contrast to the object on the other side. In this way one object as a real fact obtains a re-adjustment of the relative values of its factors by reason of its analogies to another object. In other words, it becomes a real fact tinged with Appearance. By itself, its factors would not be felt in those proportions. To know the truth partially is to distort the Universe. For example, the savage who can only

count up to ten enormously exaggerates the importance of the small numbers, and so do we whose imaginations fail when we come to millions. It is an erroneous

moral platitude, that it” is necessarily good to know the truth. The minor truth may beget the major evil, And this major evil may take the form of the major error. Henri Poincaré points out that instruments of precision, used unseasonably, may hinder the advance oi science. For example, if Newton’s imagination had been dominated by the errors in Kepler’s Laws as disclosed by modern observation, the world might still be wait-

REALISM

148 ing for the

Law

of Gravitation.

The

Truth must be seasonable. Section IV. The two*conspicuous examples of the truth-relation in human experience are afforded by propositions and by sense-perception. A proposition is the abstract possibility of some specified nexus of actualities realizing some eternal object, which may either be simple, or may be a complex pattern of simpler objects. The realization may (1) concern the complete nexus with its component occasions in assigned functions, or (2) it may concern the individual realization of the eternal object by some or all, of the component occasions, or (3) it may concern the joint realization by some

unspecified

subordinate

nexus.

All of

these alternatives merely concern the possibility of propositions of the various types, so important for the purposes of Formal Logic. But for the present discussion we need simply consider the broad fact that a proposition is the abstract possibility of an assigned nexus illustrating an assigned

pattern. No verbal sentence merely enunciates a proposition. It always includes some in citement for the production of an assigned psychological attitude in the prehension of the proposition indicated. In other words, it endeavours to fix the subjective form

which clothes the feeling of the proposition as a datum. There may be an incitement to believe, or to doubt, or to enjoy, or

to obey. This

incitement

is conveyed

partly by the grammatical mood~ and tense of the verb, partly by the whole suggestion of the sentence, partly by the whole content of the book, partly by the material

circumstances

of the book,

in-

cluding its cover, partly by the names of the author and of the publisher. In the

discussion of the nature of a proposition, a

AND

ANALYSIS

great deal of confusion has been introduced by confusing this psychological

incitement with the proposition itself. A proposition is a notion about actualities, a suggestion, a theory, a supposition about things. Its entertainment in experi-

ence sub-serves many purposes. It is an extreme case of Appearance. For actualities which are the logical subjects are conceived in the guise of illustrating the predicate. The unconscious entertainment of propositions is a stage in the transition from the Reality of the initial phase or experience to the Appearance of the final phase. In the lowest types of actualities in whose processes propositions hardly arise, there is practically no Appearance differentiating the final and initial phases. It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest, and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one. Also action in accordance with the emotional lure of a proposition is more apt to be successful if the proposition be true. And apart from action, the contemplation of truth has an interest of its own. But, after all this explanation and qualification, it remains true that the importance of a proposition lies in its interest. Nothing illustrates better the

danger of specialist sciences than the confusion due to handing over propositions for theoretical consideration by logicians, exclusively. The truth of a proposition lies in its truth-relation to the nexus which is its logical subject. A proposition is true when the nexus does in reality exemplify the pattern which is the predicate of the proposition. Thus in the

analysis of the various component factors involved the proposition, if true, seems to

THEORY

OF

149

KNOWLEDGE

be identical with the nexus. For there are

in fact qualify the regions? The answer

the same actual occasions and the same eternal objects involved. But in all analysis there is one supreme factor which is apt to be omitted, namely, the mode of togetherness. The nexus includes the eternal object in the mode of realization. Whereas in the true proposition the togetherness of the nexus and the eternal object belongs to the mode of abstract possibility. The eternal object is then united to the nexus as a mere “predicate.” Thus a nexus and a proposition belong to different categories of being. Their identification is mere nonsense. It is the nonsense of the same sort as the fashionable identification of physical fact with formulae of pure mathematics. Propositions, like everything else except experience in its own immediacy, only exist as entertained in experience. It is the peculiar function of the mental pole that the objective content of its prehensions only exists in the mode of possibility. But matter of fact essentially involves a mental pole. Thus in the analysis of an

depends

actual occasion,

we necessarily find com-

ponents belonging to the mode of possibility. The most conspicuous example of truth and falsehood arises in the comparison of existences in the mode of possibility with existences in the mode of actuality. Section

V. For animals

on

this Earth,

sense-perception is the culmination of Appearance. The sensa derived from bodily activities in the past are precipitated upon the regions in the contemporary world. The note of hypothesis, the note of mere suggested possibility is eliminated, The regions appear to the percipient as in their own right associated with the sensa. The Appearance now is, that the sensa qualify the regions.

The question then arises, Do the sensa

on what

is meant

by “in fact,”

and what is meant by “qualification.” It is here that the notion of truth and falsehood applies to sense-perception. But in the realm of truth there are many mansions; and we have to analyse the types of truth and of falsehood which sense-perception is capable of. In the first place, the primary status of the sensa as qualifications of affective tone must be kept in mind. They are pri-

marily

inherited

as such

qualifications

and then by “transmutation” are objectively perceived as qualifications of regions. The immense esthetic importance of sensa is due to this status of sensa. For the sensum as a factor in the datum of a prehension imposes itself as a qualification of the affective tone which is the subjective form of that prehension. Thus a pattern of affective tone is conformally produced by a pattern of sensa as datum, Now when a region appears as red in sense-perception, the question arises whether red is qualifying in any dominant manner the affective tones of the actualities which in fact make up the region, If so, there

is in this sense

a truth-

relation between the reality of the region and its appearance for the contemporary percipient. For example, if the light has undergone reflexions in a mirror, the appearance of the region behind the mirror affords no ground for conjecture as to the affective tones of its component

actualities, This notion of the sensa as qualifica-

tions of affective tone is a paradox for philosophy, though it is fairly obvious to common sense. A red-irritation is prevalent among nerve-racked people and among bulls. The affective tone of per. ception of a green woodland in spring

150 can only be defined by the delicate shades of the green. It is a strong esthetic emotion with the qualification of green in spring-time. The intellect fastens on smell as a datum: the animal experiences it as a qualification of his subjective feel-

ings. Our developed consciousness fastens on the sensum as datum: our basic animal experience entertains it as a type of subjective feeling. The experience starts as that smelly feeling, and is developed by mentality into the feeling of that smell.

We can also observe qualifications of moods hovering on the verge of becoming sensa, in fact functioning as sensa

for the infant, and being dismissed from that category by the developed intellect of the grown-up person. For example, the emotional moods of the mother nursing the infant, moods of love, or gaiety, or depression, or irritation, are directly perceived on the mother’s face by the infant, and are responded to. It certainly is in the highest degree improbable that the subtle

trains of thought by which our epistemologists obtain their knowledge should have occurred to speechless infants, or to dogs and horses. Direct perceptions of such moods in these cases must enter on equal terms with the other sensa. But in respect to the perception of such moods, the animal body functions vary differently from its functionings in the conveyance of sensa. Hence for the educated intellect there is a distinction of type. But in any case the infant feels its mother’s cheerfulness as a datum, and feels it conformally, with that affective tone. The datum is derived from the past, the immediate past. It is precipitated upon that present region occupied by the nexus of occasions which constitute the complex fact of the mother’s existence, body and soul. For the infant, the Appear-

ance includes the qualification of cheer-

REALISM

AND

ANALYSIS

fulness. And in this respect it may have

—it often does have—to the contemporary real mother a truth-relation in the fullest sense of the term “truth.” Section VI, The relation of senseperception to contemporary occasions can also exemplify another type of truthrelation between Appearance and Reality. The sense-perception may result from the normal functioning of the healthy

animal body. The consequent inheritance from

the

antecedent

occasions

of

the

personal soul may likewise -share in this healthy normality. Also the particular body and soul in question may share in that conformation of their reactions to those main external activities of fluent energy which is normally required for the preservation of that species of animal. Given these conditions of normality, the resulting appearance will be that proper to that species of animal under circumstances of that type. This is a fact of nature, and the Appearance expresses the issue of a Law of Nature, belonging to that cosmic epoch and to those more special conditions within that epoch. This is a truth-relation between Appearance and Reality of a more indirect character than the first sort of truth-relation. It is wider, vaguer, and more diffuse in its reference. We have perceived what wellconditioned individuals of our own type would perceive under those circum-

stances. Section VII. Within any type of truthrelation a distinction arises. The Reality

functions in the past, the Appearance is perceived in the present. On a moonless

night, the faintly luminous stretch of the sky which is the Milky Way is an Appearance of the contemporary world, namely, it is a great region within the

“Receptacle” of that world as it appears. But the Reality whose functioning issues

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

151

in that Appearance, is a flux of lightenergy travelling through the utmost depths of space and, to our imaginations, through illimitable time.

Beyond that Milky Way as it stands in sight,

at a finite

ill-defined

distance,

a

barrier separating us from the contemporary space beyond:—Does that remote activity of the transference of light-energy still persist as a contemporary fact? Perhaps the occasions whose interconnections constitute that distant region have changed the ordering of their goings-on. Stars flare out in a few days, and in a few years, their light has died. The Appearance of the contemporary regions has its truth-relations to the past, and its truthrelations to contemporary Reality. These latter truth-relations can only be estimated by an imaginative leap, which has as its basis for justification the truth-relations to the past and our experience of the stability of the types of order involved. Perhaps in the mutual immanence of occasions, although the antecedence and the consequence,—the past, the present and the future—still hold equally for physical and mental poles, yet the relations of the mental poles to each other are not subject to the same laws of perspective as are those of the physical poles. Measurable time and measurable space are then irrelevant to their mutual connections. Thus in respect to some types of Appearance there may be an element of immediacy in its relations to the mental side of the contemporary world. Other types of Appearance, such as the located sensa in sense-perception, may depend on the time and space which express the perspective arising in the mutual immanence of the physical poles. If such be the case, some types of Appearance will have a more direct relation than others to contemporary Reality.

Section VIII. There is a third type of truth-relation which is even vaguer and more indirect than the second type considered above. It may be termed the type of “symbolic truth.” This species of truth may be included under the second type, as an extreme instance of it. But on the whole,

it is clearer

to consider

it as a

distinct species. The relation of Appearance to Reality, when there is symbolic truth, is that for certain sets of percipients the prehension of the Appearance leads to the prehension of the Reality, such that the subjective forms of the two prehensions are conformal. There is however no direct causal relation between the Appearance and the Reality; so that in no direct sense is the Appearance the cause of the Reality, or the Reality the cause of the Appearance. A set of advantitious circumstances has brought about this connection between those Appearances and those Realities as prehended in the experiences of those percipients. In their own natures the Appearances throw no light upon the Realities, nor do the Realities upon the Appearances, except in the experiences of a set of peculiarly conditioned percipients. Languages and their meanings are examples of this third type of truth. There is an indirect truth-relation of the sounds or of the visual marks on paper to the propositions conveyed. We are confining the discussion to the relation of written or spoken sentences to propositions. There is a right and a wrong use of any particular language among the group of people who are properly conditioned. Also, having regard to the esthetics of literature, language not only conveys objective meaning, but also involves a conveyance of subjective form. Music, ceremonial clothing, ceremonial smells, and ceremonial rhythmic visual

152 appearances, also have symbolic truth, or symbolic falsehood. In these latter instances, the conveyance of objective meaning is at a minimum, while the conveyance of suitable subjective form is at its

height. Music provides an example when it interprets some strong sentiment, patriotic, martial, or religious, by providing the emotion which the votaries dumbly feel ought to be attached to the apprehension of national life, or of the clash of nations, or of the activities of God. Music elicits some confused feeling into distinct apprehension. It performs this service, or disservice, by introducing an emotional clothing which changes the dim objective reality into a clear Appearance matching the subjective form provided for its prehension. There is then the vague truth-relation, via community of subjective form, be-

tween the music and the resulting Appearance. There is also the truth-relation between the Appearance and the Reality —the Reality of National Life, or of Strife between nations, or of the Essence of God. This complex fusion of truthrelations, with their falsehoods intermixed, constitutes the indirect interpretative power of Art to express the truth about the nature of things. Of course a

somewhat gross, almost vulgar, instance has been given, for the sake of easy expla-

nation. But the delicate inner truth of Art is mostly of this sort. Section IX. This discussion suggests an illustrative digression on the origins of

socially diffused habits of behaviour and habits of interpretation, among human beings. An idea arises from the antecedent establishment of modes of human functioning which are germane to it. In the infancy of its incarnation in human history, it lurks in the penumbra of consciousness, undiscriminated and unex-

REALISM

AND

ANALYSIS

pressed. For the historian in later ages it

discloses itself by the dim growth of the sense of importance attached to those functionings of the tribe which dimly elicit its discrimination. But soon an inversion takes place. These modes of functioning are interpreted by some rest-

less intellects of the tribe. The behaviour patterns

then, in addition

to their own

intrinsic value for tribal life, take on the

role of an apparatus of expression. They become linked to an intellectual construction. The behaviour patterns, with their entwined emotions, evoke the apprehension of the construction. Conversely, the entertainment of the construction constitutes an urge towards the modes of behaviour. In this way, the ceremonies with their output of emotion become the mode of expression for the ideas; and the ideas become an interpretation of the ceremonies. This is the account of the primitive origination of the linkage of an idea to an apparatus of expression. The linkage between an idea and its expression has been described above as being “interpretation.” Some analysis oi this concept of “interpretation” has now to be made. Two behaviour patterns mutually interpret each other, only when some common factor of experience is realized in the enactment of either pattern. The common factor constitutes the reason for the transition from one pattern to the other pattern. Each pattern interprets the other as expressive of that common factor. Here a behaviour-pattern is merely another phrase for a mode of experience. Thus, in this sense, the enter-

tainment of a myth is one

behaviour-

pattern, and a tribal dance, or a Court ceremonial, is another behaviour pattern. Section X. But after all, it is the blunt

truth that we want. The final contentment of our aims requires something more

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

than vulgar substitutes, or subtle evasions, however delicate. The indirections of truth can never satisfy us. Our purposes seek their main justification in sheer matter-of-fact.

All

the

rest

is addition,

however important, to this foundation. Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions, The blunt truth that we require is the conformal correspondence of clear and distinct Appearance to Reality. In human experience, clear and distinct Appearance is primarily sense-perception. The blunt truth required for sense-perception is the truth of the first type, already partially discussed in Sectic. IV of this Chapter. In that section the doctrine was developed that the prehension

of a sensum,

as an

apparent object qualifying a region, involved for that prehension a subjective form also involving that sensum as a factor. We enjoy the green foliage of the spring greenly: we enjoy the sunset with an emotional pattern including among its elements the colours and the contrasts of the vision. It is this that makes Art possible: it is this that procures the glory of perceived nature. For if the subjective form of reception be not conformal to the objective sensa, then the values of the percept would be at the mercy of the chance make-up of the other components in that experience. For example, in the intuition of a multiplicity of three or four objects, the mere number imposes no subjective form. It is merely a condi-

tion regulating some pattern of effective components. In abstraction from those components, mere triplicity can dictate no subjective form for its prehension. But green can. And there lies the difference between the sensa and the abstract mathematical forms. The steady values derived from sense-

153 perception, which are there even when disregarded and even when jarring with other emotions,

exist because

the

sensa

themselves enter into the subjective forms of their physical prehensions. Section XI, The point to be decided is whether the green meadow in springtime, as it appears to us, in any direct way conforms to the happenings within the region of the meadow, and more particularly within the regions of the blades of grass. Have we any grounds for the belief that in some way things really are in those regions as our senses perceive those regions? In the first place, such conformation evidently cannot arise from the necessities of nature. The delusive perceptions prove that. Double vision, and images due to reflexion and refraction of light, show that the appearance of regions may be quite irrelevant to the happenings within regions. Appearances are finally controlled by the functionings of the animal body. These functionings and the happenings within the contemporary regions are both derived from a common past, highly relevant to both. It is thereby pertinent to ask, whether the animal body and the external regions are not attuned together, so that under nor-

mal circumstances, the appearances conform to natures within the regions. The attainment of such conformation would belong to the perfection of nature in respect to the higher types of its animal life. There is no necessity about it. Evidently there is failure, interference, and only partial adjustment. But we have to ask whether nature does not contain within itself a tendency to be in tune, an Eros urging towards perfection. This question cannot be discussed without passing beyond the narrow grounds of the truth-relation.

Logic, Semantics, and Scientific Method DSDBBBOQ

ODD

OODOLOQOLO

OO

OLOHSLOELO

LO OOOO

Some Foundations of Logic BER.DLRAND

RUSS ELL AdNDaAcls ERsi Dat ORs EE WORT EHEAD

Definitions. A definition is a declaration that a certain newly-introduced symbol or combination of symbols is to mean the same as a certain other combination of symbols of which the meaning is already known. Or, if the defining combination of symbols is one which only acquires meaning when combined in a suitable manner with other symbols,. what is meant is that any combination of symbols in which the newly-defined symbol or combination of symbols occurs is to have that meaning (if any) which results from

It is to be observed that a definition is, strictly speaking, no part of the subject in which it occurs. For a definition is concerned wholly with the symbols, not with what they symbolise. Moreover it is not true or false, being the expression of a volition, not of a proposition. (For this

reason, definitions are not preceded by the assertion-sign.) Theoretically, it is unnecessary ever to give a definition: we might always use the definiens instead, and thus wholly dispense with the definierdum. Thus although we employ

substituting the defining combination of

definitions and do not define “definition,”

symbols for combination latter occurs. definiendum

yet “definition” does not appear among our primitive ideas, because the defini-

the newly-defined symbol of symbols wherever We will give the names and definiens respectively

or the ot to

tions are no part of our subject, but are,

strictly speaking, mere typographical con-

what is defined and to that which it is

veniences.

defined as meaning. We express a definition by putting the definiendum to the left and the definiens to the right, with the sign “=” between, and the letters “Df” to the right of the definiens. It is to be understood that the sign “=” and the letters “Df” are to be regarded as together forming one symbol. The sign “=” with-

introduced

no

definitions,

our

if we

formulae

would very soon become so lengthy as to

be unmanageable;

but theoretically, all

definitions are superfluous. In spite of the fact that definitions are theoretically superfluous, it is nevertheless

true that they often convey

more im.

portant information than is contained in the propositions in which they are used. This arises from two causes. First, a

out the letters “Df” will have a different meaning, to be explained shortly. An example of a definition is pIg«==.~

Practically, of course,

definition

usually

implies

that

the

definiens is worthy of careful considera-

pigs

154

tion. Hence the collection of definitions

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

embodies our choice of subjects and our

judgment as to what is most important. Secondly, when what is defined is (as often occurs) something already familiar, such as cardinal or ordinal numbers, the definition contains an analysis of a common idea, and may therefore express a notable advance. Cantor’s definition of the continuum illustrates this: his definition amounts to the statement that what

he is defining is the object which has the properties commonly associated with the word “continuum,” though what precisely constitutes these properties had not before been known.

In such

cases,

a definition

is a “making definite”: it gives definiteness to an idea which had previously been more or less vague.

METHOD

155

ments about “all propositions” are meaningless. More generally, given any set of objects such that, if we suppose the set to have a total, it will contain

members

which presuppose this total, then such a set cannot have a total. By saying that a set has “no total,” we mean, primarily, that no significant statement can be made about “all its members.” Propositions, as the above illustration shows, must be a set having no total. The same is true, as we shall shortly see, of propositional functions, even

when

these are restricted

to such as can significantly ment a given object a. In is necessary to break up smaller sets, each of which

have as argusuch cases, it our set into is capable of a

total. This is what the theory of types aims at effecting. The principle which enables us to avoid

illegitimate THE THEORY

OF LOGICAL TYPES

I. The Vicious-Circle Principle An analysis of the paradoxes to be avoided shows that they all result from a certain kind of vicious circle.t The vicious circles in question arise from supposing that a collection of objects may contain members which can only be defined by means of the collection as a whole. Thus, for example, the collection of propositions will be supposed to contain a_ proposition stating that “all propositions are either true or false.’ It would seem, however, that such a statement could not be legitimate unless “all propositions” referred to some already. definite collection, which it cannot do if new propositions are created by statements about “all propositions.”

We shall, therefore, have to say that state1 See the last section of the present Chapter. Cf. also H. Poincaré, ‘Les mathématiques et la logique,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (Mai, 1906), p. 307.

totalities may

be stated as

follows: “Whatever involves all of a collection must not be one of the collection”; or, conversely: “If, provided a certain collection had a total, it would have

members only definable in terms of that total, then the said collection has no total.”

We shall call this the “Vicious-circle principle,” because it enables us to avoid the vicious circles involved in the assumption of illegitimate totalities. Arguments which are condemned by the vicious-circle principle will be. called “vicious-circle fallacies.” Such arguments, in certain circumstances, may lead to contradictions, but it often happens that the conclusions to which they lead are in fact true, though the arguments are fallacious. Take, for example, the law of excluded middle, in the form “all propositions are true or false.” If from this law we argue that, because the law of excluded middle is a proposition, therefore the law of excluded middle is true or false, we incur a viciouscircle fallacy. “All propositions” must be

REALISM

156

in some way limited before it becomes a

we

legitimate totality, and any limitation which makes it legitimate must make any statement about the totality fall outside the totality. Similarly, the imaginary sceptic, who asserts that he knows nothing, and is refuted by being asked if he knows that he knows nothing, has asserted nonsense, and has been fallaciously refuted by an argument which involves a vicious-circle fallacy. In order that the sceptic’s assertion may become significant, it is necessary to place some limitation upon the things of which he is asserting his ignorance, because the things of which it is possible to be ignorant form an illegitimate totality. But as soon as a suitable limitation has been placed by him upon the collection of propositions of which he is asserting his ignorance, the proposition that he is ignorant of every member of this collection must not itself be one of the collection. Hence any significant scepticism is not open to the above form of refutation.

“There

VIII. The

Contradictions

We are now in a position to show how the theory of types affects the solution of the contradictions which have beset mathematical logic... . (1) The oldest contradiction of the kind in question is the Epimenides. Epimenides the Cretan said that all Cretans

were

liars, and all other

statements

made by Cretans were certainly lies. Was this a lie? The simplest form of this contradiction is afforded by the man who says “I am lying”; if he is lying, he is speaking the truth, and vice versa. :

.

.

.

.

e

may

AND

interpret is a

his

proposition

a man

says “I am

lying,”

statement

as:

which

am

I

affirming and which is false.” That is to say, he is asserting the truth of some value of the function “I assert p, and p is false.” But we saw that the word “false” is ambiguous, and that, in order to make it unambiguous, we must specify the order of falsehood, or, what comes to the same thing, the order of the proposition to which falsehood is ascribed. We saw

also that, if p is a proposition of the nth order, a proposition in which p occurs as an apparent variable is not of the nth order, but of a higher order. Hence the

kind of truth or falsehood which

can

belong to the statement “there is a proposition p which I am affirming and which has falsehood of the mth order” is truth or falsehood of a higher order than the ath. Hence the statement of Epimenides does not fall within its own scope, and therefore no contradiction emerges. If we regard the statement “I am lying” as a compact way of simultaneously making all the following statements: “I am asserting a false proposition of the first order,” “I am asserting a_ false proposition of the second order,” and so on, we find the following curious state of things: As no proposition of the first order is being asserted, the statement “I am asserting a false proposition of the first order” is false. This statement is of the second order, hence the statement “I am making a false statement of the second order” is true. This is a statement of the third order, and is the only statement of

the third order which

is being made.

Hence the statement “I am making a false statement of the third order” is false. Thus we see that the statement “I am making a false statement of order 2n-+ 1” is false, while

(1) When

ANALYSIS

am

the statement

making a false statement

“J

of order

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

2n” is true. But in this state of things there is no contradiction.

THE THEORY

OF DEDUCTION

The purpose of the present section is to set forth the first stage of the deduction of pure mathematics from its logical foundations. This first stage is necessarily concerned with deduction itself, 7.e., with the principles by which conclusions are inferred from premisses. If it is our purpose to make all our assumptions explicit, and

to effect the deduction of all our other propositions from these assumptions, it is obvious that the first assumptions we need are those that are required to make deduction possible. Symbolic logic is often regarded as consisting of two coordinate parts, the theory of classes and the theory of propositions. But from our point of view these two parts are not coordinate; for in the theory of classes we deduce one proposition from another by means oi principles belonging to the theory of propositions, whereas in the theory of propositions we nowhere require the theory of classes. Hence, in a deductive system, the theory of propositions necessarily precedes the theory of classes, But the subject to be treated in what follows is not quite properly described as the theory of propositions. It is in fact the theory of how one proposition can be inferred from another. Now in order that one proposition may be inferred from another, it is necessary that the two should have that relation which makes the one a consequence of the other. When a proposition g is a consequence of a proposition p, we say that p implies q. Thus deduction depends upon the relation of implication, and every deductive system must contain among its premisses

METHOD

157

as many of the properties of implication as are necessary to legitimate the ordinary procedure of deduction. In the present section, certain propositions will be stated as premisses, and it will be shown that they are sufficient for all common forms of inference. It will not be shown that they are all necessary, and it is possible that the number of them might be diminished. All that is affirmed concerning the premisses is (1) that they are

true, (2) that they are sufficient for the theory of deduction, (3) that we do not know how to diminish their number. But with regard to (2), there must always be some element of doubt, since it is hard to be sure that one never uses some principle unconsciously. The habit of being rigidly guided by formal symbolic rules is a safeguard against unconscious assumptions; but even this safeguard is not always adequate. 1. PRIMITIVE IDEAS AND PROPOSITIONS Since

all definitions

of terms

are ef-

fected by means of other terms, every system of definitions which

is not circular

must start from a certain apparatus of undefined terms. It is to some extent optional what ideas we take as undefined in mathematics; the motives guiding our choice will be (1) to make the number of undefined ideas as small as possible, (2) as between two systems in which the number is equal, to choose the one which seems the simpler and easier. We know no way of proving that such and such a system of undefined ideas contains as few as will give such and such results.? Hence 2 The recognized methods of proving independence are not applicable, without reserve, to funda-

mentals. Cf. Principles of Mathematics, #17. What is there said concerning primitive propositions applies with even greater force to primitive ideas.

REALISM

158

we can only say that such and such ideas are undefined in such and such a system, not that they are indeffnable. Following Peano, we shall call the undefined

and

the

undemonstrated

ideas

propositions

primitive ideas and primitive propositions respectively. The primitive ideas are ex-

plained by means of descriptions intended to point out to the reader what is meant; but the explanations do not constitute definitions, because they really involve the ideas they explain. In the present number, we shall first enumerate the primitive ideas required in this section; then we shall define implication; and then we shall enunciate the primitive propositions required in this section. Every definition or proposition in

the work has a number, for purposes of reference. Following Peano, we use numbers having a decimal as well as an» integral part, in order to be able to insert new propositions between any two. A change in the integral part of the number will be used to correspond to a new chapter. Definitions will generally have numbers whose decimal part is less than 1, and will be usually put at the beginning of chapters. In references, the integral parts of the numbers of propositions will be distinguished by being preceded by a star; thus “*ror” will mean the definition or proposition so numbered, and “*r” will mean the chapter in which propositions have numbers whose integral part is 1, 1.¢., the present chapter. Chapters will generally be called “numbers.” Primitive Ideas

AND

ANALYSIS

tion such as “this is red,’ where “this”

is something given in sensation, will be elementary. Any combination of given elementary propositions by means of negation, disjunction or conjunction (see below) will be elementary. In the primitive propositions of the present number, and therefore in the deductions from these primitive propositions in *2-*s,

the letters p, g,.r, s will be used to denote elementary propositions. (2) Elementary propositional functions. By an “elementary propositional function” we shall mean an expression containing an undetermined constituent, 7.e., a variable, or several such constituents, and such that, when the undetermined constituent or constituents are determined, 7.c., when values are assigned to the variable or variables, the resulting value of the expression in question is an elementary proposition. Thus if p is an undetermined elementary proposition, “not-p” is an elementary propositional function. We shall show in *9 how to extend the

results of this and the following numbers (*1-*5) to. propositions which are not ele-

mentary. (3) Assertion. Any proposition may be either asserted or merely considered. If I

say “Caesar died,” I assert the proposition “Caesar died,” if I say “ ‘Caesar died’ is a proposition,” I make a different assertion, and “Caesar died” is no longer asserted, but merely considered. Similarly in a hypothetical proposition, e.g., “if a= b, then b =a,” we have two unasserted propositions, namely “a = 6” and “b =a,” while

what is asserted is that the first of these

(1) Elementary propositions. By an “elementary” proposition we mean one which does not involve any variables, or, in

implies the second. In language, we indi-:

cate when a proposition is merely considered by. “7f so-and-so” or “that so-and-so”

other language, one which does not in-

or merely by inverted commas. In symbols,

volve such words

“the”

if p 1s a proposition, p by itself will stand

or equivalents for such words. A proposi-

for the unasserted proposition, while the

as “all,” “some,”

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

asserted proposition will be designated by “

eyo

The sign “ +” is called the assertion-sign; * it may be read “it is true that” (although philosophically this is not exactly what it means). The dots after the assertion-sign indicate its range; that is to say, everything following is asserted until we reach either an equal number of dots preceding a sign of implication or the end of the sentence. Thus “ }:9.D.g” means “it is true that p implies gq,” whereas “}.p.D +.q”

undetermined,

METHOD we

obtain

159 an

assertion

which can be applied to any particular elementary proposition. Such assertions are like the particular enunciations: in

Euclid: when it is said “let 4BC be an isosceles triangle; then the angles at the base will be equal,” what is said applies to any isosceles triangle; it is stated concerning one triangle, but not concerning a

definite one. All the assertions

in the

present work, with a very few exceptions,

assert propositional functions, not definite propositions.

means “p is true; therefore q is true.”* As a matter of fact, no constant eleThe first of these does not necessarily in- mentary proposition’ will occur in the volve the truth either of p or of q, while present work, or can occur in any work the second involves the truth of both. which employs only logical ideas. The (4) Assertion of a propositional funeideas and propositions of logic are all tion. Besides the assertion of definite prop- general: an assertion (for example) which

ositions, we need what we shall call “assertion of a propositional function.” The general notion of asserting any propositional function is not used until *9, but we use at once the notion of asserting various special elementary propositional functions. Let @x be a propositional function

tity is asserted in the form “A is A.” Here

is true of Socrates but not of Plato, will not belong to logic,® and if an assertion which is true of both is to occur in logic, it must not be made concerning either, but concerning a variable x. In order to obtain, in logic, a definite proposition instead of a propositional function, it is necessary to take some propositional function and assert that it is true always or sometimes, .e., with all possible values of the variable or with some possible value. Thus,

A is left undetermined, because, however

giving the name

whose argument is x; then we may assert ¢x without assigning a value to x. This is done, for example, when the law of iden-

A may be determined, the result will be

“individual”

to what-

ever there is that is neither a proposition nor a function, the proposition “every individual is identical with itself” or the

true. Thus when we assert $x, leaving x undetermined, we are asserting an ambiguous value of our function. This is only legitimate if, however the ambiguity may be determined, the result will be true. Thus take, as an illustration, the primitive proposition *1-2 below, namely

be a proposition belonging to logic. But these propositions are not elementary. (5) Negation, If p is any proposition, the proposition “not-p,” or “p is false,” will

Wp pe Po

be represented by “~p.” For the present,

i.e., ““p or p’ implies p.” Here p may be any elementary proposition: by leaving p 3 We have adopted both the idea and the symbol of assertion from Frege.

4Cf. Principles of Mathematics, #38.

proposition “there are individuals” will

p must be an elementary proposition. 5 When we say that a proposition “belongs to logic,” we mean that it can be expressed in terms of the primitive ideas of logic. We do not mean that logic applies to it, for that would of course be true of any proposition.

REALISM

160

AND

ANALYSIS

“either p is true or g is true,” where the

convenient interpretation of implication is to say, conversely, that if either p is false or g is true, then “p implies q” is to

alternatives are to be not mutually exclusive, will be represented by “og”

be true. Hence “p implies qg” is to be defined to mean: “Either p is false or g is true.” Hence we put:

(6) Disjunction. If p and gq are any propositions, the proposition “p or q,” i.e.,

This

is called

the

disjunction

or

the

logical sum of p and qg. Thus “~p%q” will

mean

“p is false or

“~(p¥q)”

will mean

g is true”;

“it is false that

either p or g is true,” which is equiva-

lent to “p and g are both false”; “~(~p*~q)” will mean “it is false that either p is false or qg is false,” which

is equivalent to “p and q are both true”; and so on. For the present, p and. q must be elementary propositions.

The above are all the primitive ideas required in the theory of deduction. Other primitive ideas will be introduced in Section

B,

we say that p implies q. The idea of implication, in the form in which we require it, can be defined. The meaning to be given to implication in what follows may at first sight appear somewhat artificial; but although there are other legitimate meanings, the one here adopted is very

much more convenient for our purposes than any of its rivals. The essential property that we require of implication is this: “What is implied by a true proposition is true.” It is in virtue of this prop-

erty that implication yields proofs. But this property by no means determines anything,

and

if so

what,

is

implied by a false proposition, What it does determine

Oe

Here the letters “Df” stand for “definition.” They and the sign of equality together are to be regarded as forming one symbol, standing for “is defined to mean.” © Whatever comes to the left of the sign of equality is defined to mean the same as what comes to the right of it. Definition is not among the primitive ideas, because definitions are concerned solely with the symbolism, not with what is symbolised; they are introduced for practical convenience, and are. theoretically unnecessary. In virtue of the above definition, when

;

Definition of Implication. When a proposition g follows from a proposition p, so that if p is true, g must also be true,

whether

*T-Ol. DP.) ==, Pg

is that, if p implies q,

then it cannot be the case that p is true and q is false, 7.e., it must be the case that

either p is false or q is true. The most

“pq” holds, then either p is. false or g is true; hence if p is true, q must be true. Thus the above definition preserves the essential characteristic of implication; it gives, in fact, the most general meaning

compatible with the preservation of this characteristic. Primitive Propositions

*r1, Anything implied by a true elementary proposition is true. Pp.* The above principle will be extended in *9 to propositions which are not elementary. It is not the same as “if p is true, then if p implies g, q is true.” This is a true proposition, but it holds equally when p is not true and when p does not. imply q. It does not, like the principle we 6 The sign of equality not followed by the letters “Df” will have a different meaning, to be defined later. 7 The letters “Pp” stand for ‘primitive proposition,” as with Peano.

LOGIC, are

SEMANTICS,

concerned

with,

enable

AND

SCIENTIFIC

us to assert

q simply, without any hypothesis. We cannot express the principle symbolically, partly because: any symbelism in which p is variable only gives the hypothesis that p is true, not the fact that it is true.?

The above principle is used whenever we have to deduce a proposition from a proposition. But the immense majority of the assertions in the present work are assertions

of propositional

functions, i.e.,

they contain an undetermined variable. Since the assertion of a propositional function is a different primitive idea from the assertion of a proposition, we require a primitive proposition different from *1 1, though allied to it, to enable

us to deduce the assertion of a propositional function “yx” from the assertions of the two propositional functions “¢ x” and “#x D Wx.” This primitive proposition is as follows: *1:11. When ¢ x can be asserted, where x is a real variable, and ox D wx can be asserted, where x is a real variable, then wx can be asserted, where «x is a real variable. Pp. This principle is also to be assumed for

METHOD

161

which “gx” is significant. The primitive proposition *rr1, by securing that, as the result of the assertions of the propositional functions “px” and “px D wx,” the propositional function “yx” can also be asserted, secures partial symbolic recognition, in the form most useful in actual deductions, of an important principle which follows from the theory of types, namely that, if there is any one argument a for which both “fa” and “ya” are significant, then the range of arguments for which “gx” is significant is the same

as the range of arguments for which “y x” is significant. It is obvious that, if the propositional function “¢ x D wx” can be asserted, there must be arguments a@ for which “fa D Wa” is significant, and for which, therefore, “fa” and “wa” must be significant. Hence, by our principle, the values of x for which “¢ x” is signifi-

cant are the same

as those for which

“wx” is significant, i.e, the type of possible arguments for #x (cf. p. 15) is the same as that of possible arguments for yx. The primitive proposition *111, since it states a practically important

functions of several variables.

consequence

Part of the importance of the above primitive proposition ‘; due to the fact that it expresses in the symbolism a result following from the theory of types, which requires symbolic recognition. Suppose we have the two assertions of propositional functions ““|.ox” and “-L.px D Wx”; then the “x” in x is not absolutely anything, but anything for which as

“axiom of identification of type.” Another consequence of the principle that, if there is an argument a for which both ¢a@ and wa are significant, then x is significant whenever yx is significant, and vice versa, will be given in the “axiom of identification of real variables,” introduced in *1 72. These two propositions, *1r'11 and *1°-72, give what is symbolically essential to the conduct of demonstrations in accordance with the theory of types. The above proposition *1 11 is used in every inference from one asserted propositional function to another. We will illustrate the use of this proposition by setting forth at length the way in which it

argument

the: function “x”

is signif-

cant; similarly in “fx D yx” the x is

anything for which “fx D yx” is significant. Apart from some axiom, we do not know that the x’s for which “fx D yx” is significant are the same as those for 8 For

further

remarks

on

Principles of Mathematics, #38.

this

principle,

cf.

of this fact, is called the

REALISM

162

is first used, in the proof of *2°06. That proposition is

“Llpog. DigDno.por’ We have already proved, in *2°05, the proposition fs. Dn

i phon g

iy

tgs Spier.

For if, in this proposition, we replace p by qr, q by pq, and r by por, we obtain, as an instance of *2:04, the proposition

“Perm.”

“ran Pepi (gr) sig pry

tr),

and here the hypothesis is asserted by *2:05. Thus our primitive proposition *r1r enables us to assert the conclusion. 12,

true, or “p or 7’ is true.” It is a form of the associative law for logical addition,

and will be called the “associative principle.” It will be referred to as “Assoc.”

The proposition

b°(q'r) -D. (b"q)",

true or p is true, then p is true.” It is called the “principle of tautology,” and will be quoted by the abbreviated title of “Taut.” It is convenient, for purposes of reference, to give names to a few of the more important propositions; in general, propositions will be referred to by their numbers. erg:

Peg7. Pp

gore

This principle states: “If g is true, then ‘p or q’ is true.” Thus e.g., if q is “to-day is Wednesday” and p is “to-day is Tuesday,” the principle states: “If to-day is

Wednesday, then to-day is either Tuesday or Wednesday.” It is called the “principle of addition,” because it states that if a proposition is true, any alternative may be added without making it false. The principle will be referred to as “Add.” *r

which would be the natural form for the associative law, has less deductive power, and is therefore not taken as a primitive proposition. *r6a

Hae) Pc pep.

This proposition states: “If either p is

4k; p's

gp Pps

Pps

This principle states: “If either p is true, or ‘q or 7’ is true, then either q is

Ri Qa Lew ap Dialep2 tgp

Sdaveg sic ug or

ANALYSIS

This principle states that “p or q’’ implies “g or p.” It states the permutative law for logical addition of propositions, and will be called the “principle of permutation.” It will be referred to as

apogee vp) tm

It is obvious that *2°06 results from *2-05 by means of *2:04, which is

AND

Pig OD? Dip" ¢g-

Sepinekp:

This principle states: “If g implies r,

then ‘p or q’ implies ‘p or r.’” In other words, in an implication, an alternative may be added to both premiss and con-

clusion without impairing the truth of the implication. The principle will be called the “principle of summation,” and will be referred to as “Sum.” *1-7. If p is an elementary

~p

is an elementary

proposition,

proposition.

Pp.

*1r71. If p and q are elementary propositions, pg Pp.

is an elementary

proposition.

*1-72. If pp and yp are elementary propo-

sitional functions which take elementary propositions as arguments, pp’Wp is an elementary propositional function. Pp. This axiom is to apply also to functions of two or more variables. It is called the “axiom of identification of real variables.” It will be observed that if ¢ and w

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

are functions which take arguments of different types, there is no such function as “px’yx,” because @ and wy cannot significantly have the same argument. A more general form of the above axiom will be given in *9. The use of the above axioms *1°7-71'72 will generally be tacit. It is only through them and the axioms of *g that the

SCIENTIFIC

METHOD

163

theory of types explained in the Introduction becomes relevant, and any view of logic which justifies these axioms justifies such subsequent reasoning as employs the theory of types.

This completes

the list of primitive

propositions required for the theory of deduction as applied to elementary propositions.

Ethics and ‘Theory of Value OOD

ODDDPOOOOOOQOOOQWOQOOOCOLOO CO] OO ODO DOPOD

Fgoism as a Theory of Human Motes C..D. BROAD egoistic in one sense and some in another, even if all were egoistic in some sense. But the theory often takes the special form that the only kind of ultimate

ley seem prima facie to be a number

of different kinds of ultimate desire which all or most men have. Plausible examples would be the desire to get pleasant experiences and to avoid unpleasant ones, the desire to get and exercise power over others, and the desire to do what is right and to avoid doing what is wrong. Very naturally philosophers have tried to reduce this plurality. They have tried to show that there is one and only one kind of ultimate desire, and that all other desires which seem at first sight to be ultimate are really subordinate to this. I shall call the view that there really are several different kinds of ultimate desire Pluralism of Ul-

desire is the desire to get or to prolong pleasant experiences, and to avoid or to cut short unpleasant experiences, for oneself. That zs a monistic theory. I shall call the wider theory Psychological Egoism, and this special form of it Psychological Hedonism. Psychological Egoism might be true, even though Psychological Hedonism were false; but, if Psycho-

logical

that there is really only one kind of ultimate desire Monism of Ultimate Desires. Even if a person were a pluralist about ultimate desires, he might hold that there are certain important features common to all the different kinds of ultimate desire. Now much the most important theory on this subject is that all kinds of ultimate desire are egorstic. This is not in itself necessarily a monistic theory. For there might be several irreducibly different kinds of ultimate desire, even if they were all egoistic. Moreover, there might be several irreducibly different, though not necessarily unrelated, senses of the word

and some

desires

be false, Psychological

cannot be true. I shall now discuss Psychological Egoism. I think it is best to begin by enumerating all the kinds of desire that I can think of which might reasonably be called “egoistic” in one sense or another. (1) Everyone has a special desire for the continued existence of himself in his present bodily life, and a special dread of his own death. This may be called Desire for Self-preservation. (2) Everyone desires to get and to prolong experi-

timate Desires, and I shall call the view

“egoistic’;

Egoism

Hedonism

ences

of certain kinds, and to avoid and

to cut short experiences of certain other kinds, because the former are pleasant to him and the latter unpleasant. This may be called Desire for one’s own Happiness. (3) Everyone desires to ac-

might be 164

|

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

quire, keep, and develop certain mental and bodily powers and dispositions, and to avoid, get rid of, or check certain others. In general he wants to be or to become a person of a certain kind, and wants not to be or to become a person of

certain other kinds. This may be called Desire to be a Self of a certain kind. (4) Everyone desires to feel certain kinds of emotion towards himself and his own powers

and dispositions,

and

not to feel

certain other kinds of reflexive emotion. This may be called Desire for Self-respect. (5) Everyone desires to get and to keep for himself the exclusive possession of certain material objects or the means of buying and keeping such objects. This may be called Desire to get and to keep Property. (6) Everyone desires to get and to exercise power over certain other persons, so as to make them do what he wishes, regardless of whether they wish it or not. This may be called Desire for Self-assertion. (7) Everyone desires that other persons shall believe certain things about him and feel certain kinds of emotion towards him. He wants to be noticed,

to be respected by some, to be loved by some,

so

on.

to be

Under

feared

this

by some,

head

come

and

the

Desire for Self-display, for Affection, and

so on. Lastly, it must be noted that some desires, which are concerned primarily with other things or persons, either would not exist at all or would be very much weaker or would take a different form if it were not for the fact that those things or persons already stand in certain rela-

tions to oneself. I shall call such relations egoistic motive-stimulants, The following are among the most important of these. (i) The relation of ownership. If a person owns a house or a wife, e.g., he feels a much stronger desire to improve the

165

house or to make the woman happy than if the house belongs to another or the woman is married to someone else. (ii) Blood-relationship. A person desires, e.g., the well-being of his own children much more strongly than that of other children. (iii) Relations of love and friendship. A person desires strongly, e.g., to be loved and respected by those whom he loves. He may desire only to be feared ‘by those whom he hates. And he may desire only

very mildly, if at all, to be loved and respected by those to whom he feels indifferent. (iv) The relationship of being fellow-members of an institution to which one feels loyalty and affection. Thus, e.g., an Englishman will be inclined to do services to another Englishman which he would not do for a foreigner, and an Old Etonian will be inclined to do services to another Old Etonian which he would not do for an Old Harrovian. I think that I have now given a reasonably adequate list of motives and motivestimulants which could fairly be called “egoistic’ in some sense or other, Our next business is to try to classify them and to consider their inter-relations. (1) Let us begin by asking ourselves the following question. Which of these motives could act on a person if he had been the only person or thing that had ever existed? The answer is that he could

still have had desires for self-preservation, for his own happiness, to be a self of a certain kind, and for self-respect. But he could not, unless he were under the delu-

sion that there were other persons or things, have desires for property, for self-assertion, or for self-display. Nor could he have any of those desires which are stimulated by family or other aliorelative relationships. I shall call those desires, and only those, which could be felt by a person who knew or believed

166

himself to be the only existent in the universe, Self-confined. (2) Any desire whieh is not selfconfined may be described as extra-verted; for the person who has such a desire is necessarily considering, not only himself and his own qualities, dispositions, and states, but also some other thing or person. If the desire is egoistic, it will also be intro-verted; for the person who has such a desire will also be considering himself

and his relations to that other person or thing, and this will be an essential factor conditioning his experience. Thus a selfconfined desire is purely intro-verted, whilst a desire which is egoistic but not self-confined is both intro-verted and extra-verted. Now we may subdivide desires of the latter kind into two classes,

according as the primary emphasis is on the former or the latter aspect. Suppose that the person is concerned primarily with himself and his own acts and experiences, and that he is concerned with the other thing or person only or mainly as an object of these acts or experiences or as the other term in a relationship to himself. Then I shall call the desire Se/fcentred. I shall use the term Self-regarding to include both desires which are self-centred and those which are selfconfined. Under the head of self-centred desires come the desire for property, for self-assertion, for self-display, and for affection.

(3) Lastly, we come to desires which are both intro-verted and extra-verted, but where the primary emphasis is on the other person or thing and its states. Here the relationship of the other person or thing to oneself acts as a strong egoistic motive-stimulant, but one’s primary desire is that the other person or thing shall be in a certain state. I will call such desires Other-regarding. A desire which is other-

REALISM

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ANALYSIS

regarding, but involves an egoistic motivestimulant, may be described as Selfreferential. The desire of a mother to render services to her own children which she would not be willing to render to other children is an instance of a desire which is other-regarding but self-referential. So, too, is the desire of a man to inflict suffering on one who has injured him or one whom he envies. Having thus classified the various kinds of egoistic desire, I will now say something about their inter-relations.

(1) It is obvious that self-preservation may be desired as a necessary condition of one’s own happiness; since one cannot acquire or prolong pleasant experiences unless one continues to exist. So the desire for self-preservation may be subordinate to the desire for one’s own happiness. But it seems pretty clear that a person often desires to go on living even

when there is no prospect that the remainder of his life will contain a balance of pleasant over unpleasant experiences. This attitude is expressed very strongly in the loathsome lines of Maecenas which Seneca has handed down to posterity: Debilem facito manu, debilem pede coxo tuber adstrue gibberum, lubricos quate dentes; vita dum superest, bene est; hanc mihi,

vel acuta si sedeam cruce, sustine.

(2) It is also obvious that property and power over others may be desired as a means to self-preservation or to happiness. So the desire to get and keep property, and the desire to get and exert power over ° others, may be subordinate to the desire for self-preservation or for one’s own happiness. But it seems fairly certain that the former desires are sometimes independent of the latter. Even if a person

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begins by desiring property or power only

as a means—and it is very doubtful whether we always do begin that way—it seems plain that he often comes to desire them for themselves, and to sacrifice happiness, security, and even life for them. Any miser, and almost any keen politician, provides an instance of this. It is no answer to this to say that a person who desires power or property enjoys the experiences of getting and exercising power or of amassing and owning property, and then to argue that therefore his ultimate desire is to give himself those pleasant experiences. The premiss here is true, but the argument is self-stultifying. The experiences in question are pleasant to a person only in so far as he desires power or property. This kind of pleasant experience presupposes desires for something other than pleasant experiences, and therefore the latter desires cannot be derived from desire for that kind of pleasant experience. Similar remarks apply to the desire for self-respect and the desire for self-display. If one already desires to feel certain emotions towards oneself, or to be the object of certain emotions in others, the experience of feeling those emotions or of knowing that others feel them towards one will be pleasant, because it will be the fulfilment of a pre-existing desire. But this kind of pleasure presupposes the existence of these desires, and therefore they cannot be de-

rived from the desire for that kind of pleasure. (3) Although the various kinds of egoistic desire cannot be reduced to a single

ultimate egoistic desire, e.g., the desire for one’s own happiness, they are often very much mixed up with each other. Take, e.g., the special desire which a mother feels for the health, happiness, and prosperity of her

children.

This

is predominantly

other-

167

regarding, though it is self-referential. The mother is directly attracted by the thought of her child as surviving, as having good dispositions and pleasant experiences, and as being the object of love and respect to other persons. She is directly repelled by the thought of his dying, or having bad dispositions or unpleasant experiences, or being the object of hatred or contempt to other persons. The desire is therefore other-regarding. It is self-referential, because the fact that it is Aer child and not another’s acts as a powerful motive-stimulant. She would not be prepared to make the same sacrifices for the survival or the welfare of a child which was not her own. But this self-referential otherregarding motive is almost always mingled with other motives which are self-regarding. One motive which a woman has for wanting her child to be happy, healthy and popular is the desire that other women shall envy her as the mother of a happy. healthy and popular child. This motive is subordinate to the self-centred desire for

self-display. Another motive, which may be present, is the desire not to be burdened with an ailing, unhappy, and unpopular

child. This motive is subordinate to the self-contained desire for one’s own happiness. But, although the self-referential other-regarding motive is nearly always

mixed with motives which are self-centred or self-confined, we cannot plausibly explain the behaviour of many mothers on many ocasions towards their children without postulating the other-regarding motive. We can now consider the various forms which Psychological Egoism might take. The most rigid form is that all human motives are ultimately egoistic, and that

all egoistic motives are ultimately of one kind. That one kind has generally been supposed to be the desire for one’s own happiness, and so this form of Psycho-

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168

logical Egoism may in practice be identified with Psychological Hedonism. This theory amounts to saying that the only ultimate

AND

ANALYSIS

motive could be ascribed to such a man is by supposing that, although he is intellectually convinced of his future extinc-

motives are self-confined, and that the only

tion, yet in practice he cannot help im-

ultimate self-confined motive is desire for one’s own happiness. I have already tried to show by examples that this is false. Among self-confined motives, e.g., is the desire for self-preservation, and this cannot be reduced to desire for one’s own happiness. Then, again, there are self-regarding motives which are self-

agining himself as surviving and witnessing events which will happen after his

centred but not self-confined, such as the

desire for affection, for gratitude, for power over others, and so on. And, finally, there are motives which are self-referential but predominantly other-regarding, such as a mother’s desire for her children’s welfare or a man’s desire to injure one whom he hates. It follows that the only form of Psychological Egoism that is worth discussing is

the following. It might be alleged that all ultimate motives are cither self-confined or self-centred or other-regarding but selfreferential,

some

being of one

kind and

some of another. This is a much more modest theory than, e.g., Psychological Hedonism. I think that it covers satisfac-

torily an immensely wide field of human motivation, but I am not sure that it is true without exception. I shall now discuss

it in the light of some examples. Case A. Take first the case of a man who does not expect to survive the death of his present body, and who makes a will, the contents of which will be known to no one during his lifetime. (1) The motive of such a testator cannot possibly be the expectation of any experiences which he will enjoy after death through the provisions of his will being carried

out;

for he believes

that he will

have no more experiences after the death of his body. The only way in which this

death. I think that this kind of mental confusion is possible, and perhaps not uncommon;

but I should doubt whether

it is a

plausible account of such a man’s motives to say that they all involve this mistake.

(2) Can we say that his motive is the desire to enjoy during his life the pleasant experience of imagining the gratitude which the beneficiaries will feel towards him after his death? The answer is that this may well be ove of his motives, but it cannot be primary, and therefore cannot be the only one. Unless he desired to be thought about in one way rather than another after his death, the present experience of imagining himself as becoming the object of certain retrospective thoughts and emotions on the part of the beneficiaries would be neither attractive nor repulsive to him. (3) I think it is plain, then, that the ultimate motive of such a man cannot be desire for his own happiness. But it might be desire for power over others. For he

may be said to be exercising this power when he makes his will, even though the effects will not begin until after his death.

(4) Can we say that his motive in making the will is simply to ensure that certain persons will think about him and fee! towards him in certain ways after his death? In that case his motive would come under the head of self-display. (This must, of course, be distinguished from the ques-:

tion, already discussed, whether his motive might be to give himself the pleasant experience of imagining their future feelings of gratitude towards him.) The answer is that self-display, in a wide sense, may be a

ETHICS

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OF

motive, and a very strong one, in making a will; but it could hardly be the sole motive. A testator generally considers the relative needs of various possible beneficiaries, the question whether a certain person would appreciate and take care of a certain picture or house or book, the question whether a certain institution is doing work which he thinks important, and so on. In so far as he is influenced by these considerations, his motives are other-regarding. But they may all be self-referential. In making his will he may desire to benefit persons only in so far as they are Ais relatives or friends. He may desire to benefit institutions only in so far as he is or has been a member of them. And so on. I think that it would be quite plausible to hold that the motives of such a testator are all either self-regarding or self-referential, but that it would not be in the least plausible to say that they are all self-confined or that none of them are other-regarding. Case B. Let us next consider the case of a man who subscribes anonymously to a certain charity. His motive cannot possibly be that of self-display. Can we say that his motive is to enjoy the pleasant experience of self-approval and of seeing an institution in which he is interested flourishing? The answer is, again, that these motives may exist and may be strong, but they cannot be primary and therefore cannot be his only motives. Unless he wants the institution to flourish, there will be nothing to attract him in the experience of seeing it flourish. And, unless he subscribes from some other motive than the desire to enjoy a feeling of self-approval, he will not obtain a feeling of self-approval. So here, again, it seems to me that some of his motives must be other-regarding. But it is quite possible that his other-regarding motives may all be self-referential. An essential factor in making him want to bene-

VALUE

169

fit this institution may be that it is Ais old college or that a great friend of Ais is at the

head of it. The question, then, that remains is this. Are there any cases in which it is reason able to think that a person’s motive is not egoistic in any of the senses mentioned? In practice, as we now see, this comes

down

to the question whether there are any cases in which an other-regarding motive is not stimulated by an egoistic motive-stimulus, i.e., whether there is any other-regarding motive which is not also and essentially self-referential. Case C. Let us consider the case of a person who deliberately chooses to devote his

life to working among lepers, in the full knowledge that he will almost certainly contract leprosy and die in a particularly loathsome way. This is not an imaginary case. To give the Psychological Egoist the longest possible run for his money I will suppose that the person is a Roman Catholic priest, who believes that his action may secure for him a place in heaven in the next world and a reputation for sanctity and heroism

in this, that it may

be re-

warded posthumously with canonization,

and that it will redound to the credit of the church of which he is an ordained member.

It is difficult to see what self-regarding or self-referential motives there could be for the action beside desire for happiness in heaven, desire to gain a reputation for sanctity and heroism and perhaps to be canonized after death, and desire to glorify the church of which one is a priest. Ob-

viously there are extremely strong selfconfined and self-centred motives against

choosing this kind of life. And in many cases there must have been very strong self-referential other-regarding motives against it. For the person who made such a choice must sometimes have been a

REALISM

170 young man of good family and brilliant prospects, whose parents were heart-broken at his decision, and whose friends thought

him an obstinate fool for making it. Now there is no doubt at all that there was

an

other-regarding

motive,

viz.,

a

AND

ANALYSIS

Egoist prove that no single person would

haye so decided under these hypothetical Factors which cannot be conditions. eliminated cannot be shown to be necessary

and

cannot

be shown

to be

superfluous; and there we must leave the matter.

direct desire to alleviate the sufferings of the lepers. No one who was not dying in the last ditch for an over-simple theory of human nature would deny this. The only questions that are worth raising about it

tending medical missionary found the experience of imagining the sufferings of

are

(1) Is this other-regarding

the lepers intensely unpleasant, and that

motive stimulated by an egoistic motivestimulus and thus rendered self-referen-

his primary motive for deciding to spend

these.

tial? (2) Suppose that this motive had not been supported by the various. selfregarding and self-referential motives for deciding to go and work among the lepers, would it have sufficed, in presence of the motives against doing so, to ensure the choice that was actually made? As regards the first question, I cannot see that there was any special pre-existing relationship between a young priest in Europe and a number of unknown lepers in Asia which might plausibly be held to act as an egoistic motive-stimulus. The lepers are neither his relatives nor his friends nor his benefactors nor members

of any community or institution to which he belongs. As regards the sufficiency of the otherregarding motive, whether stimulated egoistically or not, in the absence of all self-regarding motives tending in the same

direction, no conclusive answer

can

be given. I cannot prove that a_ single person in the whole course of history would have decided to work among lepers, if all the motives against doing so had been present, whilst the hope of heaven, the desire to gain a reputation for sanctity and heroism, and the desire to glorify and extend one’s church had been wholly absent. Nor can the Psychological

I suspect

that a Psychological

Egoist

might be tempted to say that the in-

his life working among them was to get rid of this unpleasant experience. This, I think, is what Locke, e.g., would have had to say in accordance with his theory of motivation. About this suggestion there are two remarks to be made.

(1) This

motive

cannot

have

been

primary, and therefore cannot have been the only motive. Unless this person

desired that the lepers should have their sufferings alleviated,

why

the

should him.

thought

be an A

there

of

unpleasant

malicious

man,

is no

their

reason

sufferings

experience e.g.,

finds

to the

thought of the sufferings of an enemy a

very pleasant experience. This kind of pleasure presupposes a desire for the wellbeing or the ill-being of others. (2) If his primary motive were to rid himself of the unpleasant experience of

imagining the sufferings of the lepers, he could hardly choose a less effective means than to go and work among them. For the imagination would then be replaced by actual sense-perception; whilst, if he stayed at home and devoted himself to other activities, he would have a’

reasonably good chance of diverting his attention from the sufferings of the lepers. In point of fact one knows that such a person would reproach himself in so far as he managed to forget about

ETHICS

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the lepers. He would wish to keep them and their sufferings constantly in mind, as an additional stimulus to doing what he believes he ought to do, viz., to take active steps to help and relieve them. In this connexion it is important to notice the following facts. For most people the best way to realize the sufferings of strangers is to imagine oneself or one’s parents or children or some intimate and beloved friend in the situation in which the stranger is placed. This, as we say, ‘brings home to one’ his sufferings. A large proportion of the cruelty which decent people applaud or tolerate is applauded or tolerated by them only because they are either too stupid to put themselves imaginatively into the position of the victims or because they deliberately refrain from doing so. One important cause of their deliberately refraining is the notion of retributive justice, i.e., the belief that these persons, or a group taken as a collective whole to which they belong, have deserved suffering by wrongdoing, and the desire that they shall get their deserts. Another important cause of this deliberate refrainment is the knowledge that one is utterly powerless to help the victims. However this may be, the fact that imagining oneself in their position is often a necessary condition of desiring to relieve the sufferings of strangers does not make that desire _ self-referential. Imagining oneself in their place is merely a condition for becoming vividly aware of their sufferings. Whether one will then desire to relieve them or to prolong them or will remain indifferent to them, depends on motives which are not primarily self-regarding or self-referential. ’ 1 will now summarize the results of this discussion. (1) If Psychological Egoism asserts that all ultimate-motives are self-confined;

171

or that they are all either self-confined or self-centred, some being of one kind and some of the other; or that all self-confined

motives can be reduced to the desire for one’s own happiness; it is certainly false. It is not even a close approximation to the truth. (2) [La ae asserts that all ultimate motives are either self-regarding or selfreferential, some being of one kind and some of the other; and that all otherregarding motives require a self-referential stimulus, it is a close approximation to the truth. It is true, I think, that in most people and at most times other. regarding motives are very weak unless stimulated by a self-referential stimulus. As England’s wisest and wittiest statesman put it in his inimitable way: “Temporal things will have their weight in the world, and, though zeal may prevail for a time and get the better in a skirmish, yet the war endeth generally on the side of flesh and blood, and will do so until mankind is another thing than it is at present.” + (3) Nevertheless, Psychological Egoism, €ven in its most diluted form, is very doubtful if taken as a universal proposition. Some persons at some times are strongly influenced by other-regarding motives which cannot plausibly be held to be stimulated by a self-referential stimulus. It seems reasonable to hold that the presence of these other-regarding motives is necessary to account for their choice of alternatives which they do choose, and for their persistence in the course which they have adopted, though this can never be conclusively established in any particular case. Whether it is also sufficient cannot be decided with certainty, for selfregarding and self-referential compo1 Halifax: The Character of a Trimmer.

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172

ANALYSIS

attempt

on

nents are always present in one’s total

any

motive for choosing such an action.

basis will succeed.

I think that the summary which I have just given fairly represents the results of introspection and reflection on one’s own and other men’s voluntary action. Yet Psychological Egoism in general and

Psychological

Hedonism

in __ particular

have seemed almost self-evident to many

highly intelligent thinkers, and they do still seem highly plausible to nearly everyone when he first begins to speculate on human motivation. I believe that this depends, not on empirical facts, but on certain verbal ambiguities and misunderstandings. As so often happens in philosophy, clever people acept a false general principle on a@ priori grounds and then devote endless labour and ingenuity to explaining away plain facts which obviously conflict with it. A full discussion of the subject would require an analysis of the confusions which have made these theories seem so plausible; but this must be omitted here.

I must content myself with the following remarks in conclusion. I have tried to show that Psychological Egoism, in the

only form in which it could possibly fit the facts of human life, is not a monistic theory of motives. On this extended interpretation of the theory the only feature common to all motives is that every motive which can act on a person has one or another of a large number of different kinds of special reference to that person, I have tried to show that this certainly covers a very wide field, but that it is by no means certain that there is even this amount of unity among ail human motives. I think that Psychological Egoism is much the most plausible attempt to reduce the prima facie plurality of ultimate kinds of desire to a unity. If it fails, I think it is most unlikely that

alternative

AND

a different

For my part I am inclined to accept an

irreducibly

pluralistic

view

of human

motives. This does not, of course, entail that the present irreducible plurality of

ultimate motives may not have evolved, in some sense of that highly ambiguous word, out of fewer, either in the history

of each individual or in that of the human race. About that I express no opinion here and now. Now, if Psychological Hedonism had been true, all conflict of motives would have been between motives of the same kind. It would always be of the form

“Shall I go to the dentist and certainly be hurt now but probably avoid thereby frequent and prolonged toothache in

future? Or shall I take the risk in order to avoid the certainty of being hurt by the dentist now?” On any pluralistic view there is also conflict between motives of irreducibly different kinds, e.g., between aversion to painful experience and desire to be thought manly, or between a desire to shine in conversation

and aversion

to

hurting a sensitive person’s feelings by a witty but wounding remark. It seems

to

me

plain

that,

ordinary moral judgments selves and about others, we hesitatingly assume that there often is conflict between

in

our

about ouralways uncan be and motives of

radically different kinds. Now

I do not

myself share that superstitious reverence

for the beliefs of common

sense which

many contemporary philosophers profess. But I think that we must start from them, and that we ought to depart from. them only when we find good reason to do so: If Psychological Hedonism, or any other monistic theory of motives had been

true, we should have had to begin the study of Ethics by recognizing that most

ETHICS

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moral judgments which we pass on ourselves or on others are made under a profound misapprehension of the psycho-

logical

facts

and

are

largely

vitiated

thereby. If Psychological Hedonism, e.g.,

had been true, the only ethical theory worth discussing would have been an egoistic form of Ethical Hedonism. For one cannot be under an obligation to attempt to do what is psychologically impossible. And, on the hypothesis of Psychological Hedonism, it is psycho-

logically impossible for anyone ultimately to desire anything except to prolong or acquire experiences which he knows or expects to be pleasant and to cut short or avoid experiences which he knows or expects to be unpleasant. If it were still possible to talk of having duties at all, each person’s duties would be confined within the limits which that psychological impossibility marks out. And it would clearly be impossible to suppose

173

that any part of anyone’s ultimate motive for doing any act is his belief that it would be right in the circumstances together with his desire to do what is right as such. For, if Psychological Hedonism were true, a desire to do what is right could not be ultimate, it must be subordinate to the desire to get or prolong pleasant experiences and to avoid or cut short unpleasant ones. Now it is plain that such consequences as these conflict sharply with commonsense notions of morality. If we had been obliged to accept Psychological Egoism, in any of its narrower forms, on its merits,

we should have had to say: “So much the worse for the common-sense notions ol morality!” But, if Iam right, the morality of common

sense, with all its difficulties

and incoherences, is immune at least to attacks from the basis of Psychological Egoism.

Intrinsic Value G. E. MOORE The main conclusions, at which we have arrived so far with regard to the theory stated in Chapters I and II, may be briefly summed up as follows. I tried to show, first of all, (1) that to say that a

voluntary action is right, or ought to be done, or is wrong, is not the same thing as to say that any being or set of beings whatever, either human or non-human, has towards it any mental attitude whatever—either an attitude of feeling, or of willing, or of thinking something about

it; and that hence no proof to the effect that any beings, human or non-human. have any such attitude towards an action is sufficient to show that it is right, or ought to be done, or is wrong; and (2) similarly, that to say that any one thing or state of things is intrinsically good, or intrinsically bad, or that one is intrinsically better than another, is also not the same thing as to say that any being or set of beings has towards it any mental attitude whatever—either an attitude of

174

REALISM

feeling, or of desiring, or of thinking something about it; and hence that here

again no proof to the effect that any being or set of beings Aas some such mental attitude towards a given thing or state of things is ever sufficient to show that it is intrinsically good or bad. These two points are extremely important, because the contrary view is very commonly held, in some form or other, and_ because (though this is not always seen), whatever form it be held in, it is absolutely fatal to one or both of two very fundamental principles, which our theory implies. In many of their forms such views

are fatal to the principle (1) that no action is ever both right and wrong; and hence also to the view that there is any always characteristic whatever which belongs to right actions and never to wrong ones; and in ail their forms they are fatal to the principle, (2) that if it is once the duty of any being to do an action whose total effects will be A rather than one whose total effects will be B, it must always be the duty of any being to

do an action whose total effects will be precisely similar

whose

total

to A rather

effects

will

be

than

one

precisely

similar to B, if he has to choose between them. I tried to show, then, first of all, that these two principles may be successfully defended against this first line of attack— the line of attack which consists in saying

(to put “good”

it shortly)

that

“right”

and

are merely sudjective predicates.

But we found next that even those who admit and insist (as many do) that “right” and “intrinsically good” are not subjective predicates, may yet attack the second principle on another ground. For this second principle implies that the question whether an action is right or

wrong

must

always

depend

upon _ its

AND

ANALYSIS

actual consequences; and this view is very commonly

disputed on one

or other of

three grounds, namely, (1) that it sometimes depends merely on the inérinsic' nature of the action, or, in other words,

that certain kinds of actions would be absolutely always right, and others absolutely always wrong, whatever their con-

sequences

might

be, or

(2)

that

it

depends, partly or wholly, on the mozive

from which the action is done, or (3) that it depends on the question whether the agent had reason

to expect that its

consequences would be the best possible. I tried, accordingly, to show next that each of these three views is untrue. But, finally, we raised, in the last chapter, a question as to the precise sense in which right and wrong do depend upon the actual consequences. And here for the first time we came upon a point as to which it seemed very doubtful whether our theory was right. All that could be agreed upon was that a voluntary action is right whenever and only when its total

consequences

are

as

good,

in-

have trinsically, —as any that would followed from any action which the agent could have done instead. But we were unable to arrive at any certain conclusion as to the precise sense in which the phrase “could have’ must be understood if this proposition is to be true; and whether, therefore, it zs true, if we give to these words the precise sense which our theory gave to them.

I conclude, then, that the theory stated in Chapters I and II is right so far as it merely asserts the three principles (1) that there zs some characteristic which belongs and must belong to absolutely al/ right voluntary actions and to no wrong

ones;

(2) that one such characteristic consists in the fact that the total consequences of right actions must always be as good,

ETHICS

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175

intrinsically, as any which it was possible

he does sacrifice his own

for the agent to produce under the cir-

general good; they only hold that he will

cumstances

(it being uncertain, however,

in what sense precisely the word “possible” is to be understood), whereas this can

never be true of wrong ones; and (3) that if any set of consequences A is once intrinsically better than another set B, any set precisely similar to A must always be intrinsically better than a set precisely similar to B. We have, indeed, not con-

sidered all the objections which might be urged against these three principles; but we have, I think, considered all those which are most commonly urged, with one single exception. And I must now briefly state what this one remaining objection is, before I go on to point out the respect in which this theory which was stated in Chapters I and II, seems to me to be utterly wrong, in spite of being right as to all these three points.

This one last objection may be called the objection of Egoism; and it consists in asserting that no agent can ever be under any obligation to do the action,

whose total consequences will be the best possible, zf its total effects upon him, personally, are not the best possible; or in other words that it always would be right for an agent to choose the action whose

total effects upon himself would be the best, even if absolutely all its effects (taking into account its effects on other beings as well) would not be the best. It asserts in short that it can never be the duty of any agent to sacrifice his own good to the general good. And most people, who take this view, are, I think, content

to assert

this, without

asserting

further that it must always be his positive duty to prefer his own good to the general good. That is to say, they will admit that a man may be acting rightly, even if

good to the

be acting equally rightly, if he does not.

But there are

some

philosophers

who

seem to hold that it must always be an agent’s positive duty to do what is best for himself—always, for instance, to do what will conduce most to his own “perfection,’ or his own salvation, or his own

“self-realisation”;

who

imply, therefore,

that it would be his duty so to act, even if the action in question did not have the best possible consequences upon the whole.

Now the question, whether this view is true, in either of these two different forms, would, of course, be of no practical importance, if it were true that, as a matter of fact, every action which most promotes the general good always also most promotes the agent’s own good, and vice versa. And many philosophers have taken great pains to try to show that this is the case: some have even tried to show that it must necessarily be the case. But it seems to me that none of the arguments which have been used to prove this proposition really do show that it is by any means umiversally true. A case, for instance, may arise in which, if a man

is

to secure the best consequences for the world as a whole, it may be absolutely necessary that he should sacrifice his own life. And those who maintain that, even in such a case, he will absolutely always be securing the greatest possible amount of good for himself, must either maintain

that in some future life he will receive goods sufficient to compensate him for all that he might have had during many

years of continued life in this world—a view to which there is the objection it may be doubted, whether we shall any future life at all, and that it is more doubtful, what, :f we shall,

that have even that

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AND

ANALYSIS

life will be like; or else they must main-

sidering the question, comes to the con-

tain the following paradox.

clusion that he can never be under any

Suppose there are two men, A and B, who up to the age of thirty have lived lives of equal intrinsic value; and that at that age it becomes the duty of each of them to sacrifice his life for the general good. Suppose A does his duty and sacrifices his life, but B does not, and continues to live for thirty years more. Those

obligation to sacrifice his own good to the

who

hold

that the agent’s own

good

always coincides with the general good, must then hold that B’s sixty years of life, no matter how well the remaining thirty years of it may be spent, cannot possibly have so much intrinsic value as A’s thirty years. And surely this is an extravagant paradox, however much intrinsic value we may attribute to those final moments of A’s life in which he does his duty at the expense of his life; and however high we put the loss in intrinsic value to B’s life, which arises from the fact that, in this one instance, he failed to do his duty. B may, for instance, repent of this one act and the whole of the remainder of his life may be full of the highest goods; and it seems extravagant to maintain that all the goods there may be in this last thirty years of it cannot possibly be enough to make his life more

valuable, intrinsically,

than that of A. I think, therefore, we must conclude that a maximum of true good, for ourselves, is by no means always secured by those actions which are necessary to secure a maximum of true good for the world as a whole; and hence that it 7s a question of practical importance, whether, in such cases of conflict, it is always a duty, or right, for us to prefer our own good to the general good. And this is a question which, so far as I can see, it is impossible to decide by argument one way or the other. If any person, after clearly con-

general good, if they were to conflict, or even that it would be wrong for him to do so, it is, I think, impossible to prove that he is mistaken. But it is certainly equally impossible for him to prove that

he is not mistaken. And, for my part, it seems to me quite self-evident that he is

mistaken. It seems to me quite selfevident that it must always be our duty to do what will produce the best effects upon the whole, no matter how bad the

effects upon

ourselves may

be and no

matter how much good we ourselves may

lose by it. I think, therefore, we may safely reject this last objection to the principle that it must always be the duty of every agent to do that one, among all the actions which he can do on any given occasion, whose total consequences will have the greatest intrinsic value; and we may conclude, therefore, that the theory stated in Chapters I and II is right as to all the three points yet considered, except for the doubt as to the precise sense in which

the words “can do” are to be understood in this proposition. But obviously on any theory which maintains, as this one does, that right and wrong depend on the

intrinsic

value

of the consequences

of

our actions, it is extremely important to decide rightly what kinds of consequences

are

intrinsically

better

or

worse

than

others. And it is on this important point that the theory in question seems to me

to take an utterly wrong view. It maintains, as we saw in Chapter II, that any whole which contains more pleasure is always intrinsically better than one which contains less, and that none can be in-

trinsically better, unless it contains more pleasure; it being remembered that the

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its

phrase “more pleasure,” in this statement, is not to be understood as meaning strictly what it says, but as standing for

if it were the case, what it would involve is this. It would involve our maintaining

any one of five different alternatives, the

actual voluntary action have more intrinsic value than those of the possible alternatives, it absolutely always happens to be true that they a/so contain more pleasure, although, in other cases, we know that degree of intrinsic value is by no means always in proportion to quantity of pleasure contained. And, of course, it is theoretically possible that this should be so: it is possible that the total consequences of actual voluntary actions should form a complete exception to the general rule: that, in their case, what has more intrinsic value should absolutely always also contain more pleasure, although, in other cases,* this is by no means always true: but anybody can see, I think, that, in the absence of strict proof that it is so, the probabilities are all the other way.

nature of which was fully explained in our first two chapters. And the last question we have to raise, is, therefore: Is this proposition true or not? and if not, what zs the right answer to the question: What kinds of things are intrinsically better or worse than others? And first of all it is important to be quite clear as to how this question is related to another question, which is very liable to be confused with it: namely the question whether the proposition which was distinguished in Chapter I, as forming the first part of the theory there stated, is true or not: I mean, the proposition that quantity of pleasure is a correct criterion of right and wrong, or that, zn this world, it always is, as a mat-

ter of fact, our duty to do the action which will produce a maximum of pleasure, or (for this is, perhaps, more commonly held) to do the action which, so far as we can see, will produce such a maximum. This latter proposition has been far more often expressly held than the proposition that what contains more pleasure is always intrinsically better than what contains less; and many people may be inclined to think they are free to maintain it, even if they deny that the intrinsic value of every whole is always in proportion to the quantity of pleasure it contains. And so, in a sense, they are; for it is quite possible, theoretically, that quantity of pleasure should always be a correct criterion of right and wrong, here in this world, even if intrinsic value is not always in exact proportion to quantity of pleasure. But though this is theoretically possible, it is, I think, easy to see that it is extremely unlikely to be the case. For

that, where the total consequences of any

It is, indeed, so far as I can see, quite im-

possible absolutely to prove either that it is so or that it is not so; because

actual

actions in this world are liable to have such an immense number of indirect and

remote

consequences,

which

we

cannot

trace, that it is impossible to be quite certain how the total consequences of any two actions will compare either in respect of intrinsic value, or in respect of the quantity of pleasure they contain. It may, therefore, possibly be the case that quantity of pleasure is, as a matter of fact, a wrong,

correct criterion of right and even if intrinsic value is oz in proportion to quantity of

always pleasure contained. But it is impossible to prove that it is a correct criterion, except by assuming that intrinsic value always is in proportion to quantity of pleasure. And most of those who have held

the former

view

have,

fact made this assumption,

I think,

even

in

if they

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AND

ANALYSIS

have not definitely realised that they were

way. And if anybody, after clearly con-

making it.

sidering the issue, does come to the conclusion that no one kind of enjoyment is ever intrinsically better than another, provided only that the pleasure in both is equally intense, and that, if we could get as much pleasure in the world, without needing to have any knowledge, or any moral qualities, or any sense of beauty,

;

Is this assumption true, then? Is it true that one whole will be intrinsically better than another, whenever and only when it contains more pleasure, no matter what

the two may be like in other respects? It seems to me almost impossible that any one, who fully realises the consequences

of such a view, can possibly hold that it zs

as we can get with them, then all these

true. It involves our saying, for instance, that a world in which absolutely nothing except pleasure existed—no knowledge, no love, no enjoyment of beauty, no moral qualities—must yet be intrinsically better—better worth creating—provided only the total quantity of pleasure in it were the least bit greater, than one in which all these things existed’ as well as pleasure. It involves our saying that, even if the total quantity of pleasure in each

things

was exactly equal, yet the fact that all the beings in the one possessed in addition knowledge of many different kinds and a full appreciation of all that was beautiful or worthy of love in their world, whereas none of the beings in the

other possessed any of these things, would give us no reason whatever for preferring the former to the latter. It involves our saying that, for instance, the state of mind of a drunkard, when he is intensely pleased with breaking crockery, is just as valuable, in itself—just as well worth

having, as that of a man

who is fully

realising all that is exquisite in the tragedy of King Lear, provided only the mere quantity of pleasure in both cases is the same. Such instances might be

multiplied indefinitely, and it seems

to

me that they constitute a reductio ad absurdum of the view that intrinsic value is always in proportion to quantity of

pleasure.

Of

course,

here

again,

the

question is quite incapable of proof either

would

be

entirely

superfluous,

there is no way of proving that he is wrong. But it seems to me almost impossible that anybody, who does really get the question clear, should take such a

view; and, if anybody were to, I think it is self-evident that he would be wrong. It may, however, be asked: If the

matter is as plain as this, how has it come about that anybody ever has adopted the view that intrinsic value zs always in proportion to quantity of pleasure, or has ever argued, as if it were so? And IJ think one chief answer to this question is that those who have done so have not clearly realised all the consequences of their view, partly because they have been too ex-

clusively

occupied

with

the

particular

question as to whether, in the case of the total consequences of actual voluntary actions, degree of intrinsic value is not always in proportion to quantity of pleasure—a question, which, as has been admitted, is, in itself, much more obscure. But there is, I think, another reason, which is worth mentioning, because it introduces us to a principle of great importance. It may, in fact, be held, with great plausibility, that no whole can ever have any intrinsic value unless it contains some pleasure; and it might be thought, at first sight, that this reasonable, and perhaps true, view could not possibly lead

to the wholly unreasonable one that intrinsic value is always in proportion

to

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quantity of pleasure: it might seem obvious that to say that nothing can be valuable without pleasure is a very differ-

ent thing from saying that intrinsic value is always in proportion to pleasure. And it is, I think, in fact true that the two views are really as different as they seem, and that the latter does not at all follow from the former. But, if we look a little closer, we may, I think, see a reason why

the latter should very naturally have been thought to follow from the former.

The reason is as follows. If we say that no whole can ever be intrinsically good,

179

of course, /essen its value, by adding other

things, e.g., by adding pain; but we can never increase it except by adding pleasure. Now from this it does not, of course, follow strictly that the intrinsic value of a whole is always in proportion to the quantity of pleasure it contains in the special sense in which we have throughout been using this expression—that is to say, as meaning that it is in proportion to the excess of pleasure over pain, in one of the five senses explained in Chapter I. But it is surely very natural to think that

are,

it does. And it does follow that we must

of course, saying that if from any whole,

be wrong in the reasons we gave for disputing this proposition. It does follow

unless it contains

some

pleasure, we

which is intrinsically good, we were to subtract all the pleasure it contains, the remainder, whatever it might be, would have no intrinsic goodness at all, but must always be either intrinsically dad, or else intrinsically indifferent: and this (if we remember our definition of intrinsic value) is the same thing as to say that this remainder actually Aas no intrinsic goodness at all, but always zs either positively bad or indifferent. Let us call the pleasure which such a whole contains, A, and the whole remainder, whatever it may be, B. We are then saying that the whole A+B is intrinsically good, but that B is not intrinsicaly good at all. Surely it seems to follow that the intrinsic possibly be cannot value of A+B greater than that of A by itself? How, it may be asked, could it possibly be otherwise?

How,

by adding

to A something,

namely B, which has zo intrinsic goodness at all, could we possibly get a whole which has more intrinsic value than A? It may naturally seem to be self-evident that we could not. But, if so, then it absolutely follows that we can never increase the value of any whole whatever except by adding pleasure to it: we may,

that we must be wrong in thinking that by adding such things as knowledge or a sense of beauty to a world which contained a certain amount of pleasure, without adding any more pleasure, we could increase the intrinsic value of that world. If, therefore, we are to dispute the proposition that intrinsic value zs always in proportion to quantity of pleasure we must dispute this argument. But the argument may seem to be almost indisputable. It has, in fact, been used as an

argument in favour of the proposition that intrinsic value zs always in proportion to quantity of pleasure, and I think it has probably had much influence in inducing people to adopt that view, even if they have not expressly put it in this form. How, then, can we dispute this argument? We might, of course, do so, by rejecting the proposition that no whole can ever be intrinsically good, unless it contains some pleasure; but, for my part, though I don’t feel certain that this proposition is true, I also don’t feel at all certain that it is mot true. The part of the argument which it seems to me cer-

REALISM

180

tainly can and ought to be another part—namely, the that, where a whole contains A and B, and one of these,

intrinsic

goodness

disputed is assumption two factors, B, has no

at all, the intrinsic

value of the whole cannot be greater than that of the other factor, A. This assump-

tion, I think, obviously rests on a still more general assumption, of which it is only a special case. The general assumption is: That where a whole consists of

two factors A and B, the amount by which its intrinsic value exceeds that of one of these two factors must always be equal to that of the other factor. Our special case will follow from this general assumption: because it will follow that if

B be intrinsically indifferent, that is to say, if its intrinsic value=0, then the

amount by which the value of the whole A-+ B exceeds the value of A must also = 0, that is to say, the value of the whole

must be precisely equal to that of A; while if B be intrinsically bad, that is to

say, if its intrinsic value is less than then the amount by which the value A-+B will exceed that of A will also less than 0, that is to say, the value

0, of be of

AND

ANALYSIS

fact that A and B doth exist together, to-

gether with the fact that they have to one another any relation which they do happen to have (when they exist together, they always must have some relation to one another; and the precise nature of the relation certainly may in some cases make a great difference to the value of the

whole state of things, though, perhaps, it need not in all cases)—that these two facts together must have a certain amount of intrinsic value, that is to say must be either intrinsically good, or intrinsically bad, or intrinsically indifferent, and that

the amount by which this value exceeds the

value

would

which

the

existence

have, if A existed

of

A

quite alone,

need not be equal to the value which the existence of B would have, if B existed quite alone. This is all that we are saying. And can any one pretend that such a view necessarily contradicts the laws of arithmetic? or that it is, self-evident that it cannot be true? I cannot see any ground for saying so; and if there is no ground, then the argument which sought to show that we can never add to the value of any whole except by adding pleasure to it, is

the whole will be Jess than that of A.

entirely baseless.

Our special case does then follow from the general assumption; and nobody, I

If, therefore, we reject the theory that intrinsic value is always in proportion to quantity of pleasure, it does seem as if we may be compelled to accept the principle that the amount by which the value of a whole exceeds that of one of its factors is not necessarily equal to that of the remaining factor—a principle which, if true, is very important in many other cases. But, though at first sight this prin. ciple may seem paradoxical, there seems to be no reason why we should not accept

think,

would

maintain

that

the

special

case was true without maintaining that the general assumption was also true. The general assumption may, indeed, very naturally seem to be self-evident: it has, I think, been generally assumed that it is so: and it may seem to be a mere deduction from the laws of arithmetic. But, so far as I can see, it is mot a mere deduction from the laws of arithmetic, and, so far from being self-evident, is certainly untrue,

Let us see exactly what we are saying,

if we deny it. We are saying that the

it; while there are other independent reasons why we should accept it. And, in any case, it seems

quite clear that the

degree of intrinsic value of a whole is

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not always in proportion to the quantity of pleasure it contains.

But, if we do reject this theory, what, it may be asked, can

it? How

can we

we

answer

substitute

for

the question,

what kinds of consequences are intrinsically better or worse than others? We may, I think, say, first of all, that for the same reason for which we have rejected the view that intrinsic value is always in proportion to quantity of pleasure, we must also reject the view that it is always in proportion to the quantity of any other single factor whatever. Whatever single kind of thing may be proposed as a measure of intrinsic value, instead of pleasure—whether knowledge, or virtue, or wisdom, or love—it is, I think, quite plain that it is not such a measure; because it is quite plain that, however valuable any one of these things may be, we may always add to the value of a whole which contains any one of them, not only by adding more of that one, but also by adding something else instead. Indeed, so far as I can see, there is no characteris-

tic whatever which always distinguishes every whole which has greater intrinsic value from every whole which has less, except the fundamental one that it would always be the duty of every agent to prefer the better to the worse, if he had to choose between a pair of actions, of which they would be the sole effects, And similarly, so far as I can see, there is no

characteristic whatever which belongs to all things that are intrinsically good and only to them—except simply the one that they all are intrinsically good and ought always to be preferred to nothing at all, if we had to choose between an action whose sole effect would be one of them and one which would have no effects whatever. The fact is that the view which seems to me to be true is the one which,

181

apart from theories, I think every one would naturally take, namely, that there are an immense variety of different things, all of which are intrinsically good; and that though all these things may perhaps have some characteristic in common, their variety is so great that they have none, which, besides being common to them all, is also peculiar to them—that is to say, which never belongs to anything

which is intrinsically bad or indifferent. All that can, I think, be done by way of making plain what kinds of things are intrinsically good or bad, and what are better or worse than others, is to classify

some of the chief kinds of each, pointing out what the factors are upon which their

goodness or badness depends. And I think this is one of the most profitable things which can be done in Ethics, and one which has been too much _ neglected hitherto. But I have not space to attempt it here.

I have only space for two final remarks. The first is that there do seem to be two important characteristics, which are common to absolutely all intrinsic goods,

though not peculiar to them. Namely (1) it does seem as if nothing can be an intrinsic good unless it contains both some feeling and also some other form of consciousness; and, as we have said _before, it seems possible that amongst the feelings contained must always be some amount of pleasure. And (2) it does also seem as if every intrinsic good must be a complex whole containing a considerable variety of different factors—as if, for instance, nothing so simple as pleasure by itself, however intense, could ever be any good. But it is important to insist (though it is obvious) that neither of these characteristics is peculiar to intrinsic goods: they may obviously also belong to things bad and indifferent. Indeed, as

182

REALISM

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ANALYSIS

regards the first, it is not only true that

not seem to be of much use—that is to

many wholes which contain both feeling and some other form of consciousness are

say, to lead to further good effects; and

intrinsically bad; but it seems also to be true that nothing can be intrinsically bad, unless it contains some feeling.

The other final remark is that we must be very careful to distinguish the two questions (1) whether, and in what degree, a thing is intrinsically good and bad, and (2) whether, and in what degree, it is capable of adding to or subtracting from the intrinsic value of a whole of which it forms a part, from a third, entirely different question, namely (3) whether, and in what degree, a thing is useful and has good effects, or harmful and has bad effects. All three questions are very liable to be confused, because, in

common life, we apply the names “good” ‘and “bad” to things of all three kinds indifferently: when we say that a thing is “good” we may mean either (1) that

it is intrinsically good or (2) that it adds to the value of many intrinsically good wholes or (3) that it is useful or has good effects; and similarly when we say that a thing is bad we may mean any one of the three corresponding things. And such confusion is very liable to lead to mistakes, of which the following are, I think,

the commonest. In the first place, people are apt to assume with regard to things,

which really are very good indeed in senses (rt) or (2), that they are scarcely any good at all, simply because they do

similarly, with regard to things which really are very bad in senses (1) or (2), it is very commonly assumed that there cannot be much, if any, harm

in them,

simply because they do not seem to lead to further bad results. Nothing is commoner than good thing: cluding that, any good; or

to find people asking of a What use is it? and conif it is no use, it cannot be asking of a bad thing: What

harm does it do? and concluding that it it does harm in take, of ful, but

no harm, there cannot be it. Or, again, by a converse things which really are very are not good at all in senses

any misuse(1)

and (2), it is very commonly assumed that they mzst be good in one or both of these two senses. Or again, of things, which really are very good in senses (1)

and (2), it is assumed that, because they are good, they cannot possibly do harm. Or finally, of things, which are neither intrinsically good nor useful, it is assumed that they cannot be any good at all, although in fact they are very good in sense (2). All these mistakes are liable to occur,

because,

in fact, the degree of

goodness or badness of a thing in any one of these three senses is by no means always in proportion to the degree of its goodness or badness in either of the other two; but if we are careful to distinguish

the three different questions, they can, I think, all be avoided.

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183

Value as the Object of Interest ’ RALPH

BARTON

PERRY

II the view

is formulated it becomes the “judgment

which is elaborated in the book. 1. I, being an English-speaking person,

of value,” the former, or constituent cognition, being the “interest-judgment.” Both judgments may be true or false, but the interest-judgment need not be true in order that the interest, and hence the

First,

examine

which

let me

briefly restate

systematically

my

attention

that

domain

is directed

to

by a

certain set of words, of which the most common are “good,” and “bad.” Seeking to discover the broad lines or general structure of this domain, I find that: 2. There is a pervasive character of

things which consists in their being the

value of its object, shall occur.

5. I find that interest may vary quantitatively in several ways, and I derive from these quantitative variations of interest a meaning for the comparative and superlative forms of value, positive and

objects of certain acts or dispositions having the peculiar opposition of favor and disfavor. These acts I call “interests,” positive and negative; and of their objects when so regarded I propose to say that they have “value,” positive and negative. 3. I attempt to set forth in some detail the nature of interest, and find that it is fundamentally motor or conative. It is action, or a disposition to act, for or against that which I call its object. 4. Beyond its motor character the most important feature of interest is its intimate relation to cognition. There is a

all interested activity; and absolute in the sense that the judgment which applies it is true independently of the interest

cognitive constituent of interest, which is

or opinion of the judge from whom

its accompanying expectation regarding the interest’s object; and this cognition will vary in the degree of its explicitness,

proceeds. 7. I suggest, and hope at some later time to make clear, that there are specific varieties of interest, and of relations of interests, which are characteristic of subdivisions of the general domain which we

being at its minimum

in appetites, im-

pulses, and feelings, at its maximum in deliberate volition. There is also a supervening cognition, in which the interest itself is known, whether to the subject himself at the time of his interest, or to a second subject. When this latter cognition

negative, i.e., for “better,” “best,” “worse,”

and “worst.” There appears to be only one principle of quantitative comparison ap-

plicable

to

different

interests,

namely,

“inclusion,” or the principle that a and b are greater than a.

6. In terms of the principle of inclusion I formulate a standard or ideal of maximum inclusion. This standard is “uni-

versal” in the sense of being applicable to

it

took as our original field of inquiry: subdivisions commonly designated by such relatively specific terms as “rectitude,” “beauty,” “piety,” “sovereignty,” and

1 For a fuller treatment of this theory, see Professor Perry’s A General Theory of Value and Realms of Value.

REALISM

184 “wealth.” The field designated by “true” seems to me (provisionally) not to involve interest, but only a kindred act which I call “expectation.”

AND

ANALYSIS

This the social scientist rightly dismisses

than

as irrelevant, or embraces within his own descriptive scheme under the principle ot psychological or historical relativism. The result is that something is left out, namely, the question of the truth or

any other system with which which I am acquainted, to bring order and coherence into the discourse in which the above and like terms (whether general such as “good,” or specific such as “right” and “beautiful”) are employed; and to corre-

validity of the standard. I do not mean that a philosopher may not apply a standard, but only that his prior and proper task is to formulate and defend the standard which he applies. Even though it should be the case that standards de-

8. The system of concepts briefly outlined seems

late

that

to me

group

to serve,

of cultural

better

activities

known as ethics, esthetics, religion, politics, economics, and science. g. I do not claim that the results of my study coincide either with verbal usage or with common sense. Verbal usage is inexact, and common sense is largely a product of habit. The demand for theory arises from the fact that no thoughtful person can abide by either of them. There is a presumption in favor of common sense, but this means only that common sense contains a precipitate of experience

and reason for which theory must find a place. Verbal usage can not be recklessly violated without misunderstanding or ir-

relevance, but it is a very differer.t matter to suppose, as some philosophers do, that it is only necessary to elucidate what is already meant. In any case, it is important as far as possible to find characters, structures, and relations, and in so far as they are found the question of nomenclature becomes comparatively unimportant.

10. Of prime importance is the difference between the theory of the practical and the exercise of practical judgment.

The philosophy of value has often played into the hands of social scientists of the positivistic school by encouraging the view that philosophers mean simply to apply a standard to social phenomena.

rive their authority from ‘the superior quality of the person who applies them,

it would be the peculiar business of the philosopher. to explain and defend this view, rather than to exemplify it. Ill

Before considering the objections to the view just outlined I should like to point out the extent to which the opponents of this view agree that interest is uniquely related to value, for from this agreement

I derive a sense of being on the right track, or of having at least looked in the right direction. In the classification of alternative views in my General Theory of Value I defined two views which were

plainly akin

to my

own,

namely,

the

view that value consists in a qualification of the object for interest, and the view that value consists in being the object of a qualified interest, personal, rational, social, or divine. The third alternative was the view that interest plays no part whatever in the meaning of value. But it appears more and more clearly as the discussion proceeds that even upholders of this view attach a peculiar, even though external, importance to interest. Although they refuse to zdentify value with interest, they do for the most part show a marked

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inclination to one or more of the following positions: (1) Interest is a necessary condition of anything’s possessing or acquiring the quality of value.

(2) Interest

is a necessary

of anything’s

being known

condition

to be valu-

able.

(3) Only which

interest,

interest

is

or a

complexes

of

constituent,

are

valuable. (4) Whatever is valuable is ipso facto interesting. If all of these claims can be accounted for, then the very view which professes to be most flatly opposed to the view which I have maintained in my General Theory

of Value,

can

be

cited

in

its

support.”

relation

IV Because of its general bearings, I should

like to consider first the type of objection that is excited by the large amount of psychology contained in my General Theory of Value. I do not mean the

objections felt by psychologists to the effect that my psychology is bad or indifferent psychology, but those felt by logicians to the effect that my psychology is irrelevant. It is interesting to me to find that while some of my critics who prefer to define value in terms of “satisfaction” object that my view is not psychological and existential enough, others object to the fact that I have brought value within the realm of nature and mind, when I should

have respected its peculiar transcendence.

2 Professor A. P. Brogan has objected (in a private letter) that this classification of theories does not provide for his view that value consists in a

185

of

“betterness.”

Perhaps

not,—but

perhaps my fault is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the view in question has shown a healthy tendency to develop. If “better” is a highly abstract relation such as “different,” which makes no prescription as to its terms save that there shall be two, then such a view as Professor Brogan’s evidently belongs to my first type:—“Value as Irrelevant to Interest.” If, on the other hand, “‘better’’ is a relation such as “warmer,”

“brighter,” “sadder,”

or (to waive the use of the comparative) “brother of,” “successor of,”—a relation, namely, having a limited domain, then my classification will depend on the domain. If better should happen to be an interest-relation,

as the above

are thermal,

visual,

emotional, familial, or temporal relations; if, in other words, it is of the very essence of the relation “better” that it holds only between complexes of which interests are constituents, then I should

place it under the type “Value as the Object of Qualified Interest.” I should do so because the view would seem to me to consist essentially in identifying value with some comparative or superlative, or

specifically qualified, form of interest instead of with interest generically. But I attach no great importance to this question of classification, and the merit of Professor Brogan’s view would not in the least be affected in my judgment by the ease or the awkwardness of its fitting in. Nor do I claim to have proved my own view by an exhaustive elimination of every other possibility.

Thus

Professor Bruno Tapper, speaking phenomenologists and neoKantians, says of the present writer that he “does not claim that his values are free from the biological and psychological taint.” > Now while I do not regard value

fér’

the

as independent

of life and mind, neither

do I regard such an alliance as derogating from value’s health or reputation. It is customary in some circles to regard biology and psychology as so disreputable as to contaminate the logical “purity” of any doctrine that associates with them. But the only evil in psychology or biology is in confusing them with something else, such as logic; and to avoid this con-

fusion it is much safer to bring them to

light than to leave them in the dark. Now there are two forms which the logical criticism may take. One may argue that value has logical characters which must be studied logically; which must, in other words, be dealt with by applying whatever logical system one holds. Theory 3 Inter. Jour. of Ethics, XL

(1930), p. 519.

REALISM

186

AND

ANALYSIS

of value must, in other words, be con-

But let our logical critic develop his

formed to logic. Or, in the second place,

position further. The meaning of a concept, he proceeds, is universal; that is, whatever holds of value in general holds

one may argue that value zs itself an independent logical character, which must be provided for by the expansion or revision of one’s system of logic. In other words, the so-called “logic of value” means one of two things. It means, on the one hand, that in theory of value (as

necessarily for all cases of it, actual or possible; and holds for all judges, actual or possible. It is @ priori, in that my

might be said equally of physics, psy-

would be true even if there were no par-

chology, or any other branch of inquiry) ment and conclusion to logical form. Or, on the other hand, it means that theory of value has a peculiar logic of its own, which distinguishes it from theory of

ticular values. Beyond this point the argument will vary with the specific variety of the author’s logic. If he is a phenomenological logician he will tell us that value is an essence, an entity neither physical nor mental, which is directly

every other sort, and which perhaps gives

envisaged by an act of intuition.* If he is

it priority to every other sort of logic. It is my contention that arguments of the first sort are formalistic, and so far as theory of value is concerned, quite barren; whereas arguments of the second sort are interesting and material, but false. Arguments of the first sort are surprisingly common, and their refutation, though comparatively easy, is nevertheless clarifying. The substance of the criticism is as follows. Value is a concept; and the meaning of a concept is not to be confused with the act of conceiving it, or with any of the psychological antecedents, conditions, or accompaniments of that

a logistical logician he will select one or

we must think straight, and fit our argu-

act. Value

zs what

value

means;

and its

nature is to be sought there, and not in

the subjectivity of him who means it. Now it is to be noted that, so far as this argument is concerned, we are as ignorant as ever of what value does mean. Nor, so far as I can see, has any notion whatever of its meaning as yet been excluded. Indeed, it is still quite open to us to suppose that it means nothing. That is the beauty of the logical method, so far

as logic is concerned, and its barrenness so far as anything else is concerned.

knowledge

knowledge

more

of it is independent

of

concepts

particular

of any

values,

as indefinables,

and

and

use

them in a series of definitions of ascending complexity. If he is an idealistic logician, he will construe value as a concrete universal. If he is an instrumentalist logician, his concept will turn out to be a plan of action appropriate to a concrete situation. But it can scarcely have escaped notice

that first and last this amounts to no more than the obvious truth that the concept of value is a concept; or that the meaning of

value in general is general. It also follows, not less obviously, that whatever be the logical characters of concepts, meanings, or generals, they will hold of value in that

aspect, that is, qua concept; and that the special complexion of an author’s logic will be reflected in his formulation * Professor Bruno Tapper tells us that “it is un-

fortunate that Max Scheler brackets the objectivity’ of values with that of colors and tones” (Inter. Jour. of Ethics, XL (1930), p. 523). It is unfortunate, because then the characterization of value as “‘essence’’ ceases to differentiate it. Essence tends to become a status in discourse, the status, namely, of being intuited; or an aspect, namely, the “what” as distinguished from the “that”; which status or aspect may be possessed by anything.

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

of

VALUE

the logical characters of value. The same considerations apply to the propositional characters of value. There is a concept of value, and value may therefore be a constituent of propositions that are true or false. Whatever one thinks of propositions,

whether

he inclines

to the

subject-predicate or relational form, or to the logic of classes; whether he inclines to the view that relations are internal, or the view that they are external; whether he thinks of truth as connotative or denotative, identifies it with correspondence, coherence or intuitive insight; all of these differences will be reflected in what he says about value. Now any philosopher is at

liberty, if he likes, to expound his logic by means of examples drawn from the field of value, provided he is willing to admit

that it is logic and not theory of value that he is expounding. He will leave the theory of value precisely where he found it. He has in effect used value only as a symbol, having, so far as these calculations are concerned, no meaning beyond that of “any concept.” When one has ascribed to the concept of value the general logical characters which one ascribes to all concepts as such, one is as far as ever from supplying the more determined characteristics which distinguish this concept from other concepts. It is still pertinent to ask, —What is the concept? When one conceives of value, what does one conceive? And there is no possible answer to this question which has as yet been excluded, not even that so-called psychological answer to which this logical critique was

supposed to be peculiarly fatal. There is only one kind of psychologism which has been proved to be vicious, that,

namely, which confuses the content of a concept with the mental process of conceiving it. But this does not in the least militate against the supposition that a concept

187

may be a concept of the mental. The conceptual form itself does not prescribe what shall be conceived. Take, for example, the concept of fear. If I know what fear in general means, then the concept of it is just as good a concept in every logical sense as any other concept. It is universal, a

priori, absolute, over-individual, or whatever other attribute one is accustomed, in one’s favorite logic, to conjure with. The only reservation is that one must not con-

fuse the essential what of fear when I do conceive it, with the accidental how of my conceiving it. By the same token, if it so

happens that I conceive value as the state of being object of an interest, then logic is as bound to take care of my concept as of any other.

Professor Dewey has used the illustration of a hit, foul, or strike in baseball.’ These are fairly complicated concepts, and they evidently involve the setting of a game and the participation of human beings engaged more or less in using their minds. But once the concept is conceived, and its meaning

fixed, it is logically just as reputable as any other. One must not mix up the psychology of the conceived player and the psychology

of the philosopher or the spectator who is doing the conceiving. Nor should one mix up the physics of the conceived baseball or diamond with pAysics of the spectator. The concept of a ball can not be hit with any private bat, any more than it can be annexed to the private mental biography of any particular spectator. It has a peculiar logical status of its own. But it means mind and body in a peculiar juxtaposition and intercourse. So of the conception of value in terms of interest. The general concept, once it is conceived, has rights of its own, and it can not be identified with the particular series of mental or physical occurrences which 5 This Journal, XX

(1923), p. 617.

REALISM

188

AND

ANALYSIS

does not consist in being formal, but in

gave it birth. Plato compared conceiving to childbearing on the ground that the concept like the child is a product of inner

being merely formal where one ought to

gestation. But conceiving is also like childbearing in that the offspring of thought, like that of the womb, immediately pos-

for the specific properties of the concept of value, the general properties of the concept as such. It is not formalistic to argue

sesses an identity and begins a career of its Own. It can never be withdrawn again

that the specific property of value is itself a formal property; in other words, that the

into tht mother-organism. An idea once

specific character of value is to be embraced among the characters having the order of generality which we ascribe to logical char-

launched is‘ thereupon and thereafter to all eternity itself. Buegrant all this, and it remains just as freely true asever that it may be an idea of anything you like, iincluding mind.® Had I not wished to give the matter some rhetorical emphasis I might have said once for all that the psychologist is just as privileged to employ concepts as anybody else. All he has to do is to distinguish between the psychology of his own psychologizing and the psychology that he is psychologizing about. Vv The second type of logical argument to which

I alluded

above

is free from

the

fault of formalism. The fault of formalism 8 Professor Nicolai Hartmann has written to me that he accepts my account of value as the complement of his own, in the sense that “Ak?” is the complement of “TAalt.” This means, I take it, that

he is prepared to admit that the act by which value is apprehended is an act of interest. “Die Aprioritat des Wissens um

sie ist keine intellektuale, reflexive,

sondern eine emotionale, intuitive” (Ethik (1926), p. 109). Even though it were admitted that the act of apprehending value is an interested act, this does not exclude that the possibility that what is so apprehended may itself be an act. Indeed it seems to be necessary to assume this. Over and above the act of apprehension, whatever kind of act it be, there is, I take it, the act as apprehended. The very act of distinguishing the act of conceiving from what is conceived involves the conceiving of the act as such. It is then entirely possible that when I conceive the act, or conceive the totality of Akt and Inhalt, 1 then conceive value. So the outcome of the analysis must depend on whether there is an Inhalt for value which does not mean At, or embrace Ak? as a part of its meaning.

be material. It is formalistic to substitute

acters. All that it is proper to insist on in advance is that when one argues that the character of value is a logical character, it shall be clear that there 7s a character about

which one is arguing. Consider, for example, the view that value isa. category. He who defends this . view shouldbe prepared first to exhibit the concept, as he aight exhibit the concept of relation, causation, or substance; and then to prove its categoriail status. He may do so E \ , : by showing that the concept in question belongs to the alphabet of thought,—is one of those terms in terms of vyhich one must think if one is to think at ali!. Or he may do so by showing that value las specified belongs to the structure of being, or object in general, so that any particular being or object must embody it. 4

Judging by the history of philosophy neither

procedure

would

necessarily

\ex-

* Or value may be construed as a category in mse sense of being a fundamental claim,—a hopeful expectation. Thus Professor L. J. Leonard speaks of value as a justificandum, a character which applies to existence not descriptively, but ideally. This view, also, it seems to me, throws no light on the more specific question of what value means. The question of the legitimacy of believing that existence conforms to our aspirations is one question, the question as to what value means is another. Either

value

is value

because

we

aspire to it; or

value is something distinct from aspiration, to which, it so happens, we aspire. In the latter case it is quite in order to ask what it is that we aspire to. (“Value and Existence,” Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy (1927),

pp. 301 ff )

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

189

clude the possibility that value means inter-

itual act, and having canons of legitimacy est. It is true that one starts with the nowhich are limited to itself. Instead of subtion that interest belongs to some things and suming the discerning of value under this not to others,—that it belongs, for example, ° act, and making it answerable to the canons to the organic and not to the inorganic of this act, we are invited to recognize in world. But this sort of difficulty has never the case of value an independent act with troubled idealists, who in order to construe its own independent canons. Values will mind as a category have promptly doubled then not be answerable to the conditions of it, in order to provide both for the mind ordinary objectivity. They will not occur that inheres in all things and the mind in nature and history, these being the that is peculiar to minds. If this sort of realms of thought and perception. Thought equivocation is to be avoided, then a cateand perception deal with facts and necesgorial value must not be identified with sities; the new act deals with oughts and validities. Views of this sort are unlikely properties like interest residing in a part of to remain dualistic, but almost invariably nature or history to the exclusion of the rest, but with some more elementary and pass over into the more radical view that facts and necessities are degraded or dispervasive character. Hence, except among

idealists this categorial view finds its chief

guised forms of oughts and validities, so

support in the notion that there is a valuesurd, a value-prime, a simple and irre-

that the ultimate metaphysics is in terms of the ideal rather than of the real. The substitution of “validity” for existence or subsistence I do not find illuminating. The irreducibility of value to the categories of existence seems to rest on the

ducible character. The discussion of this alleged addition to the family of ultimate entities will be resumed later. Suffice it to say that value has now become so simple that the great difficulty is to find it. Even its parents and self-appointed champions seem to be constantly mislaying it. Another variant of this second logical line of attack, according to which value possesses a peculiar logical status of its own, is the view that there is another act of apprehension which is as fundamental as the acts of thought and perception,—as fundamental, if not more so; and which has its own correlative realm of objects. Just as there is a theoretical logic governing thought and perception and their objects, so there“is an emotional or practical logic which governs one or both of these modes of apprehension and their objects. Perhaps it is a mistake to speak of the second realm in terms of apprehension and objects. The point is that the ordinary kind of logic is held to be only one kind of logic, appropriate only to one kind of.spir-

fact that: (1) @ can be valuable without existing; or, (2), @ can be valuable without its value’s existing; or, (3), valuableness can be valuableness without existing. But I do not find anything peculiar about any of these alternatives. They are possibilities that must somehow be provided for in subject-matter other than value.

Thus, (1) @ can be believed without existing; (2) @ can be believed without the belief’s existing, as when a is the object of a purely imaginary belief; (3) belief can be belief without existing, that is, belief may be a null class or a nature that is not exemplified. The supposed difficulty seems to arise from the supposition that if anything is asserted, existence is asserted, But the rejection of this naive supposition is the first step in logic. As to the term “validity” I can not see that it introduces any new meaning which

190

REALISM

AND

ANALYSIS

is helpful in this connection. The German

Professor M. E. Clarke, for example, re-

verb

“is,” but so have all verbs except the verb

gard “ought-to-be” as the equivalent of value. Value is what ought to be, and it is a further character of it that it ought,

“to be.” The specific meanings of “va-

or “tends,” to be real. Nor does he iden-

lidity” and “Geltung” seem to be: (1) value, in which case the expression “values are valid” is questionable or redundant; (2) logical correctness or proof, which is applicable to judgments

tify this obligation or tendency with the moral subject’s obligation to do some-

gelten, like the English

verb

“to

hold,” has the merit of avoiding the term

of being as well as to judgments of value, and is provided for in all types of logic and epistemology; (3) compliance with

legal forms, which is clearly too restricted in its application to suit the purpose of

thing about it. Seznsollen and Tunsollen are quite distinct, the latter affording the

real condition by which the former may be executed. Seznsollen remains as the mode of being (Seinsmodus) characteris-

tic of values. We should not say of a value

that

it zs, but

be.

that

it ought

to

,

The case for such a doctrine as this

the present theory.

Professor Hartmann also excludes value

seems to me to rest upon the finding of

from the realm of being, and hence from the scope of the logic of being. He points

value and ought, in some manner that sets them apart from being and that has a logic of its own. This manner of finding

out that while a’s value may be something that it is not, @ is not in this case indifferent to what it is not. This peculiar relevance of non-being to being in the case of value, is expressed by saying that a is not what it ought to be.® When the analysis takes this form the issue turns on “ought,” and no conception of “ought” is excluded by the analysis up to this point. An interpretation of “ought” in terms of real will may serve the purpose as well as any other; though in this case it must, of course, be contended that the statement of the situation in terms of the two terms,

the thing, and what it ought to be, is

incomplete. There would be an implied reference either to the thing’s own

will;

or to the will of some other being, actual or hypothetical, having an interest in the thing.

But Professor Hartmann excludes this possibility by insisting that “ought” is itself an irreducible concept. He does not, as do Professor John Laird and 8 Ethik, pp. 144 ff. 9 Ethik, pp. 154 ff.

Hartmann provides by attributing cognition to feeling, emotion, and will. These states of the subject reveal a peculiar

content, which is a priori independently and in its own peculiar way.?°

Whether this view is tenable or not, depends on the analysis of the relations of cognition and interest. It seems clear that the proposed

view

can

have

no

force

unless it can provide a substitute for ordinary knowledge in the field of value. If values are either unknown, or known

by thought and perception, then the logic of thought and perception applies to them; and they take their place in the realm of what is judged to be, or judged to be so and so. Those who insist that values have a logic of their own must insist that it has a cognition of its own, —and must therefore impute a cognitive

office to those parts of our nature, such as will and feeling, which are ordinarily con-

trasted to the cognitive part. Thus the view in question must depend on some 10 Ethik, pp. 104 ff.

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

such thesis as that values make

VALUE

them-

selves known, or reveal themselves, by their power to excite will and feeling.

They make themselves known by moving. Duty makes itself known by speaking imperatively to my awestruck will, beauty makes itself known by appealing seductively to my fascinated feeling. This is

an

interesting

question

in itself quite

191

apart from its bearing on the hegemony of logic. There is a widespread belief that if a thing alleged to be valuable is exhibited to a subject, and leaves him cold, he can

not have found it valuable. This would seem to imply that in the case of value the finding of the evidence

must

take the form of an affecto-motor sponse.

itself

re-

Foundations of Ethics SIR W. DAVID ROSS The general conception of ethics which I have worked is this: Ethics often described as a normative science, laying down norms or rules of right of good behaviour. That seems to me

on is as or to

cannot tell the truth to 4 without breaking a promise to B, or when he cannot give pleasure to C without hurting D? Moral _ philosophy cannot relieve his

practical difficulty by telling him in ad-

be in a sense true, and in a sense untrue.

vance

In a sense, ethics would be guilty of great

case. What he ought to do will depend on

offciousness

the precise circumstances, including his precise state of knowledge and opinion, and some of these circumstances he must know better than any one could tell him; if he can get help in his practical difficulty

in undertaking

this

task.

There are many plain men who already know as well as any moral philosopher could tell them, how they ought to be-

have. Not only do they see their concrete duty, in the difficult with admirable

situations

clearness

of life,

and correctness,

what

he ought to do in such a

anywhere, it will be not by reading a treatise on moral philosophy, but by

but they have principles, of a certain

stating his case

degree of generality, on which no moral philosopher can improve—tell the truth, keep your promises, aim at the happiness of those round you, and so on. But these general principles, while perfectly sound

goodness and wisdom

when properly understood, are apt to lead to difficulties, familiar even to the plain man, when their nature is not properly understood; for they are apt to conflict, at least in appearance, with one another. What is the plain man to do when he

to some

one

in whose

he has confidence,

a good and wise “plain man.” But besides his practical difficulty, he is apt to be plunged in a more deep-seated perplexity. “What can be the authority of morai rules,” he is apt to say, “if, when we try to apply them to the problems of daily life, they are found to contradict one another?” And there is another source of perplexity for him. He finds that some of the moral rules he habitually accepts—

REALISM

192

AND

ANALYSIS

not the very general ones of which I have

any act which violates such a rule must

given instances, but rules such as those which prescribe monogamous marriage

be viewed with suspicion until it can justify itself by appeal to some other rule of the same type. The second difficulty moral philosophy

and forbid unchastity—have been and are by no means accepted even as an ideal among all races of mankind; and this, again, is apt to lead to doubts of the

authoritativeness of any of the accepted rules. These two difficulties, at least, moral philosophy can do something to remove.

The first difficulty it relieves in this way. Rules such as “tell the truth,” “injure no man,” cannot survive if they con-

tinue to be taken as absolute rules of such a kind that any and every act which is an instance of telling the truth is

thereby rendered right, and any act which is an instance of injuring another man is thereby rendered wrong. The rules cannot both be true, when thus understood, if there is a single case in which one can-

not tell the truth without inflicting pain.

can

relieve

by an

examination

of the

moral rules current in a given society, with a view to dividing them into their different classes. Of these, it seems

that

four may be distinguished. There are, or may be, some whose correctness is selfevident (as, for instance, the rule that we

should produce as much good as we can); some whose rightness can be deduced from a self-evident rule by applying the rule to the universal conditions of human nature; some which can be derived from a self-evident rule by applying the rule to

the actual

conditions

of the particular

society; and some which cannot be justi-

fied even on that basis and must be discarded as based on incorrect views about human nature or physical nature, or on

And we find, further, that we cannot believe that there is any one of them which is universally true, as thus understood. At any rate we all feel sure that it is sometimes right to say what is not true, that it is sometimes right to break a promise, and so on with any one of such rules. The only way to save the authority of such rules is to recognize them not as rules

views which were true in past conditions

guaranteeing the rightness of any act that

them—lay

falls under them, but as rules guaranteeing that any act which falls under them tends, so far as that aspect of its nature goes, to be right, and can be rendered wrong only if in virtue of another aspect of its nature it comes under another rule

western lands, as we can see from studying the Greek sophists, Socrates, and Plato; and we may conjecture that they

by reason of which it tends more decidedly

of society but have ceased to be true today.

These two perplexities, one arising from conflict between the rules current in a single society, the other arising from conflict between the rules accepted in different societies—the pointing out of the conflicts, and the attempt to reconcile

at the origin

of ethics

in

lie at the basis of all ethical inquiry. If ethics does in fact relieve these perplexities, it to that extent has a practical value, by removing a great discouragement

to be wrong. Kant overshot the mark when he tried to vindicate for such rules absolute authority admitting of no exception; but he would have been right if

from the moral life. But it is essential that it should be pursued in a purely theoretical spirit, guided only by the wish

he had confined himself to insisting that

morality has really been hindered, as Kant

to discover

what

is true;

the cause

of

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

pointed out with great force, by cheap and easy defences of the accepted moral

code. And of course the study has great theoretical interest, quite apart from any practical value that it may be found to have.

Thus

ethics

has

grown

up,

as

an

193

as might properly be stated in a dictionary; the second inquiry is an inquiry into the nature of certain characteristics; but of course it should not be assumed without inquiry that characteristics such as

we have in mind in our use of terms really exist. The last-named inquiry

attempt to attain greater clearness in our thinking about questions of conduct. A

should precede the second-named inquiry.

little reflection shows that two kinds of

characteristics—rightness and goodness— exist, there would be little point in inquiring what would be their nature if they did exist. Now, taking rightness first, I think we can satisfy ourselves that it exists; i.e., I think we can see that in

judgement play the chief parts in this department of our thought, those in which we judge certain acts, or kinds of acts, to be right, and those in which we

judge certain kinds of things other than acts, such things as virtue or knowledge or pleasure, to be good or worth aiming at; and it becomes one of the chief tasks of ethics to reach clarity as to the meaning of the predicates of these judgements. In the inquiry into the meaning of such terms there are two stages. At the first we content ourselves with pointing out any ambiguities there may be in the usage of the terms, and distinguishing what seems to be the primary meaning in moral thought, as distinguished from any meanings of lesser moral importance and any which are not moral at all but, for instance, logical or aesthetic. At the second stage we try to inquire into the nature of that thing which we primarily mean by the term in question, in ethical thought— whether it falls under any more general category such as that of quality or relation, whether it can be defined by the use of simpler terms, and if so whether its definition involves the use of some

other ethical term (as it would if right could only be defined in terms of good, or good in terms of right) or whether it can be defined by the use of purely nonethical or naturalistic terms. The first stage of the inquiry is an inquiry into the use of language, and reaches results such

For unless

many

we

are satisfied that these

situations that occur there is an

action possible which because it would be of a certain type—for instance, because

it would produce more that is good than any other act possible in the circumstances —would be in that respect suitable to the circumstances (in the particular way which we describe by the words “morally suitable”); and further, that there is at least one possible action than which no other,

in

view

of its whole

character,

would be more suitable morally. The first

of these facts seems to me to be apprehended as self-evident; the second naturally follows from it. That seems to me the proper order; when we face a moral situation, what we see first is the existence of component suitabilities, or responsibilities, or claims, or prima facie obligations—whichever language we prefer.

And because we see the existence of these we see that there must be some action (or possibly several alternative actions) which would have a higher degree of resultant

suitability than any of the other actions that could be done in the circumstances,

though we may have no certainty as to which action (or actions) would have

this characteristic. The next step is to reflect on the nature

REALISM

194 of this characteristic which we call right-

ness;

and

this

involves

the

inquiry

whether it is definable ‘or not, and if so,

in what sort of terms it is definable. One may inquire first whether it is definable in non-ethical terms. I have examined, I believe, the most important attempts to define it in such a way, and have, I hope,

AND

ANALYSIS

tions and desires, are what is directly willed. We should be justified, then, in treating actions as the most important sub-

jects of the predicate “right.” It seems, further, that actions can be called right for a variety of reasons, so long as “right” is used in a rather wide sense as equivalent to “morally suitable”; for an action

given sufficient reasons for holding that

is in one respect morally suitable if it

no combination of non-ethical terms expresses the nature of what we mean by

proceeds from good motives, in another

rightness, however much we may think that actions having such-and-such a nonethical characteristic must necessarily be right. And then, passing to attempts to define rightness by the use of another ethical term, e.g., as productivity of what is good, I have tried to show that this

does not express what we mean by “tight,” even if we were to think that all acts having this character are right, and that no others are so. If these contentions are correct, moral rightness is an indefinable characteristic, and even if it be a species of a wider relation, such as suitability, its differentia cannot be stated except by repeating the phrase “morally right” or a synonym; just as, while red is

a species of colour, what distinguishes it from other colours can be indicated only by saying that it is the colour that is red. From this it is natural to pass to asking what are the proper sudjects of the predicate “right.” Now here, even within the moral sphere, we find that “right” is applied to a variety of kinds of thing. We can say that certain emotions and desires are the right emotions and desires to have in certain situations, and it seems

clear that “right” here has a moral meaning, not reducible to non-ethical terms. But “right” is used mainly, and “obligatory” is used only, of actions; and “obliga-

tory” is used only of them, because they

and they alone, in distinction from emo-

respect morally suitable if it (whatever motive it proceeds from) in fact produces results which are the maximum possible fulfilment of the various moral claims that exist against the agent. But if we use “right” in the narrower sense in which a “right” action is an obligatory action, we can, I think, see that neither of these

is the proper subject of rightness. The former cannot be obligatory, because only

that is obligatory which can be chosen, or which, at least, the agent could choose if

he were a better man; but however good a man he were, he could never choose his immediate motive, since what we choose

is acts and never anything else. And the latter cannot be obligatory, for the same reason, viz., that we cannot choose to produce results, but only to exert ourselves to do so. We are apt to be misled here, because we usually describe our duties as duties to do such things as paying our debts, relieving distress, and so on, where the phrases we use seem to

refer simply to the achievement of certain results; but on reflection we see that such a phrase as “paying one’s debts” includes a reference to two different though con-

nected things—an activity of setting oneself to pay one’s debts and the receipt of money by our creditor which normally results. Of these two things only the first is an activity of ours at all; and therefore

it alone can be that which is obligatory. It is quite natural that both the view

ETHICS

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the motive, and that the achievement of a certain result, in that to which we are obliged, should have received much support among moral philosophers; for which which

includes includes

both the well-motivated action and the action in which we not only exert ourselves in the right way but achieve what we set ourselves to do, have undoubtedly a certain moral suitability on that account. But it is not moral suitability of the

special kind

which

can

alone

involve

obligatoriness, since neither the desire to be felt by us here and now, nor the result to be achieved by us, can be chosen, and only what is capable of being chosen can be obligatory. I need hardly add that in saying that motives are not an element in what is obligatory, I am not suggesting that a man who never acted from a good motive could do the whole duty of man. That this could not be so follows from two reasons. If a bad or indifferent motive ever leads to a right act, it can only be by accident, and therefore in a succession of acts from such motives very few are likely to be the right acts in the circumstances. And secondly, good desires being

the most essential element in a good character, and one of our main duties being that of producing what is good wherever we can, and the betterment of our own character being one of the good things that are most under our own control, it is one of our main duties to set ourselves to improve our own character, and that will almost inevitably lead to our later

acts being to some extent well motivated. In saying that it is setting oneself to produce this or that change that is obligatory, I may seem to have come perilously near to saying what I have expressly dis-

avowed, that it is by its motive that an act

is made right.or wrong.

It is, of

195

course, always from some motive or other that we set ourselves to bring about changes. But the setting oneself is quite

different from the doing so from any particular motive. If I set myself to produce a state of affairs in which one thing will be in the state A and another thing in the state B, I may do so either from

the wish

to effect

the first of these

changes, accepting the other indifferently or even unwillingly as a necessary ac-

companiment

of the first, or from the

wish to effect the second of them, accepting the other indifferently or even unwillingly as a necessary accompaniment of the second; then my self-exertion is the same in the two cases, but the motives are quite different. And further, in deciding what I ought to do, it is evident that I must consider equally all the elements, so

far as I can foresee them, in the state of affairs I shall be bringing about. If I see that my act is likely to help M, for instance, and to hurt N, I am not justified in ignoring the bad effect, or even in treating it as less important than the good effect, merely because it is the good effect and not the bad one that I wish to bring about. It is the whole nature of that which I set myself to bring about, not that part of it which I happen to desire, that makes my act right or wrong.

If we are right in holding that the general nature of the things that are obligatory is that they are activities of self-exertion, what can we say about their particular character? Perhaps the most widely current view on this question is that the special character of all the acts that are right, and that which makes them right, is that they are acts of setting oneself to produce a maximum of what is good. This seems to me far from being, as it is often supposed to be, self-evident, and to be in fact a great over-simplifica-

REALISM

196 tion of the ground of rightness. There is no more reason, after all, to suppose that there is one single reason which makes all acts right that are right, than there is for supposing (what I fancy no one who con-

siders the matter will suppose) that there is a single reason which makes all things good that are good. And in fact there are several branches of duty which apparently cannot be grounded on productivity of the greatest good. There appears to be

a duty, for instance, of fulfilling promises, a duty of making compensation for wrongs we have done, a duty of rendering

AND

ANALYSIS

but the number of separate grounds ap-

pears to be quite small. And the ultimate propositions at which we arrive seem not

to express mere brute facts, but facts which are self-evidently necessary. For instance, the very object of a promise being to encourage some one to believe that one will act in a certain way, it is self-

evident that he has a moral claim to our behaving in that way if he wants us to do so. If we now turn to ask how we come to know these fundamental moral principles, the answer seems to be that it is in the

a return for services we have received,

same way in which we come to know the

and these cannot be explained as forms of the duty of producing the greatest good; we are conscious of duties to behave in these ways even when we have no convic-

axioms of mathematics. Both alike seem

included

tion that the greatest sum of good will be

to belong necessarily to anything which

thus produced, and this is so even when we take account of more distant results such as the increase in general mutual

satishes that definition. And as in mathematics, it is by intuitive induction that we grasp the general truths. We see first, for instance, that a particular imagined act, as being productive of pleasure to

confidence which the keeping of a single promise is likely to produce; for we are conscious of the duty even when owing to the secrecy of the promise this result is not likely to happen. Again, we are conscious of a duty to do what is just, and this refers not to the production of a maximum of good, but to the right distribution of it. This may perhaps be brought within the formula of “producing the maximum good” by recognizing enjoyment of happiness in proportion to merit as a more complex good to be distinguished from the merit and the

happiness; but it seems impossible to explain the other duties just referred to by similar hypotheses, because the results to

be produced, if good at all, are good only because there is a duty produce them. We seem conclude that there is ground of the rightness

to set oneself to to be driven to not one single of all right acts;

to be both synthetic and a priori; that is to say, we see the predicate, though not in the definition of the subject,

another, has a claim on us, and it is a

very short and inevitable step from this to seeing that amy act, as possessing the same constitutive character, must have the same resultant character of prima facie rightness. But we are perhaps in one

respect better off than we are in geometry, at least; for while in geometry the diagrams by whose aid we come to see the

general truths merely approximate to having the two characteristics which we see to be necessarily united, we have before us in ethics acts already done, in which we can recognize the two charac-

teristics

to

be

actually

present

and

necessarily united—the characteristic, for instance, of being productive of pleasure

to another person and that of being prima facie right. On

the

other

hand,

we

cannot,

in

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

general, claim intuitive or any other kind

107.

of certainty as to the actual (or resultant)

means to something good,” the sense in which a hedonist who thought pleasure

rightness

prima

the only thing good in itself might never-

facie obligations differ in the degree of

theless call virtue good if he thought it a useful means to pleasure. We must recognize that it is often used of whole states

of particular

acts.

For

their obligatoriness, and we often cannot say which of two or more prima facie obligations involved in a particular situation is the more or the most obliga-

of affairs in which good is thought to

almost all conscientious men agree in their answer, and then we may hope that the judgement they agree in is true. In others they would be pretty evenly divided, and then all that any of them can say is “this seems to me to be the right course.” And one who does what seems to him to be right is doing what in another sense zs right, and is doing an action of moral worth. This is the gist of what I have been trying to say about judgements of which the predicate is “right”; I turn now to those of which the predicate is “good.” Here too we have to recognize the existence of various senses in which the word is used. We must recognize that “good” is often used merely in the sense of “good of its kind.’ We must recognize

predominate over evil. But there is clearly another sense in which “good” is used as meaning “good absolutely” and not merely “good of its kind,” as meaning “good in itself” and not as a means, as meaning “good through and through” and not merely predominantly. And it is this sense that is the most important for ethics; for it is things that are good in this sense that are involved in what is the widest of all our duties, the duty of producing as much that is good as we can. But, within this sense, it seems that we can distinguish two sub-senses. Suppose we take three things which we think it incumbent upon us to produce, to the best of our ability—virtuous activity, the use of the intelligence, and the happiness of other people—we find that they fall into two classes. We can distinguish them first by noting the difference between the mental states of which they are worthy objects. All alike are worthy objects of interest—of satisfaction when they are present, of desire when they are absent, of regret when they are lost. But the first two are also worthy objects of admiration; they are fine activities of the spirit; and no one would say that of pleasures just as pleasures. Or again, we may distinguish them by noting that whereas the first two confer goodness on their possessors, pleasure as such confers no goodness on its possessor. And finally, we may note that while virtuous activity and the use of the intelligence are morally worthy objects of interest for any one,

that it is often used in the sense of “a

no matter who is to exercise them, it is

tory. When we are dealing with obligations of the same kind, we have certain criteria for measuring their obligatoriness; we can see that, ceteris paribus, there is a greater prima facie obligation to produce a great good than to produce a small one, and a greater prima facie obligation to fulfil a very explicit and deliberate promise, than to fulfil one which is casually made and not taken very seriously by the promisee, or again to fulfil a prior promise rather than a later one inconsistent with it. But if we try to balance an obligation to produce a certain good against an obligation to fulfil a certain promise, we move in a region of uncertainty.

In some

such

cases,

all or

REALISM

198

only the pleasures of other people and not his own pleasures that are morally worthy objects of interest to any one, his own pleasures being completely neutral in this respect—natural objects of interest, but morally neither worthy objects of satisfaction nor worthy objects of dissatisfaction. It seems, then, that there are two senses in which things good in themselves are good, and that virtuous activity and the use of the intelligence are good in both senses, pleasures are good only in one, and for any man only the pleasures of other people are good in that one sense. Have we, in describing things good in themselves as worthy objects of interest

or as worthy objects of admiration, made their goodness consist in certain relations to those who take interest in them, or admire them? I think not, in the latter case; for admiration includes not only a certain emotion, but also the thought that the object of that emotion is good, and therefore only that which is already good in itself can be a worthy object of admiration. On the other hand, the fact that only the pleasures of others, and not his own, are a morally worthy object of in-

terest to any one, at once indicates that their goodness consists in a certain relation to him, which they have not to their owners and which his pleasures have not to him. This relation is not one which can be stated in purely non-ethical terms, as the relation of being an object of interest can be stated; it involves the ethical

or

non-naturalistic

term

“worthy”

or

AND

ANALYSIS

morally suitable. Thus this secondary type of. goodness is defined by reference to rightness. And now that we have recognized in the pleasures of others things that are good in this secondary and relative sense, we may perhaps recognize other things that are good in the same sense. I suggest that the complex good which consists in the proportionment of happiness to moral worth is good in this sense. It is obviously not in itself a worthy object of admiration; our admiration would be only for

him who

had effected it. But it is a

worthy object of interest. And the relativity of this good, in contrast with the absoluteness of the goodness of virtuous activity and of the use of the intelligence, betrays itself in the fact that, just as his own pleasure is not a morally worthy object of interest to any man, so the right proportioning of pleasure between him-

self and others is not a morally worthy object of interest to him, but only the right proportioning of pleasure between others. There is clearly nothing morally right in desiring happiness proportioned to one’s own merits—though of course there is nothing morally wrong either; for rightness and wrongness are not contra-

dictories but contraries. In discussing rightness or obligatoriness, I attempted, after considering the nature of this characteristic itself, to throw some light on the nature of the things which possess this characteristic. Similarly, after discussing the nature of

“suitable.” And we can get further light

goodness,

on its nature by noting that to be an object worthy of interest is the same—not as being the object of a right interest, for a thing worthy of interest is worthy of interest even when no interest is taken in

question, what kinds of thing are good. A first answer to this question was

it, but

as

being

a

thing,

interest

in

which, if such interest exists, is right or

I tried

next

to

answer

the

indeed given in the consideration of the meanings of “good”; for we found that the two main meanings of good which I

have indicated—“good as worthy object of admiration” and “good as worthy

ETHICS object

AND

THEORY

of interest’—were

OF

applicable

VALUE to

two different sets of things, the first to certain moral and intellectual activities, the second to cértain pleasures. I did not attempt to indicate more precisely which intellectual activities are good; those which are good are good because of their intrinsic characteristics, and it is the business of two other branches of philosophy, logic and esthetics, to specify these characteristics. But it is part of our business to indicate which kinds of moral activities

are good. It is usually to activities of will that we apply the description “morally good,” but it would be a mistake to limit moral

goodness

to

these;

for

emotions,

such as delight at the good fortune of another, and desires which do not lead to action, can be morally good, no less than actions; and actions themselves are good, in the main, by reason of the desires from which they spring. We may perhaps

generalize by saying that what is morally good, besides

certain

actions, is interests

of certain kinds, and that these owe their

goodness, and their degree of goodness, to what they are interests in. With one exception, to be mentioned later, the highest interest is the interest in some-

thing that is good in the strictest sense, i.e., in the bringing into being, in oneself or in another, of good moral or intellectual activity or disposition or capacity. Next to that comes the interest in the pleasure of others. Interest in pleasure to be enjoyed by oneself is neutral in respect

of goodness or badness, except where the pleasure is itself the proper pleasure of a good or of a bad activity. Interest in inflicting pain on others is itself morally bad, but less bad than interest in the bringing into being of bad activities in oneself or in others. Interest falling within any one of these classes tend to be better or worse according to their gen-

199

erality, a wide altruism being, for instance, better than a narrow, and a wide

malevolence being worse than a narrow.

They also tend to be better or worse according

to their intensity,

an

intense

altruism being better than a tepid, and an intense malevolence being worse than a tepid. When we consider interests as forming motives

to action, we

have

to recognize

that there is a better motive than any of these, the wish to do one’s duty; for it

is clear that it is always morally better to act from the sense of duty than to do an alternative act from any other motive, however good, and if the sense of duty

is the best motive when it is in conflict with

others, it is also the best motive

when it conspires with others in pointing to the same action. It is the best because,

while the other good desires are desires

to bring into being this or that good thing, without considering whether it is the greatest good one could bring about, in conscientious action an attempt, at least, has been made to do this. While the desire to do one’s duty is thus different in kind from all other motives, it seems true to say, not, with Kant, that it alone has moral value, but that it has

the highest moral value. Certain other motives also have moral value, because of

the affinity of nature that there is between them and the sense of duty, since they include a part of the thought which is included in the sense of duty. The other good motives are attractions towards certain actions as being of a certain character; the sense of duty is an attraction towards them as being right as being possessed of that same character. Again, it does not seem to be correct

to say, with Kant, that the addition of any other motive to the sense of duty necessarily makes the motivation of an

REALISM

200

AND

ANALYSIS

act less good than it would be without that addition. So long as the strength of the sense of duty is equal in both cases,

fixing the degree of goodness of an action.

the addition of another good motive improves the motivation, and the addition of a neutral motive, i.e., of the desire for one’s own happiness, does nothing to make the motivation worse. Motive is the main factor that makes an action good or bad, but it is not the

stance, and to hurt B, our action is a better one if what we want is to help A, than if it is to hurt B. The fact, however,

only one. The motive of the great majority of bad actions is one which is not bad at all, the desire for pleasures which

are themselves morally neutral—such

as

the pleasures of eating and drinking, of warmth and shelter. Theft, for instance, rarely proceeds from any form of malevolence; it springs from the wish to get easily such comforts as money will buy; yet theft is bad. It is bad, not because it has a bad motive, which it has not, but because it lacks a good motive which a man of ideally good character would have in the same situation. It is bad because of a moral insensitivity which it manifests, an insensitivity to the right of others to what they own. Again, many acts which we

think bad are bad not by reason of springing from a desire to inflict pain on others, but by reason of the insensitivity to their pain which they manifest. Thus an action is judged good or bad not by reference merely to its motive, but by a comparison of that with the whole range

of motives that would ideally be present. If a man is not repelled by some feature of a proposed action that an ideally good man would be repelled by, his action is to that extent bad. In other words, intention as well as motive plays a part in

But it plays a smaller part; for if we intend by an action to help A, for in- |

that intention plays some part in fixing the goodness of an action implies that only the doing of what is the right action in the moral stances right course

circumstances can have the greatest value that an action in the circumcan have. At this point, then, the and the good converge. But of the doing of the right action will

be the best action only if it is done from the best motive to which the circumstances could give rise. Further, the rightness of actions is not, in general, proportional to their goodness; for the rightness of an action necessarily depends equally on the nature of all that is intended in it,

while its goodness depends primarily on

what is desired, and only in a lesser degree on what is intended but not desired. It is further to be noted that the admission of intention as well as motive in what makes an action good helps to explain the high esteem in which selfsacrifice is held. The motive of an act of self-sacrifice may be no better than that

of another in which no self-sacrifice is involved; but the former action includes also the intention to accept pain to ourselves as the price we are ready to pay to bring about the good we desire to bring

about; and, our own pleasure being morally neutral, willingness to give it up in a good cause is a component which has moral worth and gives additional

worth to the action that involves it.

Esthetics SOOO

ODDO OO OMOOWROWHROWNROILOD

Standards of Criticism

Geh DUCASSE matter (as that of beauty) is not of the

#10

sort

Beauty is relative to the individual observer. Beauty . . . was defined as the capacity of an object esthetically contemplated to yield feelings that are pleasant. This definition cannot be characterized simply either as objective, or as subjective. According to it, “beautiful” is an adjective properly predicable only of objects, but what that adjective does predicate of an object is that the feelings of which it constitutes the esthetic symbol for a

contemplating

observer, are pleasurable.

Beauty being in this definite sense dependent upon the constitution of the individual observer, it will be as variable as that constitution. That is to say, an object’ which one person properly calls beautiful will, with equal propriety be not so judged by another, or indeed by the same person at a different time. There

is,

then,

no

such

thing

as

concerning the authoritative opinion beauty of a given object. There is only the opinion of this person or that; or the opinion of persons of some specified sort. When one has stated the opinion and mentioned the person or class of persons who hold it, one has gone as far as it is possible to go in the direction of a scientifically objective statement relating to the beauty of the object. When some 201

which

“is so,” or

“not

so,” in an

absolute sense, the nearest approach that one can make to the wished-for absoluteness lies in furnishing, as fully as possible, the data to which the matter in question is relative; and this is what one

does in the case of beauty when one indicates just who it happens to be, that judges the given object beautiful or the

reverse. All that was said above concerning esthetic connoisseurship, i.e., concerning superior capacity for experiencing differ-

ence in esthetic feeling in the presence of slight differences in the esthetic object, applies equally here, where differences in the pleasantness of the feelings are

particularly in question. There are connoisseurs of beauty, or, more often, of particular sorts of beauty; but their judgments of beauty are “binding” on no one. Indeed it is hard to see what could possibly be meant by “binding” in such a connection, unless it were an obligation on others to lie or dissemble concerning

the esthetic feelings which in fact they have or do not have on a given occasion. There is, of course, such a thing as good taste, and bad taste. But good taste, | submit, means either my taste, or the taste of people who are to my taste, or the taste of people to whose taste I want

REALISM

202

AND

ANALYSIS

to be. There is no objective test of the

given food or wine, or to obtain pleasur-

goodness or badness of taste, in the sense

able feelings in contemplating esthetically a given picture, melody, etc. But such community in the experience of pleasure, '

in which there is an objective test of the goodness or badness of a person’s judgment concerning, let us say, the fit-

ness of a given tool to a given task.

even then remains a bare matter of fact concerning just the persons who have it

in common, and leaves wholly untouched Sexi

Why we have a natural inclination to think otherwise. What makes it so difhcult for us to acknowledge that judgments

the equally bare fact that other persons —whether many, few, or only one—find not pleasure but displeasure in the very same objects.

of esthetic value, i.e., of beauty and ugliness, which are truly judgments about objects, are not universally and necessarily

valid, but on the contrary valid, except by chance, only for the individuals who make them, is that we are so constantly occupied otherwise with judgments concerning instrumental values. These have to do with relations of the object judged, to other objects, and such relations are socially observable, and the judgments concerning them socially valid. That a given railroad bridge is a good bridge can be proved or disproved by running over it such trains as we wished it to carry, and observing whether or not it does carry them. But there is no similar

test by which the beauty of a landscape could be proved or disproved. Judgments

of beauty (which is an immediate value) have to do with the relation of the

meh@ Beauty cannot be proved by appeal to consensus, or to the “test of time,’ or to

the type of person who experiences it in a given case. In the light of what precedes, it is obvious that the familiar attempts to prove the beauty of certain works of art by appeal to the consensus of opinion, or to the test of continued approval through long periods of time in the life either of society or of the individual, are, like the appeal to the connoisseur’s verdict, entirely futile. Such tests cannot possibly prove the object’s beauty to those who do not perceive any in it; and to those who do, they are needless. They

prove nothing whatever, except that beauty is found in the object . . . by such

quite possible that two persons, or two million, should have similar tastes, i.e.,

as do find it there. We might attempt to rank beauties on the basis of the particular aspect of human nature, or type of human being, that experiences esthetic pleasure in given cases. This would lead to a classifying of beauties as, for instance, sentimental, intellectual, sexual, spiritual, utilitarian, sensuous, social, etc. We might well believe in some certain order of worth or dignity in the human faculties respectively concerned, but this would not lead to any

should happen alike to find pleasure in a

esthetically objective ranking of beauties.

object judged to the individual’s own pleasure experience, of which he himself is the sole possible observer and judge. Judgments of beauty are therefore in this respect exactly on a par with judgments of the pleasantness of foods, wines, climates,

amusements,

companions,

etc.

Like these they are ultimately matters of

the individual’s own taste. It is of course

ESTHETICS

203

To suggest it would be as ludicrous as a proposal to rank the worth of various religions according to the average cost of the vestments ‘of their priests. For a ranking

of beauties,

only such

principles

there

are

available

as the relative

in-

tensity of the pleasure felt, its relative duration, relative volume, and _ relative freedom from admixture of pain. These principles, however, do not in the least release us from the need of relying upon the individual’s judgment; on the contrary their application rests wholly upon it.

#13 Beauty cannot be proved by appeal to technical principles or canons. It may yet be thought, however, that there are certain narrower and more technical requirements in the various fields of art, without

the fulfilling of which no work can be beautiful. Among such alleged canons

more, in many cases I am able to give reasons for my opinions. But of what nature are those reasons? They are, ultimately, of the same nature as would be that offered by a man argu-

ing that my pen had to fall when I let go of it a moment gravitation. Gravitation we give to the general ported objects do fall,

ago, because of is but the name fact that unsupand at a certain

rate; but it is not a reason, or cause, or

proot of that fact. To say that something always happens, is not to give any reason why it ever does. Therefore when I say that a certain design is ugly because it is against the “law of symmetry,” I am not giving a reason why it had to give me esthetic displeasure, but only mentioning the fact that it resembles in a_ stated respect certain others which as a bare matter of fact also do displease me. This character which displeases me and many persons, may, however, please others. And, what is more directly to the point,

of beauty may be mentioned the rules of

it not only may but it does,—jazzy or un-

so-called “harmony” in music; various precepts concerning literary composition; unity; truth to nature; such requirements as consistency, relevance, and unambiguity; and so on. There are indeed “rules” or “principles” of that sort, some of which are, I will freely declare, valid for me;

couth though I may call the taste of such persons. But what most obstinately drives me to the acquisition of a certain, at least abstract, sense of humor concerning the ravening intolerance and would-be-authoritativeness of my own pet canons of

so that when I find myself confronted by flagrant violations of them, I am apt to feel rather strongly, and to be impatient

or sarcastic about “that sort of stuff.” And indeed, on occasions when I have found myself inadvertently guilty of having

drawn some line or written some sentence

in violation of my own esthetic canons, I have at times felt as ashamed of the line or the sentence as I should of having picked somebody’s pocket. I admit having pronounced opinions about the beauty or ugliness of various things, and what is

beauty, is the fact that they have changed in the past, and that I see no reason why they should not change again in the future. For all I can see to prevent it, I may well to-morrow, next year, or in some future incarnation, burn what I

esthetically adore to-day, and adore what I now

would

burn. If this happens,

I

have no doubt at all that I shall then smugly label the change a progress and

a development of my taste; whereas today I should no less smugly describe the possibility of a change of that sort in me, as a possibility that,my taste may go

REALISM

204 to the devil. And, let it be noted, the sole

foundation upon which either of the two descriptions would rest, would be the fact that the describer actually possesses

at the time the sort of taste which he does. Tastes can be neither proved nor

refuted,

but only “called names,”

i.e.

praised or reviled. Certain limited and empirical generalizations have been found possible concerning factors upon which the esthetic

pleasure of most people, or of some kinds of people, appears to depend. Precarious generalizations of this sort may be found for instance in manuals of design and of pictorial composition, where they are often dignified by the name of “princi-

ples.’ People familiar

with them

may

then be heard to say that a given picture, perhaps, is well composed and why; or that the tones, the masses, or the values are, as the case may be, well or ill balanced, and so on. Other statements that we may hear and which also imply “principles,” would be that the color is

AND

ANALYSIS

have the imposing sound of expert judgments based upon authoritative principles, and are likely to make the lay consumer | of art feel very small and uninitiated. Therefore it cannot be too much emphasized here that a given picture is not ugly because the composition of it, or the color combinations in it, are against

the rules; but that the rule against a given type of composition or of color combination is authoritative only because, or if, or for whom, or when, compositions or combinations of that type are actually found displeasing. All rules and canons and theories concerning what a painting or other work of art should or should not be, derive such authority as they have over you or me or anyone else, solely from the capacity of such canons zo predict to us that we shall feel esthetic

pleasure here, and esthetic pain there. If a given rule predicts this accurately for a

in the

given person, that person’s actual feeling of esthetic pleasure or displeasure then, proves that that rule was a valid one so far as he is concerned. That is, the feeling judges the rule, not the rule the feeling. The rule may not be valid for someone else, and it may at any time cease to be valid for the given person, since few things are so variable as pleasure. The actual experience of beauty or ugliness by somebody is the final test of the. validity of all rules and theories of painting, music, etc., and that test absolutely determines how far, and when, and for whom any given rule or theory holds or does not hold. The difference between the criticisms of the professionals, and those of the people who, having humbly premised that they “know nothing about art,” find little more to say than that a given work is in their judgment beautiful, or as the case

technical jargon of the particular craft,

may be, ugly or indifferent;—the differ-

clean, or else muddy; that the drawing is, perhaps, distorted; that the surfaces are well modelled; that the lines are rhythmical; that the color combinations are impossible; that the masses lack volume or solidity, etc. The words beauty and uglihess may not occur once, but it is nevertheless obvious that all such statements are not merely descriptive, but critical. They are not direct assertions of esthetic

value or disvalue, viz., of beauty or ugliness, but, taking it as an obvious fact, they attempt to trace it to certain definite sorts of features in the work. The more intelligent and better informed kind of artcriticism is of this analytical and diagnostic sort, and there is nothing beyond

this that the art-critic could do. All

such

comments,

worded

ESTHETICS

205

ence, I say, between the criticisms of professionals and of laymen is essentially

make one feel as though receiving a special-delivery,

that the former are able to trace the esthetic pleasure or displeasure which

extra-postage letter, . . . just to say, per-

one were registered,

haps, that after Thursday comes

Listening to the comments

Friday!

of artists

they feel, to certain features of the object, while the latter are not able to do it. From this, however, it does not in the

and of some critics on a picture will quickly convince one that, strange as it

least follow that the evaluations of the

sounds, they are as often as not almost

professionals ultimately rest on any basis less subjective and less a matter of

incapable

individual taste than do those of the lay-

is brush work, values, edges, dark against light, colored shadows, etc. They are thus often not more but less capable than the untrained public of giving the picture esthetic attention, and of getting from it genuinely esthetic enjoyment. The theory that esthetic appreciation of the products of a given art is increased by cultivating an amateur’s measure of proficiency in that. art, is therefore true only so far as such cultivation results in more intimate and thoroughgoing esthetic acquaintance with the products of that art. This is likely to be the case in an interpretative art like music (not music-composing). But in an art which, like painting, is not so largely interpretative, and is at the same time dependent on rather elaborate technical processes, the amateur practitioner’s attention is from the very first emphatically directed to these processes;

man. Indeed, so far as the non-professionals really judge at all, ie., do not merely echo an opinion which they have somehow been bluffed into accepting as

authoritative, their judgment is based on the fact that they actually feel something. The

artists

and

professional

critics,

on

the other hand, are exposed to a danger

which does not threaten people who know nothing of the factors on which esthetic pleasure or displeasure has in the past been found to depend for most people, or for some particular class of people,—the danger, namely, of erecting such em-

pirical

findings

into

fixed

and _ rigid

rules, and of judging the work of art no longer by the esthetic pleasure it actually gives them, but by that which they think

it “ought” to give them according to such rules. This danger is really very: great, especially for the artist, who, in the nature of the case, is constantly forced to give attention to the technical means by which the objective .expression of his feeling is alone to be achieved. Having thus all the time to solve technical problems, it is fatally easy for him to become interested in them for their own sake, and, without knowing it, to be henceforth no longer an artist expressing what he feels, but a restless virtuoso searching for new stunts to perform. This may be the reason. why so many of the pictures displayed in our

exhibits,

although

well-enough

painted,

of seeing

the

picture

about

which they speak. What they see instead

and, when

it is directed to extant works

of art it is directed to them as examples

of a technique

to be studied,

not as

esthetic objects to be contemplated. The danger is then that such technical matters will come to monopolize his attention habitually, and that even in the face of nature he will forget to look at her, wondering instead whether the water or the sky be the brighter, or what color would have to be used to reproduce the appearance of a given shadow. Attention to technique is of course indispensable to the acquisition of it; and mastery of

REALISM

206

technique

is in turn

production

of art on any but the most

necessary

to the

humble scale. The risk is that the outcome of technical training will be not mastery of technique, but slavery to it. This risk disappears only when the technical apparatus has become as intimately a part of the artist as the hand is of the body for ordinary purposes, and

is used without requiring attention. The attention can then turn from the means to the ends of art, viz., to the objective expression of feeling. But the stage at which technique has so become secondnature as to be forgotten, is not often fully reached. With most artists, what we may call their technical savoir-faire creaks more

or

less, as

does

the social

savozr-

faire of people who have become emily-

posted

but

lately. Like

the

nouveaux

gentlemen, such artists are too conscious of their technical manners, and forget what they are for.

#14 Beauty and accuracy of representation. Among the special criteria by which the merit of works of art—especially paintings—is judged by many, there is one about which something should be said here, namely, accuracy of representation. Accuracy of representation is important from the standpoint of esthetic criticism only so far as beauty happens to be conditioned by it. Representation, in painting, is a relation between the perceptual varicolored canvas and the esthetic object, when that esthetic object is not simply a flat design as such, but contains imaginal and conceptual elements. Accuracy of representation of the intended esthetic object, by the perceptual canvas

is thus not in itself an esthetic but a

AND

ANALYSIS

noematic merit. Nevertheless it is a merit which is indispensable since without it the intended esthetic object (in the sort of cases considered), would be set up before the attention either not at all, or only in altered form. Accuracy of representation of the esthetic object is of course not at all the

same thing as accuracy of representation of the model. An accurate representation of a model is, merely as such, not a work of art

at all, but

only

a document,—a

piece of reliable information about the appearance of an existing object. If it is accurate, the copy will indeed have more or less the same esthetic import and value as the model itself, but that copy as such will none the less be only a work of imitative skill. It will not be a work of art unless it also constitutes the conscious objective expression of a feeling experi-

enced by the painter. Accuracy of representation of the esthetic object, on the other hand, means only that the perceptual canvas sets up clearly before the ideational attention just the esthetic object that embodies the feeling which it is intended should be obtained in contemplation. Photographic accuracy of drawing, and faithfulness of representation of persons or things, provokes the pleasure of recognition, and admiration of the painter’s capacity to act as a color camera. But

this does not mean

that his work is a

work of art; nor even that he has created something beautiful, if the object which he has “photographed” happens not to be so. On the other hand, the fact that various elements are out of drawing in some pictures in which the artist is ex-

pressing himself in terms of represented objects, does not mean that they are necessarily ugly. What

is important

for

ESTHETICS beauty

is not

207

truth

but plausibility.

A

dramatic entity represented may in fact

truth is stranger than fiction, it does not make good fiction, but only news for the

be distorted, but it is not on this account

papers.

ugly if it does’ not Jook distorted. Contrariwise, if something which in fact is

photographically accurate looks distorted or unplausible, it will be disagreeable in esthetic effect. The works of El Greco, who is famous for his distortions of drawing, illustrate this. Some people have thought that something was wrong with his eyes; but the true explanation of his distortions is much more probably his preoccupation with the design-aspect of his paintings. When his design needed a line or thing of a particular shape and size at a certain place, and the object represented at that place happened to be, say, a human leg incapable of the needed shape and size, then it was so much the worse for the leg. Either design or accuracy of representation had to be sacrificed, and in such cases El Greco did hesitate to sacrifice the _ latter. not Whether

ugliness

is produced

thereby,

however, depends on whether the sacrifice is obvious,—the

inaccuracy

flagrant.

In

many places it is not; and it does not there constitute an esthetic fault. Where the distortion is not plausible, on the other hand, but thrusts itself upon our notice as distortion, it gives rise to ugliness and is therefore to that extent esthetically bad, whatever esthetic gains it may otherwise involve. Only the addicts of design, who are satisfied with but a half of what an esthetically complete beholder demands,

fail to see this. On

the

other hand, to the painter who justifies this or that bad part of his picture by insisting that “nature looked just like that,” the answer is that even if she did, she ought not to have, so far as beauty was concerned.

As often has been said, when

Judgments of mediate or instrumental value are capable of being proved or disproved. Their truth or falsity is objective, in the sense that it is not conferred

upon them by the individual’s taste, but is a matter of connections in nature independent of the critic’s taste. But the relevance or importance, if not the truth, of any judgment of mediate value, is a matter of the individual critic’s taste or constitution, since for any such critic that

relevance depends on a judgment of immediate value by him. As regards judgments of immediate value, and in particular of beauty and ugliness, it seems to me that here as in

other fields, ultimate analysis leads. unavoidably to the particular constitution of the individual critic (no matter how he

may have come by it), as the necessary and sufficient ground for all such judgments. The constitutions of numbers of individual critics may, of course, happen to be alike in some respects; or they can be made more or less alike by subjecting them to the sort of psychological pressure appropriate to the causation of such a result. If a number of critics are constituted alike in some respects, then any one of them will be able to formulate value judgments with which will agree as many of the other critics as are constituted like him in the respects needed for such agreement! I cannot see that “objective validity” in the case of a judgment of immediate value, means anything whatever but this; namely, several people judge alike because they are constituted alike. But whether a given taste be

REALISM

208

possessed by one person only, or by a thousand alike, the maxim that de gustibus non est disputandum, holds with regard to it.

Is there then no such thing as the refining and educating of taste? Certainly there is,—and there is also such a thing as perversion and depravation of taste.

AND

ANALYSIS

possible at least to point to some respects in which the (immediate) value judgments of all people whatever, would, agree. Nobody whatever, it may be urged, likes great hunger or thirst or cold, or cuts and burns, etc. Now it may be granted that certainly not many do. But after all there are masochists and ascetics and martyrs. It may be true because

But the question in any given case is, which is which?.No one so far as I know

tautologous

has yet pointed out any way of answering

we must keep in mind that pain and

that nobody likes pain; but

this question otherwise than arbitrarily

pleasure are the predicates, not the sub-

and dogmatically, i.e., otherwise than in terms of the taste actually possessed by

jects, of immediate-value-judgments. Their

some person or other, usually oneself, arbitrarily taken as standard. That question, indeed, is hardly ever frankly faced.

subjects are things, situations, experiences. The question is’ thus not whether painfulness is. ever pleasurable, but whether

there are any situations

or experiences

it at all

which everybody without exception finds,

seem always to have labored under the strange delusion that if only they suc-

for instance, painful. And this is very doubtful. We can probably say only that with regard to some situations or ex-

Those

who

have

approached

ceeded in showing that the tastes of a large number or a majority of people were alike, the question was answered; whereas

the truth is on

the contrary,

as just

pointed out, that mere numbers have no bearing whatever on the question. Taking a vote is only a device for ascertaining in

advance what would be the outcome of a fight between

two groups

every person

were

of people, if

as strong

as every

other and strength alone counted. “Proof” by appeal to a vote is obviously but a

civilized

form

of the argumentum

periences, the dissentients are very few. And as we have just seen, numbers mean nothing at all in such a matter. This brings us to what may be called a dogmatico-liberalistic position. Neither I nor anyone can refute anyone else’s judgments of immediate value—here, of beauty and ugliness; nor can anyone refute mine. This is the liberalistic aspect of the situation. The fullest insight into it, however, constitutes no reason whatever

ad

why any one should hold to his own im-

It may be asked, however, whether in

mediate valuations any the less strongly. That our own opinion must in the nature of such matters be dogmatic is no reason

baculum. the absence of any standard of immediate value objectively valid in any sense other

than

that

described

above,

it

is

not

why it should not be honest, vigorous, and unashamed.

209

ESTHETICS

The Transaction Involved in Esthetic Experience : Coe poe 1. Though preference is vital to the apprehension of beauties, these lie objectively upon the surface of the experienced world. 2. Conflict in esthetic judgment therefore not anomalous; an object may vary in beauty even for the same person. 3. Sensuous and bodily resonance a condition of the fullest beauty.

ently. And since this is typical of esthetic differences of opinion, we may stop at once to notice not merely that it is typical,

but that it is the heart of the matter. Not that beauty is what I prefer as against what you prefer, but that we never make the direct judgment that this or that was beautiful, with regard to what we have ourselves seen, unless what

I

we judged about satisfied or pleased or

Before we turn to varieties of esthetic judgment and their meanings, it is worth while specifying the character of esthetic judgment in general as distinguished from other kinds of judgment bordering closely upon it. We may take as critical the case of disagreement in esthetic judgment where in other judgments there is admitted agreement, and in finding just the point of the disagreement find also

charmed

or

attracted

us,

suited

our

preferences in the matter. The question then comes to be whether esthetic judgment is merely a record of our having

preferred

something

to something

else,

or of having liked something or other. That it is not this alone is obvious at once. King James liked his old friends best

because they were like comfortable old

nature of the judgment and its meaning. There is nothing more regularly disagreed upon, I suppose, than the beauty of women, and in such cases there is often no disagreement as to the facts. If

shoes, and I suppose that even King James hardly thought his old shoes beautiful. So of much that we prefer or like or even love; we should never think of calling it beautiful, whether it is oysters to eat, or old friends to see, or old shoes to wear. We are not speaking simply or

we say, How

lovely she is,—such eyes,

mainly of affections, or of our likes or

such hair, such skin! we may be answered, Yes, just such eyes, just such hair and skin, but not lovely at all. And such regular features, we add. But what if one prefers to regularity of features sensitive and intelligent mobility? As soon as the question of beauty comes clear of the rest, it turns into preference, appar-

dislikes or preferences in general when we call things beautiful. How then does it happen that in disagreements in esthetic judgment, likes and dislikes are so sure to be the end of the argument? How does it happen that, even when one party to the disagreement is willing finally to concede beauty where he does not discern

just that which is the specifically esthetic

1D, W. Prall, Aesthetic mission of the publisher.

Judgment,

Thomas

Y. Crowell

Company,

1929.

Reprinted

by kind

per-

REALISM

210

AND

ANALYSIS

it, he adds, as the fundamentally important point, that while the object in question may be beautiful, though he

experience completely verifies the judgment, our own experience as completely fails to. Our informant, pointing to the.

can’t see that it is, he really doesn’t like

beautiful object before us both, asks us to

it?

agree that his judgment is correct, and instead we disagree; we find the object

At least it must be admitted

that no

mere statement by others is in the matter of beauty acceptable. We are willing enough to admit another man’s record

of the dimensions of a rug or an estate, often without verification; but whether the rug is beautiful or ugly, whether the gardens or the buildings are fine to look at, we can only tell by looking ourselves. And once we do look and see them, if

they delight us by their physical appearance, we

have the experience

necessary

for making the judgment that they are beautiful, or for agreeing with or verifying this judgment as communicated to us by some one else. And esthetic judgments are peculiar in this respect. If we doubt that a baby weighs thirteen pounds, we can _ be assured of it by inspecting the scales with the baby’s weight on them and finding

that the weight reported was correct. If we doubt the fact that carnations are sometimes green or that a locomotive will run ninety miles an hour, the tests of these judgments, while they sometimes involve complicated processes of measurement, are sure to satisfy us if they are carefully and accurately made by any merely rational human _ observer. If the green is not the shade of green expected, or if the locomotive runs

eighty-nine and nine-tenths miles, the statements are verified at least approximately. Not so of statements as to beauty. If we attempt to verify such a statement as that something or some one is beautiful, we must

see that some

one or some-

thing ourselves. And it often happens that in the very presence of a friend whose

not beautiful or even positively ugly. Since the object and its qualities, its

shade of color, its shape, its dimensions, do not vary, it would seem clear that the variation which is to account for the difference, and hence for the conflict of

judgments, lies in the person having it. And this would accord with what we have already noticed. If qualities occur as qualities of objects only in certain active transactions, and if beauty is a quality present to you when you look at a

building but not to me when I look, it must simply be a different transaction that goes on between me and the building from what goes on in your case. That such a difference is possible is shown by the parallel case of what are called the secondary qualities. If I have eyes suffici-

ently different

from

other

eyes

to be

partially color-blind, I may on a trial choose what is red when I am asked to

pick out the green; and when a quality is such that it is received through one sense and one sort of sense organ, there is no mystery in such a mistake nor in the mistaken judgment that would express it, nor yet in a conflict between two judgments ostensibly upon the same

thing, since these are records of different experiences

through

different

kinds

of

eyes. A defective or abnormal sense organ cannot furnish the same experience that a normal one does in the same circumstances; or rather, the circumstances are not the same in a transaction between a colored surface and a defective eye as in a transaction involving the same surface and a normal eye. And the _possessors

ESTHETICS

211

of the two differing eyes, since they are

blood

not capable of being in the same ocular

roughly by the delight we feel or fail to

circumstances,

feel in apprehending objects. Our part of the transaction, the whole of which is our apprehension of the beauty of anything or the manifestation of that thing’s beauty to us, seems then to be the delight in the object as directly apprehended, with no

the same

perspective

re-

lation to objects, cannot have the same visual experiences. Their records of what

they experience will thus conflict if they are taken to be, as of course they are not, merely two distinct records of the experiencing of identical permanent qualities. It would seem reasonable to suppose that a parallel explanation is adequate in the case of conflicting or contradictory esthetic judgments. Unfortunately for our knowledge here, we do not know what exactly is involved in our experiencing the beauty of an object, except that it seems to be a very great deal that goes on in our bodies, including at least, beyond the apprehension of the ordinary qualities, the

it may

involve,

is characterized

reference beyond this apprehended form

processes of ordinary sense perception of

or appearance. Thus esthetic experience is an experience of an object as apprehended delightfully, primarily too, as so apprehended directly through the senses. This is what is properly signified by the term esthetic in the first place, and it is the primary meaning, never to be neglected in the analysis of esthetic experience. Such experience is, no matter how much of ourselves it involves, the experience of the surface of our world directly apprehended, and this surface is always, it would seem, to some degree pleasant or unpleasant to sense in immediate perception. But the use of the word perception here may too strongly suggest more than any immediacy. An act of perception may look beyond the surface and fill in our immediate data with the content of previous perceptions or similar ones. We may perceive solidity through a mere surface area, a substantial round orange where for bare sense apprehension there is perhaps only a spot of orange color. Of the delight that is apprehended beauty it is better to say not that it is perceived but that it is intuited. For it is characteristic of esthetic apprehension that the surface fully present to sense is the total object of apprehension We do not so much perceive an object as

ordinary sense qualities.

intuit its appearance, and as we leave this

apprehension of the beauty either of these qualities themselves or of the object possessing them in apprehension. And since this apprehension is not merely that of the qualities as such—for these we may agree on and still disagree as to the beauty—it seems clear enough, provided that our recording judgments are honest and ingenuous, that they are a clear indi-

cation of the difference between

us in

what goes on at our end of the transaction that constitutes our looking at things esthetically. Since disagreement is so common between esthetic judgments, it would appear also that the processes of apprehension in the case of beauty differ from person to person much more widely, whether because of native endowment or

by acquisition through training, than the

This apprehension of beauty, whatever

it is fully and analytically, however many processes internal to our bodies and brains

and nerves

and muscles

and our very

surface in our attention, to go deeper into meanings or more broadly into connections and relations, we depart from the typically esthetic attitude.

REALISM

212

AND

ANALYSIS

Thus the ordinary conflicts of esthetic judgment reveal at once various impor-

pains in the eye or comfortable warmth in the interior bodily regions, their de-

tant points. First of all, in our apprehending beauty or in beauty’s being manifested to us, the character of the transaction depends as clearly on the apprehending process as upon the other

light must

main term in the transaction, that is, the

object; and while the object may remain

the same, persons differ greatly by nature and training with respect to this apprehending activity. If beauty has not actually been apprehended, the esthetic judgment purporting to record its presence is either false or meaningless; false if we are pretending to record such beauty on our own authority as discoverer or observer of it, meaningless, or at least purely formal and empty, if we accept and repeat an_ esthetic judgment verbally given by another whose experience we have not had and perhaps are not capable

of having. This is not to say that there is no beauty where we ourselves experience

be taken

as the quality

of .

what is apprehended, the only term in the transaction to which we can attach them,

the only visible or sensible object to be found in the experience, the only object present at all. Not seeing the light transmissions or the nervous currents running about or the brain processes going on, but

being conscious of delight in what zs happening, and needing to have this attributed

to something—since it is qualitative and all qualities are by us attributed to some-

thing,

quality ‘meaning

attribute,

of

course—we attribute beauty to all that there is present to consciousness in the case, namely, the so-called external object entering into this elaborate transaction. And we call the object beautiful no more figuratively or less literally than we call it red or round or solid or external or objective, since after all the object is

continuous in nature with everything else

no delight in apprehending an object; but it is at least certain that some one must be so constituted as to experience this

as an event within related events. Its beauty, however, is not an event, but the

delight in apprehension, if esthetic judg-

it literally has in relation

ment is ever to have any meaning for any human mind. If all esthetic judgments were empty of such specific meaning, it seems impossible that any of them would ever have been

organism

pronounced,

or

that

beauty

would

ever

have been discovered. As we shall see later, there is even ground for supposing that beauty is constituted in the very transaction that is this pleasurable appre-

hension, and that it is therefore properly called a tertiary quality, since for its manifestation it requires not merely sense

perception as of color or shape, but such further processes as are in themselves pleasurable. But being processes of appre-

hension and not mere bodily feelings like

character of one, the specific quality which apprehending

to a human

it, in the only

sense in which any event or any object has qualities at all which are present to minds, Thus our example of a conflict in esthetic judgment reveals also the sense in which beauty, although it is the quality only of an occurrence in a transaction in which human organic activity is an essential, functioning element, is a quality of the object apprehended. If it is properly.

only a tertiary quality so-called, in distinction from qualities involving merely the processes of factual perception, it is

still an objective quality just as truly as any other—shape or size or redness. Only, since all qualities of all objects are

ESTHETICS

213

present to minds solely by virtue of trans-

actions with bodily nervous organisms, it follows that in an organism lacking in certain training and resultant habits of mind, or defective or otherwise abnormal in more or less hypothetical internal structures and modes of functioning, the transaction which characterizes an object

as delightful in some minds, will not result in such characterization of the object be the misses misses

for other minds, since it will not same transaction. As a blind man colors, an esthetically deficient man beauty. As a lazy man misses the

exhilaration of physical activity or an unskilled worker the feeling of skillfulness in doing his work, so a man who has not exercised his perceptive powers to discriminate fine differences, or a man who has not learned a given technique, is simply incapable, in the presence of objects or events of certain sorts, of respond-

ing in the particular and complex dynamic response that is one part of the event upon which beauty supervenes before him as an objective quality upon, and of, the object or event apprehended. We do not apprehend the full process or event going on. For apprehension there is only the form, the unified group of qualities

which signifies for us an object. To this our attention is directed, and to this we attribute the felt delight as the beauty it

possesses in its own right,

prehension or your instinctively good taste; in relation to my untrained faculties and my lacking taste it is not beautiful.

But this involves no contradiction in the account of what happens in nature. There goes on in you, when you see it, a process which presents a_ delight necessarily attributed to what you experience, to all that there is for your conscious experience, namely, the object itself. And as we saw, beauty always is just felt, If it strikes you and you are struck by it, the blow is upon your feeling capacities through the senses, not merely upon the external senses themselves operating only so far as to apprehend the so-called primary and secondary qualities of the object, its shape and color, say. It is the object as one unified and unitary apprehended form that has the beauty that you feel. When I see the object, the same things do not happen; there is no such intense feeling to be attributed to the object, and I do not feel a great beauty, because the process giving

rise to its occurrence is not called forth in me by the object. We are both judging

the same object. We define it alike, we test its qualities and properties by the same modes of verification; but the beauty of it cannot come fully into being when it strikes my senses, simply because my organic structure has not been trained, or

is not naturally gifted, so to respond as to set up the processes

giving intense

de-

light and felt as the beauty of the object. 2

Thus esthetic

to admit

genuine

conflicts

judgments,

conflicts

which

in may

be full contradictions as they stand, is in the first place to admit that the meanings borne by such judgments

are also con-

tradictory. While one thing delights you with its beauty, there may be in it as experienced by me no beauty at all. /¢ is beautiful in relation to your trained ap-

Thus our contradictory judgments involve no contradictions in the statements

about the actual situation as fully made out. There are simply two different situations to which the same external object is common, As gasoline under certain conditions is an active part of the event that is the smooth running of an engine, and

under others is part of the event which is the storing of gasoline

in a tank,

so

214

REALISM

AND

ANALYSIS

hended prospect, not because it is there and I fail to see it, but because without my response it is absent, unconstituted. In other words, the processes that bring about delight in an object are not going

organisms anything but events either, and since, roughly, identity is established in any such slowly passing event as an ani-_ mal body or a physical object, it seems ~ more to the purpose to say that what is missing when I do not see the beauty is so much of the transaction as depends on or is constituted by my functioning in a particular fashion. Since such functioning is actually necessary to any beauty at all, just as necessary as the relatively permanent properties of the prospect, it also seems reasonable to say that the same object perceived by the same person may at one time be beautiful and at another time not, according as those transactions are or are not carried through, without which no beauty is ever present. What it would mean to have beauty present in the absence of these processes is the same sort of thing that is meant by the presence of determinate size without an agreed upon unit of measure or standard of comparison, or of sound when there are no hearing mechanisms. Both are entirely relative matters, which means that they are constituted in a relation both terms of which must be present as conditions of their presence. In the case of beauty the term on the human side is not mere perceptual processes, but those accompanying functional activities, perhaps deeper or

on in the transaction, between me and the

more

prospect, which is my present apprehension and recognition of it as what I have seen once before, then as beautiful,

apprehending relations established _ between the person and the object apprehended; activities that on some occasions

one object may be a term in the appre-

hension of beauty by one organism and a merely present object, not beautiful at all, in connection with another human organism. Two further points follow here at once. As the same engine sometimes runs smoothly in transactions with gasoline and sometimes does not run at all, refuses to enter into transactions with gasoline; and as we do not say either that it is not the same engine or that the gasoline has changed its nature, but only that something is wrong; so with the same subject in the presence of the same object at different times. What is apprehended at both times is, say, the prospect from a certain point of vantage in this sort of light. It is the same prospect that I saw yesterday, and I am the same person for all the purposes that require identity of name and personal responsibility. But today the beauty is not present as it was yesterday. Am I to say that the prospect is no longer beautiful? Literally I am. Or rather, I am to say that I do not now

directly feel the beauty of the appre-

now not so. It has often been urged by theorists that I am then not perceiving the same object. It would be rather more to the point to say that I am not the same person. But

voluminous,

occurring

in

certain

fail to be set going, or else do not occur intensively enough to be felt and consciously recognized as beauty even in connection with the same perceived objects

neither statement is warranted for intelligible and practically efficacious dis-

3

course, Since no objects are anything but the forms of changing events, and no

But it should follow that if it is apprehension that involves the feeling of beauty,

ESTHETICS all apprehension

215 whatever,

bare percep-

tion itself of length or breadth, may have some degree of delight in it. And hence all objects should have some degree of

stops at all, if his attention

even

fora

moment rests entirely on the form of what is before him, he of course may and no doubt usually does have esthetic

beauty. Then the same human _ being could not possibly sometimes in the

pleasure in it. And

presence of a certain object. experience its beauty and sometimes not. And this is to be taken into account. But to do so is a simple matter. The two cases of seeing a prospect as beautiful and seeing it as not beautiful are most probably cases of

tions in which are comprehended formally

the relative intensity or volume of the processes going on. But at a sufficiently low degree of intensity, due to any of a thousand causes, such as indigestion, or

‘a

very

low

temperature,

which

may

absorb energy or distract attention, or sorrow, which sometimes reduces all vitality nearly to coma, and so on and on—at such a low intensity the feeling is almost nil and the beauty has faded or quite vanished. In extreme cases, of course, the processes of apprehension may be actually unpleasant on account of other concurrent bodily processes, and _ the object which was delightful may now be directly offensive to sight. We are often reminded that logicians

and mathematicians have esthetic pleasure in their own specialized logical and mathematical objects. And this too is a clear possibility on our view, although it is also clear why other men miss these beauties, and why the appreciation of them is not primarily and typically illustrative of esthetic contemplation. Usually the attention of intellectual endeavor is focussed ahead, in the perception of spreading relations from a point rather than in the intuition of forms present and static. Only enough of this attention is given to the stage reached at any point in calculation to grasp the possibilities for future operations. But if a mathematician

if he completes a

demonstration or a great scheme of operavast numbers of meanings in relation, he

may easily dwell upon this form itself. In other words, as soon as he stops his mathematical operations and notices their

form, he is a contemplating subject with precisely the sort of absorbing object of attention that is typical of all esthetic experience. Only, since pure symbolic

forms lack color and sound and richness of sensuous content in general, even the purest mathematical esthetic contemplation, disinterested and intense as it may be, lacks volume. It occupies less of sense apprehension, less of those accompanying processes stirred into action by the senses that resound in felt delight. If it is the purest and most elevated esthetic pleasure,

it is at

any

rate

also

the

thinnest

and most meagre. It is frugal if not ascetic. Our two added points, then, are that all apprehension may be tinged with esthetic feeling, touched with beauty, but that it is the full sensuous resonance of the process that is typical, in cases where we stop at intuition of form or quality instead of moving on to perception of relations and connections and further meanings in general. And second, that since this resonance of sensuous volume may or may not be stirred by the same object at different times, even the same object may be perceived by the same person as beautiful at one time and not at another and still remain the same _perceived object.

All that we have been taking account of in the present chapter reinforces the view

REALISM

216

that actual beauty is present upon objects only

in

connection

with

processes

in-

volving more than the properties of the so-called external objects which enter into them. While these processes terminate for

conscious attention in the form of the object, they involve within human bodies, which thus enter these objects, little suppose, elaborate further than those

into transactions with known, but, we may activities that extend involved in the per-

AND

ANALYSIS

rhythm, without in the least feeling the formal or sensuous or expressive beauty of the dictated passage. Experience is genuinely and characteristically esthetic only as it occurs in transactions with external objects of sense or with the objects of sensuous imagination held clearly before the mind in intuition; and the beauty attributed to objects in esthetic judgments, while it is objectively theirs, just as any quality is, is

ception of sense-qualities as such. In fact,

like all other qualities the essence or form

if attention is characteristically perceptive and not intuitive, these further processes remain largely in abeyance, as when in musical dictation one hears so well as to write out accurately what was perceived through the ears and the sense for

attended to by directed feeling, dependent for its nature as well as its manifestation upon human organic activities just as truly as upon the objects felt to be beautiful and afterwards recorded as beautiful in esthetic judgment.

Philosophy of Religion DDD

DDD

OPHWH_™_’W_’O

OOO

DOOD

HODODOD

OOD

God Finite and God Infinite VWiILLIAM

PRPPERELIL

lL our opening discussion we defined religion as the belief in a power greater than ourselves that makes for good. We defended this definition on the ground that it left religion free from the proven falsities, ethical and physical, embodied in traditional creeds, while at the same time it avoided the emptiness and _platitude of those schools of ultra-modernism which cling to the word “religion,” but use it to mean only the recognition of some sort of unity and mystery in the universe, plus a praiseworthy devotion to whatever is praiseworthy, as for example, the perfecting of humanity. Taking religion as we took it, we see at once that it is neither certainly and obviously true nor certainly and obviously false, but possibly true, and, if true, tremendously

exciting.

The question of its truth or falsity is exciting and momentous because it is a question, not of the validity of this or that theory as to the nature of the physical world or as to the origin and destiny of the

human

race,

but

because

it is the

question whether the things we care for most are at the mercy of the things we care for least. If God is not, then the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good, is but the accidental and ineffective by-product of blindly swirling atoms, or of the equally unpurposeful, though more conceptually complicated, mechanisms of present-day physics. A

MONTAGUE

man may well believe that this dreadful thing is true. But only the fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true.

For to wish there should be no God is to wish that the things which we love and strive

to realize

and

make

permanent,

should be only temporary and doomed to frustration and destruction. If life and its fulfilments are good, why should one rejoice at the news that God is dead and that there is nothing in the whole world except our frail and perishable selves that is concerned with anything that matters? Not that such a prospect would diminish the duty to make the best of what we have while we have it. Goodness is not made less good by a lack of cosmic support for it. Morality is sanctionless, and an ideal can never derive its validity from what is external to itself and to the life whose fulfilment it is. Atheism leads not to badness but only to an incurable sadness and loneliness. For it is the nature of life everywhere to outgrow its present and its past, and, in the life of man, the spirit has outgrown the body on which it depends and seeks an expansion which no finite fulfilment can satisfy. It is this yearning for the infinite and the sense of desolation attending the prospect of its frustration that constitutes the motive to seek religion and to make wistful and diligent inquiry

as to the possibility of its truth. 217

REALISM

218

THE

PROLEGOMENA TO EVERY POSSIBLE THEOLOGY

There are two great problems which, taken together, comprise the prolegomena to every possible theology or atheology. They are the Problem of Evil and the

Problem of Good. How can the amount of evil and pur-

AND

ANALYSIS

and all other creatures suffer the failure to realize this? The experience of what is alleged to be unreal evil becomes itself the real evil. As for the portion of the world’s evil that serves as a wholesome

punishment or wholesome lesson for anybody, it is but an infinitesimal fraction of the total of the world’s misery. Finally, if God’s purposes are other than what

poselessness in the world be compatible

we call good, then his nature is other than

with the existence of a God? And how can the amount of goodness and _ purposefulness in the world be compatible

what we mean by good, while to go further and assume, as some absolute idealists have assumed, that our sin and

with the non-existence of a God?

agony actually contribute to God’s joyment, would ‘be to make him merely lacking in good, but a demon evil. In short, the explanations do

1. The Problem of Evil. The first of these problems has already been touched upon, but its importance justifies us in considering it again. Of one thing we can be certain, since the existing world contains evil, God’s alleged attributes of

infinite power and perfect goodness can be reconciled only by altering the one or the other of those attributes. For surely it would seem that since God does not abolish evil it must be either because he can’t or because he won’t, which means that he is limited either in his power or

in his goodness. The line more commonly adopted by theological apologetics is to preserve the infinite power of God at any

cost and do what one can with the goodness. Since evil occurs, God must be willing that it should occur. Why? Well, perhaps evil is a mere negation or illusion; perhaps it is good in disguise, a necessary ingredient of divine satisfaction; or a

desirable human

and _ natural

punishment , of

sin; or a lesson and opportunity

for human good. Or God’s ideal of .goodness may be quite different from ours, etc. To each and all of these suggestions there are two answers, one theoretical,

the other practical. In the theoretical retort we ask, if evil is only a negation or illusion or disguise, then why should we

ennot of not

explain. But if they did (and this is the

practical retort that follows and clinches the theoretical), the case of the theologians would be still worse; for if evil is

really nothing, it is nothing to avoid; while if it is some disguised or indirect form of good, it is a duty to abet it, not oppose it. If the Vessels of Wrath, like the Vessels of Grace, contribute to the divine happiness, why should we care which sort of vessels our brothers and ourselves become? We should not only be

“willing to be damned for the glory of God,” we should strive for it. Surely no such vicious nonsense as that perpetrated

by these defenders of God’s unlimited power would ever have blackened the history of religious apologetics had it not been for man’s ignoble and masochistic craving to have at any price a monarch or master, no matter how evil

in the light of his own conscience such a. master might be. .

If our analysis of the Problem of Evil is valid, there can

exist no omnipotent

God.

omnipotent

Possibly

an

It, con-

ceivably an omnipotent Demon, but not an omnipotent Goodness.

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

219

2. The Problem of Good. The world that we know contains a quantity of good which, though limited, is still far in excess of what could be expected in a

Even the electrons and protons themselves are supposed to amalgamate and by so doing dissipate into space as short pulses of energy the very stuff of which they were made. And living organisms, with their minds, their societies, and their

purely mechanistic system. If the Universe were composed tirely of a vast

number

entities, particles of matter

en-

of elementary or electricity,

or pulses of radiant energy, which preserved themselves and pushed and pulled one another about according to merely physical laws, we should expect that they would occasionally agglutinate into unified structures, which in turn, though far less frequently, might combine to form structures still more complex, and so on. But that any considerable number of these higher aggregates would come about by mere chance would itself be a chance almost infinitely small. Moreover, there would be a steady tendency for such aggregates, as soon as they were formed, to break down and dissipate the matter and energy that had been concentrated in them. This increase of leveling, scattering, and disorganization to which all differentiated, concentrated, and organized aggregates are subject in our world, and in any world in which there is random motion alone, or random motion supplemented by such reciprocal ab extra determinations as are formulated in the laws of physics, is named the Increase of Entropy. This principle is exemplified in many familiar ways. The intense and concentrated waves caused by the stone dropped in the pool spread out and become less intense as their extensity increases. The hot stove in the cool room dissipates its differentiated and concentrated heat until a uniform level of temperature is reached. Stars radiate their energy and their mass into space, heavy and complex atoms break down into their simpler and lighter atomic constituents.

cultures, grow old, degenerate, and die, which is not merely the way of all flesh,

but the way of all things.

And yet within this world that is forever dying, there have been born or somehow come to be, protons and electrons, atoms of hydrogen and helium, and the whole series of increasingly complex chemical elements culminating in radium and uranium. And these atoms not only gather loosely into nebulae, but in the course of time combine tightly into molecules, which in turn combine into the various complicated crystals and colloids that our senses can perceive. And on the only planet we really know, certain of the compounds of carbon gain the power of building themselves up by assimilation, and so growing and reproducing. Life thus

started

“evolves,”

as

we

say,

into

higher and higher forms, such as fishes, reptiles,

and

birds,

mammals,

primates,

men, and, among men, sages and heroes. Now the serious atheist must take his world seriously and seriously ask: What. is the chance that all this ascent is, in a unt verse of descent, the result of chance? And of course by chance, as here used, we mean not absence of any causality, but absence of any causality except that recognized in physics. Thus it would be “chance”. if a bunch

of little cards, each

with a letter

printed on it, when thrown up into the breeze, should fall so as to make a mean-

ingful sentence like “See the cat.” Each movement of each letter would be mechanically caused, but it would be a chance and a real chance, though a small one, that

they would so fall. And if a sufficiently

REALISM

220

AND

ANALYSIS

large bundle of letters were thrown into the air there would also be a chance that

concocted ad hoc to help us out of a difficulty. Surely, mind is a vera causa if ever

they would fall back so as to spell out the

there was one, and we merely suggest that the kind of anabolic and antientropic factor of whose existence we are certain in ourselves, is present and operative in varying degree in all nature. If we are right, we escape the universe of perpetual miracle, on which the atheist sets his heart. The organized structures and currents of ascent and evolution, from the atoms themselves to the lives of men, cease to be outrageously improbable runs of luck and become the normal expression of something akin to us. Material nature makes altogether too many winning throws for us not to suspect

entire play of Hamlet. The chance of this happening would be real enough, but it

would be so small that, if properly expressed as a fraction, },, the string of digits contained in the denominator would, I suspect, reach from here to one of the fixed stars. And as for the probability that the atoms composing the brain of the author

of Hamlet, if left to the mercy of merely mechanistic

breezes, would

fall into the

combinations which that brain embodied— well, that is a chance that is smaller still. Surely we need not pursue the game further. Let the atheist lay the wager and

name the odds that he will demand of us. Given the number of corpuscles, waves, or what not, that compose the universe, he is to bet that with only the types of mechanistic causality (or, if you are modern and fussy about the word “cause” you can call them “functional correlations”) that are recognized in physics, there would result,

I will not say the cosmos that we actually have, but any cosmos with an equal quantity of significant structures and processes. He certainly will not bet with us on even terms, and I am afraid that the odds that

he will feel bound to ask of us will be so heavy that they will make him sheepish, because it is, after all, the truth of his own theory on which he is betting. But what is the alternative to all this? Nothing so very terrible; merely the hypothesis that the kind of causality that we know best, the kind that we find in the only part of matter that we can experience directly and from within, the causality, in short, that operates in our lives and minds, is not an alien accident but an essential

ingredient of the world that spawns us. The alternative to mere mechanistic determination is not some unknown thing

that she is playing with dice that are loaded, loaded with life and mind and purpose. This is the solution that seems to me al-

most inevitable of the problem which, for want of a better name, I have called the

Problem of Good. And so we are confronted with a God, or something very like a God, that exists, not as an omnipotent monarch, a giver of laws and punishments, but as an ascending force, a nisus, a thrust toward concentra-

tion, organization, and life. This power appears to labor slowly and under difficulties. We can liken it to a yeast that, through the aeons, pervades the chaos of matter and slowly leavens it with spirit.

The great difficulty of any theory of a finite God turns on his relation to the cosmic whole within which he functions. Legitimately or not, the mind rejects the kind of dualism involved. Moreover, a divine mind or personality can scarcely be conceived as other than a cosmic mind. It is, of course, possible that the earth, the solar system, or the galaxy to which we belong, has a unified consciousness associated with it, but no such limited system could be the body of God. Our interest in the

problem of deity would not be satisfied by

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

discovering a mind that was merely larger

than our own. Nor would any such limited mind factor God, pears hence

throw light upon the antientropic which we have accepted as a finite and which, despite its finitude, apto pervade the entire cosmos and to indicate a relationship to the to-

tality different from and more intimate than that of a part to its whole. Are we then forced to conclude that the finite God,

which solves for us the Problem of Good, requires as correlate the infinite God of religious tradition who seemed to be precluded by the Problem of Evil? .

THE

.

.

°

°

QUESTION OF A COSMIC MIND

If the arguments that I have advanced are valid, it follows that the great question of whether the totality of material elements that make up the universe is the bearer of a unitary life and mind is not to be decided by the absence of structures that resemble

the organisms that we know. What qualifies a material system to be the bearer of spirit is not hands or eyes or brain. It is, first, the organization of its components into a single system, and, second, the capacity of that system to retain its past as a living present history and to possess the potentialities of future change commensurate with that history. Now, however perishable the parts of the universe may be, the whole itself is enduring, and nothing happens without leaving its trace; while as for the unity of the cosmos, it would

seem that the very fact that it is self-contained, with nothing beyond into which it can scatter, would confer upon it a higher degree of organicity than would be pos-

221

not to ascribe personality to whatever of unitary mind and life the world as a whole may be supposed to possess. With an impressive assumption of piety, he will tell us that persons are finite, and that it would be an insult to God to impute to him an attribute so characteristic of human limitation, It seems to me that the piety of the pantheist is distorted and mistaken. A mind gains personality through gaining a more perfect, intimate, and articulate rapport among its elements, and an emancipation from the status of body servant. Personality is mind become substantive and autonomous, mind _become spirit. If the universe has a mind, that mind would be more rather than less personal than ours, for it would have more rather than less of unity and organicity. Yet there is one element in the pantheistic conception of personality which I believe to be sound. A person must have an environment with which he is in interaction. Now, how can the mind of the universe, outside of which there can be nothing, possess an environment? The answer seems to me plain. If we are not frightened by the etymology of the term, we can speak of an “internal environment.” “That in God which is not God” is God’s environment, and that

is the “world.” The world consists of all finite existences, energies, particles, or what not. Each has its inner, or mental, potentialities, and its outer, or material, actuality, and each has its measure of self-affrming spontaneity or primary causality, and also its inertia or passivity by which it figures as a term in the network of predominantly mechanistic interrelations. One is here tempted to distin-

guish the world mind from the world by

sible for any system included within it. It is perhaps at this point in the dis-

using the old phrases natura naturans and

cussion that the pantheist will warn

be resisted, for natura naturata

us

natura naturata, but the temptation must is tainted

REALISM

222

with

the pantheistic

exaltation

of the

AND

ANALYSIS

summits already ascended. But also it is

whole at the expense of the parts which

true that for God, as for us, the form of

are then no longer parts but mere phases

good remains constant through the flux

or “modes” of a one and only “Substance.” Now, the real things of the real world are things in their own right, active and obstreperous entities, constituting a modified mechanism which, with respect to values, is a good deal of a chaos. This chaos, however, as we have seen, appears to be undergoing an amelioration genuine though painfully slow, and the leaven

of content. Life absolute and life relative create their own unchanging way to their

own unlimited growth—the twofold way of virtue, an ever more intensive enthusiasm and an ever more extensive love.

Life’s own and only goal is infinite and unending increase. THE

that works in it, and by which its evolution is wrought, we called the finite God.

NEW

WORLDLINESS

From abstract and speculative theology

let us turn to concrete religion and its THE FINITE WILL OF AN INFINITE GOD How is the unitary and personal yet infinite cosmic consciousness related to the finite God that is the cosmic nisus? Surely there are not two Gods, the one an Invisible King, the other a sort of Captain Courageous! Their relation is rather that of a mind to its will—a will of finite power working within the confines of an infinitely extended and all-inclusive mind. God, as thus conceived, is a self struggling to inform and assimilate the recalcitrant members of his own organism or the recalcitrant thoughts of his own intellect. For each organic member or each constituent thought has a being and life of its own, like that of the whole of which it is

a part. The purpose and value sought by the Great Life is the same as that of the lesser lives within; no faxed telos or end, but a maximum increase of life itself. Not merely or primarily an increase in the number of all lives, but rather a greater enrichment, enhancement, and expansion

possible place in human experience. And here we are confronted with a new prob-

lem quite different from those that we have so far considered. Man’s first gods were

children

of fear, fear which

was

itself the offspring of a more than animal power to anticipate the dangers of nature

united with an all but animal weakness in coping with them. Gradually this weakness was transformed into strength, and magic, the first false dawn of intelligence, gave way to real though primitive science. Man learned to tame the animals, to sow

the soil, to fight and build with tools, and from the early gods of fear there slowly came the God of sorrow. Humanity had gained some respite from the cruder

plagues of material nature, and turning its attention inward, began to note the failures and tragedies of life, its griefs and sins. Mere physical terror was mitigated

and supplemented by pity, and self-pity, and shame. The new God and his Other World became the solace, precious and. irreplaceable, for all who were cast down.

of each life. For God as for us all, goods

Religion, and it alone, could function as a sustaining vital force in men who saw that

are relative, variable, and growing. New values are generated by old, and new summits of beauty are revealed from the

death would come to them, and who believed their very world would also die. Now times are changed. Humanity,

RELIGION

223

of age, has

perhaps the most dangerous because the

own overproduction. And when once the quality of life is no longer surrendered to its quantity, not even the ineptitudes of an economy based purely on private profit can delay for more than a few years the permanent solution of the problem of poverty and a permanent recovery from the insanity of war. Let us go on from the conquests of poverty and of war to the less assured but still measurably probable conquests of secular intelligence in the more remote future. Diseases of the body and disorders of the mind and emotions may

most practically influential of all. It is the

be definitely eliminated, and it is con-

indictment that is based on the increasing irrelevance of religion to the needs and

ceivable that life itself may be indefinitely prolonged. A mastery of the glands may yield anodynes not merely for physical pains but for the miseries of cowardice, jealousy, and hate, and of all moral and intellectual sloth. We may even succeed

PHILOSOPHY

though

OF

not exactly come

reached its adolescence and in a new, and

for the most part, buoyant mood, would

put all childish things away, and among them its old religion. It was this Modern Temper that was the theme of our opening discussion. We considered its indict-

ment of religion both on the ground of its alleged

historic,

scientific,

and

meta-

physical falsities, and on the ground of its alleged evil and reactionary philosophy of

morals. But there is a third indictment which we did not consider but which is

interests of modern life. That this challenge, though less vocal than the others,

is more deadly, will be apparent when we remember that true things can survive the charge of falsity and good things thrive under the charge of evil, but nothing however good or-true can endure as a living force in an atmosphere of indifference and neglect. To the modern temper religion is fast

coming to seem unnecessary because fear and sorrow are no longer the major themes of our more serious culture. There is a new

worldliness that is the outcome,

not

of thoughtlessness and triviality, but of a new thoughtfulness and a new confidence in man’s power to make life happy and secure by purely secular devices. Already we have the means to conquer poverty and to supply all the necessities and an increasing number of luxuries to every member of a sanely controlled population.

The time is almost here when, learning

unavailable waves of energy. Let us give to our improbable supermen the more than improbable, yet less than impossible,

power which they will some day surely need. And to the younger Haldane’s brilliant gifts, synthetic foods and psychic anodynes, ectogenesis and _ self-directed

Malthus, we shall break

evolution, along with the power to mi-

cobwebs of obscurantism and and emancipate our species stupidest, oldest, and most all slaveries—the slavery to its

grate to other planets, stars, and galaxies,

our lesson from

through the superstition from the shameful of

in not only controlling the quantity of life, but. in eugenically directing its . quality along new and ever higher lines of our own choosing. With the keys to birth and death in their hands, directors of their own evolving destiny, it would only remain for these supermen of the future to preserve their new life from geologic and astronomic catastrophes, and, last of all, from the relentless increase of entropy and its dénouement in a dissolution of the whole material universe into

let us add one final gift—the best of all. We will. reincarnate Clerk Maxwell’s famous “Demon” and confer upon our

REALISM

224

progeny the power to reverse the downward flow of energy, and to make not only synthetic food, but synthetic matter. By their own Utopian alchemy they will take the end products of entropy, the degraded energies left from dead and dying worlds, and transmute them into

AND

ANALYSIS

traditional religious orientation toward life and its values must undergo a revolu-

tionary revision. The alternative to this revolution is not quick death for religion at the hands of brave atheists, but slow

death from neglect by a world that will have passed it by.

electrons and protons and all their higher atomic products to satisfy whatever needs they may have. Then, and only then, would mortal flesh have put on immortality and both

individual and collective life have won true lordship over all creation. Now the purpose of this journey to the further frontiers of Utopia is not to weigh the probabilities or appraise the advantages of the earthly life to come. It is not the truth of the dream, but the fact of the dream, that is of interest to us. Dreams like this are being dreamt today,

A PREFACE

TO PROMETHEAN RELIGION

The myth of Prometheus was made in

Hellas, distilled from the purest and best in the souls of Greeks. Though its setting is local and temporal, its lesson is universal and eternal; and among all the

allegories of all the peoples it stands supreme. We can take it as a translation of the

and whether well or ill grounded, they

Hebrew epic of Job into the terms of a happier, freer, and more worldly culture; and the outcome in the one case is sig-

are significantly diagnostic of that phase of the modern temper which will make it difficult for the religions of old to con-

nificantly different from that in the other. Both of the heroes, actuated by love and justice, pledge their loyalty to the ideal

tinue. Religion has been a defense against

and to it alone, and by that very fact they anger and alarm the gods of things as they are. Both are punished for their righteousness, and then the stories diverge.

fear and a flight from

sorrow.

To the

extent that men see a prospect of abolishing, or radically mitigating, these enemies of their happiness, they will reject the technique of escape and its mood of

Job yields at last and surrenders right to might. Prometheus endures the tyrant’s

defeatism. Religion will be outmoded, and

torture and keeps his spirit free, proclaim-

its tidings of escape to another and better

ing to gods and men alike the claim of the ideal to outrank the power of Heaven itself. There is a second difference be-

world will ring cold in the ears of those who love this. The new worldliness that

religion must face is based on the faith that there is not only no place for heaven, but no need for it. Humanity, adolescent at last, has tasted the first fruits of the victory of secular intelligence over nature, and dreams grandly of far greater victories to come. How then can the spirit of religion meet this new challenge? There is, as I see it, but one course to take. The

tween the Greek and the Hebrew heroes. Job was righteous, but necessarily in a small way; being human, he lacked the

far-flung vision of a demigod. Prometheus | not only defied the real in the interest of the ideal, but the ideal for which he suffered was that of progress on earth for men. Progress not by submission, but by intelligence; secular progress which, like the knowledge of good and evil, had

PHILOSOPHY

RELIGION

225

been the prerogative of the gods alone. The fire that Prometheus stole from

Religious experience at its highest and deepest would be the contact which mortal men might have with immortal spirit, the Holy Spirit of God that sweeps like a wind through chaos, and forms all material structures—the electrons, atoms, and molecules, and their aggregates, the nebulae stars and planets, and the living

Heaven

OF

to give to men

was the symbol

of just that priceless thing. And one must suppose that when, after a long season, Plato was born, it was Prometheus and

not Apollo who was his real father. For as Prometheus

was first among

the im-

mortals to proclaim the two great truths, supremacy of the ideal and the power of free intelligence, so was that Philosopher who has no peer, the first among mortals to proclaim those same two truths; a realm of eternal ideals whose beauty no fact can

dim

and

no

force subdue,

and

to whose validity the gods themselves must bow, and secondly, the duty and the power of men to make over their own institutional life by the revolutionary use of reason, and to build an ideal Republic. There is desperate need to adapt our religion to the spirit and mood of the Promethean myth, and to make of it in a very real sense a Promethean religion. For the Promethean temper is the modern temper at its best, and best expresses the present vision of what man’s life should be, and what, if things go well, it actually will become. Fortunately, the task is not so difficult as it might seem, for it is tradition only,

and not truth, that stands in the way. If God is, as I believe he is, an infinite, allinclusive cosmic life, whose will to good is single, pure, and finite, one force among many in that chaos of existence which God finds within himself and

which is the world he would perfect—if God is that, then Zeus and his cousin of old Judea never were at all except as nightmare dreams in the minds of their worshipers. It was Prometheus himself,

not Zeus, who all along was really God, or the Hellenic symbol of what Christians name the Holy Ghost.

bodies of human beings. Surely it is not too fantastic to believe that a spirit that is everywhere can also be here, and on occasion visit mortals and make known its presence in their hearts: when they are in sorrow, as a comforter; when they are bewildered, as a light; when they are in terror, as a power; when they are in joy, as a glory. It has at any rate been often so reported, And these reports and testimonies should be in the future, as after all they always have been, the primary source of all religion. Mythology and metaphysics and their various combinations in the many rational and revealed theologies can never do more than serve as the more or less dead frames of what is felt to be by those who have it, be they saints, messiahs, or ordinary folk, a living contact with some-

thing other and infinitely higher than themselves. But now for the moment let us put quite out of our minds the question of whether these contacts occur, and of whether the mystic visit of the soul of the whole to the soul of the part is a fact or an illusion. And let us ask only whether such visits, even if they had occurred and even if they were still possible, would be any longer welcome in a world in which man is coming into his own and dreaming Utopian dreams of secular conquest and of an earthly future

when pain and sadness and weakness will be no longer the determining his spiritual orientation.

factors in

226

There is certainly today a rapidly increasing number of those who in answer to this question would unhesitatingly demand a severing of all connections, real or apparent, between man and the supernatural, Of course all, or almost all of them, will hasten to add that in reality there never had been and never could be any such connections. But in that part of their reply we are not now interested. It is not their belief in the falsity of religion but only their belief in its present and future irrelevancy that concerns us. Are the new worldlings right in their ethics of naturalism and atheism? It is that that we must seriously consider. We must suppose them to amplify their thesis as follows: “Fear and ignorance made the old gods—and in a world of ignorance and fear, that was right enough, though of course there weren’t any gods there. Sorrow and failure and sin- made the Great God, and that was all right too. For though there wasn’t any such being, yet in the presence of an invincible enemy techniques of flight and surrender are justifiable. But now that the enemy is in retreat and our permanent happiness in a fair way to be secured, no sort of god is wanted, not even if he existed. Religion is defeatism both shameful and unnecessary. It will go, must go, and ought to go. ‘Salvation’ is an anachronism, for there is nothing to be saved from. We shall gain the whole world and—be sufficient unto ourselves.” This is the modern temper; this is what religion is up against. How shall we reply? After all, the root of the answer is old. The living God, we are told, is adequate to man and needed by him in good fortune as in bad. But is he? That is

the whole point. The early gods were, to be sure, invited to feasts and made really

welcome. And even now, at many tables,

REALISM

AND

ANALYSIS

grace is still said, though it is apt to be followed by an odd little sigh of relief when

it is over, and we can begin. Of

course there is the story of one who was welcomed to a wedding feast and who turned water into wine, but that story has been. put on the Puritan Index ard to refer.to it at a Dry dinner would be the height of bad form. But what is more

significant. and disconcerting,

the same

reference would be a little embarrassing even at a Wet dinner. It would elicit a

polite and perfunctory approval, but the subject of conversation would be quickly changed.. We must. remember that the Puritans, from Paul to Torquemada and from Calvin to Anthony Comstock, have succeeded in impressing their own conception of religion not merely upon their friends, but even upon their foes. God as

help in time of trouble? Yes. But at other times it is God as punisher, prohibitor, censor, kill-joy—relentless foe of worldly

life. Now

man

accepted this as a norm of operation and committed to

today

has

pretty

finally

world, not, we must hope, values, but as his place of his permanent home. He is it and to its improvement;

and the great techniques of other-worldliness are dying and will soon be dead. The prerequisite to any genuine revival of religion is not therapy but surgery, not

evolution but revolution. Authoritarianism and Asceticism are the twin cancers of Puritanism. They have poisoned religion even in its ministry to failure and pain, and on that account alone they

should be cut out with all their roots and. ramifications. If these things can once be

made to go, I believe that there is hope. For that which tainted the old religion is also the chief obstacle to the continuance of any form of religion in the future. Nobody will deny that man is finite,

PHILOSOPHY

OF

227

RELIGION

and will continue finite no matter many continents he may tame, or many planets he may colonize, or many atoms he may disintegrate and tegrate. Pain, fear, and misery he

how how how reinmay

abolish, but the finitude of his being he will not abolish. Yet for better or worse there is associated with this finitude a longing for the infinite. Though finite, man needs the infinite to complete and

unify his own being. His spirit has pathetically outgrown his flesh, even his Utopian flesh. That is the mystery and the paradox of our natures, It is obvious enough that this need should be felt most poignantly in moments of weakness and failure. Men drowning clutch even at straws. The real test of our strange need will come when we are prosperous, not temporarily prosperous, as in the past, for then it was but natural and prudent to be on the safe side, but when we are permanently prosperous, when we arrive safe in Utopia; or if that arrival seems dubious—and it assuredly is, all wild fancies to the contrary notwithstanding— then when we dream, as assuredly we now do dream, that we are on the way to Utopia. In the theory of value defended in the second chapter, the good was defined as the increment of psychic being which constitutes the actualization of a potentiality. If the definition was sound and if it is true that we have a need or poten-

were deny deed, itself

supplied in plenty. But could anyone that the loss would be real and, inmore terribly real if the very desire were lost and not merely the ful-

filment of it? The self would have actually been diminished in its possible substance, something would have dropped out of the prospect and that something the infinite. If we were right in pitying the egoist for lacking sympathies and

being so small in that very thing that he was exclusively concerned for, namely, his own self, is not the same sort of pity to be given to the atheist who, having the opportunity to enlarge his life by contact with the infinite, neglected that opportunity? Not that anything would happen to him—his tragedy would consist just in that—in the fact that nothing would happen to him. He would keep right on being himself, but nothing more. He would have lost nothing that he had,

only something that he could have had— an infinite something. And let us remember here the Promethean conception of God that was defended. If that conception is valid it means that the holy spirit of God, could one but feel it, would not only be courage to hearten us in weakness, and solace to comfort us in sorrow (perhaps in Utopia we are not ever weak or sad), but power and light and glory beyond what we had, however

had.

No

one

would

much

knowingly

we

refuse

that, even in Utopia. For though life may tiality for contact with the infinite, then lose its negations and evils, so long as the actuality of such contact should be a . life continues as life, it will never lose tremendous thing, an infinite addition to what there is of us. Why should anyone refuse it, if it were really possible to have it? One might indeed, in times of good fortune, forget it; one might even allow the instinct for it to atrophy through disuse and neglect, and cease to care for aught but finite goods so long as they

its yearning to be more Promethean

than it is. The

God, unlike the old God

of

evil tradition, would be life-affirming, not life-negating; he would not pull us back from our interests and recall us from the

world. We should be lifted up and carried forward, as by a wave, further into the world and its life than before; our inter-

REALISM

228

ests

broadened

and

deepened

and

our

souls miraculously quickened. If that is in truth what an authentic religious experience would mean or could mean, then for those who object to religion there remains but one possible line

—they must deny that there is such a thing. Of course it would be good, they will say, if it were real, but it is not real; it is but a revival of ancient empty hope masking its emptiness in phrases, Aban-

don it and let us give what time and energy we have to our real business

living like mortals

in a world

of

which

AND

is at least a chance upward-tending

power

ANALYSIS

that there is an in nature

to ac-

count for such adaptations as we find. There is at least a chance that the cosmos as a whole has a unitary life and consciousness and that the evolutionary nisus is its will which, though not omnipotent, is omnipresent. And lastly, if there is a kind of stillness and if one can contrive a

queer little turn of the heart away from what one knows to be mean, there is a chance, however small, that a union with

the holy spirit of this Promethean

God

none but mortals inhabit. To this we can

will be attained, and that by such union,

only reply: Perhaps you are right, but there is a chance that you are not. There

one’s world

will be made

radiant, and

one’s life become a high romance.

How Rehgion-May Be an Embodiment of Reason GEORGE SANTAYANA of Bacon’s, that

to a convention which inwardly offends them, but they yearn mightily in their

“a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.” In every age the most comprehensive thinkers

own souls after the religious acceptance of a world interpreted in their own fashion. So it appears in the end that their atheism and loud protestation were in

have found.in the religion of their time

fact the hastier part of their thought, since what emboldened them to deny the poor world’s faith was that they were

Experience

has

that well-known

repeatedly maxim

confirmed

and country something they could accept, interpreting and illustrating that religion so as to give it depth and universal application. Even the heretics and atheists, if they have had profundity, turn out after

a while to be forerunners of some new orthodoxy. What they rebel against is a religion alien to their nature; they are atheists only by accident, and relatively

too impatient to understand it. Indeed, the enlightenment common to young wits’

and worm-eaten old satirists, who plume themselves on detecting the scientific ineptitude of religion—something

which

the blindest half see—is not nearly enlightened enough: it points to notorious

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

facts incompatible with religious tenets literally taken, but it leaves unexplored the habits of thought from which those tenets sprang, their original. meaning, and their true function. Such studies would

bring the sceptic face to face with the mystery and pathos of mortal existence. They would make him understand why

religion is so profoundly moving and in a sense so profoundly just. There must needs be something humane and necessary

in an influence that has become the most general sanction of virtue, the chief occasion for art and philosophy, and the source, perhaps, of the best human _happiness. If nothing, as Hooker

said, is “so

malapert as a: splenetic religion,” a sour irreligion is almost as perverse. At the same time, when Bacon penned the sage epigram we have quoted he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men’s minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them. It would be pitiful indeed if mature reflection bred no better conceptions than those which have drifted down the muddy stream of time, where tradition and passion have jumbled everything together. Traditional conceptions, when they are felicitous, may

be adopted by the poet, but they must be purified by the moralist and disintegrated by the philosopher. Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself. What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak, In

the rare circumstances where a choice is possible, he may, with some difficulty, make an exchange; but even then he is only adopting a new convention which may be more agreeable to his personal

229

temper but which is essentially as arbitrary as the old.

The attempt to speak without speaking any particular less than the that shall be courier’s or a

language is not more hopeattempt to have a religion no religion in particular. A dragoman’s speech may in-

deed be often unusual and drawn from disparate sources, not without some mixture of personal originality; but that private jargon will have a meaning only because of its analogy to one or more conventional languages and its obvious derivation from them. So travellers from one religion to another, people who have lost their spiritual nationality, may often retain a neutral and confused residuum of belief, which they may egregiously regard as the essence of all religion, so little may they remember the graciousness and naturalness of that ancestral accent which a perfect religion should have. Yet a moment’s probing of the conceptions surviving in such minds will show them to be nothing but vestiges of old_ beliefs, creases which thought, even if emptied of all dogmatic tenets, has not been able to smooth away at its first unfolding. Later generations, if they have any religion at all, will be found either to revert to ancient authority, or to attach themselves spontaneously to something wholly novel and immensely positive, to some faith promulgated by a fresh genius and passionately embraced by a _ converted people. Thus every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy. Its power consists in its special and_ surprising message and in the bias which that revelation gives to life. The vistas it opens and the mysteries it propounds are another world to live in; and another world to live in—whether we expect ever to pass wholly into it or no—is what we mean by having a religion.

REALISM

230

AND

ANALYSIS

religion, bear to the Life of Reason? That

fortunate death may be to those whose spirit can still live in their country and in their ideas; it reveals the radiating effects

the relation between the two is close seems clear from several circumstances.

of action thought.

What business

relation, of the

then, does this great soul, which we call

and

the

eternal

objects

of

The Life of Reason is the seat of all ulti-

Yet the difference in tone and language

mate values. Now the history of mankind will show us that whenever spirits at once lofty and intense have seemed to attain the highest joys, they have envisaged and attained them in religion. Religion would therefore seem to be a vehicle or a factor in rational life, since the ends of rational life are attained by it. Moreover, the Life of Reason is an ideal to which everything in the world should be subordinated; it establishes lines of moral cleavage everywhere and

must strike us, so soon as it is philosophy

makes

right

eternally

different

from

wrong. Religion does the same thing. It makes absolute moral decisions. It sanctions, unifies, and transforms ethics. Religion thus exercises a function of the Life of Reason. And a further function which is common to both is that of emancipating man from his personal limitations. In different ways religions promise to transfer the soul to better conditions. A supernaturally favoured kingdom is to be established for posterity

upon

earth, or for all the faithful in

heaven, or the soul is to be freed by repeated purgations from all taint and sorrow, or it is to be lost in the absolute, or it is to become an influence and an object of adoration in the places it once haunted or wherever the activities it once loved may be carried on by future genera-

that speaks. That change should remind us that even if the function of religion and that of reason coincide, this function is performed in the two cases by very different organs. Religions are many, reason one. Religion consists of conscious ideas, hopes, enthusiasms, and objects of

worship; it operates by grace and flourishes by prayer. Reason, on the other hand, is a mere principle or potential order, on which, indeed, we may come to reflect, but which exists in us ideally only,

without variation or stress of any kind. We

conform

or do not conform

to it; it

does not urge or chide us, nor call for any emotions

on

our

part

other

than

those

naturally aroused by the various objects which it unfolds in their true nature and proportion. Religion brings some order into life by weighting it with new materiais. Reason adds to the natural materials only the perfect order which it introduces into them. Rationality is nothing but a form, an ideal constitution which experience may more or less embody. Religion is a part of experience itself, a mass of sentiments and ideas. The one is an inviolate principle, the other a

changing and struggling force. And yet this struggling and changing force of religion seems to direct man toward some-

tions of its kindred. Now reason in its way lays before us all these possibilities:

thing eternal. It seems to make for an | ultimate harmony within the soul and

it points to common objects, political and

for an

intellectual,

may

soul and all the soul depends upon. So

accid | in what is rational

that religion, in its intent, is a more conscious and direct pursuit of the Life of Reason than is society, science, or art.

lose

what

in which is mortal

an

individual

and

himself and immortalise

and human; it teaches us how sweet and

ultimate

harmony

between

the

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

For these approach and fill out the ideal life tentatively and piecemeal, hardly regarding the goal or caring for the ultimate justification of their instinctive aims. Religion also has an instinctive and blind side, and bubbles up in all manner of chance practices and intuitions; soon, however, it feels its way toward the heart of things, and, from whatever quarter it may come, veers in the direction of the ultimate. Nevertheless, we must confess that this religious pursuit of the Life of Reason has been singularly abortive. Those within the pale of each religion may prevail upon themselves to express satisfaction with its results, thanks to a fond partiality in reading the past and generous draughts of hope for the future; but any one regarding the various religions at once and comparing their achievements with what reason requires, must feel how terrible is the disappointment which they have one and all prepared for mankind. Their chief anxiety has been to offer imaginary remedies for mortal ills, some of which are incurable essentially, while others might have been really cured by well-directed effort. The Greek oracles, for instance, pretended to heal our natural ignorance, which has its appropriate though difficult cure, while the Christian vision of heaven pretended to be an antidote to our natural death, the inevitable correlate of birth and of a changing and conditioned existence. By

methods of this sort little can be done for the real betterment of life. To confuse intelligence and dislocate sentiment by gratuitous fictions is a short-sighted way of pursuing happiness. Nature is soon avenged. An unhealthy exaltation and a

one-sided morality have to be followed by regrettable reactions. When these come, the real rewards of life may seem vain to

231 a relaxed vitality, and the very name of virtue may irritate young spirits untrained in any natural excellence. Thus religion too often debauches the morality it comes to sanction, and impedes the science it ought to fulfil. What is the secret of this ineptitude? Why does religion, so near to rationality in its purpose, fall so far short of it in its texture and in its results? The answer is easy: Religion pursues rationality through the imagination. When it explains events or assigns causes, it is an imaginative substitute for science. When it gives

precepts,

insinuates

ideals,

or

remoulds aspiration, it is an imaginative substitute for wisdom—I mean for the deliberate and impartial pursuit of all good. The conditions and the aims of life are both represented in religion poetically, but this poetry tends to arrogate to itself literal truth and moral authority, neither

of which it possesses. Hence the depth and importance of religion become intelligible no less than its contradictions and practical disasters. Its object is the same

as that of reason, but its method

is

to proceed by intuition and by unchecked poetical conceits. These are repeated and vulgarised in proportion to their original fineness and significance, till they pass for reports of objective truth and come to constitute a world of faith, superposed upon the world of experience and _ regarded as materially enveloping it, if not in space at least in time and in existence. “The only truth of religion comes from its interpretation of life, from its symbolic rendering of that moral experience which it springs out of and which it seeks to elucidate. Its falsehood comes from the insidious misunderstanding which clings to it, to the effect that these poetic conceptions are not merely representations of experience as it is or should be, but are

232 rather information about experience or reality elsewhere—an experience and reality which, strangely enough, supply just the defects betrayed by reality and experience here.

Thus religion has the same original relation to life that poetry has; only poetry, which never pretends to literal validity,

REALISM

AND

ANALYSIS

be such, can work indefinite harm in the world and in the conscience. On the whole, however, religion should

not be conceived as having taken the place of anything better, but rather as having come to relieve situations which, but for its presence, would have been infinitely worse. In the thick of active life, or in the

adds a pure value to existence, the value

monotony

of a liberal imaginative exercise. The poetic value of religion would initially be greater than that of poetry itself, because religion deals with higher and more practical themes, with sides of life which are in greater need of some imaginative touch and ideal interpretation than are those pleasant or pompous things which ordinary poetry dwells upon. But this initial advantage is neutralised in part by the abuse to which religion is subject, whenever its symbolic rightness is taken for scientific truth. Like poetry, it improves the world only by imagining it improved, but not content with making this addition to the mind’s furniture—an addition which might be useful and ennobling

more need to stimulate fancy than to control it. Natural instinct is not much disturbed in the human brain by what may happen in that thin superstratum of ideas which commonly overlays it. We must not blame religion for. preventing the develop-

ment

of practical slavery, there is

of a moral

and

natural

science

which at any rate would seldom have appeared; we must rather thank it for the sensibility, the reverence, the speculative insight which it has introduced into the world. We may therefore proceed to analyse the significance and the function which religion has had at its different stages, and, without disguising or in the least condoning its confusion with literal truth, we may allow ourselves to enter as sym—it thinks to confer a more radical benepathetically as possible into its various fit by persuading mankind that, in’ spite conceptions and emotions. They have of appearances, the world is really such made up the inner life of many sages, as that rather arbitrary idealisation has painted it. This spurious satisfaction is and of all those who without great genius or learning have lived steadfastly in the naturally the prelude to many a disapspirit. The feeling of reverence should pointment, and _ the soul has infinite itself be treated with reverence, although trouble to emerge again from the artificial problems and sentiments into which it is not at a sacrifice of truth, with which thus plunged. The value of religion bealone, in the end, reverence is compatible. comes equivocal. Religion remains an Nor have we any reason to be intolerant imaginative achievement, a symbolic repof the partialities and _ contradictions resentation of moral reality which may which religions display. Were we dealing have a most important function in vitaliswith a science, such contradictions would ing the mind and in transmitting, by way have to be instantly solved and removed; of parables, the lessons of experience. But but when we are concerned with the it becomes at the same time a continuous poetic interpretation of experience, conincidental deception; and this deception, tradiction means only variety, and variety in proportion as it is strenuously denied to means spontaneity, wealth of resource,

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

233

and a nearer approach to total adequacy.

was only to use different expressions for the same influence, now viewed in its

If we hope to gain any understanding of these matters we must begin by taking them out of that heated and fanatical atmosphere in which the Hebrew tradition has enveloped them. The Jews had no philosophy, and when their national tradi-

tions came to be theoretically explicated and justified, they were made to issue in a puerile scholasticism and a rabid intolerance. The question of monotheism, for instance, was a terrible question to the

Jews. Idolatry did not consist in worshipping a god who, not being ideal, might be unworthy of worship, but rather in recognising other gods than the one worshipped in Jerusalem. To the Greeks, on the contrary, whose philosophy was enlightened and ingenuous, monotheism and polytheism seemed perfectly innocent and compatible. To say God or the gods

abstract unity and correlation

with all

existence, now viewed in its various mani-

festations in moral life, in nature, or in history. So that what in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics meets us at every step—the combination of monotheism with _polytheism—is no contradiction, but merely an intelligent variation of phrase to indicate various aspects or functions in physical and moral things. When religion appears to us in this light its contradictions and controversies lose all their bitterness. Each doctrine will simply repre-

sent the moral plane on which they live who have devised or adopted it. Religions will thus be better or worse,

never

true

or false. We shall be able to lend ourselves to each in turn, and seek to draw from it the secret of its inspiration.

Truth and Criticism in Religion

ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD 1. THE

DEVELOPMENT DOGMA

OF

In human nature there is no such separate function as a special religious sense. In making this assertion, I am agreeing with the following quotation:

Those who tend to identify religious experience with the activity of some peculiar

organ or element of the mental life have recently made much of the subconscious.

Here there seems to be a safe retreat for the hard-pressed advocates of the uniqueness of religious experience.* 1E. S. Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience, p. 291.

Religious truth must be developed from knowledge acquired when our ordinary senses and intellectual operations are at their highest pitch of discipline. To move one step from this position towards the dark recesses of abnormal psychology is to surrender finally any hope of a solid foundation for religious

doctrine. Religion starts from the generalization of final truths first perceived as exem- | plified in particular instances. These truths are amplified into a coherent system and applied to the interpretation of

life. They stand or fall—like other truths

234

REALISM

'—by their success in this interpretation. The peculiar character of religious truth

is that it explicitly deals with values. It brings into our

consciousness

that per-

manent side of the universe which we can _ care for. It thereby provides a meaning, | in terms of value, for our own existence, | a meaning which flows from the nature of things. It is not true, however, that we observe best when we are entirely devoid of emotion. Unless there is a direction of interest, we do not observe at all. Further, our capacity for observation is limited. Accordingly, when we are observing some things, we are in a bad position for observing other things.

Thus there are certain emotional states which are most favourable for a peculiar concentration on topics of religious interest, just as other states facilitate the apprehension of arithmetical truths. Also,

emotional states are related to states of the body. Most people are more likely to make arithmetical slips when they are tired in the evening. But we still believe that arithmetic holds good from sundown to cockcrow. Again, it is not true that all people are on a level in respect to their perceptive powers. Some people appear to realize continuously, and at a higher level, types of emotional and perceptive experience, - which we recognize as corresponding to those periods of our own lives most

worthy of confidence for that sort of experience. In so far as what they say interprets

our

own

best moments,

it is

reasonable to trust to the evidential force of their experience. These considerations are all commonplaces, but it is necessary to keep them

clearly in mind when we endeavour to form our philosophy of religious knowledge.

AND

ANALYSIS

A dogma is the precise enunciation of a general truth, divested so far as possible from particular exemplification. Such precise expression is in the long run a condition for vivid realization, for effectiveness, for apprehension of width of

scope, and for survival. For example, when the Greeks, such as Pythagoras or Euclid, formulated accurately mathematical dogmas, the general truths which the Egyptians had acted

upon

for more

than thirty generations

became thereby of greater importance. It is not the case, however, that our apprehension of a general truth is de-

pendent

upon

its accurate

verbal

ex-

pression. For it would follow that we could never be dissatisfied with the verbal expression of something that we had never apprehended. But this consciousness of failure to express our accurate meaning

must have haunted most of us. For example, the notion of irrational number had been used in mathematics for over two thousand years before it received accurate definition in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Also, Newton and Leibnitz introduced the differential calculus, which was the foundation of modern mathematical physics. But the mathematical notions involved did not receive adequate verbal expression for two hundred and fifty

years. Such recondite examples are quite unnecessary. We know more of the characters of those who are dear to us than we can express accurately in words. We may

recognize the truth of some statement. about them. It will be a new statement about something which we had already apprehended but had never formulated. This example brings out another fact:

that a one-sided formulation may be true, but may have the effect of a lie by its

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

255

distortion of emphasis. Such distortion does not stand in its character of a truth, but depends upon those who are affected

now receiving its proper attention.* In the framing of dogmas it is only possible to

by it. So far-as the make-up of an individual mind is concerned, there is a proportion in truth as well as in art. Thus an ill-balanced zeal for the propagation of dogma bears witness to a certain coarseness of esthetic sensitiveness.

It shows a strain of indifference—due perhaps to arrogance, perhaps to rashness, perhaps to mere ignorance—a strain of indifference to the fact that others may require a proportion of formulation different from that suitable for ourselves. Perhaps our pet dogmas require correction: they may even be wrong.

The fate of a word has to the historian the value of a document. The modern unfavourable implications of the kindred words,

dogma,

dogmatic,

dogmatist,

tell

the story of some failure in habits of thought. The word “dogma” originally means an “opinion,” and thence more especially a “philosophic opinion.” Thus, for example, the Greek physician, Galen, uses the phrase “dogmatic physicians’ to mean “physicians who guide themselves by general principles’—surely a praiseworthy practice. The nearest Greek dictionary will give this elementary information. But the dictionary—and this is why I have quoted it—gives an ominous addition to the information about Galen. It says that Galen contrasts “dogmatic physicians” with “empiric physicians.” If you then refer to the word “empiric,” you will find that “empiric physicians” contended that “experience was the one thing needful.” In this lecture we have to

investigate the application to religion of this contrast between “dogmatic” and “empiric.” The philosophy of expression is only

use ideas which

have received a distinct,

well-recognized signification. Also, no idea is determinate in a vacuum: It has its being as one of a system of ideas, A dogma is the expression of a fact as it

appears

within

a

certain

sphere

of

thought. You cannot convey a dogma by merely translating the words; you must also understand the system of thought to which it is relevant. To take a very

obvious

example,

“The

Fatherhood

of

God” is a phrase which would have a significance for a Roman citizen of the early Republic different from that which it has for a modern American—stern for the one, tender for the other. In estimating the validity of a dogma, it must be projected against the alternatives to it within that sphere of thought. You cannot claim absolute finality for a dogma without claiming a commensurate

finality for the sphere of thought within which it arose. If the dogmas of the Christian Church from the second to the sixth centuries express finally and sufhciently the truths concerning the topics about which they deal, then the Greek philosophy of that period had developed a system of ideas of equal finality. You cannot limit the inspiration to a narrow circle of creeds, A dogma—in the sense of a precise statement—can never be final; it can only be adequate in its adjustment of certain abstract concepts. But the estimate of the status of these concepts remains for determination, You cannot rise above the adequacy of the terms you employ. A dogma may be true in the sense that it expresses such interrelations of the subject matter as are 2Cf. R. M. Eaton, Symbolism vard University Press, 1925.

and Truth, Har-

REALISM

236

expressible within the set of ideas employed. But if the same

dogma be used

AND

ANALYSIS

in terms of a descriptive metaphysical system. In this concluding section of this

intolerantly so as to check the employment of other modes of analyzing the

nature

subject matter, then, for all its truth, it

physical

will be doing the work of a falsehood.

adopted as the basis of thought in this

Progress in truth—truth of truth of religion—is mainly a the framing of concepts, in artificial abstractions or partial

course of lectures, and which was more particularly described in the previous lecture. To be an actual thing is to be limited. An actual thing is an elicited feelingvalue, which is analyzable as the outcome of a graded grasping of the elements of

and

in evolving

notions

science and progress in discarding metaphors,

which

strike

more deeply into the root of reality.

course, we ask what can be said of the |

of God

in terms

description

of the meta- —

which

has

been

the universe into the unity of one fact. IV. The Nature of God. The general history of religious thought, of which the Reformation period is a particular instance, is that of the endeavour

of man-

kind to interpret the great standard experiences as leading to a more definite knowledge than can be derived from a metaphysic which founds itself upon general experience. There can be nothing inherently illegitimate in such an attempt. But if we attend to the general principles which regulate all endeavours after clear statement of truth, we must be prepared to amplify,

recast, generalize, and adapt, so as to absorb into experience.

one

system

all sources

of

The earlier statements will be not so much wrong, as obscured by trivial limitations, and as thereby implying an exclusion of complementary truths, The growth will be in the proportion of truth. The doctrines—fundamental to religion —of the nature of God must be construed in this sense. It is in respect to this doctrine that the great cleavages of religious thought arise. The extremes are the doctrine of God as the impersonal order of the universe, and the doctrine of God as the one person creating the universe. A general concept has to be construed

This grasping together may be called a perception. The grading means the grading of relevance of the various elements, so far as concerns their contribution to the

one actual fact. The synthesis is the union of what is already actual occasion, new

with for

what

is, for that I have

realization.

called it the union of the actual ground with the novel consequent. is formed

The ground

by all the facts of the world,

already actual and graded in their pro-

portion of relevance. The consequent

is

constituted by all the ideal forms of possibility, graded in their proportion. The grading of the actual ground arises from the creativity of some actual fact passing over into a new form by reason of the fact itself. The new creativity, under consideration, has thus already a definite status in the world, arising from its particular origin. We can indifferently say

that the grading arises from the status, or the status from the grading. They are different ways of saying the same thing. The grading of the ideal forms arises from the grading of the actual facts. It is the union of the forms with the facts in

to elicit a renewed feeling-value, of the type possible as a novel outcome from the antecedent facts. Depth of value is only possible if the

such

measure

as

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

antecedent facts conspire in unison. Thus a measure of harmony in the ground is requisite for the perpetuation of depth into the future. But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.

Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected. Thus the whole process itself, viewed at any stage as a definite limited fact which has issued from the creativity, requires a definite entity, already actual among the

formative

elements

as

an

antecedent

ground for the entry of the ideal forms

237 edge modes

of the

relationships

of particular

of value is not added

to, or dis-

turbed, by the realization in the actual world of what is already conceptually

realized in his ideal world. This ideal world of conceptual harmonization is merely a description of God himself. Thus the nature of God is the complete conceptual realization of the realm of ideal forms. The kingdom of heaven is God. But these forms.are not realized by him in mere bare isolation, but as elements in

the value

of his conceptual

experience.

Also, the ideal forms are in God’s vision

as contributing to his complete experience, by reason of his conceptual realization of their possibilities as elements of value

into the definite process of the temporal

in any creature. Thus God is the one

world. But such a complete aboriginal actuality must differ from actuality in process of realization in respect to the blind occasions of perceptivity which issue from process and require process. These occasions build up the physical world which is essentially in transition. God, who is the ground antecedent to transition, must include all possibilities of physical value conceptually, thereby holding the ‘ideal forms apart in equal, con-

systematic, complete fact, which is the antecedent ground conditioning every creative act. The depths of his existence lie beyond the vulgarities of praise or of power. He gives to suffering its swift insight into values which can issue from it. He is the ideal companion who transmutes what

ceptual realization of knowledge. Thus, as concepts, they are grasped together in the synthesis of omniscience. The limitation of God is his goodness. He gains his depth of actuality by his harmony of valuation. It is not true that God is in all respects infinite. If He were,

He would be evil as well as good. Also this unlimited fusion of evil with good would mean mere nothingness. He is something decided and is thereby limited. He is complete in the sense that his vision determines every possibility of

value. Such a complete vision coordinates and adjusts every detail. Thus his knowl-

has been lost into a living fact within his own nature. He is the mirror which dis-

closes to every creature its own greatness. The kingdom of heaven is not the isolation of good from evil. It is the overcoming of evil by good. This transmutation of evil into good enters into the actual world by reason of thc inclusion of the nature of God, which includes the ideal vision of each actual evil so met with a novel consequent as to issue in the restoration of goodness. God has in his nature the knowledge ot evil, of pain, and of degradation, but it is there as overcome with what is good. Every fact is what it is, a fact of pleasure, of joy, of pain, or of suffering. In_ its union with God that fact is not a total loss, but on its finer side is an element to

REALISM

238 be woven immortally into the rhythm of mortal things. Its very evil becomes a

stepping stone in the“all-embracing ideals of God. Every event on its finer side introduces

AND

ANALYSIS

would be no rational explanation of the ideal vision which constitutes God. Each actual occasion gives to the creativity which flows from it a definite character in two ways. In one way, as a fact,

God into the world. Through it his ideal

enjoying its complex of relationships with

vision is given a base in actual fact to

the rest of the world, it contributes a ground—partly good and partly bad—for

which He provides the ideal consequent, as a factor saving the world from the self-destruction

which

God

of evil. The

sustains

power

the world

by

is the

power of himself as the ideal. He adds

himself to the actual ground from which every creative act takes its rise. The world lives by its incarnation of God in itself. He transcends the temporal world, because He is an actual fact in the nature of things. He is not there as derivative from the world; He is the actual fact from which the other formative elements cannot be torn apart. But equally it stands in his nature that He is the realization of the ideal con-

ceptual harmony by reason of which there is an actual process in the total universe— an evolving world which is actual because there is order. The abstract forms are thus the link between God and the actual world. These forms are abstract and not real, because in

themselves they represent no achievement of actual value. Actual fact always means fusion into one perceptivity. God is one such conceptual fusion, embracing the concept of all such possibilities graded in harmonious,

relative

subordination.

Each

actual occasion in the temporal world is another such fusion. The forms belong no

more to God than to any one occasion. Apart from

these forms, no

rational

de-

scription can be given either of God or of

the actual world. Apart from God, there would be no actual world; and apart from the actual world with its creativity, there

the creativity to fuse with a novel consequent, which will be the outcome of its free urge. In another way, as transmuted in the nature of God, the ideal consequent as it stands in his vision is also added. Thus God in the world is the perpetual vision of the road which leads to the deeper realities. V. Conclusion. God is that function in the world by reason of which our purposes are directed to ends which in our own consciousness are impartial as to our own interests. He is that element in life in virtue of which judgment stretches beyond facts of existence to values of existence. He is that element in virtue of which our purposes extend beyond values for ourselves to values for others. He is that element in virtue of which the attainment of such a value for others transforms itself into value for ourselves. He is the binding element in the world. The consciousness which is individual

in us, is universal

in him:

the

love which is partial in us is all-embracing in him. Apart from him there could be no world, because there could be no adjustment of individuality. His purpose

in the world is quality of attainment. His. purpose is always embodied in the particular ideals relevant to the actual state of the world. Thus all attainment is immortal in that it fashions the actual ideals which*are God in the world as it is now. Every act leaves the world with a deeper or a fainter impress of God. He then

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

+39

passes into his next relation to the world

of the failure of the new forms to fertilize the perceptive achievements which consti-

with enlarged, or diminished, presentation of ideal values. He is not the world, but the valuation of the world. In abstraction from the course of events, this valuation is-a necessary metaphysical function, Apart from it, there could be no definite deter-

mination of limitation required for attainment.

But in the actual

world,

He

con-

fronts what is actual in it with what is possible for it. Thus He solves all in-

tute its past history. The universe shows

us two aspects: on one side it is physically wasting, on the other side it is spiritually ascending. It is thus passing with a slowness, inconceivable in our measures of time, to new creative conditions, amid which the physical world, as we at present know it, will be represented by a ripple barely to be distinguished from non-entity.

The present type of order in the world

determinations.

The passage of time is the journey of the world towards the gathering of new ideas into actual fact. This adventure is

has arisen from an unimaginable past, and it will find its grave in an unimagi-

upwards

ble realm of abstract forms, and creativity, with its shifting character ever deter-

and

downwards.

Whatever

ceases to ascend, fails to preserve itself and enters upon its inevitable path of decay. It decays by transmitting its nature to slighter occasions of actuality, by reason

nable future. There remain the inexhausti-

mined afresh by its own creatures, and God, upon whose wisdom all forms of order depend.

Gods JOHN

WISDOM

1. The existence of God 1s not an experimental issue in the way it was. An atheist or agnostic might say to a theist “You still think there are spirits in the trees, nymphs in the streams, a God ofthe world.” He might say this because

he noticed the theist in time of drought pray for rain and make a sacrifice and in the morning look for rain. But disagreement about whether there are gods is now less of this experimental or betting sort than it used to be. This is due in part, if not wholly, to our better knowledge

of

why things happen as they do. It is true that even in these days it is seldom that one who believes in God has

no hopes or fears which an atheist has not. Few believers now expect prayer to still the waves, but some think it makes a difference to people and not merely in ways the atheist would admit. Of course with people, as opposed to waves and machines, one never knows what they won't do next, so that expecting prayer to make a difference to them is not so definite a thing as believing in its

REALISM

240

mechanical efficacy. Still, just as primitive people pray in a business-like

way

for

rain so some people still pray for others with a real feeling of doing something to

help. However, in spite of this persistence of an experimental element in some theistic belief, it remains true that Elijah’s

method on Mount Carmel of settling the matter of what god or gods exist would be far less appropriate to-day than it was

then. 2. Belief in gods is not merely a matter of expectation of a world to come. Someone may say “The fact that a theist no more than an atheist expects prayer to

AND

ANALYSIS

punishment or help. Maybe for a moment an old fear will come or a cry for help escape him, but he will at once remember that this is no good now. He may feel’ that his father is no more until perhaps someone says to him that his father is still alive though he lives now in another world and one so far away that there is no hope of seeing him or hearing his voice

again. The child may be told that nevertheless his father can see him and hear all he says. When he has been told this the child will still fear no punishment nor expect any sign of his father, but now, even more

than he did when his father was alive, he

bring down fire from heaven or cure the

will feel that his father sees him all the

sick does not mean that there is no difference between them as to the facts, it does not mean that the theist has no expecta-

time and will dread distressing him and

tions’ different from the atheist’s. For very often those who believe in God believe in another world and believe. that God is there and that we shall go to that world when we die.” This is true, but I do not want to consider here expectations as to what one will see and feel after death nor what sort of reasons these logically unique expectations

could have. So I want to consider those theists who do not believe in a future life, or rather, I want to consider the differences between atheists and theists in so far as these differences are not a matter of

when he has done something wrong he will feel separated from his father until he has felt sorry for what he has done. Maybe when he himself comes to die he will be like a man who expects to find a friend in the strange country where he is going. But even when this is so, it is by no means

all of what makes the difference between a child who believes that his father lives still in another world and one who does

not. Likewise one who believes in God may face death differently from one who does not, but there is another difference be-

tween them besides this. This other difference may still be described as belief in

belief in a future life.

another world, only this belief is not a mat-

3. What are these differences? And is it that theists are superstitious or that atheists are blind? A child may wish to

ter of expecting one thing rather than an-

sit a while with his father and he may, when he has done what his father dislikes, fear punishment and feel distress at causing vexation, and while his father is alive he may feel sure of help when danger threatens and feel that there is sympathy

for him when disaster has come. When his father is dead he will no longer expect

other here or hereafter, it is not a matter of

a world to come but of a world that now is, though beyond our senses. We are at once reminded of those other unseen worlds which some philosophers “believe in” and others “deny,” while non-

philosophers unconsciously “accept” them by using them as models with which to “get the hang of” the patterns in the flux of experience. We recall the timeless en-

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

241

tities whose changeless connections we seek

two components, one metaphysical and the same which prompts the question “Is there ever any behaviour which gives reason to believe in any sort of mind?” and one which finds expression in “Are there other mind-patterns in nature beside the human and animal patterns which we can all

to represent in symbols and the values which stand firm? amidst our flickering satisfaction and ‘remorse, and the physical things which, though not beyond the corruption of moth and rust, are yet more permanent than the shadows they throw upon the screen before our minds, We recall, too, our talk of souls and of what lies in their depths and is manifested to us partially and intermittently in our own feelings and the behavior of others. The hypothesis of mind, of other human minds and of animal minds, is reasonable because it explains for each of us why certain things behave so cunningly all by themselves unlike even the most ingenious machines. Is the hypothesis of minds in flowers and trees reasonable for like reasons? Is the hypothesis of a world mind reasonable for like reasons—someone who adjusts the blossom to the bees, someone whose presence may at times be felt—in a garden in high summer, in the hills when clouds are gathering, but not, perhaps, in a cholera epidemic? 4. The question “Is belief in gods reasonable?” has more than one source. It is clear now that in order to grasp fully the logic of belief in divine minds we need to examine the logic of belief in animal and human minds, But we cannot do that here and so for the purposes of this discussion about divine minds let us acknowledge the reasonableness of our belief in human minds without troubling ourselves about its logic. The question of the rea-

sonableness of belief in divine minds then becomes a matter of whether there are facts in nature which support claims about divine minds in the way facts in nature support our claims about human minds. In this way we resolve the force behind the problem of the existence of gods into 1TIn another world, Statesman recently.

Dr. Joad says in the New

easily detect, and

are these other

mind-

patterns super-human?” Such over-determination of a question syndrome is common. Thus, the puzzling questions “Do. dogs think?”, “Do animals feel?” are partly metaphysical puzzles and partly scientific questions. They are not purely metaphysical; for the reports of scientists about the poor performances of cats in cages and old ladies’ stories about the remarkable performances of their pets are not irrelevant. But nor are these questions purely scientific; for the stories never settle them and therefore they have other sources. One other source is the metaphysical source we have already noticed, namely, the dif-

ficulty about getting behind an animal’s behaviour to its mind, whether it is a nonhuman animal or a human one. But there’s a third component in the force behind these questions, these disputes have a third source, and it is one which is important in the dispute which finds expression in the words “I believe in God,” “T do not.” This source comes out well if we consider the question “Do flowers feel?” Like the questions about dogs and animals this question about flowers comes partly from the difficulty we sometimes feel over inference from any behaviour to thought or feeling and partly from ignorance as to

what behaviour is to be found. But these questions, as opposed to a like question about human beings, come also from hesi-

tation as to whether the behaviour in question is enough mind-like, that is, is it enough similar to or superior to human be-

haviour to be called “mind-proving”? Like-

REALISM

242

AND

ANALYSIS

wise, even when we are satisfied that human behaviour shows mind and even when

“All right,’ Bill said gently, ‘Just tell me how you and Kay have been happy.’

we have learned whatever mind-suggesting things there are in nature which are not explained by human and animal minds,

“Bill had a way of being amused by | things which I could not understand.

we may

like taking a lot of numbers that don’t look alike and that don’t mean anything until you add them all together.’

still ask “But are these things

sufficiently striking to be called a mindpattern? Can we fairly call them manifestations of a divine being?” “The question,” someone may say, “has then become merely a matter of the applica-

tion of a name. And “What’s in a name?’ ” 5. But the line between a question of fact and a question or decision as to the application of a name is not so simple as this way of putting things suggests. The question ““What’s in a name?” is engaging

because we are inclined to answer both “Nothing” and “Very much.” And this “Very much” has more than one source. We might have tried to comfort Heloise by saying “It isn’t that Abelard no longer loves you, for this man isn’t Abelard”; we might have said to poor Mr. Tebrick in Mr. Garnet’s Lady into Fox “But this is no longer Silvia.” But if Mr. Tebrick re-

plied “Ah, but it is!” this might come not at all from observing facts about the fox which we have not observed, but from noticing facts about the fox which we had missed, although we had in a sense ob-

served all that Mr. Tebrick had observed. It is possible to have before one’s eyes all the items of a pattern and still to miss the pattern. Consider the following conversation:

“‘And I think Kay and I are pretty happy. We've always been happy.’ “Bill lifted up his glass and put it down without drinking. “Would you mind saying that again?’

he asked, “TI don’t see what’s so queer about it. Taken all in all, Kay and I have really been

happy.’

“It’s a little hard to explain,’ I said. ‘It’s

“I stopped, because I hadn’t meant to talk to him about Kay and me. ““Go ahead,’ Bill said. ‘What about the

numbers?’ And he began to smile.

“I don’t know why you think it’s so funny,’ I said. “All the things that two people do together, two people like Kay and me add up to something. There are the kids and the house and the dog and all the people we have known

and all the

times we've been out to dinner. Of course,

Kay and I do quarrel sometimes but when

you add it all together, all of it isn’t as bad as the parts of it seem. I mean, maybe that’s

all there is to anybody’s life.’ “Bill poured himself another drink. He seemed about to say something and checked himself. He kept looking at me.” ? Or again, suppose two people are speaking of two characters in a story which both

have read * or of two friends which both have known,

and one

says “Really she

hated him,” and the other says “She didn’t,

she loved him.” Then the first may have

noticed what the other has not although he knows no incident in the lives of the peo-

ple they are talking about which the other doesn’t know too, and the second speaker

may say “She didn’t, she loved him” because he hasn’t noticed what the first noticed, although

he can

remember

every

incident the first can remember. But then again he may say “She didn’t, she loved him” not because he hasn’t noticed the “John P. Marquand, H. M. Pulham, Esq., p. 320. 3 E.g., Havelock Ellis’s autobiography.

PHILOSOPHY

OF

243

RELIGION

patterns in time which the first has noticed but because though he has noticed them he doesn’t feel he still needs to emphasize them with “Really she hated him.” The line between using a name because of how we feel and because of what we have noticed isn’t sharp. “A difference as

something

about

these

plants.”

Upon

inquiry they find that no neighbour has ever seen anyone at work in their garden. The first man says to the other “He must

have worked other

says

while people slept.” The “No,

someone

would

have

to the facts,” “a discovery,” “a revelation,”

heard him and besides, anybody who cared about the plants would have kept

these phrases cover many things. Discoyeries have been made not only by Christopher Columbus and Pasteur, but also by

down these weeds.” The first man says “Look at the way these are arranged. There is purpose and a feeling for beauty

Tolstoy and Dostoievsky and Freud. Things are revealed to us not only by the

one

scientists with microscopes, but also by the poets, the prophets, and the painters.

here. I believe that someone comes, some-

invisible

to mortal

eyes.

I believe

that the more carefully we look the more we shall find confirmation of this.” They

What is so isn’t merely a matter of “the

examine the garden ever so carefully and

facts.” For sometimes when there is agreement as to the facts there is still argument as to whether defendant did er did not

sometimes they come on new things suggesting that a gardener comes and sometimes they come on new things suggesting

“exercise

the contrary and even that a malicious person has been at work. Besides ex-

reasonable

care,”

was

or

was

not “negligent.” And though we shall need to emphasize

how much “There is a God” evinces an attitude to the familiar * we shall find in the end that it also evinces some recognition of patterns in time easily missed and that, therefore, difference as to there being any gods is in part a difference as to what is so and therefore as to the facts, though not in the simple ways which first occurred to us.

6. Let us now

approach

these same

points by a different road. 6.1. How it is that an explanatory hypothesis, such as the existence of God, may start by being experimental and gradually become something quite different can be seen from the following story: Two people return to their long neglected

amining the garden carefully they also study what happens to gardens left with-

out attention. Each learns all the other learns about this and about the garden. Consequently, when after all this, one says “I still believe a gardener comes” while the other says “I don’t” their differ-

ent words now reflect no difference as to what they have found in the garden, no difference as to what they would find in the garden if they looked further and no difference about how fast untended gardens fall into disorder, At this stage, in

this context, the gardener hypothesis has

One says to the other “It must be that a

ceased to be experimental, the difference between one who accepts and one who rejects it is now not a matter of the one expecting something the other does not expect. What is the difference between them? The one says “A gardener comes unseen and unheard. He is manifested

gardener

only in his works with which we are all

garden and find among the weeds a few of the old plants surprisingly has

been

coming

vigorous. and

doing

4 “Persuasive Definitions,’ Mind (July, 1938), by Charles Leslie Stevenson, should be read here.

familiar,”

the other

gardener”

and

with

says “There

is no

this difference

in

REALISM

244

AND

ANALYSIS

what they say about the gardener goes a

there still be a question of fact? How can

difference in how they feel towards the

there still be a question? Surely as Hume says “, . . after every circumstance, every relation is known, the understanding has° no further room to operate’? ° 6.3. When the madness of these questions leaves us for a moment we can all easily recollect disputes which though they cannot be settled by experiment are yet disputes in which one party may be right and the other wrong and in which

garden, in spite of the fact that neither expects anything of it which the other does not expect.

But is this the whole difference between them—that the one calls the garden by one name and feels one way towards it,

while the other calls it by another name and feels in another way towards it? And if this is what the difference has become then is it any longer appropriate to ask “Which is right?” or “Which is reasonable?” And yet surely such questions are

appropriate when one person says to another “You still think the world’s a garden and not a wilderness, and that the gardener has not forsaken it” or “You

still think

there

are

nymphs

of the

streams, a presence in the hills, a spirit of

the world.” Perhaps when a man sings “God’s in His heaven” we need not take this as more than an expression of how he feels. But when Bishop Gore or Dr. Joad writes about belief in God and young men read them in order to settle their religious doubts the impression is not simply that of persons choosing exclama-

tions with which to face nature and the “changes and chances of this mortal life.” The disputants speak as if they are concerned with a matter of scientific fact, or of trans-sensual, trans-scientific and meta-

physical fact, but still of fact and still a matter about which reasons for and

against

may

be offered,

although

both parties may offer reasons and the one better reasons than the other. This may happen in pure and applied mathematics and logic.. Two accountants or two engineers provided with the same data may reach different results and this difference is resolved not by collecting further data but by going over the calculations again. Such differences indeed share with differences as to what will win a race, the honour of being among the most “settlable” disputes in the lan-

guage. 6.4. But it won’t do to describe the theistic issue as one settlable by such calculation,

or

as

one

about

what

can

be

deduced in this vertical fashion from the facts we know. No doubt dispute about God has sometimes, perhaps especially in mediaeval

times, been carried

on

in this

fashion. But nowadays it is not and we must look for some other analogy, some other case in which a dispute is settled but not by experiment. 6.5. In courts of law it sometimes hap-

no

pens that opposing counsel are agreed as

scientific reasons in the sense of field surveys for fossils or experiments on de-

to the facts and are not trying to settle a question of further fact, are not trying

linquents are to the point.

to settle whether the man who admittedly

6.2. Now can an interjection have a logic? Can the manifestation of an_attitude in the utterance of a word, in the application of a name, have a logic? When all the facts are known. how can

had quarrelled with the deceased did or did not

with

murder

whether

him, but are

Mr.

A

who

concerned

admittedly

5 Hume, dn Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix I.

PHILOSOPHY handed

his

OF

long-trusted

clerk

signed

blank cheques did or did not exercise reasonable care, whether a ledger is or is not a document,® whether a certain body was or was not a public authority.

In

such

cases

we _ notice, ;that

the

process of argument is not a chain of demonstrative reasoning. It is a presenting

and re-presenting of those features of the case which severally co-operate in favour of the conclusion, in favour of saying what the reasoner wishes said, in favour

of calling the situation by the name by which he wishes to call it. The reasons are like the legs of a chair, not the links of a chain. Consequently although the discussion is @ priori and the steps are not a matter of experience, the procedure resembles scientific argument in that the reasoning is not vertically extensive but horizontally extensive—it is a matter of the cumulative effect of several independent premises, not of the repeated transformation of one or two. And because the premises are severally inconclusive the process of deciding the issue becomes a matter of weighing the cumulative effect of one group of severally inconclusive

items

245

RELIGION

against the cumulative

effect of

another group of severally inconclusive items, and thus lends itself to description in terms of conflicting “probabilities.” This encourages the feeling that the issue is one of fact—that it is a matter of guessing from the premises at a further 6 The Times, March 2nd, 1945. Also in The Times of June 13th, 1945, contrast the case of Hannah y. Peel with that of the cruiser cut in two by a liner. In the latter case there is not agreement

as to the facts. See also the excellent articles by Dr. Glanville L. Williams in the Law Quarterly Review, “Language and the Law” (January and April, 1945), and “The Doctrine of Repugnancy” (October, 1943, January, 1944, and April, 1944). The author, having set out how arbitrary are many legal decisions, needs now to set out how far from arbitrary they are—if his readers are ready for the next phase in the dialectic process.

fact, at what

is to come.

But

this is a

muddle. The dispute does not cease to be a priori because it is a matter of the cumulative effect of severally inconclusive

premises. The logic of the dispute is not that of a chain of deductive reasoning as in a mathematic calculation, But nor is it a matter of collecting from several inconclusive items of information an expectation as to something further, as when a doctor from a patient’s symptoms guesses at what is wrong, or a detective from many clues guesses the criminal. It has its own sort of logic and its own sort of end—the solution of the question at issue is a decision, a ruling by the judge. But it is not an arbitrary decision though the rational connections are neither quite like those in vertical deductions nor like those in inductions in which from many signs we guess at what is to come; and though the decision manifests itself in the application of a name it is no more merely the application of a name than is the pinning on of a medal merely the pinning on of a bit of metal. Whether

a lion with stripes is a tiger or a lion is, if you like, merely a matter of the application of a name. Whether Mr. So-and-So of whose conduct we have so complete a record did or did not exercise reasonable care is not merely a matter of the application of a name or, if we choose to say it is, then we must remember that with this name a game is lost and won and a game with very heavy stakes. With the judges’ choice of a name for the facts goes

an

attitude,

and

the

declaration, the ruling, is an exclamation evincing that attitude. But it zs an exclamation which not only has a purpose but also has a logic, a logic surprisingly like that of “futile,” “deplorable,” “ graceful,” “grand,” “divine.” 6.6. Suppose two people are looking at a picture or natural scene. One says “Ex-

REALISM

246

cellent” or “Beautiful” or “Divine”; the other says “I don’t see it.” He means he doesn’t see the beauty? And this reminds us of how we felt the theist accuse the atheist of blindness and the atheist accuse the theist of seeing what isn’t there. And yet surely each sees what the other sees. It isn’t that one can see part of the picture which the other can’t see. So the difference is in a sense not one as to the facts. And so it cannot be removed by the one disputant discovering to the other what so far he hasn’t seen. It isn’t that the one sees the picture in a different light and so, as we might say, sees a different picture. Consequently the difference between them cannot be resolved by putting the picture in a different light.

And yet surely this is just what can be done in such a case—not by moving the

AND

ANALYSIS

not forthwith assume that there is no right and wrong about it, no rationality or irrationality, no appropriateness,

appropriateness no procedure

or inwhich’

tends to settle it, nor even that this procedure is in no sense a discovery of new

facts. After all even in science this is not so. Our two gardeners even when they had reached the stage when neither ex-

pected any experimental result which the other did not, might yet have continued the dispute, each presenting and re presenting the features of the garden

favouring his hypothesis, that is, fitting his model for describing the accepted fact; each emphasizing the pattern he wishes to emphasize. True, in science, there is seldom or never a pure instance of this sort of dispute, for nearly always with difference of hypothesis goes some

picture but by talk perhaps. To settle a dispute as to whether a piece of music is

difference of expectation as to the facts.

good or better than another we listen again, with a picture we look again. Someone perhaps points to emphasize certain features and we see it in a different light. Shall we call this “field work”

eses with a vigour which is not exactly

and “the last of observation” or shall we call it “reviewing the premises” and “‘the beginning of deduction (horizontal)”? If in spite of all this we choose to say

that a difference beautiful is not must be careful is a procedure

as a to for

to whether a thing is factual difference we remember that there settling these differ-

ences and that this consists not only in reasoning and redescription as in the legal case, but also in a more literal resetting-before with relooking or relistening.

6.7. And if we say as we did at the beginning that when a difference as to the existence of a God is not one as to future happenings then it ts not experimental and therefore not as to the facts, we must

But scientists argue

about rival hypoth-

proportioned to difference-in expectations

of experimental results. The difference as to whether a God exists involves our feelings more than most scientific disputes and in this respect is more like a difference as to whether

there is beauty in a thing. 7. The Connecting Technique. Let us consider again the technique used in revealing or proving beauty, in removing a blindness, in inducing an attitude which is lacking, in reducing a reaction that is inappropriate. Besides running over in a

special way the features of the picture, tracing the rhythms, making sure that this and that are not only seen but noticed, and their relation to each other— besides all this—there are other things we can do to justify our attitude and alter

that of the man

who cannot

see. For

features of the picture may be brought out by setting beside it other pictures; just

RELIGION

247

‘as the merits of an argument may be brought out, proved, by setting beside it

an attitude to the flowers which he feels inappropriate although perhaps he would

other arguments, in which striking but irrelevant features of the original are changed and relevant features empha-

not

PHILOSOPHY

OF

sized; just as the merits and demerits of a line of action may be brought out by setting beside it other actions. To use Stebbing’s Nathan Susan example: brought out for David certain features of what David had done in the matter of Uriah the Hittite by telling him a story about two sheepowners. This is the kind of thing we very often do when someone is “inconsistent” or “unreasonable.” This is what we do in referring to other cases in law. The paths we need to trace from other cases to the case in question are often numerous and difficult to detect and the person with whom we are discussing the matter may well draw attention to connections which, while not incompatible with those we have tried to emphasize, are of an opposite inclination. A may have noticed in B subtle and hidden likenesses to an angel and reveal these to C, while C has noticed in B subtle and hidden likenesses to a devil which he

feel

it inappropriate

to butterflies.

He feels that this attitude to flowers is somewhat crazy just as it 1s sometimes felt that a lover's attitude is somewhat crazy even when this is not a matter of his having false hopes about how the person he is in love with will act. It is often said in such cases that reasoning is use-

less. But the very person who says this feels that the lover’s attitude is crazy, is inappropriate like some dreads and hatreds, such as some horrors of enclosed places. And often one who says “It is useless to reason” proceeds at once to reason

with the lover, nor is this reason-

ing always quite without effect. We may

draw the lover’s attention to certain things done by her he is in love with and trace for him a path to these from things done by others at other times’ which have disgusted and infuriated him. And by this means we may weaken his admiration and confidence, make him feel it unjustified and arouse his suspicion and

contempt and make him feel our suspi-

cion and contempt reasonable. It is ‘ possible, of course, that he has already noticed the analogies, the connections, we Imagine that a man picks up some flowers that lie half withered on a table and point out and that he has accepted them— that is, he has not denied them nor gently puts them in water. Another man says to him “You believe flowers feel.” passed them off. He has recognized them He says this although he knows that the and they have altered his attitude, altered his love, but he still loves. We then feel man who helps the flowers doesn’t expect that perhaps it is we who are blind and anything of them which he himself cannot see what he can see. doesn’t expect; for he himself expects 8. Connecting and Disconnecting. But the flowers to be “refreshed” and to be before we confess ourselves thus inadeeasily hurt, injured, I mean, by rough quate there are other fires his admiration handling, while the man who puts them must pass through. For when a man in water does not expect them to whisper has an attitude which it seems to us he “Thank you.” The Sceptic says “You beshould not have or lacks one which it lieve flowers feel” because something

reveals to A.

about the way the other man

lifts the

flowers and puts them in water suggests

7 Thus, like the scientist, the critic is concerned to show up the irrelevance of time and space.

REALISM

248

AND

ANALYSIS

seems to us he should have then, not only

language the process of removing their

do we suspect that he is not influenced by

but also we suspect he is influenced by connections which should not influence

power is not a process of correcting the mismanagement of language. But it is still akin to such a process; for though it” is not a process of setting out fairly what has been set out unfairly, it is a process

him and draw his attention to these. It may, for a moment, seem strange that we should draw his attention to connections

of setting out fairly what has not been set out at all. And we must remember that the line between connections ill-

which

presented or half-presented in language and connections operative but not pre-

connections which we feel should influence him and draw his attention to these,

we

feel should not influence him,

and which, since they do influence him, he has in a sense already noticed. But we do—such is our confidence in “the light of reason.”

Sometimes the power of these connections comes mainly from a man’s mis“management of the language he is using. This is what happens in the Monte Carlo fallacy, where by mismanaging the laws of chance a man passes from noticing that

a certain

colour

or

number

has

not

turned up for a long while to an improper confidence that now it soon will turn up. In such cases our showing up of the false connections is a process we call

“explaining a fallacy in reasoning.” To remove fallacies in reasoning we urge a man to call a spade a spade, ask him what

he means

by “the State’

and

having

pointed out ambiguities and vaguenesses

ask him to reconsider the steps in his argument. g. Unspoken Connections. Usually, however, wrongheadedness or wrongheartedness

in a situation,

blindness

to

what is there or seeing what is not, does not arise merely from mismanagement of language but is more due to connections which are not mishandled in language, for the reason that they are not put into language at all. And often these mis-

connections too, weaken in the light of reason, if only we can guess where they

lie and turn it on them. In so far as these

connections

are

not

presented

in

sented in language, or only hinted at, is not a sharp one. : Whether or not we call the process of showing up these connections “reasoning to remove bad unconscious reasoning” or not, it is certain

that in order

to settle

in ourselves what weight we shall attach to someone’s confidence or attitude we not only ask him for his reasons but also look for unconscious reasons both good and bad; that is, for reasons which he can’t put into words, isn’t explicitly aware of, is hardly aware of, isn’t aware of at all—perhaps it’s long experience which he doesn’t recall which lets him know a squall is coming, perhaps it’s old ex-

perience

which

he can’t

recall

which

makes the cake in the tea mean so much and makes Odette so fascinating.® I am well aware of the distinction between the question “What reasons are

there for the belief that S is P?” and the question “What are the sources of beliefs that S is P?” There are cases where investigation of the rationality of a claim

which certain persons make is done with very

little inquiry

into

why

they

say

what they do, into the causes of their beliefs. This is so when we have very definite ideas about what is really logically relevant to their claim and what is not. Offered a mathematical theorem we ask 8 Proust: Swann’s

Phoenix Edition,

Way, Vol. I, p. 58, Vol. II.

RELIGION

249

for the proof; offered the generalization

places and learn that Miss Stein is a bird. watcher, then we begin to trouble ourselves less about her admiration.

PHILOSOPHY

OF

that parental discord causes crime we ask for the correlation co-efficients. But even

in this last case,ifwe fancy that only the figures are reasons we underestimate the complexity of the logic of our conclusion; and yet it is difficult to describe the other features of the evidence which have weight and there is apt to be disagreement about the weight they should have. In criticizing other conclusions and especially conclusions which are largely the expression of an attitude, we have not only to ascertain what reasons there are for them but also to decide what things are reasons and how much, This latter process of sifting reasons from

causes is part of the critical process for every belief, but in some spheres it has been done pretty fully already. In these spheres we don’t need to examine the actual processes to belief and distil from them a logic. But in other spheres this remains to be done. Even in science or on the stock exchange or in ordinary life we sometimes hesitate to condemn a belief or a hunch® merely because those who believe it cannot offer the sort of reasons we had hoped for. And now suppose Miss Gertrude Stein finds excellent the work of a new artist while we see nothing in it, We nervously recall, perhaps, how pic-

tures by Picasso, which

Miss Stein ad-

mired and others rejected, later came to

be admired by many who gave attention to

them,

and

we

wonder

whether

the

case is not a new instance of her perspicacity and our blindness. But if, upon giving all our attention to the work in question, we still do not respond to it, and we notice that the subject matter of the new pictures is perhaps birds in wild 9 Here I think of Mr. Stace’s interesting reflections

in “The

Mind

(January,

Problems

1945).

of Unreasoned

It must

not

be forgotten

that our

attempt to show up misconnections in Miss Stein may have an opposite result and reveal to us connections we had missed. Thinking to remove the spell exercised upon his patient by the old stories of the Greeks, the psycho-analyst may him. self fall under that spell and find in them

what

his patient

has

found

and,

incidentally, what made the Greeks tell those tales. 10. Now what happens, what should happen, when we inquire in this way into the

reasonableness,

the propriety

of be-

lief in gods? The answer is: A double and opposite-phased change. Wordsworth writes: ~ . » And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things . . . 710 We most of us know this feeling. But is it well placed like the feeling that here is first-rate work, which we sometimes tightly have even before we have fully grasped the picture we are looking at or the book we are reading? Or is it misplaced like the feeling in a house that has long been empty that someone secretly

lives there still? Wordsworth’s feeling 1s the feeling that the world is haunted, that something watches in the hills and manages the stars. The child feels that the stone tripped him when he stumbled,

Beliefs,”

10 “Tintern Abbey.”

REALISM

250

AND

ANALYSIS

that the bough struck him when it flew back in his face. He has to learn that

the tedium of obedience or the fire of rebellion which neutralized the affection

the wind isn’t buffeting him, that there is not a devil in it, that he was wrong, that his attitude was inappropriate. And as he

that I felt for her were at this moment, eliminated . . . ‘Granny!’ I cried to her

learns that the wind

wasn’t hindering

him so he also learns it wasn’t helping him. But we know how, though he learns,

his attitude lingers. It is plain that Wordsworth’s feeling is of this family. Belief in gods, it is true, is often very different from belief that stones are spite-

ful, the sun kindly. For the gods appear in human form and from the waves and control these things and by so doing reward and punish us. But varied as are the stories of the gods they have a family likeness and we have only to recall them to feel sure of the other main

sources

which co-operate with animism

to pro-

duce them,

. . . but I had beside me only that voice, a phantom, as unpalpable as that which would come to revisit me when my grandmother was dead. ‘Speak to me!’ but then it happened that, left more solitary still,

I ceased to catch the sound of her voice. My grandmother

could

no

longer hear

me... I continued to call her, sounding the empty night, in which I felt that her appeals

also

must

be

straying.

I was

shaken by the same anguish which, in the distant past, I had felt once before, one day when, a little child, in a crowd, I had lost her.” Giorgio de Chirico, writing of Courbet, says: “The word yesterday envelops us with its yearning echo, just as, on waking,

What are the stories of the -gods? What

when the sense of time and the logic of

are our feelings when we believe in God? They are feelings of awe before power, dread of the thunderbolts of Zeus, confidence in the everlasting arms, unease

things remain a while confused, the memory of a happy hour we spent the day before may sometimes linger reverberating within us. At times we think of Courbet and his work as we do of our own father’s youth.” When a man’s father fails him by

beneath the all-seeing eye. They are feelings of guilt and inescapable vengeance, of smothered hate and of a security we can hardly do without. We have only to remind ourselves of these feelings and the

stories of the gods and goddesses and heroes in which these feelings find expression, to be reminded of how we felt

as children to our parents and the big people of our childhood. Writing of a first telephone call from his grandmother, Proust says: “ . It was rather that this isolation of the voice was like a symbol,

death or weakness how much he needs another father, one in the heavens with whom is “no variableness nor shadow of turning.” We understood Mr. Kenneth Graham when he wrote of the Golden Age we feel we have lived in under the Olympians. Freud says: “The ordinary man cannot imagine this Providence in any other form but that of a greatly exalted

father, for only such a one could under-

a presentation, a direct consequence of another isolation, that of my _ grandmother, separated for the first time in my life, from myself. The orders or prohibi-

stand the needs of the sons of men, or be softened by their prayers and be placated

tions which she addressed to me at every moment in the ordinary cause of my life,

thing is so patently infantile, so incongruous with reality... .” “So incongru-

by the signs of their remorse. The whole

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

251

ous with reality”! It cannot be denied.

. . . And yet how strange it is! I ask not thee; I ask my own sad thought, What was there in my heart, that I forgot My home and land and all I loved, to fly With a strange man? Surely it was not I, But Cypris there! **

But here a new

aspect of the matter

may strike us.‘t For the very facts which make us feel that now we can recognize systems of super-human, sub-human, elusive, beings for what they are—the

persistent projections of infantile phanthese

Elijah found that god was not in the wind, nor in the thunder, but in a still

are these

small voice. The kingdom of Heaven is

facts? They are patterns in human reactions which are well described by saying that we are as if there were hidden within us powers, persons, not ourselves and stronger than ourselves. That this is so may perhaps be said to have been common knowledge yielded by ordinary observation of people,!? but we did not know the degree in which thisis so until recent study of extraordinary cases in extraordinary conditions had revealed it. I refer, of course, to the study of multiple personalities and the wider studies of psycho-analysts. Even when the results of this work are reported to us that is not the same as tracing the patterns in the details of the cases on which the results are based; and even that is not the same as taking part in the studies oneself. One thing not sufficiently realized is that some of the things shut within us are not bad

within us, Christ insisted, though usually about the size of a grain of mustard seed, and he prayed that we should become

tasies—include

systems

facts

which

less fantastic.

make

What

but good. Now the gods, good and evil and mixed, have always been mysterious powers outside us rather than within. But they have also been within. It is not a

modern theory but an old saying that in each of us a devil sleeps. Eve said: “The serpent

beguiled

me.”

Helen

says

to

Menelaus: 11 This different aspect of the matter and the connection between God, the heavenly Father, and “the good father” of the psycho-analysts, was put into my head by some remarks of Dr. Susan Isaacs. 12 Consider Tolstoy and Dostoievsky—I do not mean,

nary.

of course,

that their observation

was

ordi-

one with the Father in Heaven. New

knowledge

made

it necessary

either to give up saying “The sun is sinking” or to give the words a new meaning. In many contexts we preferred to stick to the old words and give them a new meaning which was not entirely new but, on the contrary, practically the same as the old. The Greeks did not speak of the dangers of repressing instincts but they did speak of the dangers of thwarting Dionysos, of neglecting Cypris for Diana, of forgetting Poseidon for Athena. We have eaten of the fruit of a garden we can’t forget though we were never there, a garden we still look for though we can never find it. Maybe we look for too

simple a likeness to what we dreamed. Maybe we are not as free as we fancy from the old idea that Heaven is a happy 13 Euripides: The Trojan Women, Gilbert Murray’s Translation. Roger Hinks in Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art writes (p. 108): ‘Personifications made their appearance very early in Greek poetry. . . . It is out of the question to call these terrible beings abstractions. ... They are real daemons to be worshipped and propitiated. . . . These beings we observe correspond to states of mind. The experience of man teaches him that from time to time his composure is invaded and overturned by some power from outside, panic, intoxication,

sexual

desire.”

What use to shoot off guns at unicorns? Where one horn’s hit another fierce horn grows. These beasts are fabulous, and none

Of woman The

were

born

who could lay a fable low.

Glass

Tower,

Nicholas

Moore,

p. 100.

REALISM

252 hunting ground, or a city with streets of

gold. Lately Mr. Aldous Huxley has recommended our seeking not somewhere beyond

the sky or late in time but a

timeless state not made of the stuff of

AND

ANALYSIS

against that which too often comes over us and forces us into deadness or despair,'+ also deserve critical, patient and_ courageous attention. For they, too, work to release us from human bondage into

place, not indeed one filled with sweets

human freedom. Many have tried to find ways of salvation. The reports they bring back are always incomplete and apt to mislead

but instead so empty that some of us would rather remain in the Lamb or the

music or paint. But they are by no means

this world, which he rejects, picking it into worthless pieces. But this sounds

to me still too much a looking for another

Elephant, where, as we know, they stop whimpering with another bitter and so far from sneering at all things, hang pictures of winners at Kempton and stars of the ’nineties. Something good we have for each other is freed there, and in some degree and for a while the miasma of time is rolled back without obliging us to deny the present. The artists who do most for us don’t tell us only of fairylands. Proust, Manet, Breughel, even Botticelli and Vermeer show us reality. And yet they give us for a moment exhilaration without anxiety, peace without boredom. And those who, like Freud, work in a different way

even when they are not in words but in useless; and not the worst of them are those which speak of oneness with God. But in so far as we become one with Him He becomes one with us. St. John says he is in us as we love one another. This love, I suppose, is not benevolence but something that comes of the oneness with one another of which Christ spoke.'® Sometimes it momentarily gains strength.‘® Hate and the Devil do too. And what is oneness without otherness? 14 15 16 neth

Matthew Arnold, “Summer Night.” St, John, xvi: 21. “The Harvesters” in The Golden Age, KenGraham.

IIL PRAGMATISM Pracmatism,

a school

of thought

and

which

emerged in America during the latter decades of the nineteenth century, was characterized by its most popular popularizer, William James, as a “new name for some old ways of thinking.” Perhaps James thought thus to take the curse off this enfant terrible of philosophy, but of course it is perfectly true that something one might call the “pragmatic way of thinking” as well as more particular tenets of the school can be traced far back into our intellectual history. Not to go

very far back, it can be rather readily shown that Pragmatism in its current form grows out of (1) the tradition of British Empiricism from John Locke to John Stuart Mill, (2) Kant and _ his immediate successors, (3) nineteenth-cen-

tury Positivism, (4) evolutionary biology, and (5) the new scientific psychology; though of course Pragmatism cannot be reduced to or equated with any one of these or the combination of the lot. Like (1) Pragmatism founds all knowledge on experience and greatly emphasizes induc-

tive method; like (2) Pragmatism insists that an important theoretical impasse can sometimes be traversed by just picking up one’s load and walking—i.e., that the practical considerations often supersede the exclusively rational; like (2) further, typically holds that the Pragmatism knower contributes largely and_ indispensably to the known, though always in intimate relationship with the existent environment; like (3) Pragmatism considers

itself the close ally of the natural sciences 295

the

sworn

enemy

of speculative

(especially idealistic) metaphysics; from (4), the theories of Darwin and Herbert Spencer especially, Pragmatism draws its historical, temporal, developmental

strain,

as well as the basis for its instrumentalism; and like (5) Pragmatism works away from both the associational, atomistic psychology and the spiritualistic severance of mind from body and nature. But like all schools of thought, Pragmatism must also be understood as a reaction, a revolt, an aroused and resentful attack. It has even been suggested (by W. E. Hocking) that two branches of Pragmatism can be distinguished as, first, that mainly opposed to Rationalism, and second, that mainly opposed to Agnosticism. This too deserves a brief expansion. Rationalism may be shortly described as a metaphysical theory which finds man’s rational faculties to be anticipated and, as it were, underwritten, by a universe itself

independently rational in its structure and in its procedure. Thus Rationalists emphasize

orderliness,

pattern,

coherence,

logicality, and deny or deplore chance, superfluity, irrelevance, any final evil, an open future. Pragmatism on the contrary has rather consistently interpreted the world,

society,

and

man,

as

“in

the

making,” with various competing and real possibilities as to special outcomes, It has been “pluralistic” rather than “monistic.” Patterns and systems, the Pragmatist typically argues, are imposed on a universe always more or less refractory, imposed for purposes of direction and con-

254

PRAGMATISM

trol, rather than just discovered in or read out of that universe. As William James liked to say, Rationalism and Absolutism are what they amount to in men’s

force than to act as if there were

not,

and for some people it may be very much better—better for them, better for their morale—to believe, even in the absence of

experience. Their final disproof (if such an expression can be attributed to a fallibilist) is accomplished by exposing

convincing evidence.*

them

Pragmatists are constitutionally gullible or notoriously easy believers. The truth

as making for attitudes of com-

placency, passivity, and irresponsibility.* The sceptic and the agnostic are im-

pressed with the limitations

of human

However, from this attack upon agnosticism, it must not be inferred that

is quite to the contrary. William

James

divided philosophers into two camps, the

knowledge, the sceptic arguing that there

tough-minded

is little if anything that we

much prone to requiring evidence, citing

can

(not

(that is, those

merely do) know, and the agnostic, more

proof, mistrusting

moderately, insisting that at least the ultimate things, God, immortality, the be-

tender-minded

ginning and the end, are impenetrably veiled. But the Pragmatist—to the horror of many an Empiricist and many a

speculation)

who and

are the

(that is, the somewhat

sentimental, trusting type, full of optimistic faith and inclined to credulousness).

And it is clear that Pragmatism is tough-

Rationalist—inclines to take seriously the

minded, though James himself was perhaps least extreme in this respect among

“reasons” of the heart. William James, whom this generalization better charac-

Peirce, for instance,

terizes than most other members of the school, argued in his famous essay “The Will to Believe” that sometimes there are occasions when it is important to make up one’s mind and when the evidence this

way and that is strangely balanced: in such circumstance we may rightfully let

all the members

of his school. Charles now

universally

ac-

knowledged as the founder of the movement, grew impatient with James’ con-

cessions to individual needs and desires (as in James’ notion that some men need

spiritual

consolation),

renounced _ this

perversion of his original platform, and

proposed to rename his own philosophy, Pragmaticism.

our “passional natures” decide; we may believe what we will. Perhaps we cannot know whether there is some divine force making for, assisting in, righteousness;

ment, as “We never can be absolutely sure of anything . . . ,” as well as in his early statements on philosophical methodology,

but it does not follow that we

Peirce may

must

therefore agnostically sit on the fence, for

that in effect (and it is the in effects which truly count) is to act as if there were no such force. In short, as the devout have always insisted, the agnostic

amounts to an atheist. It is no more illegitimate to act as if there were

such a

1 Tt was a powerful attack. Bertrand Russell has

written, “In the English speaking world the greatest influence in the overthrow of German idealism was William James.” Sceptical Essays, p. 57.

Still, in such a pronounce-

be regarded as right at the

core of the group.

In two papers published in the Popular

Science Monthly in 1877 and 1878, “The Fixation of Belief’ and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Peirce developed a theory relating doubt, thought, belief, 2 The argument has been very heavily attacked . See for instance, Bertrand Russell’s 4 History of Western Philosophy, Chap. 29. But it is interest ing that very lately C. J. Ducasse has revived and endorsed James’ line of reasoning. See 4 Philosophical Scrutiny of Religion, pp. 350-351.

INTRODUCTION

255

conception, and practical effects. We are provoked to the act of thinking by a doubt, a hesitation, a disturbance, and in

life, making for richer satisfactions. Now since there is no question of an antecedent reality for a belief somehow to copy, to

the successful case the thinking issues in

duplicate, to mirror, what other question

a belief which stills the doubt.

can we be asking, when we inquire as to the truth of a belief, than a question about its function in the life of the human being concerned? The better a belief is, the truer it is. Truth is a “species of good.” “The true is the name of whatever proves

The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit, and different beliefs are distin-

guished by the different modes of action to which they give rise. If beliefs do not differ in this respect, if they appease the same doubt by producing the same rule of action, then no mere differences in the manner of consciousness of them can make them different beliefs... . Thus, we come down to what is tangible and practical, as the root

itself to be good in the way of belief, and

On this theory of meaning, many disputes among men can be shown to be

good, too, for definite, assignable reasons, Thus philosophy, it turns out, is more of a “consolation” than a blueprint; and not all men are alike consoled. Rationality itself is perhaps only a sentiment: we feel the need for explaining and classifying and ordering and arranging, and when we invent or discover a right conception, we know its rightness, its adequacy, its rationality by the feeling of “lively relief

foolish, in that they are disputes only

and pleasure” it affords us. “There

about different wordings lief; the disputes are (Peirce’s importance for cism is readily discernible

nothing improbable in the supposition that an analysis of the world may yield a number of formulae, all consistent with the facts.” (Or, as Stephen Pepper, a present-day pragmatically inclined philosopher has put it, there are several root hypotheses from which one can derive an adequate metaphysics.) The question for any one of us, then, is: which of these apparently sensible and consistent explanations will serve us better? As in the solving of any problem, we need _provisionally to adopt a hypothesis and seek verification. Always it is the future that needs to be taken into account. As Peirce so liked to insist, there is a real and radical indeterminism about the universe. Now, James added, what this prag-

of every real distinction of thought, no matter how subtile it may be; and there is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist

in anything but a possible difference in practice.

Both

James

and

of the same bemerely verbal. Logical Empirihere, too.)

Peirce

were

trained

and practiced scientists, James in physiology, medicine, and psychology, Peirce in physics, geology, and mathematics, but they differed strongly in this way: Peirce was greatly impressed with the objectivity of scientific procedure, with its self-corrective features, with its cumulative progress; James was wary of scientific dogmatism,

of the tendency of the scientist to set up very narrow rules of evidence and to be more fearful of error than zealous for

truth. One of the most important kinds of effects which a belief may have, James argued, is on the believer himself. Beliefs

differ among themselves in being more or less good for a given man, good in his

matically amounts

is

to is that it might

make a difference how we make our religious and philosophical decisions. Let 3 Pragmatism, p. 76.

PRAGMATISM

256

us try to make them so as to determine the future closer to the heart’s desire. Or as John Dewey—who outlived James so many years as to seem to us

almost as belonging to another era entirely, but whose early philosophical writings were of a time with James’ earliest—as Dewey liked to put it: we

to recognize its environment as posing countless problems and at the same time

affording materials for the shaping of instruments helpful toward meeting those problems. We human selves are not souls placed down in an already completed world, there to look and contemplate. No,

we are animals who have grown in and

require a morality that is prospective and

from this world and are trying to make

not retrospective. It is a sure sign of social advance when the emphasis gets shifted from blame for what has been done in the past to an earnest concern for what is going to be done in the future. Assigning

our

of guilt, trial, judgment—all these have

way

in it, with no extra-environ-

mental vantage point ever for one minute available to us, But of course we are

animals with a difference and our great distinctiveness lies in our analytic-criticalcreative abilities. From infancy each of us is engaged in discarding and adopting

their exclusive importance in their influence upon what is yet to come. Indeed

and modifying possible solutions to our

Dewey sees this looking away from the already accomplished and settled to the

multitudinous troubles. At an especially high level of critical development man

open and creative future as the great pragmatic contribution to the history of Empiricism. Pragmatism, thus, presents itself as an extension of historical empiricism with this fundamental difference, that it does not insist upon antecedent phenomena but upon consequent phenomena; not upon the precedents but upon the possibilities of action, and this change in point of view is almost revolutionary in its consequences.*

becomes

quite self-conscious

about

his

methods of investigating and inquiring and solving, and logic is born. Logic, that is, is the science of how to think, how to

inquire—how to conduct your thinkinginquiring activities in fruitful ways. It is not surprising that with logic conceived

to be so intimately related to biological man

it is inductive

logic and

scientific

method that Dewey is especially interested in, and

only very

little in the mathe-

to call his special

matical-deductive logic that has received

version of Pragmatism by the name “In-

so much attention in our day by thinkers

strumentalism,”

who have for the most part insisted upon the purity and the autonomy of this

Dewey

who

was

thought

of himself

as

wedding the special logical interests of Peirce with the great moral and psychological interest of James.

Since

concepts,

theories, ideas, beliefs can be shown to be instruments for the resolution of doubt and the achievement of human ends, we must boldly recognize that the word

“mind” names not a theater or a spiritual substance, but all of the deliberative functions of a human organism which comes John Dewey, can Pragmatism.”

“The

Development

of Ameri-

discipline.

Dewey is to be distinguished from such Pragmatists

Englishman

as

F.

Peirce,

C.

James,

S.

and

Schiller

the

(who

adopted the label “Humanism” for his philosophy and who is a genuine Protagorean among pragmatists) by his life-

long and intense interest in the social dimensions of morality. The experimentalism which has paid off so well in the

natural sciences, he argued, can be and

INTRODUCTION must be extended to the moral, that is the social, sciences. Yet with a difference: for the social sciences are social not merely by virtue of being about society and social institutions but also in their requiring widespread social interest and cooperation in the experimental solving of their special problems. The essential rightness of democracy lies in its commitment to the indispensability of community-wide sharing in the meeting of communitywide needs, and meeting those needs not with answers derived from authority or tradition but from the hard processes of intelligence. Pragmatism, often undiscriminatingly lumped with Logical Empiricism under the pejorative title “Scientism,” is of

course linked by many bonds to this other movement, and not a few thinkers of our times have a foot in each camp. Charles

Morris, in his early philosophic days a right orthodox Pragmatist, has been strongly influenced by Positivism, as well as by both behavioristic and constitutional

257

psychology. His highly important work in sign theory, nevertheless, is to be counted in the tradition of Peirce, Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. The latter, his teacher at Chicago, has through his writings on the role of gesture in the

emergence of the socialized self, been at least as important to sociology as to philosophy. Another Pragmatist who has a close affinity with the analytic-positivistic surge is the Columbia logician and philosopher

of science, Ernest Nagel. Nagel is perhaps one who would applaud C. I. Lewis’ remark to the effect that Dewey’s logic, though excellent, is not logic. That is, thinkers like Nagel and Lewis who have from the beginnings of their careers been avid mathematical logicians are altogether unlikely to go all the way with a biologycentered logic, but as has been indicated,

today’s pragmatic philosophers have considerable leeway in their choice of forebears. For those whose interests are more mathematical, there is always Peirce.

Metaphysics SOs

DOPOOVD OOD DOO SOC Ooor>

The Root Metaphor Theory of Metaphysics SPE PHEN

Giabe Pir

ole root metaphor theory of metaphysics

bounds of a single paper, and I will spend

is a theory of the origin and development of metaphysical hypotheses. If

my time mainly on the third. This paper, then, is an argument in the form: If the

correct,

it entails

certain

first two

consequences

propositions are true, let me

show you that the third proposition also is true—namely, that one way and perhaps the only way of legitimately develop-

clarifying not only to the field of metaphysics but to other cognitive fields as

well. It involves first (1), the proposition that dogmatism is illegitimate and unnecessary in cognitive procedure; second (2), that the method of hypothesis is

legitimate, and so far as we can see, the only available undogmatic method; and, third (3), that one way, and perhaps the only way, in which metaphysical hypotheses can be derived is through the analysis of a selected group of facts (which I call the root metaphor) and the expansion of that analysis among other facts. The third proposition presupposes the first two, and the second the first; but the first proposition does not involve the other two, nor the second the third. One may eschew dogmatism and not champion a method of hypothesis, provided one can think of any other undogmatic cognitive method, but one may accept the method of hypothesis and not champion the root

ing a metaphysical hypothesis is by the root metaphor method. The objection to dogmatism as a cognitive procedure is that it is a refusal to submit cognitive materials to cognitive scrutiny. It is an assertion that such and such is true, or such and such is a fact, with an implicit or explicit threat of

“hands off.” Or it is similar assertions accompanied with a set of restrictions as to the sort of criticisms acceptable, such that automatically no hostile criticisms are acceptable. When brought out into

the light in this way and plainly described, the position of dogmatism is seen to be intrinsically self-contradictory, for it is a way of attributing to materials cognitive values which these materials could receive only upon the application to them of cognitive criteria, and a refusal to permit these criteria to be applied. The symptom of dogmatism is a refusal to permit certain materials to be doubted, and the subterfuge by means of which this refusal is legitimatized is to convert

metaphor method, provided one can think of any other better hypothetical method by which metaphysical hypotheses may be

derived, I will take the first two propositions up very briefly, for a thorough discussion of them would lead far beyond the

the particular

form

of refusal

1 For a fuller treatment of this position, see Professor Pepper’s World Hypotheses.

258

into a

METAPHYSICS cognitive

criterion.

259 For

example,

the

method to that limit known as the solip-

criterion suggested may be self-evidence— a term extraordinary enough in itself,

sism of the present

for how could. anything be evidence for

nomena

itself? The evidence for a fact is other

forms of intuition. So also, the mystic method of dubbing unreal whatever is

facts bearing upon

it, causally or other-

the Kantian

moment.

method

from

a

So, also, is

of molding

priori

phe-

categories

and

wise. Evidence in that sense is a genuine cognitive criterion (indeed, a whole set

not

of criteria). But “self-evidence” is a way at once of acquiring the prestige of the criteria of evidence, and of dispensing

meaningless whatever falls outside of an arbitrary definition of definition and

with the need of applying them. Self-

of atomic propositions. These are all methods of refusing to submit cognitive materials to cognitive scrutiny. But it must not be thought that because all these methods are dogmatic and

evidence is thus not a cognitive criterion at all, but precisely a refusal to permit a cognitive criterion to be applied. One would think the exposure of such a subterfuge would be sufficient to banish it from use, but experience has shown otherwise. The more effective means is to

a specific sort of feeling. And

so,

also, the positivistic method of dubbing

meaning, or can not be stated in the form

cognitively

illegitimate,

excellent

cogni-

tive results have not been attained by men employing these methods. On the con-

show in the history of thought or in our

trary. And this fact brings out the point

own day contradictory facts (?) or prin-

that even if dogmatic methods were legitimate, they are unnecessary. Perhaps

ciples which eminent men have asserted were self-evident or the equivalent. But there is not time to stop for this. On the basis of what I have said already, I must

hope that you will agree with me that no dogmatic method is a legitimate cognitive method in metaphysics or anywhere

else. Now, if dogmatism is rejected, then any specific appeals by theories to self-evidence, certainty, indubitability, inconceivability, meaninglessness, and the like, are also rejected. The consequence of

these rejections is to wipe the slate of cognitive methods

amazingly clean. The

traditional deductive method of discovering truths from the implication of selfevident axioms is obviously wiped away. But so, also, is the traditional inductive method of discovering reliable truths by generalizations from indubitable or stubborn facts. So, also, is the Descartian method of doubt, with its residue of indubitable facts, or the extension of his

the best way to exhibit this point is by reference to the two thoroughly intuitive views of traditional philosophy—mysticism, and solipsism of the present moment. Incidentally, the two views are mutually contradictory, and yet both are generally dogmatically supported on grounds of indubitable immediacy. But all I wish to point out here is that the substance of the two views is not changed

an iota if the claims of indubitability are dropped. Offered as descriptions of the nature of things, a mystic or solipsistic hypothesis does not differ a bit from a mystic or solipsistic dogma. If either hypothesis is true, the corresponding intuition will be straight, of course. If the hypothesis is false, the intuition is illusory. There is no cognitive gain in insisting on the intuition. Dogmatism is, therefore, unnecessary. In fact, dogmatism has always in the history of thought been obstructive to cognitive advance, and the

PRAGMATISM

260

cognitive drive has come from a method

matism.

of hypothesis. beneath the thinkers that in philosophy

“opinion,” by others it has been called

It is this method working dogmatisrhs of the great has produced the advances and science.

From the method of dogmatism I turn

to the method of hypothesis, simply because I am not aware

of any other un-

This field was

called by Plato

common sense, or middle-sized pre-analytical fact.

fact, or

In the second place, the method of hypothesis involves the acceptance of the criteria of scope and adequacy as the only general criteria for the factuality of

this method

fact or the truth of hypothesis. And the

can be observed in its concrete operation

two criteria mutually support each other.

through the whole history of thought, I

By adequacy is meant the power of an hypothesis to give a description that

dogmatic method. Though

am not sure that men have noticed what it involves when all dogmatic elements

are cleared away.

apparently fits a fact or set of facts. The precise mode of fitting is at the discretion

In the first place, it involves the frank acceptance of the situation that the

of the hypothesis and is part of the hypothesis. It may be correspondence, or

origin of hypotheses is among uncriticized

coherence, or workability, or what you will. But whatever the mode of fitting is, the fit itself must be a good fit. It is not

and therefore alterable facts. If anyone objects to the term “facts” denoting such entities, he may use any other term he pleases, but he must remember that facts denoting unalterable entities are at our present stage of knowledge purely ideal goals. Not that our perceptions, feelings, and immediacies may not be just what we

perceive, feel, and intuit them to be, but that to assume certainty on these matters is dogmatic,

and

has

frequently

been

shown to be unjustified in the history of thought. If we desire to be undogmatic, and unexposed in the rear of our cognitive endeavors, we must be prepared to change our minds about the reliability of any evidence whatever. Facts do not guarantee our hypotheses. Facts and hypotheses cooperate to guarantee the factuality and the truth of each other, Cognitive enterprises open in a field of uncriticized fact.

How much of this field will remain unaltered as a result of critical scrutiny, one can not risk stating in advance. A constant

recollection of this field of uncriticized fact, which quite correctly every hypoth-

esis tries to abandon, is the greatest insurance against the fallacies of dog-

a good fit if some of the fact. or some of the facts of the set are not included in the description; nor is it a good fit if two or more descriptions, both equally consistent with the hypothesis, can be given."

The fact: itself, since it is not dogmatic or stubborn, can, of course, be molded or even disintegrated and distributed among other facts—whatever an hypothesis may demand. But a fact can not be ignored. An adequate hypothesis may explain a fact away, but it may not leave a fact unexplained. Adequacy alone, however, is not sufhcient to determine the reliability of an

hypothesis and its descriptions. For since 1] am assuming here that the cause of. the alternative mutually inconsistent descriptions is some indeterminateness in the governing concepts of the hypothesis, not an insufficiency of facts. In the latter case, it is not the hypothesis that is inade- ° quate, but the facts; and the proper cognitive thing to do in the absence of sufficient facts is to make as many alternative descriptions or sub-hypotheses as one can, consistent with the main hypothesis and such facts as one has. Then one knows as much as one can know, under the circumstances, about the facts concerned.

METAPHYSICS

261

it is dogmatic to assume that any limited

description will be unaffected by outlying facts not included in that description, the determination of the reliability of that description can be reached only by obtaining descriptions of these outlying facts

and observing whether or not the given description is affected. The greater the range of consistent descriptions the greater the assurance as to the adequacy of any given description. All of these mutually consistent and apparently adequate descriptions become evidence for one another, and render the fit of each particular description more firm. In short, scope increases adequacy. It follows, that the maximum of adequacy will be reached with the maximum of scope, namely, when the scope is all available facts whatever and the theory a world theory or a metaphysics. In the third place, it must be apparent from the consequences already gleaned that a world hypothesis is informative of the nature of our world, or nothing is. There are notions prevalent that if judgments are derived from hypotheses they are merely hypothetical in a derogatory sense. Such notions, I believe, can only be held by people who retain a dogmatic faith in immediacies and stubborn facts. That faith, as I suggested, is cognitively quite unjustifiable, and once that faith is shaken,

where

can

one

turn

for critical

information about facts except to hypotheses and in the end to world hypotheses. Even utter skepticism is not an escape from this conclusion, for unless this doctrine is dogmatically held (and a dogmatic skepticism is no different from any other sort of dogmatism), the doctrine is subject to the same cognitive criticism as any other hypothesis and could not justify itself short of an examination of all

available facts, in which case it becomes itself a world hypothesis. So much, then, for the method of hypothesis. In the course of the foregoing discussion the prominent rdle of world hypotheses as our ultimate source for the discovery of the nature of facts comes to light. Now I want to ask: How do world

hypotheses arise? And in answer to this question, I wish to suggest an hypothesis about world hypotheses, in order to glean therefrom a few more consequences relevant to the cognitive enterprise.

I will state the hypothesis without more ado. What I call the root metaphor theory is the theory that a world hypothesis to cover all facts is framed in the first instance on the basis of a rather small set of facts and then expanded in reference so as to cover all facts. The set of facts which inspired the hypothesis is the original root metaphor. It may be a ghost, or water, or air, or mutability, or qualita-

tive composition, or mechanical push and pull, or the life history of youth, maturity, and age, or form and matter, or definition and similarity, or the mystic experience, or sensation, or the organic whole, or temporal process. Some of these facts in the course of expansion may prove adequate, others not. At first, they are accepted as they are found in uncriticized fact. How else could they be found? They

are generally dogmatically assumed to be self-evident and indubitable. They are cognitively digested and analyzed. Their structure is usually found capable of rather wide extension through uncriticized facts not at first supposed to be of their nature. This structure is then elevated into an hypothesis for the explanation of other uncriticized

facts,

as

a result

of which

these become critically interpreted in terms of the root metaphor. In the course of this interpretation, the root metaphor itself

PRAGMATISM

262

re-

gories, the contradictory descriptions may

finement which reciprocally increases its range and power of interpretation. When

disappear. But in such cases as the above

may

undergo

critical

analysis

and

it assumes unlimited range, or world-wide scope, then it is a metaphysical hypothesis, and a catalogue of its principal descriptive concepts is a set of metaphysical categories.

That is the theory. Now, let me draw from this theory a number of consequences, which are not only interesting in themselves, but also the natural elaboration of the theory. First, there develop alternative world theories based on different root metaphors. For while many root metaphors fail, a few expand into hypotheses of worldwide scope and great adequacy. These relatively fruitful root metaphors with their corresponding relatively adequate world hypotheses, I believe to be the following: similarity, which generates immanent realism; form and matter, which generates transcendent realism; push and pull, which generates mechanism; organic whole, which generates objective idealism; and temporal process, which generates contextualism (metaphysical pragmatism). None of these hypotheses is fully adequate. Whether in the hands of future ingenious philosophers one of

them may turn out to be, nobody can very well say in advance, But it seems unlikely, since the inadequacies that arise within these philosophies are all of the

form

of self-contradictions,

That

is to

say, the categories of each hypothesis lead

to descriptions which both assert and deny something of certain facts. Such is the basis of the difficulty in the so-called problem of mind and matter

in mecha-

where the difficulties are traceable directly back to the categories, and where the theories have been worked over by many men for many years, the chance seems slight of ironing out the source of

the difficulties. The point is that we now have, and are likely to continue to have, no fully adequate world theory, but a number of alternative rather highly adequate world theories, each of which is able to describe or interpret any presented fact, criticized or uncriticized, but each

of which contains some internal ulcer of self-contradiction. Second, the foregoing situation does not justify anyone in rejecting any or all of these theories in default of a better. The rejection of all but one of these theories

and the retention of that, is too obviously dogmatic to need exhibition. Yet this method of exclusion is one of the commonest methods for justifying a preferred theory. The inadequacies of theories 4, B, and C are carefully shown. That leaves

only theory D, which is then sympathetically exposed. The unwary reader may never suspect that the inadequacies of D are as great as those of 4, B, and C. The

inadequacies of other world theories are no evidence for a given world theory. Moreover, a sweeping rejection of all world theories as cognitively worthless

because they are all demonstrably somewhat inadequate, is also dogmatic. It must not be forgotten that the denial of a theory, in so far as the denial has any cognitive significance, is also a theory.

And this theory that no world theories’ have any cognitive value, has, in view of

nism, and of the problem of the relation of

the

the absolute to its fragments in objective idealism. There is always, of course, the chance that with refinement of the cate-

theories we know, very little adequacy— only as much, to be precise, as any one of

several

relatively

adequate

these theories has inadequacy.

world

It is as

METAPHYSICS

263

weak as the strongest world theory is strong. The only facts this theory can describe adequately are the facts the most adequate

theory

can

not describe

ade-

quately. As a theory, then, in competition with relatively adequate theories, this theory is not tenable—a result which merely indicates in an abstract way the

that the two descriptions cover different facts, or cover different aspects or relations

of.a fact? Two people describe different sides of the same coin, or, having different esthetic interests, describe different features of the same painting. Each description is true but partial, and all are

reconcilable

because,

strictly

speaking,

concrete fact that utter skepticism in the face of the large amount of corroborative knowledge we possess is a ridiculous theory. And a skepticism which refuses to

every description was of a different fact.

examine the evidences of knowledge is

criticized fact, from which the two metaphysical descriptions start, is not certain or stubborn, and is to a degree molded and metamorphosed by the two categorial interpretations. By the time the analyses are finished, the facts intended as well as the descriptions may be totally different. But this explanation is weakened, when we realize that a relatively adequate world theory describes not only uncriticized facts but also the criticized facts of other world theories, for its adequacy depends on its capacity to interpret any facts whatever. The idealist will, then, have his explanation of the error in the mechanist’s description of voluntary action, and vice versa. If either description has so far transformed the uncriticized fact that the latter is unrecognizable in the former, the critic is sure to bring this out and gloat over the discovery. Rarely, he succeeds in doing this, as when a mechanist is caught identifying the quality of a sound with air waves, but the greatness of the jubilee when this does occur is evidence that it does not often occur. Clearly, it could not occur often without jeopardizing the adequacy of the theory that did it, for it amounts to a failure to describe a fact. But the point I am here making is that even if the two descriptions of the uncriticized fact so far diverged from each other as to become descriptions

sheer dogmatism.

The second point, then, is that the admitted inadequacies of the several relatively adequate world hypotheses is not a good reason for the rejection of all or any of them; but, on the contrary, since they are all in the same condition, a reason

for the retention of them all. Presumably each gives some sort of information about

the world the others garble. Third, each of the alternative relatively adequate theories gives a different and irreconcilable description from the others of the “same” fact. Let the fact be any uncriticized fact—say, voluntary action, this fact is critically described in one way by a mechanist, in quite another way by an idealist. There can be no question about the difference between the two descriptions. And the more the reasons for the discrepancies are looked into the more obvious appears the irreconcilability of

the descriptions, for the differences have their source in the categories of the two world theories, and these two sets of categories show no sign of ever converging into a single set of categories. Moreover, neither of these descriptions can be discarded

in favor of the other, since, so

far as we can see, the two world theories

are about equally adequate. Can we avoid the difficulty by saying

At first, and to a degree, this explanation would seem to apply to our metaphysical

situation.

It is admitted

that the un-

PRAGMATISM

264

of different facts, the divergence would be filled in as soon as each of the theories described each other’s descriptions, for an adequate description of a description

involves consideration of what that description was about. And whatever plausibility may yet remain for the idea that alternative metaphysical descriptions supposedly of the same fact are actually about different facts, evaporates when one considers the alternative theories as total descriptions. The

total

mass

of facts presented

for de-

preting theory, but success in interpreting

has no effect upon an interpreted theory. The adequacy of a theory can not, there-_ fore, be judged by any alien theory. . Neither can it be judged by any other external agency—unless facts be regarded as external to a theory, and even these are not stubborn. Is there not truth and logic? Every world theory has its own theory of truth and its own logic. What about a

logical calculus, such as a calculus of propositions? As a fact, of course, every world

theory must accept such a calculus and

scription to each world theory is the same

interpret it; but as an ultimate canon of

total mass on any interpretation of “same.”

right reasoning, such a calculus is far from

Any fact, part, aspect, or relation which may have escaped description in considering a theory problem by problem, does not escape in the total systematic consideration of a theory. Take the spread of description wide enough and two relatively adequate world theories are bound to cover any given field of fact, and their

acceptable to many theories. Even such general logical principles as identity and contradiction acquire quite different concrete interpretations from theory to theory, and

descriptions of this field will be different and irreconcilable. Fourth, alternative

if anything strictly unaltered remains over for these principles in all theories, this is simply due to the fact that each set of categories generates them, The validity of these principles depends on the fruitfulness

of the hypotheses which employ them, not equally

adequate world theories are autonomous. One world theory can not legitimately judge a description of another world theory as wrong simply because the description of the latter is not such as the former would have made. For this kind of judgment assumes that one set of categories is right and other sets wrong, which is, without a sympathetic consideration of the other theory, a dogmatic assumption. The justification for such general legislative powers is often claimed on the basis that a given

world theory can explain or include in itself the other theories. But so can and must any relatively adequate world theory. Other theories are among the most important facts that any world theory must interpret. Failure in interpreting would constitute a great inadequacy in an inter-

the reverse. To assert their self-evidence or their validity independent of their function in hypotheses, would be dogmatic.

Each

world

theory develops its own

cognitive canons out of its own categories, and by these canons judges its own adequacy. That is to say, the contradictions which develop in a theory, are contradictions in the theory’s own terms. Idealistic logic itself, for instance, offers no means of

harmonizing the finite and the absolute. A world theory is autonomous in its interpretations of facts and autonomous in its criticism of its interpretations. This does not mean that an idealist is always the best critic of idealism, but that, whoever the critic may be, the only legitimate criticism

of idealism is in idealistic terms. Fifth, eclecticism is confusing. By the root metaphor conception we are able to

METAPHYSICS

265

give a precise definition of eclecticism. It is an attempt to interpret facts by means of incompatible sets of categories, categories generated from different root metaphors. Eclecticism is, therefore, mixed metaphor, A specious richness of connotation is obtained thereby at the sacrifice of clarity. I hesitate to say that it is always fallacious. In cases where the inadequacy of a world theory lies in its inability to describe a certain type or group of facts, it may well be

claimed that a more complete total theory is obtained by borrowing for this group of facts the categories of another root metaphor. But it must be remembered that the adequacy of the descriptions of this borrowed set can only be determined by the scope (that is, range of descriptive power) of that set. In other words, the borrowed

set of categories can be relied upon

to

furnish a relatively adequate description of the limited group of facts only because it has a capacity of describing a much larger group of facts than the group it is called on to describe; it may even be able to describe all facts. Why not, then, go over to the descriptions of the borrowed set throughout, and abandon the descriptions of the first set, which lack scope? The only

plausible reason why this should not be done is that the second set may lack scope

as these, as to what should be done in cases where theories lack scope, are of little more than academic interest, for we possess several theories of worldwide scope, and, the dogma of the stubborn fact being set aside, these world theories automatically supplant hypotheses of limited scope. This must not, incidentally, be interpreted to mean that hypotheses applying to a limited number of facts are necessarily hypotheses of limited scope. Every world hypothesis generates a nest of sub-hypotheses for the purpose of describing limited ranges of fact. But since these sub-hypotheses are all derivable from the main hypothesis, they

possess indirectly the scope of that main hypothesis. They are not hypotheses of limited scope. Sixth and last, as the reverse of eclectic confusion, the root metaphor conception offers a means of obtaining clarity in metaphysics. Once the few fruitful root metaphors have been intuited and the characteristic behavior of their sets of categories in description noted, then it is possible to untangle complex philosophic writings; to judge the feasible mode of solution or the very solubility of given problems, and to determine the bearing

and validity of philosophic criticisms.

in a region of fact where the first set ap-

I offer this theory in the first place as a description of fact, as a statement of what

pears to be adequate. But even then, the

philosophers consciously or unconsciously

intermediate regions of fact, which both

always have done in their attempt to under-

theories claim to describe with adequacy,

stand the world in which they live. The

will be permeated with ambiguity and con-

method expounded by this theory underlies, I maintain, all dogmatisms, and is

fusion. Is it not better to keep the two theories well apart, study the descriptions which each give separately, and note the regions which each is able to describe but the other not?

Actually, however, such considerations

presupposed by all eclecticisms. And in the second place, whether the theory be correct in fact or not, I offer it as a useful in-

strument for the clarification of a confused field.

Theory of. Knowledge DODO

ODOODDYD

90000

O00

000

2

OOOND

OD

The Genesis of the Self and Social Control GHORGE

BERBERA

I, is evident that a statement of the life

of each individual in terms of the results of an analysis of that which ately experienced would offer plane of events, in which the of each would differ from the

is immedia common experience experiences

MEAD

as they can represent the results of past conduct. But taking time seriously, we realize that the seemingly timeless character of our spatial world and its permanent objects is due to the consentient

set which

of others only in their extent, and the completeness or incompleteness of their connections. These differences disappear in the generalized formulations of the social sciences. The experiences of the same individuals, in so far as each faces

a world in which objects are plans of action, would implicate in each a different succession of events. In the simplest illustration, two persons approach a passing automobile. To one it is a moving object that he will pass before it reaches the portion of the street that is the meeting-

place of their two paths. The other sees an object that will pass this meeting-point before he reaches it. Each slices the world

each one

of us selects. We

abstract time from this space for the purposes of our conduct. Certain objects cease to be events, cease to pass as they are in

reality passing and in their permanence become

the conditions of our action, and

events take place with reference to them. Because a whole community selects the same consentient set does not make the

selection less the attitude of each one of them. The life-process takes place in individual organisms, so that the psychology which studies that process in its creative determining function becomes a science of the objective world. Looked at from the standpoint of an evolutionary history, not only have new

forms with their different spatio-temporal

from the standpoint of a different time system. Objects which in a thousand ways are identical for the two individuals, are

environments and their objects arisen, but new characters have arisen answering to the sensitivities and capacities for re-

yet fundamentally different through their location in one spatio-temporal plane, involving a certain succession of events, or in another. Eliminate the temporal dimension, and bring all events back to an instant that is timeless, and the individuality of these objects which belongs to them in behavior is lost, except in so far 266

sponse. In the terms of Alexander, they have become differently qualitied. It is

as impossible to transfer these characters

of the habitats to the consciousness of the forms

as

it is to

transfer

the

spatio-

temporal structure of the things to such a so-called consciousness. If we introduce

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

267

a fictitious instantaneousness into a pass-

has taken place only in a social group, for

ing universe, things fall to pieces. Things

selves

that are spatio-temporally distant from us

selves, as the organism as a physical object exists only in its relation to other physical objects. There have been two fields within which social groups have arisen which have determined their environment together with that of their members, and the individuality of its members. These lie in the realm of the invertebrates and in that of the vertebrates. Among the Hymenoptera and termites there are societies whose interests determine for the individuals their stimuli and habitats, and so differentiate the individuals themselves, mainly through the sexual and alimentary processes, that the individual is what he is because of his membership within those societies. In the complex life of the group, the acts of the individuals are completed only through the acts of other individuals, but the mediation of this complex conduct is found in the physiological differentia-

can be brought into this instant only in terms

of our

immediate

contact

experi-

ence. They are what they would be if we were there and had our hands upon them. They take on the character of tangible matter. This is the price of their being located at the moment of our bodies’ existence. But this instantaneous view has the great advantage of giving to us a picture of what the contact experience will be when we reach the distant object, and of determining conditions under

which

the distance

characters

arise. If

the world existed at an instant in experience, we should be forced to find some realm such as consciousness into which to transport the distance or socalled secondary qualities of things. If consciousness in evolutionary history, then, has an unambiguous significance, it refers to that stage in the development of

life in which the conduct of the individual marks out and defines the future field and objects which make up its environment, and in which emerge characters in the objects and sensitivities in the individuals that answer to each other. There is a relativity of the living individual and its environment, both as to form and content. What I wish to trace is the fashion in which self and the mind has arisen within this conduct.

It is the implication of this undertaking that only selves have minds, that is, that cognition only belongs to selves, even in the simplest expression of awareness. This, of course, does not imply that below the stage of self-consciousness sense characters and sensitivity do not exist. This obtains in our own immediate experience in so far as we are not self-conscious. It

is further implied that this development

exist

only in relation

tion of the different

members

to other

of the

society. As Bergson has remarked of the instincts, the implements by which a complex act is carried out are found in the differentiated structure of the form. There is no convincing evidence that an ant or a bee is obliged to anticipate the act of another ant or bee, by tending to respond in the fashion of the other, in order that it may integrate its activity into the common act. And by the same mark

there is no evidence of the existence of any language in their societies. Nor do we need to go to the invertebrates to discover this type of social conduct. If one

picks up a little child who has fallen, he adapts his arms and attitude to the attitude of the child, and the child’ adapts himself to the attitude of the other; or in boxing or fencing one responds to stimulus of the other, by acquired physiological adjustment.

PRAGMATISM

268

Among the vertebrates, apart from the differentiation of the sexes and the nurture and care of infant forms, there is

little or no inherited physiological differentiation to mediate the complexities of social conduct. If we are to cooperate successfully with others, we must in some manner get their ongoing acts into our-

selves to make the common act come off. As I have just indicated, there is a small range of social activity in which this is not necessary. The suckling of an infant form, or a dog fight, if this may be called a social activity, does not call for more

parts of the complex

act, though

these

parts are found in the conduct of different individuals. The objective of the act is then found in the life-process of the group, not in those of the separate individuals alone. The full social object

would not exist in the environments of the separate individuals of the societies of the Hymenoptera and termites, nor in the restricted societies of the vertebrates whose basis is found alone in physiological adjustment. A cow that licks the

skin of a calf stuffed witli hay, until the skin is worn away, and then eats the hay,

than inherited physiological adjustment.

or a woman who expands her parental im-

Perhaps the so-called herding instinct should be added, but it hardly comes to more than the tendency of the herd to stick together in their various activities.

pulse upon a poodle, cannot be said to have the full social object involved in the entire act in their environments. It would

The wooing and mating of forms, the care of the infant form, the bunching of animals in migrations, and fighting, about exhaust vertebrate social conduct, and beyond these seasonal processes vertebrate societies hardly exist till we reach man. They exhaust the possibilities in vertebrate structure of the mediation of social conduct, for the vertebrate organism has

shown no such astonishing plasticity in physiological differentiation as that which we can trace among the insects, from isolated forms to members of the societies of the termites, the ants, and the bees.

A social act may be defined as one in which the occasion or stimulus which sets free an impulse is found in the character or conduct of a living form that belongs to the proper environment of the

living form whose impulse it is. I wish, however, to restrict the social act to the class of acts which involve the codperation of more than one individual, and whose object as defined by the act, in the sense of Bergson, is a social object. I mean by a social object one that answers to all the

be necessary

to piece together the en-

vironments of the different individuals or superimpose them upon each other to reach the environment and objects of the societies in question.

Where

forms

such

as those

of the

Hymenoptera and the termites exhibit great plasticity in development, social acts based on physiological adjustment, and corresponding societies, have reached astonishing complexity. But when the limit of that plasticity is reached, the limit of the social act and the society is reached also. Where, as among the vertebrates, that physiological adjustment which meditates a social act is limited and fixed, the societies of this type are correspondingly insignificant. But another type of social act, and its corresponding society and object, has been at least suggested by the description of the social act based upon physiological adjustment. Such an act would be one in which the different parts of the act which belong to different in-

dividuals should appear in the act of each individual.

This cannot

mean,

however,

that the single individual could carry out

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

the entire act, for then, even if it were possible, it would cease to be a social act, nor could the stimulus which calls out his own part of*the complex act be that

269

social act can

exist spatio-temporally

in

the experience of the different members of the society, as stimuli

that set

free not

in so far as they appear in his conduct. If

only their own responses, but also as stimuli to the responses of those who share in the composite act, a principle

the social object is to appear in his ex-

of codrdination

perience, it must be that the stimuli which set free the responses of the others involved in the act should be present in his experience, not as stimuli to his response, but as stimuli for the responses of others; and this implies that the social situation which arises after the completion of one phase of the act, which serves as the stimulus for the next participant in the complex procedure, shall in some sense be in the experience of the first actor, tending to call out, not his own response, but that of the succeeding actor. Let us make the impossible assumption that the wasp, in stinging a spider which it stores with its egg, finds in the spider a social object in the sense which I have

would not depend differentiation. Any

upon physiological one necessary psy-

chological condition

for this would

which calls out the other parts of the act

might be found

which

be

that the individual should have in some fashion present in his organism the tendencies to respond as the other participants in the act will respond. Much more than this would be involved, but this at least would be a necessary precondition. A social object answering to the responses ot! different individuals in a society could be conceived of as existing in the experiences

of individuals in that society, if the differ

from that of physiological differentiation.

ent responses of these individuals in the complex acts could be found in sufficient degree in the natures of separate individuals to render them sensitive to the different values of the object answering to the parts of the act. The cortex of the vertebrate central nervous system provides at least a part of the mechanism which might make this possible. The nervous currents from the column and the stem of the brain to the cortex can there bring the acts that go out from these lower centers into relation with each other so that more complex processes and adjustments can arise. The centers and paths of the cortex represent an indefinite number of possible actions; particularly they represent acts which, being in competition with each other, inhibit each other, and present the problem of organization and adjustment so that overt conduct may proceed, In the currents and cross-currents in the gray matter and its association fibers, there exist

If the objects that answer to the complex

the tendencies to an indefinite number of

specified. The spider would have to exist in the experience of the wasp as live but quiescent food for the larva when it emerges from the egg. In order that the paralyzed spider should so appear to the wasp, the wasp would need to be subject to the same stimulus as that which sets free the response of the larva; in other words, the wasp

would

need

to be able

to respond in some degree as the larva. And of course the wasp would have to view the spider under the time dimension, grafting a hypothetical future onto its passing present, but the occasion

for this

would have to lie in the wasp’s tending to respond in réle of larva to the appropriate food which it is placing in storage. This, then, presents another possible principle of social organization, as distinguished

PRAGMATISM

270 responses. Answering to these adjustments are the objects organized into a field of action, not ‘only spatially but temporally; for the tendency to grasp the distant object, while already excited, is so linked with the processes of approach that it does not get its overt expression till the intervening stretch is passed. In this vertebrate apparatus of conduct, then, the already excited predispositions to thousands of acts, that far transcend the outward accomplishments, furnish the inner attitudes implicating objects that are not immediate objectives of the individual’s

act. But the cortex is not simply a mechanism. It is an organ that exists in fulfilling its function. If these tendencies to action which do not get immediate expression appear and persist, it is because they belong to the act that is going on. If, for example, property is a social object in the experience of men, as distinguished from the nut which the squirrel stores, it is because features of the food that one buys innervate the whole complex of responses by which property is not only acquired, but respected and protected, and this complex so innervated is an essential part of the act by which the man buys and stores his food. The point is not that buying food is a more complicated affair than picking it up from the ground, but that exchange is an act in which a man excites himself to give by making an offer. An offer is what it is because the presentation

is a stimulus to give. One cannot exchange otherwise than by putting one’s self in the attitude of the other party to the bargain. Property becomes a tangible object, because all essential phases of property appear in the actions of all those involved in exchange, and appear as essential features of the individual’s action.

The individual in such an act is a self.

If the cortex has become

an organ of

social conduct, and has made possible the appearance of social objects, it is because’ the individual has become a self, that is, an individual who organizes his own response by the tendencies on the part of

others to respond to his act. He can do this because the mechanism of the vertebrate brain enables the individual to take these different attitudes in the formation of the act. But selves have appeared late in vertebrate evolution. The structure of the central nervous system is too minute to enable us to show the corresponding

structural changes in the paths of the brain. It is only in the behavior of the human

animal

that

we

can

trace

this

evolution. It has been customary to mark this stage in development by endowing man with a mind, or at least with a certain sort of mind. As long as consciousness is regarded as a sort of spiritual stuff out of which are fashioned sensations and affections and images and ideas or significances, a mind as a locus of these entities is an almost necessary assumption, but when these contents have been returned to things, the necessity of quarters for this furniture has disappeared also.

It lies beyond the bounds of this paper to follow out the implications of this shift for logic and epistemology, but there is one phase of all so-called mental processes which is central to this discussion, and that is self-consciousness. If the sugges-

tions which I have made above should prove tenable, the self that is central to all so-called mental experience has appeared

only in the social conduct of human yertebrates. It is just because the individual finds himself taking the attitudes of the

others who are involved in his conduct that he becomes an object for himself. It

THEORY

OF

271

KNOWLEDGE

is only by taking the réles of others that we have been able to come back to ourselves. We have seen above that the social object can exist for the individual only if the various parts of the whole social act carried out by other members of the society are in some fashion present in the conduct

of the individual. It is further true that the self can exist for the individual only if he assumes the réles of the others. The presence in the conduct of the individual of the tendencies to act as others act may be, then, responsible for the appearance in the experience of the individual of a social object, i.e., an object answering to complex reactions of a number of individuals, and also for the appearance of the self. Indeed,

these two appearances are correlative. Property can appear as an object only in so far as the individual stimulates himself to buy by a prospective offer to sell. Buying and selling are involved in each other. Something that can be exchanged can exist in the experience of the individual only in so far as he has in his own make-up the tendency to sell when he has also the tendency to buy. And he becomes a self in his experience only in so far as one attitude on his own part calls out the corresponding attitude in the social undertaking. This is just what we imply in “selfconsciousness.” We appear as selves in our conduct in so far as we ourselves take the attitude that others take toward us, in these correlative activities. Perhaps as good an illustration of this as can be found is in a “right.” Over against the protection of our lives or property, we assume the attitude of assent of all members in the community. We take the rdle of what may be called the “generalized other.” And in doing this we appear as social objects, as selves. It is interesting to note that in the development of the individual child, there are two stages which present the two essen-

tial steps in attaining self-consciousness. The first stage is that of play, and the second that of the game, where these two are distinguished from each other. In play in this sense, the child is continually acting

as a parent, a teacher, a preacher, a grocery man, a policeman, a pirate, or an Indian. It is the period of childish existence which Wordsworth has described as that of “endless imitation.” It is the period of Froebel’s kindergarten plays. In it, as Froebel recognized, the child is acquiring the rdles of those who belong to his society. This takes place because the child is continually exciting in himself the responses to his own social acts. In his infant dependence upon the responses of others to his own social stimuli, he is peculiarly sensitive to this relation. Having in his own nature the beginning of the parental response, he calls it out by his own appeals. The doll is the universal

type of this, but before

he plays with a doll, he responds in tone of voice and in attitude as his parents respond to his own cries and chortles. This has been denominated imitation, but the psychologist now recognizes that one imitates only in so far as the so-called imitated act can be called out in the individual by his appropriate stimulation. That is, one calls or tends to call out in himself the same response that he calls

out in the other. The play antedates the game. For in a game there is a regulated procedure, and rules. The child must not only take the role of the other, as he does in the play, but he must assume the various réles of all the participants in the game, and govern his action accordingly. If he plays first base, it is as the one to whom the ball will be thrown from the field or

from the catcher. Their organized reactions to him he has imbedded in his own playing of the different positions, and this

PRAGMATISM

272 organized reaction becomes

what I have

called

“generalized

other”

and

his

the

accompanies

controls

that

conduct.

stimulus is found in the vocal gesture in a human society. The term gesture I am using to refer to that part of the act or

And it is this generalized other in his experience which provides him with .a

attitude of one individual engaged in a: social act which serves as the stimulus to

self. I can only refer to the bearing of this childish play attitude upon so-called sympathetic magic. Primitive men call out in their own activity some simulacrum of the response which they are seeking from the world about. They are children crying in the night. The mechanism of this implies that the individual who is stimulating others to response is at the same time arousing in himself the tendencies to the same reactions. Now, that in a complex social act, which serves as the stimulus to another individual to his response is not as a rule

another individual to carry out his part of the whole act. Illustrations of gestures, so defined, may be found in the attitudes and movements of others to which we respond in passing them in a crowd, in the turning of the head toward the glance of another’s eye, in the hostile attitude assumed

fitted to call out the tendency to the same response in the individual himself. The hostile demeanor of one animal does not frighten the animal himself, presumably. Especially in the complex social reactions of the ants or termites

or the bees, the

part of the act of one form which does call out the appropriate reaction of another can hardly be conceived of as arousing a like reaction in the form in question, for here the complex social act

is dependent

upon

physiological

differ-

entiation, such an unlikeness in structure exists that the same stimulus could not call out like responses. For such a mechanism as has been sugested, it is necessary to find first of all some stimulus in the social conduct of the members of an authentic group that can call out in the individual that is responsible for it, the same response that it calls out in the other; and in the second place, the individuals in the group must be of such like structure that the stimulus will have the same value for one form that it has for the other. Such a type of social

over against a threatening gesture, in the thousand and one different attitudes which we assume toward different modulations of the human voice, or in the attitudes and suggestions of movements in boxers or fencers, to which responses are so nicely adjusted. It is to be noted that the attitudes to which I have referred are but stages in the act as they appear to others, and include expressions of

countenance,

positions

of

the

body,

changes in breathing rhythm, outward evidence of circulatory changes, and vocal sounds. In general these so-called gestures belong to the beginning of the overt act, for the adjustments of others to the social process are best made early in. the act, Gestures are, then, the early stages: in the overt social act to which other forms involved in the same act respond. Our interest is in finding gestures which can affect the individual that is responsible for them in the same manner as that in which they affect other individuals, The vocal gesture is at least one that assails our ears who make it in the same physiological fashion as that in which it affects others. We hear our own vocal gestures

as others hear them. We may see or feel movements of our hands as others see or feel them, and these sights and feels have

served in the place of the vocal gestures in the case of those who are congenitally

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

273

deaf or deaf and blind. But it has been the vocal gesture that has preéminently provided the medium of social organization in human ‘society. It belongs historically to the beginning of the act, for it arises out of the change in breathing rhythm that accompanies the preparation for sudden action, those actions to which other forms must be nicely adjusted. If, then, a vocal gesture arouses in the individual who makes it a tendency to the same response that it arouses in another, and this beginning of an act of the other in himself enters into his experience, he will find himself tending to act toward himself as the other acts toward him. In our self-conscious experience we understand what he does or says. The possibility of this entering into his experience we have found in the cortex of the human brain. There the codrdinations answering to an indefinite number of acts may be excited, and while holding each other in check enter into the neural process of adjustment which leads to the final overt conduct. If one pronounces and _ hears

himself pronounce the word “table,” he has aroused in himself the organized attitudes of his response to that object, in the samé fashion as that in which he has aroused it in another. We commonly call such an aroused organized attitude an idea, and the ideas of what we are saying accompany all of our significant speech. If Wwe may trust to the statement in one of St. Paul’s epistles, some of the saints spoke

with tongues which had no significance to them. They made sounds which called out no response in those that made them. were without meaning. The sounds Where a vocal gesture uttered by one individual leads to a certain response in

another,

we

may

call it a symbol

of

that act; where it arouses in the man who makes it the tendency to the same re-

sponse, we may call it a significant symbol. These organized attitudes which we arouse in ourselves when we talk to others are, then, the ideas which we say are in our minds, and in so far as they arouse the same attitudes in others, they are in their minds, in so far as they are self-conscious in the sense in which I have used that term. But it is not necessary

that we should

talk to another

to have these ideas. We can talk to ourselves, and this we do in the inner forum of what we call thought. We are in possession of selves just in so far as we can and do take the attitudes of others toward ourselves and respond to those attitudes. We approve of ourselves and condemn ourselves. We _ pat ourselves upon the back and in blind fury attack ourselves. We assume the generalized attitude of the group, in the censor that stands at the door of our imagery and inner conversations, and in the affirmation of the laws and axioms of the universe of discourse. Quod semper, quod ubique. Our thinking is an inner conversation in which we may be taking the rdles of specific acquaintances over against ourselves, but usually it is with what I have termed the “generalized other” that we converse, and so attain to the levels of abstract thinking, and that impersonality, that so-called objectivity that we cherish. In this fashion, I conceive, have selves

arisen in human behavior and with the selves their minds. It is an interesting study, that of the manner in which the, self and its mind arises in every child, and the indications of the corresponding manner in which it arose in primitive man. I cannot enter into a discussion of this. I do wish, however, to refer to some

of the implications of this conception of

the self for the theory of social control. I wish to recur to the position, taken

274

PRAGMATISM

earlier in this paper, that, if we recognize that experience is a process continually passing into the future, objects exist in

in this character it controls the expression of the act. The vision of the distant object,

we reduce the world to a fictitious instan-

is not only the stimulus to movement toward it. It is also, in its changing dis-

taneous present, all objects fall to pieces. There is no reason to be found, except in

tance values, a continual control of the act of approach. The contours of the object

an equally fictitious mind, why any lines should be drawn about any group of

determine

physical particles, jects. However, no exists. Even in present there is a

whole act is in the individual and the

nature as the patterns of our actions. If

constituting them obsuch knife-edge present the so-called specious passage, in which there

is succession, and both past and future are there, and the present is only that section in which, from the standpoint of action, both are involved. When we take this passage of nature seriously, we see that the object of perception is the existent future of the act. The food is what the animal will eat, and his refuge is the burrow where he will escape from his pursuer. Of course the future Gy 2S

future, contingent. He may not escape, but in nature it exists there as the counterpart of his act. So far as there are fixed relations there, they are of the past, and the object involves both, but the form that it has arises from the ongoing act. Evolutionary biology, in so far as it is not mere physics and chemistry, proceeds perhaps unwittingly upon this assumption, and so does social science in so far as it is not static. Its objects are in terms

of the habitat, the environment. They are fashioned ®

cause the object is the form of the act,

by

reactions.

I am _ merely

in

its

the organization

seizure,

act, we are abundantly familiar. Just be-

case

the

in the structure or function,

the complex act. No complication of the

in a common

vidual into relation with this social object. With the control of the object over the

of the act

act which did not mediate this could survive. Or we may take refuge in a controlling factor in the act, as does Bergson, but this is not the situation that interests us. The human societies in which we are interested are societies of selves. The human individual is a self only in so far as he takes the attitude of another toward himself. In so far as this attitude is that of a number of others, and in so

universe answering to acts.

control is bringing the act of the indi-

this

the very existence of the object insures its control of the act. In the social act, however, the act is distributed among a number of individuals. While there is or may be an object answering to each part of the act, existing in the experience of each individual, in the case of societies dependent upon physiological differentiation the whole object does not exist in the experience of any individual. The control may be exercised through the survival of those physiological differentiations that still carry out the life-process involved in

far as

are social objects, and I take it that social

in

object is in his field of experience. Barring a breakdown

affirming the existence of these objects, afirming them as existent in a passing In so far as there are social acts, there

but

he can

assume

the

organized

attitudes of a number that are codperating activity, he takes the atti-

tudes of the group toward himself, and in taking this or these attitudes he is defining the object of the group, that

which defines and controls the response. Social control, then, will depend upon the degree to which the individual does

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

475

assume the attitudes of those in the group who are involved with him in his social activities. In the illustration already used,

The individual does not, of course, assume the attitudes of the numberless

the man who buys controls his purchase from the standpoint of a value in the

implicated in his social conduct, except in so far as the attitudes of others are uniform under like circumstances, One assumes, as I have said, the attitudes of generalized others. But even with this advantage of the universal over the multiplicity of its numberless instances, the number of different responses that enter into our social conduct seems to defy any capacity of any individual to assume the rdles which would be essential

object that exists for him only in so far as he takes the attitude of a seller as well as a buyer. Value exists as an object only for individuals within whose acts in exchange are present those attitudes which belong to the acts of the others who are essential to the exchange. The act of exchange becomes very com-

plicated;

the degree to which

all the

essential acts involved in it enter into the acts of all those engaged therein varies enormously, and the control which the object, i.e., the value, exercises over the acts varies proportionately. The Marxian theory of state ownership of capital, i.e., of exclusive state production, is a striking illustration of the breakdown of such control. The social object, successful economic production, as presented in this theory, fails to assume the attitudes of individual initiative which successful . economic

: production

5 1: implies.

* Democratic

government, on the theory of action through universal interest in the issues of a campaign, breaks down as a control,

others who are in one way or another

to define our

social objects. And _ yet,

though modern life has become indefinitely more complex than it was in earlier periods of human history, it is far easier for the modern man than for his predecessor to put himself in the place of those who contribute to his necessities,

who

share with him

the functions

of

government, or join with him in determining prices. It is not the number of

participants, or even the number of different functions, that is of primary importance. The important question is whether these various forms of activities belong so naturally to the member of a

human

society that, in taking the rdle

and surrenders the government largely to the political machine, whose object more nearly answers to the attitudes of the

the complexities of human society do not

voters and the non-voters. Social control depends, then, upon the

exceed those of the central nervous system, the problem of an adequate social object,

of another, his activities are found to belong to one’s own nature. As long as

degree to which the individuals in society

which is identical with that of an ade-

are able to assume the attitudes of the others who are involveds with them in common endeavor. For the social object will always answer to the act developing itself in self-consciousness. Besides propecty, vall, of the institutions are such objects, and serve to control individuals

quate self-consciousness, is not that of becoming acquainted with the indefinite number of acts that are involved in social

who find in them the organization of

ourselves in the rdles of those who are

their own social responses.

involved with us in the common

behavior,

but that of so overcoming

the

distances in space and time, and the barriers of language and convention and social status,

that we

can

converse

with

under-

276 taking of life. A journalism that is insati-

ably curious about the human attitudes of all of us is the sign of the times. The other curiosities as to the conditions under which other people live, and work, and fight each other, and love each other, follow

from the fundamental curiosity which is the passion of self-consciousness. We must

PRAGMATISM be others if we are to be ourselves. The modern realistic novel has done more than technical education in fashioning the

social object that spells social control. If we can bring people together so that they can enter into each other’s lives, they will inevitably have a common _ object, which will control their common conduct,

Logic, Semantics, and Scientific Method DOD DPDODNDPPODO’O’W’WOQ®DHDWEOOO OOO HD OOH

OO

OOD

DS

Experience and Meamng CisleoL EeWebs Clie since the provisional skepticism of Descartes’ First Meditation the attack upon any problem of reality has always been shadowed by the question “How do you know?”. The extent to which this perennial challenge has determined the course of modern philosophy requires no exposition.

That on the whole the results of it have been salutary will hardly be denied; though it may be said—and has been said—that it leads,

on

occasion,

to

the confusion

of

methodological considerations with positive conclusions. The last thirty-five years have witnessed a growing emphasis upon another ‘such challenge, which bids fair to

prove equally potent in its directing influence. This is the question “What do you mean?” asked with intent to require an answer in terms of experience. That is, it

is demanded that any concept put forward

empirical-meaning requirement it would be essential to sketch those developments which have brought it to the fore: pragmatism and the “‘pragmatic test”; neo-realism,

both of the American school and the similar view of Russell; the new methodology in physics which came in with relativity, especially Einstein’s treatment of definition and Bridgman’s operational theory of the con. cept; Whitehead’s method of “extensive abstraction,” by which certain previously refractory concepts can now be defined in terms of the actually observable and their empirical content thus made evident. Last and most particularly, one would mention the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, whose program is based throughout upon this consideration of empirical meaning. It

would likewise be desirable to consider the divergences between these different movements of thought in their interpretation of the general requirement of empirical meaning.

or any proposition asserted shall have a definite denotation; that it shall be intelligible not only verbally and logically but

in the further sense that one can specify

But before this audience it will be unnecessary to attempt any such survey,

those empirical items which would determine the applicability of the concept or constitute the verification of the proposition. Whatever cannot satisfy this demand

either of this development in current theory or of the points of divergence with respect to it. Taking these matters for granted, the purpose of what follows will be to explore a little certain questions con.

is to be regarded as meaningless. For any sufficient consideration of this

277

PRAGMATISM

278 cerning the limitations imposed upon sig-

nificant philosophic

discussion

by this

requirement of empirical meaning; in particular certain issues which are likely

to divide those who approach these problems with the thought of James and Peirce and Dewey in mind from the logical positivists. The ultimate objective of such discussion would be to assess. the bearing

of this limitation to what has empirical meaning upon ethics and the philosophy of values, and upon those metaphysical problems which concern the relation between values and reality. But that objective cannot be reached in the present paper, which will be concerned with prior questions. Even these cannot be set forth

with any thoroughness;

and I hope it

will be understood that the purpose of this discussion is to locate issues rather than to dispose of them, and that criti-

cisms ventured are not put.forward in the spirit of debate. The Vienna positivists

repudiate

all

problems of traditional metaphysics, including the issue about the external world supposed to divide idealists from realists, and any question concerning the metaphysical character of other selves. In the authoritative statement of their position we find the following: “If anyone assert ‘There is a God, “The ground of the world is the Unconscious,’ ‘There is an entelechy as the directing principle in the

living,’ we

do not say to him ‘What

you assert is false’ but instead we ask him “What do you mean by your statement?.’ And it then appears that there is a sharp line of division between two kinds of propositions. To the one belong statements such as those made in the empirical sciences: their meaning can be determined by logical analysis; more specifically, it can be determined by reduction to statements of the simplest sort

about the empirically given. The other class of propositions, to which those mentioned above belong, betray themselves as _ completely empty of meaning, if one take ~

them in the fashion which the metaphysician intends. . . . The metaphysician and the theologian, misunderstanding themselves, suppose that their theses assert something, represent matters of fact. Analysis shows, however, that these propositions assert nothing, but only express a sort of feeling of life.’ * According to

Carnap

all value-theory

and normative

science are likewise without meaning, in the theoretical or empirical sense of that word.”

The expression of such feeling of life, and of our evaluative reactions is, of course, admitted to be a legitimate and worth-while activity; but, as such expression, metaphysical theses are to be classed with art and poetry. Obviously there is room in such a theory for descriptive ethics, on a psychological or sociological basis, and for the determination of values by reference to a norm which is assumed or hypothetical; but traditional questions of the “objectivity” of value are repudiated. We may meaningfully ask “When is a character judged good?” or “What is actually approved?” but not “With what right is this character

said to be ‘good’?” or “What is absolutely worthy of approbation?”.? This

repudiation

of metaphysics

and

1 Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung des Wiener Kreises (1929) 16. (I have translated somewhat freely.) 2 “Auf dem Gebiet der Metaphysik (einschliesslich aller Wertphilosophie und Normwissenschaft) fihrt die logische Analyse zu dem negativen Ergebnis, dass die vorgeblichen Sitze dieses Gebietes ginzlich sinnlos sind.” “Uberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache,” Erkenntnis, Vol. 2 (1931) 220. 3 See M. Schlick, Fragen der Ethik, esp. I 8 pp.

10-12.

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

normative science by the logical positivists

cannot, I think, be regarded as an implication

of the empirical-meaning

re-

METHOD

279

stinde) which are constructed out of elementary experiences (Elementarerlebnisse), at bottom, through the relation

quirement alone. At least an important

of remembered

light is thrown upon it by taking into account that “methodological solipsism”’ in accordance with which their program

first person. Your mind and your experience can be nothing more, for my cognition, than a construction which I put upon certain data of my own ex-

itserinnerung); second, physical objects, which are constructions out of the simpler for-me things of actually given experience; third, other selves and the mental or cultural in general (fremdpsychische und geistige Gegenstinde), which are, for actual knowing, constructions out of certain classes and certain relationships of physical things and processes. In this program we have a consistently maintained effort to be true to the nature of knowledge as we find it. The egocentric predicament is taken seriously; and the “solipsistic’ character ascribed to knowing is no more strange or fantastic than Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception. The manner in which the negative side of logical positivism is related to this same method may, perhaps, be more readily appreciated by reference to cruder

perience.

but

is developed. Even though they regard this procedure as advantageous rather than prescribed, still the negations or limitations which characterize it seem to underlie their theses, in whatever terms expressed. On its constructive side this method

means no more, at bottom, than a persistent attempt so classes of objects the basis of this perience will be

to define the different of our knowledge that knowledge in direct exexhibited. It is of the

essence of knowledge that it is in the

thorough

If, then,

and

we

are

completed

to

have

account

a

of

knowledge, it is not sufficient that the constitution of objects known should be traced back to experience in the merely generic ‘sense. So far as your observations and reports enter into the construction of that reality which is known to me, they

can do so only through the interpretation which I put upon certain modes of your behavior perceived by me. Actually given experience is given in the first person; and reality as it is known in any case of actual knowledge can be nothing, finally, but a first-person construction from data

given in the first person. Consonantly, we have such construction of the objects of science in general as is outlined in Carnap’s Logischer Aufbau der Welt: first, the different kinds of for-me entities (eigenpsychische Gegen-

somewhat

similarity

parallel

(AAnlichke-

considerations

which are suggested by Berkeley’s argu ment against material substance. (It was Berkeley who first adduced the requirement of empirical meaning in order to prove his opponent’s concepts empty and non-significant.)

As has often been noted, the significance and applicability of Berkeley’s argument does not leave off at the point where he ceases to use it. By identical logic other selves and the past and future must go on the same way as material substance. If you are more than one of my ideas, how can I know it? How can I consistently suppose that I even have an interest in

that untouchable you outside my mind which ipso facto could make no difference in my experience of you? Also, at

this moment, what is that past which I remember, as more than the present recol-

PRAGMATISM

280

lection, or the future as more than the present experience of anticipation? All must finally dissolve into the eternal now of actually given experience. There is even one further step for this logic to take. What am I? This self as a recognizable or conceivable particularity can be no more than one of those ideas I call mine. And Wittgenstein gives indication that he accepts the parallel methodological implication: “The subject does

not belong to the world but it is the limit of the world. Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted? You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But you do not really see the eye. And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye... . Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality coordinated with it.” 4 I must not convey the impression that the logical positivists use Berkeleyan arguments, or that they arrive at their conclusions by such a train of thought as the above. Nevertheless this may serve to

suggest

how

methodological

solipsism

comports with a thoroughgoing empiricism; and it further suggests why this procedure is to be taken as having no metaphysical Subjective implications. idealism, consistently carried through, ends by qualifying every substantive with the prefix “idea of” or “experience of,” which by being thus universal becomes meaningless. Whereas Berkeley supposes his argument to establish a subjectivist metaphysics by proving the realistic metaphysics to be empty of empirical meaning, logical positivism points out that the con4 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, pp. 151-153, Cf, Carnap, Logischer Aufbau der Welt §65.

trary of a meaningless assertion is likewise without meaning; and hence repudi-

ates metaphysical theses of both sorts, and the issue itself, as non-significant. Three points, here evident, contain, I think, the gist of the matter. First; when knowledge is envisaged, as it must be, from within the egocentric predicament, all objects known or conceived must reveal them-

selves as constructions, eventually, from data given in first-person experience. Also, what enters into such construction from past experience can only come in by way

of present recollection. (This last is, I take it, the reason for.the basic position of the relation of remembered-similarity in the program of Carnap.) Other selves and their experience, or their reports, can enter only as certain items of first-person experience upon which a peculiarly complex construction is put. Second; distinctions such as that between real and imaginary, or between that which is apprehensible to me alone and the object apprehended by us in common, must nevertheless find their genuine place and importance in such construction. The fact these distinctions that we make in practically useful ways evidences that they are not outside the egocentric predica-

ment and metaphysical but inside it and empirical. They are determined by criteria which the subject can and does apply within his own experience. Berkeley, for example, offered the criterion of independence of my will as the basis for the distinction of real from imaginary. And in Carnap one finds such distinctions, and their empirical criteria, meticulously ex-

amined, Third; metaphysical issues concerning the external world and other selves do not turn upon such empirically applicable distinctions as those just referred to, which can be applied within first-person experience. Such metaphysical

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

issues can arise only as it is attempted to give some second meaning to the concepts involved; meanings which do not answer

to any empirical criteria which the subject can apply within his own experience. Throughout, a particular and critical point is that only first-person (eigenpsychische) data of experience are allowed, in the end, to enter into the construction of objects of knowledge or to function as the empirical content of any meaning. There is, I think, one further question

which is crucial for any theory of knowledge; namely, the question of immediacy and mediation, or transcendence. This has a connection-with the preceding considerations; but with respect to this further

problem I- cannot satisfy myself that I elicit any complete and clear pronouncement from the literature of logical positivism. One can pose the principal issue involved by reference to a statement of Russell’s: “Empirical knowledge is confined to what we actually observe.” > This may seem to be a truism; but I think it is in fact thoroughly false, and demonstrably incompatible with the very existence of empirical knowledge. Let us impose this limitation quite rigorously, in conformity with the considerations set forth above. Knowledge is always in the first person; whatever is known must be known to the subject in question, at the actual moment, within his own experience. The experience of others can enter only as certain items of their subject’s own—their reports and behavior perceived by him. And the experience of yesterday or tomorrow can figure in this knowing only as it enters, in the form of memory or imagina-

tion,

into

experience

here

and

now.

5 Our Knowledge of the External World, 112. The author makes this statement quite in passing, and perhaps without having in mind the point with which we are concerned.

METHOD

281

Hence nothing can be known but what is verifiable in the subject’s own experience at the moment when the knowing occurs. Similarly for meaning. Suppose it maintained that no issue is meaningful unless it can be put to the test of decisive verification. And no verification can take place except in the immediately present experience of the subject. Then nothing can be meant except what is actually present in the experience in which that meaning is entertained. Whatever runs beyond this is unverifiable, and hence

meaningless. The result of any such train of thought is obvious; knowledge would collapse into the useless echo of data directly given to the mind at the moment, and meaning would terminate in the immediate envisagement of what is meant. This is a reduction to absurdity of both knowledge and meaning.® If nothing can be known but what is literally within the cognitive experience itself, and what is meant can be only that which is present in the experience which is the bearer of that meaning, then there is no valid knowledge and no genuinely significant meaning. Because the intention to refer to what transcends immediate experience is of the essence of knowledge

and

meaning

both.

Berkeley

himself

tacitly recognized that, in noting that one idea is “sign of” another which is to be expected; even the skeptic recognizes this intent of knowledge—he is skeptical

precisely of the possibility that what is not immediate can be known. If that in6In order to avoid confusion with a quite different problem, the distinction between meaning in the sense of denotation and meaning as connotation should be in mind. It is only the former meaning of “meaning” which is in point in this discussion. In the classification of logical positivism meanings are (1) structural, as in logic and mathematics, or (2) empirical, as in natural science, or (3) emotive, as in art and poetry. It is meaning

in sense

(2) which

is concerned

here.

PRAGMATISM

282

tention of transcendence is invalid, then the further characters of knowledge and

enters into the experience of the subject. This view recognizes, in at least one

of meaning are hardly worth discussing.

sense, the transcendence of the object known or meant; and thus avoids the reduction to absurdity which has been

Neither the logical positivists nor any-

one else (unless a mystic) intends this reduction to absurdity. But if it is something which has to be avoided by any

theory genuine becomes tion of meaning. that the cognitive

which

is compatible

with

the

validity of knowledge, that fact important for the just interpretathe requirement of empirical In particular, it becomes evident experience in terms of which a meaning requires to be ex-

mentioned. The difficulty of this view is, of course, to reconcile such transcendence

of the object with the possibility of knowing it. Second, there are identity-theories, both idealistic and realistic, according to which the object, or the object so far as it is known, is identical with some content

of the subject’s experience at the moment when the knowing takes place. The out-

plicated cannot be exclusively the sub-

standing difficulty of this view is to avoid

ject’s own given data at the moment of the cognition. Thus that manner of reading the implications of methodological solipsism which is suggested above would

the reduction to absurdity, because it is incompatible with the supposition that anything can be known which lies beyond the immediate experience of the knower.’

condemn

that procedure

to futility. If

Such identity-theories are also liable to

what the method requires is that objects

difficulty with the problem of error. For the third type of theory—which includes both objective idealism and pragmatism—the object known is definable or specifiable in terms of experience, but the experience in terms of which the object

known should be constructed or defined exclusively in terms of sense-data actually given to the subject at the moment when the knowing takes place, then that method is incompatible with the possi-

bility of knowledge and the reality of

is thus definable is not exclusively, the

empirical meaning. We are here faced with a problem which runs through the whole history of

experience of the subject at the moment of knowing; it transcends that experience. In rough general terms, objective idealism takes this relation between the experience in terms of which the object is specifiable and the experience which cognizes, to be the relation of something deductively implied to that in which it is implicit. That is, the present experience in which the knowing occurs—the idea or the given

post-Kantian epistemology—though

it is

Berkeley rather than Kant who precipitated it in its modern form. How can the knowledge-relation, or the relation of idea to the object it denotes, be valid unless what is known or meant is present to or in the experience which knows or means? But if what is meant or what-is known is merely the cognitive experience itself,

or something in it, then how can either knowledge or meaning be genuine? In general

there

are

three

types

of

solution which have been offered. The first of these is representationalism,

ac-

cording to which the object never literally

—is taken as determining implicitly the whole object in its reality, and as determining it unambiguously and with certainty, if only we could be explicitly aware 7 For an identity-theory of the realistic variety, the object known may transcend the knowing experience—because it is known only in part—but the object so far as it is genuinely cognized can-

not.

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

of all that is implied. In equally rough terms, pragmatism may be said to take this relation as inductive; the given experience of the moment of knowing is the basis of a probability-judgment concerning the experience (or experiences) which would verify, and in terms of which the real nature of the object is expressible. It would probably be incorrect to take the logical positivists as holding an identity-theory of the cognitive relation. But if they do not, then their conception of the object known, as constructed or “‘constituted” in terms of given sense-data, requires to be interpreted so as to avoid an ambiguity which is possible. At this moment I am thinking of the wall behind my back. If I should turn around, I could verify my idea of it. But if at this moment I refer to the wall as a construction from presently given data, then the distinction between “construction” as present concept, and “construction” as that which this concept means to denote, is essential. Both are empirical data, if you like—but they are not the same data. The data which have their place in the concept are memories, visual and tactile images, anticipations; the data which would verify this conception would “be perceptions. Not only are memories,

ideas of imagination, and per-

ceptions different events, but they are empirically distinguishable kinds of experience-content. Either, then, the wall which my idea denotes is merely the imagination8 There

could

be

doubt;

for example,

Carnap

says, ‘Between ‘concepts’ and ‘objects’ there is only a difference in the manner of speech” (Logrscher Aufbau der Welt, Zusammenfassung, p. 262); and their conception of the relation between physical and mental might be taken to argue an identitytheory. But they have, I think, been principally absorbed in the problem of the analysis of the concept (or the object as an intellectual construction), and one should be chary of attempting to elicit from their writings any answer to the present question, which is of a quite different order. At least, I

should not wish to presume to do so.

METHOD

283

wall or recollection-wall, which is the immediate datum; or I cannot at this moment know the real wall which I mean; or —the third possibility—it is false that what I now know and mean by “the wall” coincides with any complex of sense-data now in my ‘mind. It is on this point that the third type of theory is significant. For the pragmatic form of this third type knowing begins and ends in experience; but it does not end in the experience in which it begins. Hence the emphasis on the temporal nature of the knowing process, the leading character of ideas, and the function of knowledge as a guide to action. Knowing is a matter of two “moments,”

the moment

of assertion

or entertainment and the moment of verification; both of these moments belonging to experience in the generic sense of that word. Knowledge will be true or correct only in so far as the present experience— of the entertainment of the meaning—envisages or anticipates correctly the experience or experiences which would verify it; that is, our knowledge is true if the anticipated experience is genuinely to be met with. But the entertaining experience can be truly cognitive, as against a mere enjoyment of itself, only by the fact that what would be realized in the moment of verification is distinct from the experience which entertains or anticipates it. Otherwise error would be impossible—one cannot be mistaken about the immediate— and hence knowledge, as the opposite of error, would likewise be impossible. I do not mean to say, of course, that at the mo-

ment when something is believed or asserted it cannot have a ground in given experience, or be “partially verified”; but it 7¢ meant that there must be something more, which is believed in or asserted, than what is verified immediately, if the experience is to have the significance of a

PRAGMATISM

284

knowing as contrasted with an esthetic

ground of this repudiation is the obvious

enjoyment. The same point canbe phrased in an-

one that a relation of experience to what cannot be brought within experience is a relation which cannot be investigated, and one the very conception of which as cognitive involves a confusion of thought. All three of these theories would agree that the cognoscendum must be defined, or constructed, or constituted for knowledge, in terms of experience. But if we are not to fall into the opposite error of the reduction to absurdity, which comes from identifying datum and cognoscendum, it must be recognized that the experience of knowing and the experience in terms of which the object is specified cannot be simply identical.

other way by reference to the question whether, and in what sense, the datum, by means of which any item of reality is known, is distinct in its being from the cognoscendum.®

I should urge that any identity-theory which denies this difference between datum and cognoscendum is incompatible with the cognitive function of the idea or datum. This cognitive function is the guidance of behavior; and in order that the cognizing experience may perform this function there must be at least an element of anticipation or implicit prediction which

foreshadows what is not here and now

The very simple point which is per-

present in the datum. For certain types of realism the problem thus set is taken to be that of the relation between data as items of experience and the reality in its independent existence, which is not any item or complex of items in experience. Pragmatism, in common with idealism and with logical positivism, repudiates the problem in this form as unreal.'° For all three of these views the relation of datum to cognoscendum is taken to be a relation within experience (in the generic sense), or between one experience and others; not a relation between something in experience and something alto-

tinent to the further issues of this paper

gether out of it. The reasons

for this

attitude would be different in each case;

but for all three

views

the principal

®T borrow this formulation from the recent discussion of Strong and Lovejoy in the pages of The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 29 (1932) 673687 and 30 (1933) 589-606. 10 There may be doubt of this. I do not affirm it dogmatically;

tent of Dewey’s James’s insistence as,” and Peirce’s of the effects of bearings, exhausts

but this seems

to express

the in-

denial of ‘antecedent reality,” that a thing is what is “known pronouncement that our concept an object, which have practical our whole concept of the object.

is the fact that although knowledge

is

subject to the here-and-now predicament —the data must be immediate—it is

essential to the cognitive function of the present experience that its cognoscendum should not be merely here and now. If, for example, there’ can be knowledge of a future event in one’s own life, then the datum which is the vehicle of this anticipation is not the anticipated cognoscendum. And in so far as all empirical knowing has the dimension of anticipation or implicit prediction, the thing known is not to be identified with, or phrased exclusively in terms of, here-andnow experience. What is known now, now has the status of being verifiable; but in

the nature of the case it does not and cannot have the status of being verifiablenow."* The only thing which is literally and completely verifiablenow is that which is immediate and now-verified. 11 We use the expression “‘verifiable now” oftentimes in the sense of “verifiable at will.” That means literally “verifiable the next moment if I choose to meet certain understood conditions,”

LOGIC, This

SEMANTICS,

account

AND

is, of course,

SCIENTIFIC

hopelessly

inadequate, and raises all sorts of questions which cannot be dealt with here. But the points which are directly pertinent

METHOD

285

eye. This verifying experience is not actual; I do not touch the watch. But

nothing is lacking for it except my own

The conception that “empirical knowledge is confined to what we actually

initiative. At least I believe that to be the case; and this belief is coordinate with the degree of my felt assurance that the watch is real and is mine. This is, per-

observe” is false. To know (empirically) is to be able to anticipate correctly further

haps, the simplest case of verifiability— observability at will. All the conditions of

possible experience. If this is not the whole significance of such knowing, at least

the verifying experience are present except only my intent to make the verification.’* Next, let us consider the other side of the moon.** This is something believed in but never directly observed. The belief is an inference or interpretation based upon direct observation; the moon behaves like a solid object and must, therefore, have another side. But what is believed in must, in order to be real, possess characters which are left undetermined in our belief

to the further discussion are these. (1)

it is an essential part of it. (2) What is anticipated, known, or meant must indeed be something envisaged in terms of experience—the requirement of empirical meaning stands. But equally it is essential that what is empirically known or meant

should not be something which is immediately

and

exhaustively

verified,

in

what I have called the moment of entertainment. It will also be of importance to consider a little the sense, or senses,

of the word

“verifiable.” Like any word ending in “able,” this connotes possibility and hence connotes conditions under which this possibility is supposed to obtain. To advance the dictum that which is empirically known, and what is meant, must be verifiable, and omit all examination of the wide range of significance which could attach

to

“possible

verification,’

would

be to leave the whole conception rather obscure. But instead of attempting here some pat formulation @ priori, let us

briefly

survey

different

modes

of the

“possibility” of the verifying experiences projected by meaningful assertions. At this moment I have a visual presenta-

tion which leads me to assert that my watch lies before me on the table. If what I assert is true, then I could touch the watch, pick it up, and I should then

observe certain familiar details which are not discernible at this distance from my

about

it. For

instance,

there

must

be

mountains there; or there must be none. To speak more precisely, our belief in-

cludes alternatives which are not determined; but, if the thing believed in is what it is believed to be, these alternatives must be determined in the object. If there were nothing more, and more

specific, to

the other side of the moon than what is specifically determined in our construction of it, then it would be a logical abstraction instead of a physical reality. 12 Such a single experience would not be a theoretically complete verification of my assertion about the watch. As I have elsewhere indicated, no

verification of the kind of knowledge commonly stated in propositions is ever absolutely complete and final. However, an expected experience of the watch can be completely verified, or falsified. 18 Tt will be obvious that there are modes of verifiability which would fall between the preceding illustration and this one. For example, the verifying experience might be such as could be reached, from actual present conditions, by a more or less complicated chain of circumstances, but a chain every link of which is supposedly related to the preceding one in the manner of the first example.

PRAGMATISM

286

These undetermined characters are what we should see if we could build an X-ray telescope, or what we*should find about us if we could construct a space-ship to fly up there and land. What we should observe if these things could be accom-

In making “verifiability” a criterion of empirical meaningfulness, the primary reference is to a supposed character of what is conceived rather than to any sup- ‘

posed approximation of the conditions of verification

to the actual.

plished is what we mean by the other side

quirement

of “verifiability”

of the moon as a physically real thing— as something more than a logical con-

edge is a stricter one, because knowing requires, in addition to meaningfulness, some ground of the assurance of truth. But, as this example makes clear, even the “possible verification” which is requisite to empirical knowing cannot be confined to the practicalities, or by de-

struction put upon presently given data. The projected verification in this case

is ideal in a sense which goes quite beyond the preceding example. It is humanly possible, perhaps; men may some day build space-ships or X-ray telescopes. But the conditions of this verification—or any

other direct empirical verification of the

(3) The

re-

for knowl-

tailed comprehension of the procedure of such verification. We do not command the means for making any direct verifi-

which

cation of our belief in the other side of the

we cannot meet at will. We cannot, by any

moon; but what this signified is that, with all the means in the world, we do not know how to. If it be said that it is required for empirical meaning—or even for knowledge—that we should lay down a rule of operation for the process of verification, it should be observed that sometimes this rule of operation will have

thing in question—include chain

of

planned

some

activity,

completely

bridge the gap between actual conditions and the projected verification. Obviously, then,

unless

belief in the other. side

of

the moon is meaningless, it is not requisite to such empirical meaning that

the verifying experience should even be possible at present, in any narrow interpretation of that word “possible.” To analyze the conception of “verifiable” which would extend to such cases would be a large order. I shall only suggest what I think might be some of the critical

points, (1) As this example

serves

to

illustrate, any reality must, in order to satisfy our empirical concept of it, transcend the concept itself. A construction imposed upon given data cannot be identical with a real object; the thing itself must be more specific, and in comparison with it the construction remains abstract. In making any verification we expect something which we cannot anticipate. This is a paradox in language; but it is, or should be, a commonplace of the distinction between ideas and objects. (2)

to be rather sketchy. This difficulty—if it is a diffculty—will be found to affect not only such extreme cases as the other

side of the moon but quite commonplace items of knowledge as well. I join with you in feeling that such considerations smack of triviality; but cer-

tainly a theory which could be overturned by such trivial facts would not be worth holding. Just what we can sensibly mean

by “empirically verifiable” is really a bit obscure. Perhaps the chief requirement ought to be that we should be able to analyze the supposed connection between the projected verifying experience and

what is-actually given (the “rule of operation”) in such wise that this procedure of verification can be envisaged in analogy

with

operations

which

can

actually be

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287

carried out. The degree to which such analogy could be made complete would, I think, justly affect the significance of our

competent opinion. But there is a general

supposed knowledge. As a third example let us take the case

reality cannot be definitely ruled out un-

of the electron. The existence of electrons

conditions of its verification could never

is inferred from the behavior of oil-droplets between charged plates, tracks regis-

be realized. Between those conceptions for the verification of which we can definitely specify a rule of operation, and those which we can definitely eliminate as theoretically impossible, there is an enormous gap. And any conception which falls in this middle ground is an hypothesis about empirical reality which possesses at least some degree of meaningfulness. If those who believe in the electron as a sort of ultramicroscopic bullet cannot envisage this object of their belief in such wise that they would be able to recognize certain empirical eventualities as the verification of it, in case the conditions of

tered on photographs from

cathodes,

and

of the discharge other

such

actually

observed phenomena. But what is it that is inferred; or is anything really inferred? Some physicists, for example Bridgman, would say that our concept of the electron comprehends nothing more than these observable phenomena, systematically connected by mathematical equations in verifiable ways. The layman, however, and probably most physicists, would not

be satisfied

to think

of “electron”

as

merely a name of such observable phenomena. But what more may they suppose themselves to be believing in? An electron is too small to be seen through any microscope which ever can be made, and it would not stay put if a beam of light were directed upon it. It is equally beyond the reach of the other senses. But

is the phrase “too small to be directly perceived” meaningful or is it not? And how direct must a “direct verification” be? Suppose it to be urged that no one can set a limit to scientific inventiveness,

or anticipate the surprises which investigation of the subatomic will quite surely present; and that if or when such developments take place, definitely localized phenomena may perhaps be observed within the space to which the mass of the

electron is assigned. Whether this is or is not a question about the real nature of the electron, and what limitations should be imposed on useful conceptions in physics, are matters concerning which I could not have a

point here which all of us can judge. A hypothetical less we

can

conception say

of an empirical

categorically

that

the

such verification could be met, then they

deceive themselves and are talking nonsense. But if they can thus envisage what

they believe in, then the fact that such verifying experience is highly improbable,

and even that the detail of it must be left somewhat indefinite, is no bar to its meaningfulness. Any other decision would be a doctrinaire attempt to erect our

ignorance as a limitation of reality. The requirement of empirical meaning is at bottom nothing more than the obvious one that the terms we use should possess denotation. As this requirement is interpreted by pragmatists and positivists and others who share the tendencies of thought which have been mentioned, no

concept has any denotation at all unless eventually in terms of sensuous data or imagery. It is only in such terms that a thing meant, or what a proposition asserts, could be recognized if presented to us. But, as the preceding considerations are intended to make clear, the envisagement >

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of what would thus exhibit the denotation or verify the assertion—which is all that meaning requires—has little or nothing

to do with the question whether the conditions under which the requisite presen-

tations could be realized can be met or not. Whether such verifying experience is mine or is yours or is nobody’s; whether it happens now or in the future or never; whether it is practically possible or humanly problematic or clearly beyond our capacity to bring about—all this is beside the point when the only question is that of theoretical meaningfulness. One may be tempted, in protest against various forms of transcendentalism and verbalism, to announce the unqualified dictum that only what is verifiable can be known, and only what is knowable can be the subject of a meaningful hypothesis. But such flat statement, while true in general, may nevertheless be_ misleading on account of an ambiguity in the word

“verifiable.” On the one hand this connotes a certain character of the content of one’s assertion or hypothesis. This must be envisaged in sensuous terms; it must be the case that we could recognize certain empirical eventualities as verifying it, supposing that the conditions of such verifying experience could be satisfied. Verifiability in this sense requires an empirical content of the hypothesis, but has nothing to do with the practical or even the theoretical difficulties of verification.

Whatever

further

restrictions

may

be

appropriate in physics or any other natural science, the only general requirement of

empirical meaning—which alone is pertinent to those hypotheses about reality which philosophy must consider—is this limitation to what can be expressed in terms which genuinely possess denotation. On the other hand, “verifiable” con-

notes the possibility of actually satisfying .

the conditions of verification. Or, to put it otherwise, verifiability may be taken to require “possible experience” as con-_ ditioned by the actual; we must be able ' to find our way, step by step, from where

we actually stand to this verifying experience. Hence practical or theoretical difficulties are limitations of verifiability in this second sense. These limitations may be genuinely pertinent to knowledge, because knowledge requires the assurance of truth; and whatever would prevent actual verification may prevent such assur-

ance, But verifiability in this second sense has no relevance to meaning, because the assurance of truth is, obviously, not a condition of meaningfulness.

It is of importance to avoid confusing these two senses of “verifiable” in assessing the significance

tions

which

of those

considera-

methodological

solipsism

makes prominent. If it could be said that actual knowing must rest upon verification which, in the end, must be firstperson and must be here and now when the knowing occurs, at least it would be an absurdity to translate this into the

negation of meaning

to whatever

can-

not be expressed in terms of first-person

experience and of experience here and now. I impute this absurdity to no one; I would merely urge the necessity of avoiding it, It is likewise important, in the same connection, to bear in mind what have been called the two moments of cognition. It is a fact that past experience is a given

datum only in the form of memory; the future, only in the form of imagination.

And the reports of others are data for the knower only in that form in which they lie-within the egocentric predicament. Hence any idea which can occur with cognitive significance must be a construc-

tion by the knower, ultimately in terms of

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first-person present data. These predicaments, however, are limitations of the moment of entertainment. If one should

conclude that because the cognizing experience must take place within boundaries of the first-person and_

immediate,

the the

therefore the object of that

knowledge, so far as it is genuinely known or meant, must also lie within those limits, one would be overlooking the distinction between the experience which entertains and the projected experience

which would verify what is thus entertained. The distinction of these two is of

the essence of cognition as contrasted with esthetic enjoyment of the immediate. To identify them would be to reduce knowledge and meaning to absurdity. Again, I

do not impute to anyone this identification of the idea, in terms of immediate

data, with the object, specifiable in terms of possible experience or experience which is anticipated. I would only urge the

desirability of avoiding this fallacy. In the time which remains it is a bit absurd even to suggest any bearings which the above may be supposed to have upon metaphysical problems. But with your indulgence I shall barely mention three such issues. One traditional problem of metaphysics is immortality. The hypothesis of immortality is unverifiable in an obvious sense. Yet it is an hypothesis about our own future experience. And our understanding of what would verify it has no

lack of clarity. It may well be that, apart from a supposed connection with more exigent and mundane problems such as those of ethics, this hypothesis is not a fruitful topic of philosophic consideration. But if it be maintained that only what is scientifically verifiable has meaning, then this conception is a case in point. It could hardly be verified by science; and there is

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no observation or experiment which science could make, the negative result of which would disprove it. That consideration, however, has nothing to do with its

meaningfulness

as an hypothesis about

reality. To deny that this conception has an empirical content would be as little justified as to deny empirical content to

the belief that these hills will still be here when we are gone. Next let us consider that question about the external world, supposedly at issue between idealists and realists. One suspects that the real animus of debate between these two parties is, and always has been, a concern with the question of an essential relationship between cosmic processes and human values; and that if, historically, idealists have sought to capture their conclusion on this point by arguments derived from a Berkeleyan or similar analysis of knowledge, at least such attempt has been abandoned in current discussion. So that this question about the external world, in any easily statable form, is probably not pertinent to present controversy. But there is one formulation which, if it is too naive to be thus pertinent, at least poses an intelligible question about the nature of reality. Let us phrase this as a realistic hypothesis: If all minds should disappear from the universe, the stars would still go on in their courses. This hypothesis is humanly unverifi-

able. That, however, is merely a predicament, which prevents assurance of truth but does not affect meaning. We can only express or envisage this hypothesis by means of imagination, and hence in terms

of what any mind like ours would experience if, contrary to hypothesis, any mind should be there. But we do not need to commit the Berkeleyan naivete of arguing that it is impossible to imagine a tree on a desert island which nobody is

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290

thinking of—because we are thinking of it ourselves. It is entirely meaningful, for example, to think of those inventions which

nobody

has

ever

thought

of, or

those numbers which no one will ever count; we can even frame the concept of those concepts which no one will ever

frame. Those who would deny this on logical grounds exhibit a sense for paradox of language which is stronger than their sense of fact. Furthermore, imagination is sufficient for empirical meaning, though it requires perception for verification. I can imagine that future time which I shall never perceive; and humans can

items which are data for me—your tooth and your behavior. My own toothache is equally a construction. Until there are such prior constructions as the physical ’ concept “teeth,” from given sense-data, neither your toothache nor mine is a possible object of knowledge. And, similarly, until there is a construction in-

volving such prior constructions as human bodies, there is no own-self or yourself as

particular objects of knowledge. As knowable

things,

and

myself

are

yourself

equally constructions; and though as constructed objects they are fundamentally different in. kind, the constructions

meaningfully think of that future when

are coordinate. That experience which 1s

humanity may have run its cosmic course and all consciousness will have disappeared. It may be that the hypothesis of a reality with no sentience to be affected by it is not a particularly significant issue; though the idealist might have an interest in it for the sake of the light which decision about it would throw upon the nature which reality has now. In any case, the fact that it is unverifiable has no bearing upon its meaningfulness. Whether this hypothesis is true, is a genuine question about the nature of reality.

the original datum

Finally, we may turn to the conception of other

selves. The

importance

which

this topic has for ethics will be obvious. Descartes conceived that the lower animals are a kind of automata; and the monstrous supposition that other humans are merely robots would have meaning if there should ever be a consistent solipsist to make it. The logical positivist does not

tions is, in Carnap’s

of all such construcphrase,

“without

a

subject.” 14 Nevertheless it has that quality or status,

characteristic

of all given

ex-

perience, which is indicated by the adjective “first-person.” With the general manner of this account of our knowledge of ourselves and others I think we should agree. But it does not touch the point at issue. Suppose

I fear that I may have a toothache tomorrow. I entertain a conception involvying various constructions from present data; my body, teeth, etc. But my present experience, by which I know or anticipate

this future toothache, is not an experience of an ache. There is here that difference which has been noted between the experience which entertains and the experience which would verify, to which it implicitly refers. A robot could have a toothache, in the sense of having a

swollen jaw and exhibiting all the appro-

deny that other humans have feelings; he

priate behavior,

circumvents the issue by a behavioristic interpretation of “having feelings.” He

pain connected with it. The question of metaphysical solipsism is the question whether there is any pain connected with

points out that your toothache is a verifiable object of my knowledge; it is a construction put upon certain empirical

but

there

would

be no

your observed behavior indicating tooth14 See Logischer Aufbau der Welt, §65.

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ache. The logical positivist claims that this issue has no meaning, because there is no empirical content which could verify the non-solipsistic assertion—that is, no content unless, following his procedure, I identify your pain with observable items such as the behavior which exhibits it; in

which case it is verifiable in the first person. To make this identification, however, is to beg precisely the point at issue.

Let us compare the two cases of your toothache now and my toothache tomorrow. I cannot verify your toothache, as distinct from your observable behavior, because of the egocentric predicament. But neither can I verify my own future toothache—because of the now-predicament. My tomorrow’s pain, however, may genuinely be an object of knowledge for me now, because a pain may be cognized by an experience in which that pain is not a given ingredient. (The imagination of a pain may be painful; but it is not the pain anticipated. If it were, all future events which we anticipate would be happening already.) Your pain I can never verify. But when I assert that you are not an automaton, I can envisage what I mean—

and what makes the difference between the truth and falsity of my assertion— because I can imagine your pain, as distinct from all I can literally experience of you, just as I can imagine my own future pain, as distinct from the experience in which I now imagine it.

METHOD

291

In the nature of the case I cannot verify you as another center of experience dis-

tinct from myself. Any verification which I might suppose myself to make would violate the hypothesis by being first-person experience. But there is nothing to which I can give more explicit empirical content than the supposition of a conscious-

ness like mine connected with a body like my own. Whether there is any such would be a terribly important question about reality if anybody entertained a doubt about the answer. Whether you are an-

other mind or only a sleep-walking body is a question of fact. And

it cannot

be

exorcized by definitions—by defining “meaningful” so as to limit it to the verifiable, and “verifiable” by reference to the egocentric predicament. This conception of other selves as metaphysical ultimates exemplifies the philosophic importance which may attach to a supposition which is nevertheless unveri-

fiable on account

of the limitations of

knowing. Though empirical meaning is requisite to theoretical significance—and that consideration is of first importance in guarding against verbal nonsense in philosophy—still the sense in which a supposition is meaningful often outruns that in which the assurance of truth, by verification, can genuinely be hoped for. In limiting cases like this last question it may even outrun the possibility of verification altogether.

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292

Signs, Semitic, and the Umfication of Science ' CHARLES MORRIS The Four Primary Sign Usages

Signs in general serve to control behavior in the way something else would exercise control if it were present. To attain its goals the organism must take account of the environment in which it operates, select for its concern certain features of this environment, respond by response-sequences which will attain an environment suitable to its needs, and or-

ganize its sign-provoked responses into some pattern or other. Each of these stages

of its activity may be facilitated by the use of signs, and the four primary usages of signs correspond to these four aspects of behavior. Signs accordingly may be used to inform the organism about something, to aid it in its preferential selection of objects, to incite response-sequences of some behavior family, and to organize signproduced behavior (interpretants) into a determinate whole. These usages may be called in order the informative, the valuative, the incitive, and the systemic uses of signs. These are the most general sign usages; other usages are subdivisions and specializations of these four, They are the purposes for which an individual produces signs as means-objects in the guid-

ance

of his own

behavior

or in the

guidance of the behavior of others. They may be employed with respect to things other than signs or to signs themselves. An individual may use signs to inform himself or others about what has been or is or will be, with respect to signs or

non-semiosical events. He may use signs to confer for himself or others a preferential status upon something—upon things, persons, needs, or even signs (as where he wants the signs he himself produces to be approved as “fine writing” or “fine

speech”). He may use signs to incite a particular response in himself or in others to objects or signs, or to call out submission in someone else, or to get the

reply to a question which bothers him, or to provoke co-operative or disruptive be-

havior in the members of some community. And he may use signs to further influence behavior already called out by signs, whether this behavior be to signs

themselves

or to something other than

signs. It seems, indeed, that all the uses to which signs may be put can be classified under these four heads, whether the ends they subserve be further specialized as entertainment, reassurance,

domination,

co-operation,

deception, instruction, or the

like. It is obvious that these four comprehensive usages of signs are closely related to the four modes of signifying. The primary use of designators is informative, the primary use of appraisers is valuative, the primary use of prescriptors is incitive, and the primary use of formators is sys-

temic. So close in fact is this relation that doubt may be raised as to whether the mode of signifying of a sign can be distinguished from-its corresponding primary usage. Thus if a sign is for a particular person at a given moment a designator,

it is informing

him

(correctly

or

in-

* Reprinted with permission of the publishers from Signs, Language and Behavior by Charles Morris, copyright 1946 by Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York.

LOGIC,

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AND

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correctly) about something, and if a sign is for a particular person at a given mo-

ment an appraiser it tends to confer a preferential place in his behavior to something. Hence it may seem, for instance, that the designative mode of signifying 1s not distinguishable from the informative use of signs, and that the modes of signifying may perhaps even be defined in terms of the primary uses to which signs

are put. That the distinction is, however, valid and important may be made clear by the following considerations. The term “use” (or function) has various significations. If no more is involved than the position that all signs are to be distinguished in terms of differences in behavior in the situations

in which they occur, then of course the occurrence of a sign cannot be distinguished from its “use.” We however have defined the use of signs in terms of the production of signs as means-objects to accomplish some end, and in this more limited sense a sign-process can occur without being used—thus a designator may give information without being used to inform. For a sign may be designative without being produced by any organism and an organism may interpret a sign produced by another organism without itself producing (or using) the sign itself. Then too it must not be forgotten that to call a sign designative may mean either that it is designative for some interpreter at a given moment or that it is in general designative for the members of a given community. Hence a person may produce a sign which is generally designative in

METHOD

293

tor. Analogously, a person may aim to inform someone else about himself without using signs designating himself; he may for instance write a poem praising the moon and hope that the reader will regard the production of the poem as an expressive sign signifying something about the author; here the production of appraisers is used to accomplish the goal of conveying information. For such reasons it is wise to distinguish the mode of signifying of signs from the uses to

which they may be put, even though it is true that each kind of sign is primarily (and in general, most adequately) used for the accomplishment of a certain pur-

pose. Corresponding to the primary usages of signs are various kinds of adequacy. There are no satisfactory terms in common employment to mark these distinctions. “Truth” is often a synonym for the adequacy of a sign, but since the term frequently blurs the distinction between denotative reliability and adequacy, it had best be avoided as a synonym for “adequacy.” We shall somewhat arbitrarily call a sign that is informatively adequate “convincing”; “effective” will be used for valuative adequacy, “persuasive” for incitive adequacy, and “correct” for systemic adequacy. A discussion of these types of adequacy will supply an opportunity to expand the treatment of sign usage, and to consider the relations of such usage to the topics of truth, knowledge, and belief, Informative Adequacy: Convincingness

order to inform someone else of some-

In the informative use of signs, signs are

thing, and yet it may happen that the sign does not operate in that process as a designator for the someone in question. Here a sign used to inform someone is not in fact for the person addressed a designa-

produced in order to cause someone to act as if a certain situation has certain characteristics.

If food

is present

in

a

certain place, then to produce signs so that a dog will behave to the given pan as

PRAGMATISM

294 containing food would be to use these signs informatively, that is, to inform the

dog that food was in the pan in question. Signs may be used by one organism to inform other organisms or to inform itself, as where one makes a note of something observed in order to inform oneself at a later time of what was observed. In the informative use of signs the producer of a sign seeks to cause the interpreter to act as if some present, past, or future situation

had such and such characteristics. The information which is thus given may be of various kinds. Signs may be used to inform someone about the physical environment, or about certain needs, or how certain objects are related to the

satisfaction of needs, or the preferential status which certain objects have for certain organisms, or what someone holds to be desirable, or the characteristics of certain signs. Insofar as signs are used to cause an interpreter to act as if something has certain characteristics they are used

informatively. Signs in any of the modes of signifying may be used informatively. A sign which is iN a given community normally an appraisor may be produced by a given

person in order to cause someone to act as if the producer himself gives to objects the preferential status signified by the

appraisor. Or one may utter a command to inform someone that one wishes a certain action to be performed. Or various grammatical forms may be produced to inform someone how signs are combined in the language in question. In all these cases information is conveyed by the use of appraisors, prescriptors, or formators, and yet that about which information is conveyed is not itself designated by the signs produced, that is, the signs produced are not designators. Nevertheless, designation is always to

some extent involved in the informative use of signs, since the interpreter of the sign must interpret the production of the sign in question designatively even when the sign produced is not itself a designator. If 4A wants to convey information about himself to B by writing a poem praising the moon, then B must interpret the poem as an expressive sign if A’s purpose is to be adequately realized, that is, must take the fact of its production by A as designating something about 4. B of course may not do this, but may remain content with what the poem itself signifies about the moon. For such reasons there is a strong tendency to use directly designative signs where the adequate conveying of information is the main goal sought. Designators do always inform, and hence it is natural that their primary use should be the informative one, even though it remains true that they may be used for other purposes and that other kinds of signs may be used informatively. A sign is informatively adequate (or convincing) when its production causes its interpreter to act as if something has

certain

characteristics.

Since

such

con-

vincingness is a matter of the use of signs, it is not to be confused with the question of the denotative reliability of the signs employed: to inform someone convincingly of something is not necessarily to inform him truly. 4 may convincingly inform B by a poem about himself in the sense of causing B to act toward A as a certain kind of person,

without 4 being in fact such a person. The term “inform” is frequently limited to those cases where the sign is not only adequate, but is “true,” that is, “inform”

is contrasted to “misinform” as “conveying true

information”

is contrasted

to

“conveying false information.” For our purposes it is convenient to distinguish

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AND

SCIENTIFIC

the informative use of signs (and hence

convincingness) from the question of the truth or falsity of the signs used; hence to “misinform” a person deliberately or

unknowingly

is still, in this usage, to

inform him. Signs may be informatively adequate even if the signs in fact denote nothing.

It follows that the test of informative adequacy is simply whether one person by the production of signs causes another to act toward something as having the characteristics which the first person wishes him to believe it has; the signs produced by the first person for this purpose may or may not themselves be designators. Designators are normally the best signs for this purpose, but signs in all the modes of signifying may be informatively adequate, and in some cases non-designative signs may better accomplish informative purposes than designators. The convincingness of signs is ulti-

mately determined by seeing whether their production by one organism causes other organisms to respond to something as having the characteristics which the producer of the signs intends to convey. Valuative Adequacy: Effectiveness The use of signs to cause preferential behavior to certain objects, needs, preferences, responses, or signs is to use signs valuatively. The same purpose may be achieved

by various

other

methods;

we

are here interested only in the use of signs for this purpose. The interpreter that is being influenced may be the producer of the signs himself or other or-

ganisms, and the preferential status which the signs are used to induce may be one which has already been accorded by the organism or may itself be built up as a result of a complex sign-process. Signs in any of the modes of signifying

METHOD

295

may be used valuatively. 4 may attempt to cause B to give a preferential status to something or other merely by designating the something in question—by stating, for instance, its relation to certain needs of B in the hope that B will then accord the status in question to what is designated in virtue of its effects on his needs. Or A may demand by prescriptors that B give to the something the preferential status intended. Even formators may occasionally be used in this connection, as when A presents to B certain formatively signified arrangements of signs in the hope that B will then adopt such arrangements in his own sign-producing behavior. Appraisors, however, are the most natural kinds of signs to use valuatively, since if a sign is an appraisor to its interpreter it does in fact dispose its interpreter to give a preferential status to what is signified. Therefore A may use signs which to B are appraisors in order to induce the desired preferential behavior, or may at least use signs which in the linguistic community to which they both belong are normally

appraisive, hoping that such signs will in the particular instance of their appearance call out in B the preferential behavior which they normally evoke in members of this community. In reading a poem in which suffering is presented as of great positive significance, the reader (as a member of a linguistic community) signifies suffering as having such signifcance, If he himself accords to suffering the importance signified, he may deliberately seek poems of this kind as a way of evoking, strengthening, and integrating his own attitudes; if such is not the case he, as a reader, nevertheless participates for a moment in a sign-process in which suffering is signified as having positive significance. It may or may not result

that he henceforth in his overt behavior

PRAGMATISM

296 gives to suffering the significance signi-

fied. A may present B with such a poem in order to determine the place suffering

will be accorded by B, or B may himself seek out or write such poems in order to

call out or to create in himself an attitude of a certain sort.

The degree to which a sign gives to something the preferential status it is used

to establish measures its effectiveness or valuative adequacy. The effectiveness of various kinds of signs will vary with individual

and

for instance,

social

circumstances.

the appraisors

If,

of a com-

munity at a given time have lost much of their interpersonal character, then the establishment of preferential behavior may perhaps be done most effectively by the use of primarily designative signs. Effectiveness is a different kind of adequacy than convincingness, yet in various ways it often depends on the latter. For signs may not be valuatively adequate unless they or other signs convincingly communicate the where and

may be signs in any mode of signifying, but the process eventuates in the estab-

lishment of appraisive ascriptors. Evaluation is not itself restricted to the valuative use of signs, but the appraisors which result may then in turn be used valuatively. Evaluation is itself only one of the ways in which the preferences of organisms are formed, just as the valuative use of signs is only one of the ways in which something or other is given a preferential place in behavior. The ade-

quacy of evaluation rests ultimately on the relation of something to some need of the organism, while the valuative adequacy of signs is restricted to the specific question as to whether they are effective in achieving the purpose of inducing some organism to accord to something or other a desired preferential behavior. An effective sign in this sense of the term may or may not be positively evaluated, that is, given a preferential status with respect to other needs and purposes.

what of that to which it is desired to

Incitive Adequacy: Persuasiveness

cause preferential behavior. And since the preferential status accorded to things is linked—though often remotely—with the. organism, the effectiveness of signs is often dependent upon the denotation (and not merely the convincingness) of certain designators, for if certain objects appraised as significant do not in fact meet the needs of their interpreters, then the appraisors may well lose their effectiveness. An individual may use signs valuatively with respect to himself as well as to others. The process of determining what preferential status will be accorded to some-

In the incitive use of signs, signs are produced in order to determine how the interpreter of the sign is to act to something, that is, to call out more or less specific responses. The aim may be merely to limit the responses to those of some behavior-family orto incite some particular response-sequence within a_ be havior-family: thus 4 may wish B to come to him and may or may not specify the particular manner in which he is to come. In the incitive use of signs the aim is to direct behavior into definite channels, and not merely to give information or to determine the preferential status of some-

thing or other (whether. objects, needs,

thing or other.

preferences, responses, signs) may be called, insofar as it is carried out by signs, evaluation. The signs used in evaluation

Once again, signs in all the modes of signifying may be used for incitive purposes. One may merely designate the con-

way in which they satisfy needs of the

LOGIC,

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AND

SCIENTIFIC

sequences of performing a certain action or the relative efficacy of one mode of action to another in reaching a certain end, hoping that the desire of the interpreter for such consequences or for efficient ways of gaining them will cause him to act in the intended way. Appraisors can be used to signify a preferential status for the desired way of acting or for the need which is served by such ways of acting, in the hope that the intended action may thus be performed by the interpreter. Even formative ascriptors

may be produced as a means of causing the interpreter himself henceforth to: produce signs according to the formula in question. But since prescriptors are signs which do tend to invoke determinate responses, they are the signs primarily used for incitive purposes: 4 will most frequently present B with signs which are commonly prescriptive in the linguistic

community of which they are both members in the expectation that the signs will in the particular case in question cause B to act in the intended way. As a member of the linguistic community, B will have aroused in himself the tendencies to action which the signs normally provoke; whether he himself will actually respond in the intended way will depend upon many factors, such as the needs operative in him at the given moment. The incitive adequacy of signs has been called persuasiveness. The relative persuasiveness of different kinds of signs will vary with circumstances. Normally prescriptors are ‘highest in persuasiveness,

since they do tend to invoke specific actions. But in a time where the customary ways of acting have become uncertain, it may well be that signs other than

prescriptors have the greater persuasiveness: it may be more persuasive to describe the consequences of a certain action

METHOD

297

than to command the action directly. The relation

between

the producer

and the

interpreter of the sign is also relevant. A parent may be able to control the behavior of a young child by a command which would be unsuccessful when used

with an adult rival. We have seen that the appraisor frequently involves designators, and that the prescriptor frequently rests on designators and appraisors. For this reason the persuasiveness of a prescriptor often depends upon the ability to convince the interpreter one is trying to influence that certain designators are reliable and that certain appraisors coincide with the preferential status which he himself accords to what is designated. The process of persuasion may therefore require the adequate use of designators and appraisors. Persuasiveness is thus often connected with the convincing and effective use of other signs: often the interpreter must be adequately informed and certain preferential statuses adequately established in order for the signs used to be persuasive. Often the preliminary situation is prepared, as in the case of the soldier trained to obey commands without hesitation. But

in other

cases

this

is not

so, and

persuasion can only be effected if certain needs are first made operative in the interpreter by adequately using designative and appraisive signs. It may even be necessary to cause the interpreter himself to undergo a complicated process of evaluation before the signs with which he is confronted become persuasive (inci-

tively adequate). A person may use signs incitively with respect to himself as well as to other persons. The process is not essentially different in the two cases, though in inciting behavior in oneself the signs used need not be linguistic signs. A person

PRAGMATISM

298

may hang on his wall a motto to incite

various sign devices. One might say to

recurrently a certain kind of behavior in

someone:

himself or he may go through a complex

related in the present situation that if one does not denote then the other °

process of evaluation before he is able to provide himself with signs persuasively adequate, as in the case where decisions have to be made which determine the whole direction of his life. Here too he must often first find true and convincing designators and effective appraisors before he attains the convictions and the commitments which permit the appearance of chosen lines of actions, and prescriptors which then persuasively incite the course of behavior which he has chosen. Systemic Adequacy: Correctness The systemic use of signs is the use of signs to systematize (organize) behavior

which other signs tend to provoke. The limitation to sign-behavior distinguishes the systemic use of signs from other attempts to organize behavior. One may, for instance, attempt to inculcate in a person by religious discourse a certain need as basic in his system of needs, and in this way to organize or systematize the needs and behavior of the individual, but such a use of signs would be incitive and not systemic as the term is here used. In the systemic use of signs the aim is simply to organize sign-produced behavior, that is, to organize the interpretants of other signs. This may be done with respect to all kinds and combinations of signs, and by the use of signs in the various modes of signifying. Suppose that there are two signs, S, and S,, which designate respectively the presence of food in two places. Then a particular relation between the two interpretants of these signs (the relation, say, of exclusive alternation) may be set up by

“The

signs S, and S, are so

denotes, but not both.” Or one might say: “It is good when signs S, and S, both occur to seek food in one of the two

designated places, and if (and only if) food is not found there to seek food in

the other place.” Or an action might be prescribed: “When S, and S, occur together, seek food in one of the two designated places and seek food in the

other if (and only if) food is not so found.” Finally, one may simply say, by the use of the formator “or,” “S, or S,.” In these cases signs in different modes of signifying are all used to organize in the same way the sign-behavior (the interpretants) caused by S,; and Sp. Since formators by their very nature affect the interpretants of the signs with which they are combined, they are especially economical

and trustworthy signs for the systemic use. But they are not the only signs that may be used in this way. Just as-formators presuppose signs in the other modes of signifying, so does the systemic use of signs minister to the other uses. Especially does it serve as a way of increasing the adequacy of other signs. A statement can often be made more

convincing

by

linking

it with

designators which already function adequately, showing that it is an implicate

of statements which are themselves convincing. If an interpreter is convinced by

statements X and Y, and if it can be shown that statement Z is implied by X and Y, then the chance that Z will be convincing is greatly strengthened. Similarly, if X and Y are shown to imply a Z that is convincing to the interpreter, then X and Y are made more convincing to

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

METHOD

299

the interpreter in question. Thus by the use

of signs are each interdependent in their

of formative ascriptors such as occur in deduction, to relate statements systemically, the informative use of signs is often rendered more adequate. Later we will examine how formative ascriptors are especially serviceable in this connection. Here it is only necessary to call attention to the fact, and to stress the point that such ascriptors serve not only the informative use but also the valuative and incitive uses. An appraisor may more effectively be used to induce a desired appraisal if it is shown to be implied by appraisors that are antecedently effective,

respective

and a prescriptor may

be made

more

persuasive by showing that it is a special instance of a prescriptor which is already persuasive to the interpreter one is attempting to influence. Insofar as signs are systemically adequate they are called (though not very appropriately) correct. Such adequacy not

merely influences the other kinds of adequacy, but is itself dependent upon them. Systemic adequacy may require a long preliminary process in which the person addressed must be stimulated by convincing, effective, and persuasive signs in various: modes of signifying before engaging in the intended organization of his sign-behavior. The various kinds of sign adequacy are thus interrelated and interdependent. Each may lend its support to the others and inadequacy in one respect may lead to inadequacy in any other respect. And just as signs in all the modes of signifying are frequently necessary to the adequate control of behavior,

the use of signs to control the behavior of an interpreter frequently requires that all of the four primary uses of signs be present and adequately performed. The modes of signifying and the primary uses

domains

interlocked

THE

and

each

with

the other.

.

.

-

domain

.

SCOPE AND IMPORT. SEMIOTIC

is

.

OF

Pragmatics, Semantics, and Syntactics In Foundations

of the Theory of Signs

(p. 6), the three terms in question were defined as follows: pragmatics as the study of “the relation of signs to interpreters,” semantics as the study of “the relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable,” syntactics as the study of “the formal relations of signs to one another.” Later analysis has shown that these definitions need refinement.

Even

as

they

stand,

how-

ever, they give no warrant for their utilization as a classification of kinds of signs (“pragmatical signs,’ “semantical signs,” “syntactical signs”); such extension of their signification is questionable,

since it may blur the distinction between signs in various modes of signifying and the signs which make up pragmatics, semantics, and syntactics conceived as the three divisions of semiotic. Hence we shall not employ such an expression as

“syntactical sign,” since doubt can then arise whether it designates a kind of sign (say, formators) or a sign within the part of semiotic distinguished as syntactics. The terms “pragmatics,” “semantics, and “syntactics” need clarification, however, even when restricted to differentiations of the field of semiotic. Carnap formulates these distinctions in the following way: If we are analyzing a language, then we are concerned, of course, with expressions. But

we

need not

necessarily also deal with

PRAGMATISM

300 speakers and designata. Although these factors are present whenever language is used, we may abstract from*one or both of them in what we intend to say about the language in question. Accordingly, we distinguish three fields of investigation of languages. If in an investigation explicit reference is made to the speaker, or, to put it in more general terms, to the user of a language, then we assign it to the field of pragmatics. (Whether in this case reference to designata is made or not makes no difference for this classification.) If we abstract

from the user of the language and analyze only the expressions and their designata, we are in the field of semantics. And if, finally, we abstract from the designata also and analyze only the relations between the expressions, we are in (logical) syntax. The whole science of language, consisting of the three parts mentioned, is called semiotic," In terms of the approach of the present study, the indicated division of the fields of semiotic needs certain further alterations: the restriction of semiotic to a study of language must be removed, the study of the structure of languages other than the scientific must be made possible, other modes of signification than the designative must be dealt with in semantics, and this in turn requires some modification of the formulation of pragmatics.

The

following

definitions

retain

the

their relation to the behavior they occur.

in which

When so conceived, pragmatics, semantics, and syntactics are all interpretable within a behaviorally oriented semiotic, syntactics studying the ways in which signs are combined, semantics studying the signification of signs, and so the interpretant behavior without which there is no signification, pragmatics studying

the origin, uses, and effects of signs within the total behavior of the interpreters of signs. The difference lies not in the presence or absence of behavior but in the sector of behavior under consideration. The full account of signs will involve all three considerations. It is legitimate and often convenient to speak of a particular semiotical investigation as falling within pragmatics, semantics, or syntactics. Nevertheless, in general it is more

important to keep in mind the field of semiotic as a whole, and to bring to bear upon specific problems all that is relevant

to their solution. The present study has deliberately preferred to emphasize the unity of semiotic rather than break each

problem into its pragmatical, semantical, and syntactical components. .

Semiotic

.

as Unification

.

.

.

of Science

essential features of the prevailing classi-

The scope of semiotic has now been sufficiently explicated: semiotic is the

fication,

science of signs, whether animal or hu-

while

freeing

it from

certain

restrictions and ambiguities: pragmatics is that portion of semiotic which deals with the origin, uses, and effects of signs within the behavior in which they occur; semantics deals with the signification of signs in all modes of signifying; syntactics deals with combinations of signs without regard for their specific significations or l[ntrodtction to Semantics, p. 9.

man, language or non-language, true or false, adequate or inadequate, healthy or pathic. There remains for consideration the question of the theoretical and practical importance of this discipline. Its theoretical import will be discussed in relation to the question as to the role of semiotic in the unification of knowledge,

and

in particular in its bearing upon

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

the treatment of psychology, humanistic studies, and philosophy in such unifica-

tion; its practical import will be discussed in relation to the. problems of the orientation of the individual, social organization, and education. As a science, semiotic shares whatever

importance a science has. As it develops it will furnish increasingly reliable knowledge about sign-processes. Men _ have sought this knowledge in various ways in

many cultures over many centuries; a scientific approach to this field but continues in this domain the development which is characteristic of every science—

astronomy, chemistry, medicine, sociology, psychology, and all the rest. A scientific semiotic is at the minimum simply one more

extension

of scientific

techniques

to fields of human interest. It needs no

METHOD

301

language of science and seeks whatever relations can be found between the terms of the special sciences and between the laws of these sciences; this activity is

essentially the descriptive semiotic of the language of science, though it may issue in suggestions for the improvement of this language. Semiotic serves in the unification of science at both levels: it provides a comprehensive language for talking

about

a

field

of

phenomena

(sign

phenomena) which has been looked at piecemeal by various special disciplines; it provides an instrument for analysis of

the relations between all special scientific languages. It is both a phase in the unifcation of science and an instrument

for

describing and furthering the unification of science. The sense in which semiotic is itself a

special justification to those who have the scientific enterprise at heart. But beyond this, semiotic has a special importance in any program for the unification (systematization) of scientific knowledge. The tendency toward the unification of science is inherent in scientific activity, since science is not content with

phase of the unification

of knowledge

a mere collection of statements known to

show,

be true, but aims at an organization of its knowledge. This unification occurs at two levels: on the one hand scientists seek knowledge concerning a subject matter which for various historical reasons has been broken up into separate fields studied by separate groups of investigators, Historically, for instance, the process of cell division has been studied by biologists and the process of surface tensions by physicists; today the biophysicist seeks comprehensive laws of surface tension which will apply to cell division. The other level of the unification of science is distinctively semiotical: it takes the existing

material may be organized under a common terminology within a general theory of behavior.

should be evident from all that precedes,

and needs no elaboration. For our discussions have brought together material which has been approached in isolation by philosophers, logicians, linguists, estheticians, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, and they

at least in principle,

how

this

The role which such a science performs in the study of the relations between all other sciences needs, however, to be considered in some detail. In the unity of science movement, as represented by the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, there are four major points at which difficulties and doubts have arisen: the relation of the “formal sciences” to the “natural

sciences,”

the

relation

of psy-

chology to the biological and_ physical sciences, the relation of humanistic studies

PRAGMATISM

302 to science, and the relation of philosophy

future, to construct

to

Semiotic

applicable to various subject matters and

all these

allowing the formulation of general laws holding for these subject matters. Unified

systematized

throws

knowledge.

considerable ‘light

on

problems and facilitates a thoroughgoing unification of scientific knowledge. The first of the problems—the relation of the “formal sciences” to the “natural sciences’ —has

already

been

discussed

tangentially, and needs only to be restated in terms of the present context. The ques-

tion is whether a unification of science can in principle eventuate in one system of terms and laws or whether an encyclopedia of unified science would stand on the shelf in two volumes, one a unification of logic and mathematics on the pattern of Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, the other a unification of the sciences of nature on the pattern of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The difficulty in a straightforward answer to this question comes in part

from the ambiguity in the terms “unification”

and

“science.”

The

work

of

Russell and Whitehead shows that it is possible to bring into one system of postulates and theorems many systems of formative ascriptors which have had an independent origin and development; it does not show that all systems of mathe-

science

a single language

is systematized

science;

it does

not exclude the possibility of alternative

systematizations. Now in this sense of unification it seems possible to unify (systematize) mathematics and natural science, and semiotic is itself the evidence of this possibility. For semiotic provides a set of terms applicable to all signs and hence to the signs of both mathematics and natural science, This does not mean that the signs — of these two domains are the same kind of signs; the distinction between formative ascriptors and designative ascriptors

protects us from this error. Nor does it mean that mathematics is a natural science; mathematical discourse is distinguished in our account from scientific discourse, just as, say, poetic discourse is distinguished from scientific discourse. But it does mean that insofar as we have knowledge about mathematics this knowledge is essentially of the same kind as all scientific knowledge, resting in this case on evidence drawn from the signification of signs; hence this knowledge is in principle incorporable within a system of

matics are part of a single system which

unified science. If we do not confuse the

includes, say, Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries. In the same way the

existence of various types of discourse with knowledge, the recognition that mathematics is not physics or poetry, and

work of Newton showed that statements about the motion of astronomical bodies and statements about the motions of bodies on the earth were instances of general laws of motion; it did not show that there were no mutually exclusive languages possible for physics. The unification of science then does not mean that there are no alternative languages, but

that a Euclidian geometry is not a non-

that it is possible to some

conclude

extent

at

present, and to an unknown extent in the

Euclidean geometry, is no obstacle to the

unification of knowledge. How far this unification can in fact be carried out remains an open question; semiotic, even its present stage, should give some assur-

ance of the feasibility of the program. So with regard to our first problem we between

that the confusing the

“formal

sciences”

distinction and

the

LOGIC,

“natural rather

SEMANTICS,

sciences” in terms

should

be

AND

SCIENTIFIC

couched

of the legitimate

dis-

tinction between mathematical discourse and scientific discourse,

and that when

this is done no obstacle is presented by this difference for the unification of scientific knowledge. Language has its mathematical portion and its scientific portion; the nature of each and their relations can be scientifically studied within semiotic,

itself a language

with a mathematical

subdivision (logic or pure semiotic) and a

scientific subdivision (descriptive semiotic). The fact that mathematics is used by a scientist and yet is itself not knowledge

METHOD

303

of the subject matter which the scientist studies raises no more of a problem than the fact that the microscope used by a scientist is not itself a scientific statement or a part of his scientific knowledge. And since semiotic is itself a science, its nature

and its relations to other sciences can in turn be studied scientifically. Semiotic then is not only a science incorporable within unified science, but is able both to

show the distinctive character of mathematics and the possibility of a single unified science which includes knowledge of mathematics along with knowledge of other subject matters.

Ethics and Theory of Value DQODODOHDOHDBODVOHNVODHVDVHOOocosvevoovsowvma

Theory of Valuation JOHN DEWEY This objection definitely puts before us for consideration the question of the relations

(1) There are propositions which are not merely about valuations that have actually occurred (about, i.e., prizings, desires, and interests that have taken place

to each other of the categories of means and end. In terms of the dual meaning of “valuation” already mentioned, the question of the relation of prizing and appraising to one another is explicitly raised. For, according to the objection, appraising applies only to means, while prizing applies to things that are ends, so that a difference must be recognized between valuation in its full pregnant sense and evaluation as a secondary and derived affair. Let the connection between prizing and valuation be admitted and also the connection between desire (and interest) and

in the past) but which describe and define certain things as good, fit, or proper in a definite existential relation: these propositions, moreover, are generalizations, since they form rules for the proper use of materials. (2) The existential relation in question is that of means-ends or means-consequences. (3) These propositions in their generalized form may rest upon scientifically warranted empirical propositions and are themselves capable of being tested by observation of results actually attained as

compared with those intended.

prizing. The problem as to the relation be-

The objection brought against the view just set forth is that it fails to distinguish between things that are good and right in and of themselves, immediately, intrinsically, and things that are simply good for something else. In other words, the

tween appraisal of things as means and prizing of things as ends then takes the following form: Are desires and interests (“‘likings,” if one prefers that word), which directly effect an institution of end-values, independent of the appraisal of things as

latter are useful for attaining the things

means or are they intimately influenced by

which have, so it is said, value in and of themselves, since they are prized for their own sake and not as means to something

this appraisal? If a person, for example, finds after due investigation that an im-

else. This distinction between two differ-

cure the conditions that are the means re-

ent meanings of “good” (and “right”) is, it is claimed, so crucial for the whole theory of valuation and values that failure to make the distinction destroys the validity of the conclusions that have been set forth.

quired for realization of a desire (including perhaps sacrifice of other end-values that might be obtained by the same expenditure of effort), does that fact react to modify his original desire and hence, by definition,

mense amount of effort is required to pro-

304

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

his valuation? A survey of what takes place

395

alternative desires (and hence end-values)

in the long run, or after survey of all conditions, merge so readily into the word “wise” suggests (though, of course, it does not prove) that ends framed in separation from consideration of things as means are

in terms of the conditions that are the

foolish to the point of irrationality.

means

2. Common sense regards some desires and interests as short-sighted, “blind,” and others, in contrast, as enlightened, farsighted. It does not for a moment lump all desires and interests together as having the same status with respect to end-values. Discrimination between their’ respective

in any deliberate activity provides an afirm-

ative answer to this question. For what is deliberation except weighing of various

means,

of their execution, and which, as determine

the consequences

actu-

ally arrived at? There can be no control of the operation of foreseeing consequences

(and hence of forming ends-in-view) save in terms of conditions that operate as the causal conditions of their attainment. The proposition in which any object adopted as an end-in-view is statable (or explicitly

stated) is warranted in just the degree to which existing conditions have been surveyed and appraised in their capacity as means. The sole alternative to this statement is that no deliberation whatsoever occurs, no ends-in-view are formed, but a

person acts directly upon whatever impulse happens to present itself. Any survey of the experiences in which ends-in-view are forthed, and in which earlier impulsive tendencies are shaped through deliberation into a chosen desire,

reveals that the object finally valued as an end to be reached is determined in its concrete makeup by appraisal of existing conditions as means. However, the habit of completely separating the conceptions of ends from that of means is so ingrained

because of a long philosophical tradition that further discussion is required. 1. The common assumption that there is a sharp separation between things, on the one hand, as useful or helpful, and, on

the other hand, as intrinsically good, and hence that there exists a separation between propositions as to what is expedient, pru-

dent, or advisable and what is inherently desirable,

does

not, in any

case, state

a

self-evident truth. The fact that such words as “prudent,” “sensible,” and “expedient,”

shortsightedness and farsightedness is made precisely on the ground of whether the object of a given desire is viewed as, in turn,

itself a conditioning means of further consequences. Instead of taking a laudatory view of “immediate” desires and valuations, common sense treats refusal to medi-

ate as the very essence of short-view judgment. For treating the end as merely immediate and exclusively final is equivalent to refusal to consider what will happen after and because a particular end is reached. 3. The words “inherent,” “intrinsic,” and “immediate” are used ambiguously, so that a fallacious conclusion is reached. Any quality or property that actually belongs to any object or event is properly said to be immediate, inherent, or intrinsic. The

fallacy consists in interpreting what is designated by these terms as out of relation to

anything else and hence as absolute. For example, means are by definition relational, mediated, and mediating, since they are intermediate between an existing situation and a situation that is to be brought into existence by their use. But the relational character of the things that are employed as means does not prevent the things from having their own immediate qualities. In case the things in question are prized and cared for, then, according to the theory that

PRAGMATISM

306

connects the property of value with prizing, they necessarily have an immediate

quality of value. The notion that, when means and instruments are valued, the value-qualities which result are only instrumental is hardly more than a bad pun. There is nothing in the nature of prizing or desiring to prevent their being directed to things which are means, and there is nothing in the nature of means to militate

against their being desired and prized. In empirical fact, the measure

of the value

a person attaches to a given end is not what he says about its preciousness but the care

he devotes to obtaining and using the means without which it cannot be attained. No case of notable achievement can be cited in any field (save as a matter of sheer acci-

dent) in which the persons who brought about the end did not give loving care to the instruments and agencies of its production. The dependence of ends attained upon means employed is such that the statement just made reduces in fact to a tautology. Lack of desire and interest are

proved by neglect of, and indifference to, required means. As soon as an attitude of desire and interest has been developed, then, because without full-hearted attention an end which is professedly prized will not be attained, the desire and interest in question automatically attach themselves to whatever other things are seen to be required means of attaining the end.

For the time being, producing or obtaining those means is the end-in-view. The notion that only that which is out of relation | to everything else can justly be called in-

herent is not only itself absurd but 1s contradicted by the very theory that connects the value of objects as ends with desire and interest, for this view expressly makes the value of the end-object relational, so that,

if the inherent is identified with the nonrelational, there are, according to this view, no inherent values at all. On the other hand,

if it is the fact that the quality exists in this case, because that to which it belongs is conditioned by a relation, then the relational character of means cannot be brought forward as evidence that their value is not inherent. The same considerations apply to the terms “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” as

applied to value-qualities. Strictly speaking, the phrase “extrinsic value” involves a contradiction in terms. Relational properties

do not lose their intrinsic quality of being just what they are because their coming into being is caused by something “extrin-

sic.” The theory that such is the case would terminate logically in the view that there are no intrinsic qualities whatever, since it

can be shown that such intrinsic qualities as red, sweet, hard, etc., are causally con-

ditioned as to their occurrence. The trouble, once more, is that a dialectic of

concepts has taken the place of examination of actual empirical facts. The extreme

The considerations that apply to “imme-

instance of the view that to be intrinsic is

diate” apply also to “intrinsic” and “inherent.” A quality, including that of a value, is inherent if it actually belongs to

to be out of any relation is found in those writers who hold that, since values are intrinsic, they cannot depend upon any rela-

something, and the question of whether or

tion whatever, and certainly not upon a

not it belongs is one of fact and not a ques-

relation

tion that can be decided by dialectical manipulation of the concept of inherency.

school attacks those who connect valueproperties with desire and interest on exactly the same ground that the latter equate the distinction between the values of means and ends with the distinction between in-

If one has an ardent desire to obtain certain things as means, then the quality of value belongs to, or inheres in, those things.

to

human:

beings.

Hence

this

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

307

strumental and intrinsic values. The views

to form desire and interest (and the objects

of this extreme nonnaturalistic school may, accordingly, be regarded as a definite exposure of what happens when an analysis of the abstract concept of “intrinsicalness”

they involve) on the basis of conditions that operate either as obstacles (negatively

valued) or as positive resources. The difference between reasonable and unreason-

is substituted for analysis of empirical occurrences.

able desires and interests is precisely the

The more overtly and emphatically the valuation of objects as ends is connected with desire and interest, the more evident

ally and are not reconstituted through consideration of the conditions that will

it should be that, since desire and interest

are ineffectual save as they co-operatively interact with environing conditions, valuation of desire and interest, as means correlated with other means, is the sole con-

dition for valid appraisal of objects as ends. If the lesson were learned that the object of scientific knowledge is im any case an ascertained correlation of changes, it would be seen, beyond the possibility of denial,

that anything taken as end is in its own content or constituents a correlation of the energies, personal and extra-personal, which operate as means. An end as an actual consequence, as an existing outcome,

is, like

any other occurrence which is scientifically analyzed, nothing but the interaction of the conditions that bring it to pass. Hence it follows necessarily that the zdea of the object of desire and interest, the end-in-view as distinct from the end or outcome actu-

ally effected, is warranted in the precise degree in which it is formed in terms of these operative conditions,

4. The chief weakness of current theories of valuation which relate the latter to desire and interest is due to failure to make an empirical analysis of concrete desires

and interests as they actually exist. When such an analysis is made, certain relevant considerations at once present themselves. (i) Desires are subject to frustration and interests are subject to defeat. The likeli-

hood of the occurrence of failure in attaining desired ends is in direct ratio to failure

difference between those which arise casu-

actually decide the outcome and _ those which are formed on the basis of existing liabilities and potential resources. That desires as they first present themselves are the product of a mechanism consisting of native organic tendencies and acquired habits is an undeniable fact. All growth in maturity consists in not immediately giving way to such tendencies but in remaking them in their first manifestation through consideration of the consequences they will occasion if they are acted upon—an operation which is equivalent to judging or evaluating them as means operating in connection with extra-personal conditions as also means. Theories of valuation which relate it. to desire and interest cannot both

eat their cake and have it. They cannot continually

oscillate between

a view

of

desire and interest that identifies the latter with impulses just as they happen to occur (as products of organic mechanisms) and a view of desire as a modification of a raw impulse through foresight of its outcome; the latter alone being desire, the whole difference between impulse and desire is made by the presence in desire of an end-in-view, of objects as foreseen consequences. The foresight will be dependable in the degree in which it is constituted by examination of the conditions that will in fact decide the outcome. If it seems that this point is being hammered in too insistently, it is

because the issue at stake is nothing other and nothing less than the possibility of distinctive valuation-propositions. For it can-

PRAGMATISM

308

not be denied that propositions having evidential warrant and experimental test are possible in the case of evaluation of things as means. Hence it follows that, if these propositions enter into the formation of the interests and desires which are valuations of ends, the latter are thereby consti-

tuted the subject matter of authentic empirical affrmations and denials. (ii) We commonly speak of “learning from experience” and the “maturity” of an individual or a group. What do we mean by such expressions? At the very least, we mean that in the history of individual persons and of the human race there takes place a change from original, compara-

tively unreflective, impulses and hard-andfast habits to desires and interests that incorporate the results of critical inquiry. When this process is examined, it is seen to take place chiefly on the basis of careful observation of differences found between desired and proposed ends (ends-in-view) and attained ends or actual consequences. Agreement between what is wanted and anticipated and what is actually obtained confirms the selection of conditions which operate as means to the desired end; discrepancies, which are experienced as frus- .

trations and defeats, lead to an inquiry to discover the causes of failure. This inquiry consists of more and more thorough examination of the conditions under which impulses and habits are formed and in which they operate. The result is formation of desires and interests which are what they are through the union of the affectivemotor conditions of action with the intellectual or ideational. The latter is there in any case if there is an end-in-view of any sort, no matter how casually formed, while it is adequate in just the degree in which the end is constituted in terms of the conditions of its actualization. For, wherever

there is an end-in-view of any sort what-

ever,

there

is affective-zdeational-motor

activity; or, in terms of the dual meaning of valuation, there is union of prizing and appraising. Observation of results obtained, of actual consequences in their agreement with and difference from ends anticipated or held in view, thus provides the conditions by which desires and interests (and hence valuations) are matured and

tested. Nothing more contrary to common sense can be imagined than the notion that

we are incapable of changing our desires and interests by means of learning what the consequences of acting upon them are, or, as it is sometimes put, of indulging them.

It should not be necessary to point in evidence to the spoiled child and the adult who cannot “face reality.” Yet, as far as valuation and the theory of values are con-

cerned, any theory which isolates valuation of ends from appraisal of means equates the spoiled child and the irresponsible adult to — the mature and sane person.

(iii) Every person in the degree in which he is capable of learning from experience draws a distinction between what is desired and what is desirable whenever he engages in formation and choice of competing desires and interests. There is noth. ing far-fetched or “moralistic” in this statement. The contrast referred to is simply that between the object of a desire as it first presents itself (because of the existing mechanism of impulses.and habits) and the object of desire which emerges as a revision of the first-appearing impulse, after the latter is critically judged in reference to the conditions which will decide the actual result. The “desirable,” or the object which should be desired (valued), does not descend out of the a priori blue nor descend as an imperative from a moral Mount Sinai. It presents itself because past experience

has shown that hasty action upon uncriticized desire leads to defeat and possibly to

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

399

catastrophe. The “desirable” as distinct from the “desired” does not then designate something at large or a priori. It points to the difference between the operation and consequences of unexamined impulses and those of desires and interests that are the product of investigation of conditions and consequences. Social conditions and pressures are part of the conditions that affect the execution of desires. Hence they have to be taken into account in framing ends in

proverbial sayings which in effect set forth the necessity of not treating desires and

terms of available means. But the distinc-

cost has been counted”—are but a few of

tion between the “is” in the sense of the object of a casually emerging desire and the “should be” of a desire framed in relation to actual conditions is a distinction which in any case is bound to offer itself as human beings grow in maturity and part with the childish disposition to “indulge” every impulse as it arises. Desires and interests are, as we have seen, themselves causal conditions of results. As such they are potential means and have to be appraised as such. This statement is but a restatement of points already made. But it is worth making because it forcibly indicates how far away some of the theoretical views of valuation are from practical common-sense attitudes and _be-

the many maxims. They are summed up in the old saying, “Respice finem”—a say-

’

liefs. There

is an

indefinite

number

of

interests as final in their first appearance but of treating them as means—that is, of appraising them and forming objects or ends-in-view on the ground of what consequences they will tend to produce in practice. “Look before you leap”; “Act in haste, repent at leisure”; “A stitch in time saves nine”; “When angry count ten”; “Do not put your hand to the plow until the

ing which marks the difference between simply Aaving an end-in-view for which any desire suffices, and looking, examin-

ing, to make sure that the consequences that will actually result are such as will be actually prized and valued when they

occur. Only the exigencies of a preconceived theory (in all probability one seriously infected by the conclusions of an uncritically accepted “subjectivistic” psychology) will ignore the concrete differences that are made in the content of “likings” and “prizings,” and of desires and interests, by evaluating them in their respective causal capacities when they are taken as means.

Esthetics . ’wON~'—D ODB voecvvreeOOvo OHDB HVBOOOVODVOoo OO DWODODOH

Esthetic Judgment CG, Lael 1. We have, so far, been mainly occupied with what might be called the phenomenology of the esthetic; with the nature and conditions of the esthetic in experience. And little has been said, except incidentally, about esthetic judgment. Immediate prizings of the directly presented as such, are not judgments. If expression is given to them, then what is expressed is a value-

Ey iS dence of value in the object; it is even the

best possible kind of evidence, since such value-findings represent the ruling confirmations of value in the thing (whereas for non-value properties like hardness, the apprehension of felt hardness upon contact would not constitute such a ruling confir-

mation). But the single value-finding in experience would never be conclusive evi-

quality of the experience as given, or of

dence of objective value in the thing: in any

the merely phenomenal content of it. The direct finding of positive value-quality may be evidence of an objective value-property in the thing presented; as felt hardness in experience or seen redness may be evidence that the thing presented has the objective property of being hard or being red.

instance, a value-judgment so based may be in error, and it is always subject to pos-

sible correction by later experience. It is precisely at this point that value-

theory can so easily go wrong by failing to distinguish between the intrinsic value which lies in the quality of experience itself and the property of inherent value in the object, which consists of a potentiality for

And if we pass readily and thoughtlessly from apprehension of the phenomenal qualities of experience-content to a judgment of the objective properties of the thing, that is commonplace and understandable, in the case of value as in these others. It represents a habit of interpretation, due to and

such experience in the presence of it. A wrong decision here makes all the differ-

in large measure justified by the general

predications as merely

character of pertinent experience in the

cognitive and lacking any objective truth or falsity—between that, and the recognition that evaluations of things are objective and cognitive, and are not relative to particular persons or circumstances or occa-

ence between the’ conception of value as subjective and merely relative to particular persons and occasions, and hence of value-

past. But however unmarked and however well warranted this transition from the disclosure of intrinsic value in direct experience to attribution of esthetic or otherwise inherent value in the object, it is one

“emotive,”

non-

sions in any fashion which differentiates

which is validatable only as an inference.

them from attributions of other properties to objects.

The value found in the experience is evi-

310

ESTHETICS Any property of an object is something

determinable through experience, and in that sense definable in terms of the experience which would sufficiently assure

311

independent property of it; one which, like other properties, is tested by experience, but is not relative to any particular experience or to the value-findings

it. It could thus be said to be a poten-

of the individual.

tiality in the object for leading to ex-

Nor is it any mark of the subjective in esthetic or otherwise inherent value that

periences of a specifiable kind under suitable conditions; and could even be said to be relative to experience if one

should choose to use this phrase “relative to” in that somewhat dubious fashion. But a property so specified is not relative to any particular experience, or to experience of any particular person, but is

an independent character of the thing, inasmuch as any particular experience may fail to be indicative of the character

of experience in general to which it is capable of conducing. Further, a property defined as a potentiality of experience is independent and objective in the sense

that any potentiality of a thing depends on what it would, could, might, lead to, but

not necessarily on what it does effect in actual fact. An actual trial of it may happen to be inconclusive or misleading as

to the objective potentiality tested; and at best will be confirmation or disconfir-

there are variable conditions on the side of the subject which affect the apprehension of such value. Remarking such conditions is important in the discussion of

esthetics because they notably affect the practice of the arts and the necessary discipline of those who would enlarge their capacity for esthetic enjoyment or cultivate that discernment by which they may more surely and accurately judge, from a single inspection, the potentialities of an object for their own further value-

findings in the presence of it, and those of other persons. That is, such subjective conditions are important for esthetic evaluation, not because they are conditions of the value in the presented object, but

precisely because they are conditions of any reliable test of a value whose authenticity is still independent of any such single

value-finding.

mation only and not a final verification.

Those who emphasize such “subjective

Furthermore, what potentiality is resident in a thing, is independent of the question

conditions of esthetic value” as if they

whether in point of fact it is tested at all.

of things and to situations in which value

Thus the conception of esthetic or inherent value as constituted by the quality of the particular experience in the presence of the object, represents such a value as relative to the individual subject. And failure to distinguish between the

quality of the experience and the valueproperty attributable to the object, must inevitably lead to such subjectivism. But the conception of it as a potentiality for conducing to certain positive valuequalities in experience, represents esthetic or inherent value in an object as an

were peculiar to this particular property is disclosed,

would

seem

to forget

that

other properties also have their testconditions in terms of the subject or observing organism. That we cannot

reliably determine temperature with cold hands, or judge of shape without reference to our spatial orientation, or tell the

weight of things by looking at them without lifting, is not a consideration affecting the independent reality of color or shape or weight in things, or the potentialities of the objects in question for experience

in general. And one who should express

PRAGMATISM

312

the fact that we cannot observe colors with our eyes shut by saying that open eyes are an essential condition of those situations in which alone color occurs, would at least be using language in a strange fashion. One who makes the correspond-

ing statement concerning esthetic value in objects, is likely to be similarly misleading.

He

stands,

moreover,

in some

danger of the fallacy of subjective rela-

tivism, which says that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that concerning tastes there is no disputing. That value in objects is a potentiality of them for conducing to experience of

positive value-quality, has no such relativistic implication: this property of the object remains just what it is regardless of the question whether the further conditions for such value-realization in experience—those on the side of the subject

—are met in any particular case or not. It likewise avoids any suggestion that the arithmetic of counting noses has any relevance to an inherent value like the esthetic ones.t That a sentimental picture like The Doctor is more widely appre-

ciated than Still Life with Apples, has no bearing on their esthetic rank. And even if the inherent value of tea has no higher significance than that of democratic appreciation (which our Chinese friends will

not admit), still there are such people as tea-tasters, whose discrimination affords a better test of the properties in question than others can make. In measure, the same social process which we rely upon to

elicit the truths of natural science works also in the assessment of esthetic values:

there are those who are especially to be

have a greater breadth of pertinent experience, and perhaps some higher degree

of the requisite powers of discernment, as well as their special place in the continuity of a tradition which represents the social working

of a human

capacity. Their judgment against any number of gathered indiscriminately, something objective which not something relative to and perhaps undiscerning

this social process

critical

may stand as contrary votes because it is is judged, and the particular experience.

If

is less essential and

works less reliably with respect to the esthetic than in the natural sciences, and the connoisseurs are a less surely distinguished class, that fact too has its

explanations: on the one side, the subjective conditions for apprehending the beautiful are somewhat

more

commonly

satisfied than are those for the appreciation of truth in quantum mechanics; and on the other side, there are no crucial experiments in art. In art as in science, there are subjective conditions of the dis-

closure of the properties of things which are in question; and these conditions of discernment are satisfied in varying degree in different experiences and the experi-

ence of different people. But in art as in science, what

these subjective conditions

affect is the discovery and discrimination of the properties of things: they have no part in creating the objective character which is to be discerned and assessed. If it were not for this independent status

of the esthetic qualities of things, training and cultivation of our capacity to discern them would be pointless, and mistakes in

because they

the determination of esthetic value would be impossible. And there can be no implication contrary to this objective char-

1Economic value is peculiar in this respect: being definable in terms of salability, it is thus relative. Certain other social values would also

acter of esthetic value in objects, in the fact that this objective character consists

relied upon

have

a similar

for judgment,

character.

in a potentiality

for the disclosure of

ESTHETICS positive

value

313 in the

presence

of the

object. As we have observed above, other

properties than value are likewise interpretable as potentialities in the object for leading to experiences of a predictable kind; and for other properties also, there are subjective conditions of such experience which confirms the predication of them to the object. The contrary conception that subjective conditions exercise some creativity in the case of values, commonly arises from one of two mistakes; either there is confusion

as to what it is which is judged in a value-judgment, or this term “valuejudgment” (or some synonym) is applied where in fact there is nothing which is judged. If what is to be reported is the value-quality in a present experience, such as our confrontation with an art-object, then no judgment is called for. This valuequality resident in the phenomenal content of the experience itself, is merely found. Applying the term “judgment” to such a direct value-finding is simply a poor and misleading use of the word. This same experience may also have cognitive significance as a clue to or a confirmation of a judgment as to the potentialities of the object for further experience. But such predictive judgment based upon this experience must not be confused with the immediate value-finding within the experience itself: the potentiality judged is a property of the object, and the judgment of it is something calling for confirmation; but the value immediately disclosed belongs to the given experience itself, and the attribution of it neither calls for nor

in which the value directly disclosed in given experience may still be said to be assessed; and second, there is a further

sense in which the esthetic quality of an experience may be judged. Third, the object of esthetic judgment is oftentimes

not a physical thing but something ingredient in it with a quality mental entity. considerations

which is easily confused of experience, or with a The first two of these will be taken up in the

order mentioned. The third of them is incidental to the larger and more important topic of the laws or specific principles of esthetics. 2. We frequently evaluate experiences as such; because having or not having

experiences of a particular character is a matter over which

we have partial con-

trol, and in which

we have a ruling in-

terest. One experience is better than another; characterized by a positive value-

quality which is higher in degree; and we

observed—even though they do not, in the end, imply any qualification of what is

are concerned to make such comparisons of different experiences. Such comparative evaluation is clearly an assessment of a particular kind. Whether or not we call it a judgment, will be a matter of no great moment, provided we are clear as to its nature. Let us first consider an analogue here, which is somewhat simpler. If we are presented with two apples at the same time, we may observe that one is redder than the other; or more accurately, what we may observe directly is that one is redder-looking than the other. We may make direct comparison of the phenomenal or presentational quality of apparent redness and assess the degree in which this characterizes one of these presentational items as compared with the other. Whether such assessment should be called a judgment, is doubtful: the comparison

said above. First, there is a certain sense

being direct, and the items compared be-

could have any confirmation. There are, however, certain complicating considerations which require to be

PRAGMATISM

314 ing directly given, the decision, “This is more red-looking than that,” is subject to no possible error, unless it be one having to do with linguistic expression and not with what is expressed. Perhaps we would

best say that no judgment is involved but only recognition of a presentational fact. The case might, however, be slightly different: the appearance of a presented apple might be compared with that of one seen yesterday. In such a case there definitely would be a judgment, though one of a peculiar sort, because one of the two presentational items to be compared is not now given, and its present memorial

surrogate may fail to coincide with the actual character of what it stands for, in the respect which is pertinent. If, then, I

decide, “This apple looks redder than the one yesterday,’ I have made a judgment

which is subject to possible érror. But the element of judgment in this comparison concerns the absent member of the pair compared. The relation of the now-given item to this absent one calls for judgment, not on account of any possible dubiety about the red appearance presently given but only because it is related to something not now given. The redness of this present appearance is indubitable; but its comparative redness is something judged be-

the judgment, and the red character of the given presentation is not judged but is indubitable.

The assessment of a degree of value in a present experience, differs from assessment of the degree of redness in the presentation of an apple, in two respects. First, if we should say that the redappearance of a presented apple is only apparent redness, then we must observe

that the value-appearance

in a present

experience is not merely apparent value, but actual and intrinsic value; that kind of value in the light of which all other values are to be determined. And second,

while two presentational items within a single given experience might be compared as to their immediate value, the value-quality of one experience cannot be directly compared with that of any other, since no other can be present. When we assess the value-quality of a present experience, we do so in the manner of the

second or the third of the above cases. Thus in assigning a degree of valuequality to present experience, or to the phenomenal content of it, we make a judgment. Yet in the sense pointed out, it is not the present and indubitable value-

quality which is judged, but rather the value-quality of other and absent perience with which, explicitly or

exim-

cause related to something which can be

plicitly, we compare it, which is the sub-

determined only by a judgment. Or the case may be of a third sort: one apple only may be now presented, and I

ject of the judgment.

This

kindof

consideration

has

its

pertinence to assessments of esthetic value.

may assess it as a very red-looking.apple—

Even in cases where what we wish to

implicitly by comparison with the whole

judge esthetically is not the directly given

class of apple-appearances

in my _ past

presentation but the objectively real thing

experience. This assessment of a degree of redness of the present appearance, is plainly a judgment, or involves a judg-

presented, we may make this judgment of

the object mainly or exclusively from the

ment.

of it. Thus

But

again,

it is, in an

obvious

sense, the class of other apple-presentations,

mnemically presented, which is subject of

character of our experience in the presence

our attribution

of esthetic

value to the object may be based on and reflect an assessment of comparative value

ESTHETICS

315

as characterizing our direct experience. And these two somewhat different assessments—of value found in the experience and of value in the real object presented —may fail to be distinguished.

hended quality. It is this immediate valuequality which is the fixed and indubitable element in any comparative assessment of it: the dubitable element or elements, by reason of which evaluation of it may

Thus the directly found value-quality

be a judgment, is not the value attribut-

disclosed

in an

experience

may,

first, be

confused with a comparative assessment of it; and second, this comparative assess-

ment of a value in present experience may be further

confused

value-property with

the

with

the objective

of the presented

result

that

the

object;

value-quality

which is found in experience and not judged, comes to be identified with the objective value of the thing observed,

which

is a property

which

has to be

judged—and may be erroneously judged —because it is not given but only evi-

denced in some measure by the quality of immediate experience. Perhaps this failure to make distinctions which are required,

plays its part in the inappropriate

ex-

tension of the word “judgment” to direct apprehensions of esthetic quality, as well as in the fallacious supposition that the esthetic character of an object is somehow created by the nature of experience in the contemplation of it, or characterizes the ‘subject-object confrontation only, and cannot be attributed to a presented

thing in the same sense as color or shape or other properties.

But one thing at least should remain clear in this whole matter. Wherever there is a judgment of esthetic value in an object, based on the value-character of an immediate experience, or on an assessment of comparative value in the experience itself, it still remains true that the value disclosed in the experience need not be judged. The value directly found need not be assessed in order to be disclosed

and

enjoyed,

other in order

nor

compared

with

to have its own

any appre-

able to this experience which is given but the value attributable to that with which

it may be compared. 3. Turning

to the second

point men-

tioned above: we may observe that even in the sense in which the value of the phenomenal as such, is one which is found and not judged, the esthetic quality of

experience may still be a matter of judgment. If our account of the manner in which esthetic experience is marked off from experiences characterized by other intrinsic values should be correct, then

there is no purely presentational quality which, for example, is sufficient to distinguish genuinely esthetic experience from the non-esthetic satisfaction of an appetite, or the child’s satisfaction in

some novel and intriguing noise, or the writer’s satisfaction in seeing his name in print. Immediate enjoyments, though various in quality, are still too nearly of

one kind to afford any sure indication of the purely esthetic. For that, we must have recourse to criteria which are indirect and reflect, for example, the fact that this kind of experience is one which can be well-maintained instead of ex-

hausting itself soon and leading to dissatisfaction. We learn, in measure, to recognize immediately in experience the signals of such enduring character or the opposite, which admit or rule out an enjoyment from the category of the esthetic; but it is not the enjoyability itselfi—not the direct

value of the given experience—which constitutes this criterion, The artist and the connoisseur doubtless acquire in high

degree such ability to determine

from

PRAGMATISM

316

directly given clues whether the satisfaction in a painting or.a piece of music is

the kind that will endure or one which will soon fade; and their apprehension of the enduring ones doubtless is infused

with a subtle and derivative immediate quality in their cultivated enjoyment itself. But—to use a comparison—if the tea-taster’s experience has developed his capacity to forecast that the tea will soon

sufficient criterion of genuine esthetic character in the experience. Such judgment is directly an assessment of esthetic, quality in the odject, and only indirectly of the genuine esthetic character of the experience. In this sense, the distinctively esthetic character of experience is not simply disclosed but has to be judged. But the

judgment in question is one of its classifi-

lose its bouquet, and such tea does not taste quite right to him, still it is the

cation as esthetic (which calls in some measure for a prediction), and is not

predictable fact signalized and not this subtle immediate signal of it, which marks

such.

the tea as not good-quality tea. And if

esthetic

the esthetician’s

determined by judgment, it still remains true that the directly disclosed value in an experience, whether esthetic or not, calls for no judgment but is indubitable when

sixth

sense

of the en-

during in art enables him to classify enjoyments as esthetic or non-esthetic by clues which are immediate and immediately affect his own enjoyments, still it remains true that it is not the immediate enjoyability but the signalized endur-

ability of enjoyment which constitutes the

the judgment of an immediate value as

found.

Thus

even

if, or insofar

quality of experience

And

such

values

as, the

must

directly

be

dis-

closable in experience are the final basis and the ultimate referents of all judgments of value.

Philosophy of Religion DDPOPDPDLPLO’POPOOPODOOODOOOO LO HOVOOOOV OO DOD

Faith and Its Object JOHN DEWEY Au religions, as I pointed out in the

structure of the world and man, are con-

preceding chapter, involve specific intellectual beliefs, and they attach—some greater,

nected

some less—importance to assent to these

brought doubt upon them; the factor that from the standpoint of historic and institutional religions is sapping the religious life itself.

doctrines

as true, true in the intellectual

sense. They have literatures held especially sacred, containing historical material with

with

the supernatural,

this connection

and

that

is the factor that has

which the validity of the religions is conThe obvious and simple facts of the nected. They have developed a doctrinal | case are that some views about the origin apparatus it is incumbent upon “beand constitution of the world and man, lievers’ (with varying degrees of strictsome views about the course of human ness in different religions) to accept. They history and personages and incidents in also insist that there is some special and that history, have become so interwoven isolated channel of access to the* truths with religion as to be identified with it. they hold. On the other hand, the growth of knowlNo one will deny, I suppose, that the edge and of its methods and tests has present crisis in religion is intimately been such as to make acceptance of these bound up with these claims. The skeptibeliefs increasingly onerous and even imcism and agnosticism that are rife and possible for large numbers of cultivated men and women. With such persons, the that from the standpoint of the religionist result is that the more these ideas are are fatal to the religious spirit are directly used as the basis and justification of a bound up with the intellectual contents, religion, the more dubious that religion historical, cosmological, ethical, and theological, asserted to be indispensable in becomes. Protestant denominations have largely everything religious. There is no need for me here to go with any minuteness into abandoned the idea that particular ecclesiastic sources can authoritatively determine the causes that have generated doubt and disbelief, uncertainty and rejection, as to cosmic, historic and theological beliefs. these contents. It is enough to point out The more liberal among them have at that all the beliefs and ideas in question, least mitigated the older belief that inwhether having to do with historical and dividual hardness and corruption of heart literary matters, or with astronomy, geol- are the causes of intellectual rejection of ogy and biology, or with the creation and the intellectual apparatus of the Christian 317

PRAGMATISM

318 also, with exceptions numerically insignifi-

in the “seat of intellectual authority” has taken place. This revolution, rather than

cant,

any particular aspect of its impact upon

religion. But these denominations retained

minumum

a certain

of intellectual

have

indispensable content.

ascribe peculiar religious force to literary documents and certain personages. Even when they have reduced the bulk of intellectual

They

this and that religious belief, is the central thing. In this revolution, every defeat

certain historic greatly content

is a stimulus to renewed inquiry; every victory won is the open door to more discoveries, and every discovery is a new

to be accepted, they have insisted at least

seed planted in the soil of intelligence,

upon theism and the immortality of the

from which grow fresh plants with new fruits. The mind of man is being habit-

individual. It is no part of my intention to rehearse

in any detail the weighty facts that collectively go by the name of the conflict of science and religion—a conflict that is not done away with by calling it a conflict of science with theology, as long as even a minimum of intellectual assent is pre-

scribed as essential. The impact of astronomy not merely upon the older cosmogony of religion but upon elements of creeds

dealing with historic events—witness the idea of ascent into heaven—is familiar. Geological discoveries have displaced creation myths which once bulked large.

Biology has revolutionized conceptions of soul and mind

which

once

occupied

a

central place in religious beliefs and ideas, and this science has made a profound impression upon ideas of sin, redemption, and immortality. Anthropology, history and literary criticism have furnished a

uated to a new method and ideal: There is but one sure road of access to truth— the road of patient, cooperative inquiry operating by means of observation, experiment, record and controlled reflection.

The scope of the change is well illustrated by the fact that whenever a particular outpost is surrendered it is usually met by the remark from a liberal theologian that the particular doctrine or supposed historic or literary tenet surrendered was never, after all, an intrinsic part of religious belief, and that without

it the true nature of religion stands out more ¢learly than before. Equally significant is the growing gulf between fundamentalists and liberals in the churches.

What is not realized—although perhaps it is more definitely seen by fundamentalists than by liberals—is that the issue

‘radically different version of the historic

does not concern this and that piecemeal item of belief, but centers in the question

events

of the method

and

personages

upon

which

by which any and every

Christian religions have built. Psychology

item of intellectual belief is to be arrived

is already opening to us natural explana-

at and justified.

tions of phenomena so extraordinary that once their supernatural origin was, so to say, the natural explanation.

The significant bearing for my purpose of all this is that new methods of inquiry and reflection have become for the educated man

today the final arbiter of all

The

positive lesson is that religious

qualities and values if they are real at all are not bound up with any single item of intellectual assent, not even that of the existence of the God of theism; and that,

under existing conditions, the religious function in experience can be emancipated

questions of fact, existence, and intellec-

only through

tual assent. Nothing less than a revolution

notion of special truths that are religious

surrender

of the whole

PHILOSOPHY

RELIGION

3*9

by their own nature, together with the idea of peculiar avenues of access to such truths. For were we to admit that there is but one method for ascertaining fact

of intellectual habit, method and criterion. One method of swerving aside the im-

and truth—that

OF

conveyed

by the word

“scientific” in its most general and generous sense—no discovery in any branch of knowledge and inquiry could then disturb the faith that is religious. I should

describe this faith as the unification of the self through allegiance to inclusive ideal ends, which imagination presents to us and to which the human will responds

as worthy of controlling our desires and choices, It is probably impossible to imagine the amount of intellectual energy that has been diverted from normal processes of arriving at intellectual conclusions because it has gone into rationalization of the doctrines entertained by historic religions. The set that has thus been given the general mind is much more harmful, to my mind, than are the consequences of any one particular item of belief, serious as have been those flowing from acceptance of some of them. The modern liberal version of the intellectual content of Christianity seems to the modern mind to be more rational than some of the earlier doctrines that have been reacted against. Such is not the case in fact. The theological philosophers of the Middle Ages had no greater difficulty in giving rational form to all the doctrines of the Roman church than has the liberal theologian of today in formulating and justifying intellectually the doctrines he entertains. This statement is as applicable to the doctrine of continuing miracles, penance, indulgences, saints and angels, etc., as to the trinity, incarnation, atonement, and the sacraments. The funda-

mental question, I repeat, is not of this and that article of intellectual belief but

pact of changed knowledge and method upon the intellectual content of religion is the method of division of territory and jurisdiction into two parts. Formerly these were called the realm of nature and the realm of grace. They are now often

known as those of revelation and natural knowledge. Modern religious liberalism has no definite names for them, save, perhaps, the division, referred to in the last chapter, between - scientific and religious experience. The implication is that in one territory the supremacy of scientific knowledge must be acknowledged, while there is another region, not very precisely defined, of intimate personal experience wherein other methods and criteria hold sway. This method of justifying the peculiar and legitimate claim of certain elements of belief is always open to the objection that a positive conclusion is drawn from a negative fact. Existing ignorance or backwardness is employed to assert the existence of a division in the nature of the subject-matter dealt with. Yet the gap may only reflect, at most, a limitation now existing but in the future to be done away with. The argument that because some province or aspect of experience has not yet been “invaded” by scientific methods, it is not subject to them, is as old as it is dangerous. Time and time again, in some particular reserved field, it has been invalidated. Psychology is still in its infancy. He is bold to the point of rashness who asserts that intimate personal experience will never come within the ken of natural knowledge. It is more to the present point, however, to consider the region that is claimed by religionists as a special reserve. It is mystical experience. The difference, how-

PRAGMATISM

320

ever, between mystic experience and the theory about it that is offered to us must be noted. The experience is a fact to be inquired into. The theory, like any theory, is an interpretation of the fact.

The

idea that by its very nature

the

experience is a veridical realization of the direct presence of God does not rest so

much upon examination of the facts as it does upon importing into their inter-

human needs and conditions and the medieval theory of an immediate union that is fostered through attention to the sacraments or through concentration upon the heart of Jesus? The contemporary emphasis of some Protestant theologians upon the sense of inner personal communion with God, found in religious experience, is almost as far away

from medieval Christianity as it is from

pretation a conception that is formed outside them. In its dependence upon a prior

Neoplatonism or Yoga. Interpretations of

conception of the supernatural, which is the thing to be proved, it begs the

experience

question. History exhibits many types of mystic experience, and each of these types is contemporaneously explained by the concepts that prevail in the culture and the circle in which the phenomena occur. There are mystic crises that arise, as among some North American Indian tribes, induced by fasting. They are accompanied by trances and semi-hysteria. Their purpose is to gain some special power, such perhaps as locating a person

They have been imported by borrowing without criticism from ideas that are current in the surrounding culture.

who is lost or finding objects that have been secreted. There is the mysticism of Hindoo practice now enjoying some vogue in Western countries. There is the mystic ecstasy of Neoplatonism with its complete abrogation of the self and absorption into an impersonal whole of Being. There is the mysticism of intense esthetic experience independent of any theological or metaphysical interpretation. There is the heretical mysticism of William Blake. There is the mysticism of sudden unreasoning fear in which the very founda-

the experience have not grown from the itself with

the aid of such

scientific resources as may be available.

The mystic states of the shaman and of North American Indians are

some

frankly techniques for gaining a special power—the power as it is conceived by some revivalist sects. There is no especial

intellectual objectification accompanying the experience. The knowledge that is said to be gained is not that of Being but of particular secrets and occult modes of operation. The aim is not to gain knowledge of superior divine power, but to get advice, cures for the sick, prestige, etc. The conception that mystic experience is

a normal mode of religious experience by which we may acquire knowledge of God and divine things is a nineteenth-century interpretation that has gained vogue in

direct

ratio

to

the

decline

of older

methods of religious apologetics. There is no reason for denying the existence of experiences that are called

mystical. On the contrary, there is every

tions seem shaken beneath one—to men-

reason to suppose that, in some degree of

tion but a few of the types that may be

intensity, they occur so frequently that they may be regarded as normal mani-

found. What

common

element

is there be-

tween, say, the Neoplatonic conception of a super-divine Being wholly apart from

festations that take place at certain rhythmic points in the movement of experience.

The

assumption

that denial of a par-

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

321

ticular interpretation of their objective content proves that those who make the denial do not have the experience in question, so that if they had it they would be equally persuaded of its objec-

present generation. Even if the alleged unreliability were as great as they assume (or even greater), the question would remain: Have we any other recourse for

tive source in the presence of God, has

point. Science is not constituted by any particular body of subject-matter. It is

no foundation in fact. As with every empirical phenomenon, the occurrence of

the state called mystical is simply an occasion for inquiry into its mode of causation. There is no more reason for converting the experience itself into an immediate knowledge of its cause than in the case of an experience of lightning or any other natural occurrence. My purpose, then, in this brief reference to mysticism is not to throw doubt upon the existence of particular experiences called mystical. Nor is it to propound any theory to account for them. I have referred to the matter merely as an illustration of the general tendency to mark off two distinct realms in one of which science has jurisdiction, while in the other, special modes of immediate knowledge of religious objects have authority. This dualism as it operates in contemporary interpretation of mystic experience in order to validate certain beliefs “is but a reinstatement of the old dualism between the natural and the supernatural, in terms better adapted to the cultural conditions of the present time. Since it is the conception of the supernatural that science calls in question, the circular nature of this type of reasoning is obvious. Apologists for a religion often point to

the shift that goes on in scientific ideas and materials

as evidence

of the unre-

liability of science as a mode of knowledge. They often seem peculiarly elated by the great, almost revolutionary, change in fundamental physical conceptions that has taken place in science during the

knowledge?

But in fact they miss the

constituted by a method, a method of changing beliefs by means of tested inquiry as well as of arriving at them. It is its glory, not its condemnation,

that its

subject-matter develops as the method is improved. There is no special subjectmatter of belief that is sacrosanct. The identification of science with a particular set of beliefs and ideas is itself a holdover of ancient and still current dogmatic

habits of thought which are opposed to science in its actuality and which science is undermining. For scientific method is adverse not only to dogma but to doctrine as well, provided we take “doctrine” in its usual meaning —a body of definite beliefs that need only to be taught and learned as true. This negative attitude of science to doctrine

does not indicate indifference to truth. It signifies supreme loyalty to the method by which truth is attained. The scientific-

religious conflict ultimately is a conflict between allegiance to this method and allegiance to even an irreducible minimum of belief so fixed in advance that it can never be modified. The method of intelligence is open and

public. The doctrinal method is limited and private. This limitation persists even when knowledge of the truth that is religious is said to be arrived at by a special mode of experience, that termed “religious.” For the latter is assumed to be a very special kind of experience. To be sure it is asserted to be open to all who

obey certain conditions. Yet the mystic experience yields, as we have seen, various

PRAGMATISM

322 results in the way of belief to different persons, depending upon the surrounding

we mean that these materials stand for something that is verifiable in general

culture of those who undergo it. As a method, it lacks the public character belonging to the method of intelligence.

and public experience.

Moreover, when the experience in question

the intellectual articles of a creed must be understood to be symbolic of moral

does

not

yield

consciousness

of

the

Were we to adopt the latter point of view, it would be evident not only that

and other ideal values, but that the facts

presence of God, in the sense that is alleged to exist, the retort is always at hand that it is not a genuine religious

taken to be historic and used as concrete evidence of the intellectual articles are

experience. For by definition, only that experience is religious which arrives at this

themselves symbolic. These articles of a creed present events and persons that

is cir-

have been made over by ‘the idealizing

cular. The traditional position is that some hardness or corruption of heart prevents one from having the experience.

imagination in the interest, at their best,

particular

result. The

argument

Liberal religionists are now more humane. But their logic does not differ. It is sometimes held that beliefs about

religious matters are symbolic, like rites and ceremonies. This view may be an advance upon that which holds to their literal objective validity. But as usually

put forward it suffers from an ambiguity. Of what are the beliefs symbols? Are they

of moral ideals. Historic personages

in

their divine attributes are materializations of the ends that enlist devotion and inspire

endeavor.

They

are

symbolic

of the

reality of ends moving us in many forms

of experience. The ideal values that are thus symbolized also mark human experience in science and art and the various modes of human association: they

modes than those set apart as religious, so that the things symbolized have an

mark almost everything in life that rises from the level of manipulation of conditions as they exist. It is admitted that the objects of -religion are ideal in contrast with our present state. What would be

independent standing? Or are they sym-

lost if it were also admitted that they have

bols in the sense of standing for some

authoritative claim upon conduct just because they are ideal? The assumption that these objects of religion exist already

symbols

of things experienced

in other

transcendental reality—transcendental_because not being the subject-matter of

experience generally? Even the fundamentalist admits a certain quality and degree of symbolism in the latter sense in objects of religious belief. For he holds that the objects of these beliefs are so far beyond finite human capacity that

our beliefs must be couched in more or less metaphorical terms. The conception that faith is the best available substitute for knowledge in our present estate still attaches to the notion of the symbolic character of the materials of faith; unless

by ascribing to them a symbolic nature

in some

realm

of Being seems

to add

nothing to their force, while it weakens their claim over us as ideals, in so far as it bases that claim upon matters that are

intellectually dubious. The question narrows itself to this: Are the ideals that move us genuinely ideal or are they ideal only in contrast with our present estate? —

The import of the question extends far. It determines the meaning given to the word “God.” On one score, the word can mean only a particular Being. On the other score, it denotes the unity of all ideal

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

ends arousing us to desire and actions. Does the unification have a claim upon our attitude and conduct because it is already, apart from us, in realized existence, or because of its own meaning and value? Suppose

inherent for the

moment that the word “God” means the ideal ends that at a given time and place one acknowledges as having authority over his volition and emotion, the values

to which one is supremely devoted, as far as these ends, through imagination, take on unity. If we make this supposition, the issue will stand out clearly in contrast

with the doctrine of religions that “God” designates some kind of Being having prior and therefore non-ideal existence.

The word “non-ideal” is to be taken literally in regard to some religions that have historically existed, to all of them as far as they are neglectful of moral qualities in their divine beings. It does not apply in the same Uteral way to

Judaism and Christianity. For they have asserted that the Supreme Being has moral and spiritual attributes. But it applies to them none the less in that these moral and spiritual characters are thought of as properties of a particular

existence and are thought to be of religious value for us because of this embodiment in such an existence. Here, as far as I can see, is the ultimate issue as to the

difference between a religion and the religious as a function of experience.

The idea that “God” represents a unification of ideal values that is essentially imaginative in origin when the imagination supervenes in conduct is attended with verbal difficulties owing to our frequent use of the word “imagination” to

denote fantasy and doubtful reality. But the

reality

of ideal

ends

as

ideals

is

vouched for by their undeniable power in action. An ideal is not an illusion be-

3273 cause

imagination

is the organ

through

which it is apprehended. For ail possibilities reach us through the imagination. In a definite sense the only meaning that can be assigned the term “imagination” is that things unrealized in fact come home to us and have power to stir us. The

unification effected through imagination is not fanciful, for it is the reflex of the

unification

of practical

and

emotional

attitudes. The unity signifies not a single

Being, but the unity of loyalty and effort evoked by the fact that many ends are one in the power of their ideal, or imaginative, quality to stir and hold us. We may well ask whether the power and significance in life of the traditional conceptions of God are not due to the ideal qualities referred to by them, the hypostatization of them into an existence being due to a conflux of tendencies in human nature that converts the object of desire into an antecedent reality (as was mentioned in the previous chapter) with beliefs that have prevailed in the cultures of the past. For in the older cultures the idea of the supernatural was “natural,” in the sense in which “natural” signifies something customary and familiar. It seems more credible that religious persons have been supported and consoled by the reality with which ideal values appeal to them than that they have been upborne by sheer matter of fact existence. That, when

once men are inured to the idea of the union of the ideal and the physical, the two

should

be

so

bound

together

in

emotion that it is difficult to institute a separation, agrees with all we know of human psychology. The benefits that will accrue, however, from making the separation are evident. The dislocation frees the religious values of experience once for all from matters that are continually becoming more

PRAGMATISM

324 dubious. With that release there comes emancipation from the necessity of resort

to apologetics. The reality of ideal ends and values in their authority over us is

goods with that of a Person supposed to originate and support them—a Being, moreover, to whom omnipotent power is attributed—the problem of the occurrence

an undoubted fact. The validity of justice, affection, and that intellectual correspondence of our ideas with realities that we call truth, is so assured in its hold upon humanity that it is unnecessary for the religious attitude to encumber itself with the apparatus of dogma and docAny other: conception of the trine. religious attitude, when it is adequately analysed, means that those who hold it care more for force than for ideal values —since all that an Existence can add is force to establish, to punish, and to reward. There are, indeed, some persons

of evil would be gratuitous. The signifcance of ideal ends and meanings is, indeed, closely connected with the fact that there are in life all sorts of things that are evil to us because we would have them existing conditions otherwise. Were

who frankly say that their own faith does not require any guarantee that moral

verts

values are backed up by physical force, but who hold that the masses are so backward that ideal values: will not affect their conduct unless in the popular belief these values have the sanction of a power that can enforce them and can execute justice upon those who fail to comply. There are some persons, deserving of more respect, who say: “We agree that the beginning must be made with the

primacy of the ideal. But why stop at this point? Why not search with the utmost eagerness and vigor for all the evidence we can find, such as is supplied by history, by presence of design in nature,

which may lead on to the belief that the ideal is already extant in a Personality having objective existence?” One answer to the question is that we are involved by this search in all the problems of the existence of evil that have haunted theology in the past and that the most ingenious apologetics have not

faced, much less met. If these apologists had not identified the existence of ideal

wholly good, the notion of possibilities to be realized would never emerge. But the more basic ariswer is that while if the search is conducted upon a strictly empirical basis there is no reason why it should not take place, as a matter of fact it is always undertaken in the interest of the supernatural. Thus it di-

attention

and

energy

from

ideal

values and from the exploration of actual conditions by means of which they may

be promoted. History is testimony to this fact. Men have never fully used the powers they possess to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing. Dependence upon an external power is the counterpart of surrender of human endeavor. Nor is emphasis on exercising our own powers for good an egoistical or a sentimentally optimistic recourse. It is not the first, for it does not

isolate man, either individually or collectively, from nature. It is not the second, because it makes no assumption beyond that

of the need and responsibility for human endeavor, and beyond the conviction that, if human desire and endeavor were enlisted in behalf of natural ends, conditions -

would

be bettered.

It involves

no ex-

pectation of a millennium of good.

Belief in the supernatural as a necessary power for apprehension of the ideal and for practical attachment to it has for its

PHILOSOPHY

RELIGION

325

a pessimistic belief in the

jection implies that my view commits one

corruption and impotency of natural means. That is axiomatic in Christian dogma. But this apparent pessimism has a way of suddenly changing into an exaggerated optimism. For according to the terms of the doctrine, if the faith in the supernatural is of the required order, regeneration at once takes place. Goodness, in all essentials, is thereby established; if not, there is proof that the established relation to the supernatural has been vitiated. This romantic optimism is one cause for the excessive attention to individual salvation characteristic of traditional Christianity. Belief in a sudden and complete transmutation through conversion and in the objective efficacy of prayer, is too easy a way out of difficulties. It leaves matters in general just about as

to such a separation of the ideal and the

counterpart

OF

they were before; that is, sufficiently bad so that there is additional support for the idea that only supernatural aid can better

them. The position of natural intelligence is that there exists a mixture of good and evil, and that reconstruction in the direction of the good which is indicated by ideal ends, must take place, if at all, through cooperative _ effort. continued There is at least enough impulse toward justice, kindliness, and order so that if it were mobilized for action, not expecting abrupt and complete transformation to occur, the disorder, cruelty, and oppression that exist would be reduced. The discussion has arrived at a point where a more fundamental objection to the position I 4m taking needs consideration. The misunderstanding upon which this objection rests should be pointed out. The view I have advanced is sometimes treated as if the identification of the divine with ideal ends left the ideal wholly without roots in existence and without support from existence, The ob-

existent that the ideal has no chance to find lodgment even as a seed that might grow and bear fruit. On the contrary, what I have been criticizing is the dentification of the ideal with a particular Being, especially when that identification makes necessary the conclusion that this Being is outside of nature, and what I have tried to show is that the ideal itself has its roots in natural conditions; it emerges when the imagination idealizes existence by laying hold of the possibilities offered to thought and action. There are values, goods, actually realized upon a natural basis—the goods of human association, of art and knowledge. The idealizing imagination seizes upon the most precious things found in the climacteric moments of experience and projects them. We need no external criterion and guarantee for their goodness. They are had, they exist as good, and out of them we frame our ideal ends. Moreover, the ends that result from our projection of experienced goods into objects of thought, desire and effort exist, only they exist as ends. Ends, purposes, exercise determining power in human

conduct. The aims of philanthropists, of Florence Nightingale, of Howard, of Wilberforce, of Peabody, have not been idle dreams. They have modified institutions. Aims, ideals, do not exist simply in “mind”; they exist in character, in _personality and action. One might call the roll of artists, intellectual inquirers, parents, friends, citizens who are neighbors, to show that purposes exist in an operative way. What I have been objecting to, I repeat, is not the idea that ideals are linked with existence and that they themselves exist, through human embodiment,

as forces, but the idea that their authority

PRAGMATISM

326 and value depend upon some prior com-

existent conditions.

plete embodiment—as if the efforts of human beings in behalf of justice, or

and advances with the life of humanity.

knowledge or beauty, depended for their effectiveness and validity upon assurance that there already existed in some supernal region a place where criminals are humanely treated, where there is no serfdom or slavery, where all facts and truths are already discovered and pos-

plish becomes the standing ground and

sessed, and all beauty is eternally displayed in actualized form. The aims and ideals that move us are generated through imagination. But they are not made out of imaginary stuff. They are made out of the hard stuff of the world of physical and social experience. The locomotive did not exist before Stevenson, nor

the telegraph before the time of Morse. But the conditions for their existence were there in physical material and energies and in human capacity. Imagination seized hold upon the idea of a rearrangement of existing things that would evolve new objects. The same thing is true of a painter,

The process endures

What one person and one group accomstarting point of those who succeed them. When the vital factors in this natural process are generally acknowledged in emotion,

thought and action, the process

will

both

be

accelerated

and _ purified

through elimination of that irrelevant element that culminates in the idea of the supernatural. When the vital factors attain

the religious force that has been drafted into supernatural religions, the resulting reinforcement will be incalculable. These considerations may be applied to the idea of God, or, to avoid misleading conceptions, to the idea of the divine. This idea is, as I have said, one of ideal possibilities unified through imaginative realization and projection. But this idea of God, or of the divine, is also connected with all the natural forces and conditions—includ-

ing man and human association—that promote the growth of the ideal and that fur-

a

ther its realization. We are in the presence

moral prophet. The new vision does not arise out of nothing, but emerges through seeing, in terms of possibilities, that is, of imagination, old things in new relations serving a new end which the new end aids in creating. Moreover the process of creation is ex-

neither of ideals completely embodied in

a musician,

a poet,

a philanthropist,

perimental and continuous. The artist, sci-

entific man, or good citizen, depends upon

what others have done before him and are doing around him. The sense of new values that become ends to be realized arises first

in dim and uncertain form. As the values are dwelt upon and carried forward in action they grow in definiteness and coherence, Interaction between aim and existent conditions improves and tests the ideal; and conditions are at the same time modified. Ideals change as they are applied in

existence nor yet of ideals that are mere rootless ideals, fantasies, utopias. For there are forces in nature and society that generate and support the ideals. They are fur-

ther unified by the action that gives them coherence and solidity. It is this active relation between ideal and actual to which I would give the name “God.” I would not insist that the name must be given. There

are those who hold that the associations of the term with the supernatural are so numerous and close that any use of the word “God” is sure to give rise to misconception and be taken as a concession to traditional

ideas. They may be correct in this view. But the facts to which I have referred are there,

and they need to be brought out with all

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

327

possible clearness and force. There exist concretely and experimentally goods—the values of art in all its forms, of knowledge, of effort and of rest after striving, of education and fellowship, of friendship and love, of growth in mind and body. These goods are there and yet they are relatively embryonic. Many persons are shut out from generous participation in them; there are

ger that resort to mystical experiences will be an escape, and that its result will be the passive feeling that the union of actual and ideal is already accomplished. But in fact this union is active and practical; it is a uniting, not something given. One reason why personally I think it fitting to use the word “God” to denote that uniting of the ideal and actual which has been spoken of, lies in the fact that aggressive atheism seems to me to have something in common with traditional

forces at work that threaten and sap existent goods as well as prevent their expansion. A clear and intense conception of a union of ideal ends with actual conditions is capable of arousing steady emotion, It may be fed by every experience, no matter what its material. In a distracted age, the need for such an idea is urgent. It can unify interests and energies now dispersed; it can direct action and generate the heat of emotion and the light of intelligence. Whether one gives the name “God” to this union, operative in thought and action, is a matter for individual decision. But the function of such

a working union of the ideal and actual seems to me to be identical with the force that has in fact been attached to the conception of God in all the religions that

have a spiritual content; and a clear idea of that function seems to me urgently needed at the present time. The sense of this union may, with some persons, be furthered by mystical experiences, using the term “mystical” in its broadest sense. That result depends largely upon temperament. But there is a marked difference between the union associated with mysticism and the union which I had in mind. There is nothing mystical about the latter; it is natural and moral. Nor is there anything mystical about the perception or consciousness of such union. Im-

supernaturalism. I do not mean merely that the former is mainly so negative that it fails to give positive direction to thought,

though that fact is pertinent. What I have in mind especially is the exclusive preoccupation of both militant atheism and supernaturalism with man in isolation. For in spite of supernaturalism’s reference to something beyond nature, it conceives of

this earth as the moral center of the universe and of man as the apex of the whole scheme of things. It regards the drama of sin and redemption enacted within the isolated and lonely soul of man as the one thing of ultimate importance. Apart from man, nature is held either accursed or negligible. Militant atheism is also

affected by lack of natural piety. The ties binding man to nature that poets have always celebrated are passed over lightly. The attitude taken is often that of man living in an indifferent and hostile world and issuing blasts of defiance. A religious attitude, however, needs the sense of a connection of man, in the way of both dependence and support, with the enveloping world that the imagination feels is a universe. Use of the words “God” or

“divine” to convey the union of actual

agination of ideal ends pertinent to actual

with ideal may protect man from a sense of isolation and from consequent despair

conditions represents the fruition of a dis-

or defiance.

ciplined mind. There is, indeed, even dan-

In any case, whatever

the name,

the

PRAGMATISM

328 meaning

is selective. For it involves no

miscellaneous

worship of everything in

general. It selects those factors in existence

physical nature. The differences could be

used for arguing that something supernatural

had

intervened

in the case of |

that generate and support our idea of good man. The recent acclaim, however, by ~ as an end to be striven for. It excludes a - apologists for religion of the surrender by multitude of forces that at any time are irrelevant to this function, Nature produces whatever gives reinforcement and direc-

tion but also what occasions discord and confusion. The “divine” is thus a term of human choice and aspiration. A humanistic religion, if it excludes our relation to nature, is pale and thin, as it is presumptuous, when it takes humanity as an object of worship. Matthew Arnold’s conception of a “power not ourselves” is too Narrow in its reference to operative and sustaining conditions. While it is selective, it is too narrow in its basis of selection— righteousness, The conception thus needs to be widened in two ways. The powers that generate and support the good as experienced and as ideal, work within as well as without. There seems to be a reminiscence of an external Jehovah in Arnold’s statement. And the powers work

to enforce other values and ideals than righteousness. Arnold’s sense of an opposition between Hellenism and Hebraism resulted

in

exclusion

of beauty,

truth,

and friendship from the list of the consequences toward which powers work

within and without. In the relation between

nature

and

human ends and endeavors, recent science

has broken down the older dualism. It has been engaged in this task for three centuries. But as long as the conceptions of

science were strictly mechanical (mechanical in the sense of assuming separate things acting upon one another purely externally by push and pull), religious apologists had a standing ground in point-

ing out the differences between man and

science of the classic type of mechanicalism* seems ill-advised from their own point of view. For the change in the modern scientific view of nature simply brings man and nature nearer together. We are no longer compelled to choose between explaining away what is distinctive in man through reducing him to another form of a mechanical model

and the doctrine that something literally supernatural marks him off from nature. The less mechanical—in its older sense —physical nature is found to be, the closer is man to nature. In his fascinating book, The Dawn of Conscience, James Henry Breasted refers

to Haeckel as saying that the question he would most wish to have answered is this: Is the universe friendly to man? The question is an ambiguous one. Friendly to man in what respect? With respect to ease and comfort, to material success, to egoistic ambitions? Or to his aspiration to inquire and discover, to invent and create, to build a more secure order for

human existence? In whatever form the question be put, the answer cannot in all honesty be an unqualified and absolute one. Mr. Breasted’s answer, as a historian, is that nature has been friendly to the emergence and development of conscience

and character. Those who will have all or nothing cannot be satisfied with this answer. Emergence and growth are not enough for them. They want something 1T use this term because science has not aban-

doned its beliefs in working mechanisms in giving up the idea that they are of the nature of a strictly mechanical contact of discrete things.

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

329

more than growth accompanied by toil and pain. They want final achievement. Others who are less absolutist may be content to think that, morally speaking, growth is a higher value and ideal than is sheer attainment. They will remember also that growth has not been confined to conscience and character; that it extends also to discovery, learning and knowledge, to creation in the arts, to

at work are frankly adopted, the change is liberating. It clarifies our ideals, rendering them less subject to illusion and fantasy. It

relieves us of the incubus of thinking of them as fixed, as without power of growth. It discloses that they develop in coherence and pertinency with increase of

natural

intelligence.

The

change

gives

in mutual aid and affection. These persons

aspiration for natural knowledge a definitely religious character, since growth in understanding of nature is seen to be or-

at least will be satisfied with an intellectual

ganically related to the formation of ideal

view of the religious based on continuing toward ideal ends.

ends. The same change enables man to select those elements in natural conditions that may be organized to support and extend the sway of ideals. All purpose is selective, and all intelligent action includes deliberate choice. In the degree in which we cease to depend upon belief in the supernatural, selection is enlightened and choice can be made in behalf of ideals

furtherance of ties that hold men together

For,

I would

remind

function choice

that is directed

readers

in con-

clusion, it is the intellectual side of the religious attitude that I have been considering. I have suggested that the religious element in life has been hampered by conceptions of the supernatural that were imbedded in those cultures wherein man had little control over outer nature and little in the way of sure method of inquiry and test. The crisis

today as to the intellectual content

of

religious belief has been caused by the change in the intellectual climate due to the increase of our knowledge and our means of understanding. I have tried to show that this change is not fatal to the religious values in our common experience, however adverse its impact may be upon

historic religions. Rather, provided that the methods

and

results of intelligence

whose inherent relations to conditions and consequences are understood. Were the naturalistic foundations and bearings of religion grasped, the religious element in life would emerge from the throes of the crisis in religion. Religion would then be found to have its natural place in every aspect of human experience that is concerned with estimate of possibilities, with emotional stir by possibilities as yet unrealized, and with all action in behalf of their realization, All that is significant in human experience falls within this frame.

Philosophy of History, Culture, and Society DDD

OQH Dorn LO LOO LO OO DDPDQPDDDOPOQPODDQOOOWMOOLO

Search for the Great Commumty JOHN DEWEY and moral

W. have had occasion to refer in passing to the distinction between democracy as a social idea and political democracy as a sys-

tem of government. The two are, of course, connected. The idea remains barren and

wider and fuller idea than can be exemplified in the state even at its best. To be real-

ized it must affect all modes of human association, the family, the school, industry, religion. And even as far as political arrangements are concerned, governmental institutions are but a mechanism for securing to an idea channels of effective operation. It will hardly do to say that criticisms of the political machinery leave the believer in the idea untouched. For, as far as they are justified—and no candid believer can deny that many of them are only too well grounded—they arouse him to bestir himself in order that the idea may find a more

ever, is that the idea and its external organs

and ideas which

the evils may be remedied by introducing more machinery of the same kind as that which already exists, or by refining and perfecting that machinery. But the phrase may also indicate the need of returning to the idea itself, of clarifying and deepening our apprehension of it, and of employing our sense of its meaning to criticize and re-make its political manisfestations. Confining ourselves, for the moment, to political democracy, we must, in any case, renew our protest against the assumption that the idea has itself produced the govern-

empty save as it is incarnated in human relationships. Yet in discussion they must be distinguished. The idea of democracy is a

adequate machinery through which to work. What the faithful insist upon, how-

aspirations

underlie the political forms. The old saying that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy is not apt if it means that

mental practices which obtain in democratic states: General suffrage, elected representatives, majority rule, and so on. The idea

has influenced the concrete political movement, but it has not caused it. The transition from family and dynastic government

supported by the loyalties of tradition to popular government was the outcome primarily of technological discoveries and

and structures are not to be identified. We

inventions working a change in the cus-

object to the common supposition of the foes of existing democratic government that the accusations against it touch the social

toms by which men had been bound together. It was not due to the doctrines of

doctrinaires. The forms to which we are 33°

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

accustomed in democratic governments represent the cumulative effect of a multitude of events, unpremeditated as far as political effects were concerned and having unpredictable consequences. There is no sanctity in universal suffrage, frequent elections, majority rule, congressional and cabinet government. These things are devices evolved in the direction in which the current was moving, each wave of

which

involved at the time of its im-

pulsion a minimum of departure from antecedent custom and law. The devices served a purpose; but the purpose was rather that of meeting existing needs which had become too intense to be ig-

SOCIETY

33%

mas. No wonder they call urgently for revision and displacement. Nevertheless the current has set steadily in one direction: toward democratic forms. That government exists to serve its community, and that this purpose cannot be achieved unless the community _ itself

shares in selecting its governors and determining fact left, nently in however

their policies, are a deposit of as far as we can see, permathe wake of doctrines and forms, transitory the latter. They are

not

whole

the

of the

democratic

idea,

have met the needs better. In this retrospective glance, it is possible, however, to see how the doctrinal formulations which accompanied them were inadequate, onesided and positively erroneous. In fact they were hardly more than political warcries adopted to help in carrying on some immediate agitation or in justifying some particular practical polity struggling for recognition, even though they were asserted to be absolute truths of human nature or of morals. The doctrines served a particular local pragmatic need. But often their very adaptation to immediate circumstances unfitted them, pragmatically, to meet more enduring and more extensive needs. They lived to cumber the political ground, obstructing progress, all the more so because they were uttered and held not as hypotheses with which to direct social

but they express it in its political phase. Belief in this political aspect is not a mystic faith as if in some overruling providence that cares for children, drunkards and others unable to help themselves. It marks a well-attested conclusion from historic facts. We have every reason to think that whatever changes may take place in existing democratic machinery, they will be of a sort to make the interest of the public a more supreme guide and criterion of governmental activity, and to enable the public to form and manifest its purposes still more authoritatively. In this sense the cure for the ailments of democracy is more democracy. The prime difficulty, as we have seen, is that of discovering the means by which a scattered, mobile and manifold public may so recognize itself as to define and express its interests. This discovery is necessarily precedent to any fundamental change in the machinery. We are not concerned therefore to set forth counsels as to advisable improvements in the political forms of democracy. Many have been suggested. It is no derogation of their relative worth to say that consideration of these changes is not at present an affair of primary importance. The problem lies deeper; it is in the first instance an intellectual prob-

experimentation but as final truths, dog-

lem: the search for conditions under which

nored, than that of forwarding the demo-

cratic idea. In spite of all defects, they served their own purpose well. Looking back, with the aid which ex post facto experience can give, it would be hard for the wisest to devise schemes which,

under

the

circumstances,

would

PRAGMATISM

332

the Great Society may become the Great Community. When these conditions are

take: fullness of integrated personality is therefore possible of achievement, since

brought into being they will make their own forms. Until they have come about, it is somewhat futile to consider what political machinery will suit them.

the pulls and responses of different groups reénforce one another and their values

In a search for the conditions under

an alternative to other principles of as-

which the inchoate public now extant may function democratically, we may proceed from a statement of the nature of the democratic idea in its generic social sense.’ From the standpoint of the individual, it consists in having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs and in participating according to need in the values which the groups sustain. From the standpoint of the groups, it demands liberation of the potentialities of members of a group in harmony with the interests and goods which are common.

Since every individual is a member

of

many groups, this specification cannot be fulfilled except when different groups interact flexibly and fully in connection with other groups. A member of a robber band may express his powers in a way con-

sonant with belonging to that group and be directed by the interest common to its members. But he does so only at the cost of repression of those of his potentialities which can be realized only through membership in other groups. The robber band cannot interact flexibly with other groups; it can act only through isolating itself. It must prevent the operation of all interests save those which circumscribe it in its separateness. But a good citizen finds his conduct as a member of a political group enriching and enriched by his participation in family life, industry, scientific and artistic associations. There is a free give-and1 The most adequate discussion of this ideal with which I am acquainted is T. V. Smith’s The Democratic Way of Life.

accord, Regarded as an idea, democracy is not sociated life. It is the idea of community life itself. It is an ideal in the only intelligible sense of an ideal: namely, the tendency and movement of some thing which exists carried to its final limit, viewed as completed, perfected. Since things do not attain such fulfillment but are in actuality distracted and interfered with, democracy in this sense is not a fact and never will be. But neither in this sense is there or has there ever been anything which is a community in its full measure, a community unalloyed by alien elements. The idea or ideal of a community presents, however, actual phases of associated life as they are freed from restrictive and disturbing elements, and are contemplated as having attained their limit of development. Wherever there is conjoint activity

whose

consequences

are

appreciated

as

good by all singular persons who take part in it, and where the realization of the good is such as to effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being just because it is a good shared by all, there is in so far a community. The clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of de-

mocracy. Only when we start from a community as a fact, grasp the fact in thought so as to clarify and enhance its constituent elements, can we reach an idea of democracy’ which is not utopian. The conceptions and shibboleths which are traditionally associated with the idea of democracy take on a veridical and directive meaning only when they are construed as marks and

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

333

traits of an association which realizes the defining characteristics of a community. Fraternity, liberty and equality isolated from communal. life are hopeless abstractions. Their separate assertion leads to mushy sentimentalism or else to extravagant and fanatical violence which in the end defeats its own aims. Equality then becomes a creed of mechanical identity which is false to facts and impossible of realization. Effort to attain it is divisive of the vital bonds which hold men together; as far as it puts forth issue, the outcome

care and development are attended to without being sacrificed to the superior strength, possessions and matured abilities of others. Equality does not signify that kind of mathematical or physical equivalence in virtue of which any one element may be substituted for another. It denotes effective regard for whatever is distinctive and unique in each, irrespective of physical and psychological inequalities. It is not a natural possession but is a fruit of the community when its action is directed by

is a mediocrity in which good is com-

its character as a community.

mon only in the sense of being average and vulgar. Liberty is then thought of as independence of social ties, and ends in dissolution and anarchy. It is more difficult to sever the idea of brotherhood from that of a community, and hence it is either practically ignored in the movements which identify democracy with Individualism, or else it is a sentimentally appended tag. In its just connection with communal experience, fraternity is another name for the consciously appreciated goods which accrue

Associated or joint activity is a condition of the creation of a community. But association itself is physical and organic, while communal life is moral, that is emotionally, intellectually, consciously sustained. Human beings combine in behavior as directly and unconsciously as do atoms, stellar masses and cells; as directly and unknowingly as they divide and repel. They

of others, but in so far as his needs for

do so in virtue of their own

structure, as

man and woman unite, as the baby seeks the breast and the breast is there to supply its need. They do so from external circumfrom an association in which all share, stances, pressure from without, as atoms and which give direction to the conduct combine or separate in presence of an of each. Liberty is that secure release and electric charge, or as sheep huddle together fulfillment of personal potentialities which from the cold. Associated activity needs no take place only in rich and manifold assoexplanation; things are made that way. ciation with others: the power to be an But no amount of aggregated collective individualized self making a distinctive action of itself constitutes a community. contribution and enjoying in its own way the fruits of association. Equality denotes For beings who observe and think, and the unhampered share which each in- whose ideas are absorbed by impulses and dividual member of the community has become sentiments and interests, “we” is in the consequences of associated action. It as inevitable as “I.” But “we” and “our” is equitable because it is measured only exist only when the consequences of combined action are perceived and become an by need and capacity to utilize, not by exobject of desire and effort, just as “I” and traneous factors which deprive one in or“mine” appear on the scene only when a der that another may take and have. A distinctive share in mutual action is conbaby in the family is equal with others, sciously asserted or claimed. Human assonot because of some antecedent and structural quality which is the same as that _ciations may be ever so organic in origin

PRAGMATISM

334 and firm in operation, but they develop into societies in a human sense only as their consequences, béing known, are esteemed and sought for. Even if “society” were as much an organism as some writers have held, it would not on that account be society. Interactions, transactions, occur de facto and the results of interdependence follow. But participation in activities and sharing in results are additive concerns. They demand communication as a prerequisite. Combined activity happens among human beings; but when nothing else happens it passes as inevitably into some other mode of interconnected activity as does the interplay of iron and the oxygen of water. What takes place is wholly describable in terms of energy, or, as we say in the case of human interactions, of force. Only when there exist signs or symbols of activities and of their outcome can the flux be viewed

as from

without,

be ar-

rested for consideration and esteem, and be regulated. Lightning strikes and rives a tree or rock, and the resulting frag-

ments take up and continue the process of interaction, and so on and on. But when

phases of the process are represented by signs, a new medium is interposed. As symbols are related to one another, the important relations of a course of events are recorded and are preserved as meanings. Recollection and foresight are possible; the new medium facilitates calculation, planning, and a new kind of action which intervenes in what happens to direct its course in the interest of what is foreseen and desired. Symbols in turn depend upon and promote communication. The results of conjoint experience are considered and transmitted. Events cannot be passed from one

to another, but meanings may be shared

by means of signs. Wants and impulses are then attached to common meanings.

They are thereby transformed into desires and purposes, which, since they implicate’

a common or mutually understood meaning, present new ties, converting a conjoint activity into a community of interest and endeavor. Thus there is generated

what, metaphorically, may be termed a general will and social consciousness: desire and choice on the part of individuals in behalf of activities that, by means of symbols, are communicable and shared by all concerned. A community thus presents an order of energies transmuted into one of meanings which are appreciated and mutually referred by each to every other on the part of those engaged in combined action. “Force” is not eliminated but is transformed in use and direction by ideas and sentiments made possible by means of symbols. The work of conversion of the physical and organic phase of associated behavior into a community of action saturated and regulated by mutual interest in shared meanings, consequences which are translated into ideas and desired objects by means of symbols, does not occur all at once nor completely. At any given time, it sets a problem rather than marks a settled achievement. We are born organic beings associated with others, but we are not born members of a community. The

young have to be brought within the traditions, outlook and interests which characterize a community by means of education: by unremitting instruction and by learning in connection with the phenomena of overt association. Everything which is distinctively human is learned, not native, even though it could not be learned without native structures which mark man off

from other animals. To learn in a human

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

way and to human

AND

effect is not just to

acquire added skill through refinement of original capacities, To learn to -be human is to develop through the give-and-take of communica-

tion an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community; one who understands and appreciates its beliefs, desires and methods, and

who contributes to a further conversion of organic powers into human resources and values. But this translation is never finished. The old Adam, the unregenerate element in human nature, persists. It shows itself wherever the method obtains of attaining results by use of force instead of by the method of communication and enlightenment. It manifests itself more subtly, pervasively and effectually when knowledge and the instrumentalities of skill which are the product of communal life are employed in the service of wants and impulses which have not themselves been modified by reference to a shared interest. To the doctrine of “natural” economy which held that commercial exchange would bring about such an interdependence that harmony would automatically

result, Rousseau gave an adequate answer in advance. He pointed out that interdependence provides just the situation which makes it possible and worth while for the stronger and abler to exploit others for their own ends, to keep others in a state of subjection where they can be utilized as animated tools. The remedy he suggested, a return to a condition of independence based on isolation, was hardly seriously meant. But its desperateness is evidence of the urgency of the problem. Its negative character was equivalent to surrender of any hope of solution. By contrast it indicates the nature of the only possible solution: the perfecting of the

SOCIETY

335

means and ways of communication of meanings so that genuinely shared interest in the consequences of interdependent activities may inform desire and effort and thereby direct action. This is the meaning of the statement that the problem is a moral one dependent upon intelligence and education. We have in our prior account sufficiently emphasized the role of technological and industrial factors in creating the Great Society. What was said may even have seemed to imply acceptance of the deterministic version of an economic interpretation of

history and institutions. It is silly and futile to ignore and deny economic facts. They do not cease to operate because we refuse to note them, or because we smear

them over with sentimental idealizations. As we have also noted, they generate as their result overt and external conditions of action and these are known with various degrees of adequacy. What actually happens in consequence of industrial forces is dependent upon the presence or absence of perception and communication of consequences, upon foresight and its effect upon desire and endeavor. Economic agencies produce one result when they are left to work themselves out on the merely physical level, or on that level modified

only as the knowledge, skill and technique which the community has accumulated are transmitted to its members unequally and by chance. They have a different outcome in the degree in which knowledge of consequences is equitably distributed, and action is animated by an informed and lively sense of a shared interest. The doctrine of economic interpretation as usually stated ignores the transformation which meanings may effect; it passes over the new medium which communication may

interpose between industry and its eventual

336 consequences. It is obsessed by the illusion which vitiated the “natural economy”: an

illusion due to failure to note the difference made in action by perception and publication of its consequences, actual and possible. It thinks in terms of antecedents, not

of the eventual; of origins, not fruits. We have returned, through this apparent excursion, to the question in which our earlier discussion culminated: What are the conditions under which it is possible for the Great Society to approach more closely and vitally the status of a Great Community, and thus take form in genuinely democratic societies and state?

What are the conditions under which we may reasonably picture the Public emerging from its eclipse? The study will be an intellectual or hypothetical one. There will be no attempt to state how the required conditions might come into existence, nor to prophesy that they will occur. The object of the analysis will be to show that unless ascertained specifications are realized, the Community cannot be organized as a democratically

effective Public. It is not claimed that the conditions which will be noted will suffice, but only that at least they are indispensable. In other words, we shall endeavor to frame a hypothesis regarding the democratic state to stand in contrast with the earlier doctrine which has been nulli-

fied by the course of events. Two essential constituents in that older theory, as will be recalled, were the notions that each individual is of himself

PRAGMATISM

bound up with the first and stands or falls with it. At the basis of the scheme lies what Lippmann has well called the | idea of the “omnicompetent” individual: — competent to frame policies, to judge their results; competent to know in all situations demanding political action what is for his own good, and competent to enforce his idea of good and the will to effect it against contrary forces. Subsequent history has proved that the assumption in-

volved illusion. Had it not been for the misleading influence of a false psychology, the illusion might have been detected in advance. But current philosophy held that ideas and knowledge were functions of a mind or consciousness which originated in individuals by means of isolated contact with objects. But in fact, knowledge is a function of association and communication; it depends upon tradition, upon tools and methods socially transmitted, devel-

oped and sanctioned. Faculties of effectual observation, reflection and desire are habits acquired under the influence of the culture and institutions of society, not readymade inherent powers. The fact that man acts from crudely intelligized emotion and from habit rather than from rational consideration, is now so familiar that it is

not easy to appreciate that the other idea was taken seriously as the basis of eco-

nomic and political philosophy. The measure of truth which it contains was derived from observation of a relatively small

group of shrewd business men who regulated their enterprises by calculation and

equipped with the intelligence needed, under the operation of self-interest, to engage in political affairs; and that general suffrage, frequent elections of officials and majority rule are sufficient to ensure the

accounting, and of citizens of small and stable local communities who were so in-

responsibility of elected rulers to the desires and interests of the public. As we shall see, the second conception is logically

of proposed measures upon their own concerns. Habit is the mainspring of human ac-

timately acquainted with the persons and affairs of their locality that they could pass competent judgment upon the bearing

HISTORY

/CULTURE,

AND

tion, and habits are formed for the most part under the influence of the customs of a group. The organic structure of man entails the formation of habit, for, whether we wish it or not, whether we are aware of it or not, every act effects a modification of attitude and set which directs future behavior. The dependence of habitforming upon those habits of a group which constitute customs and institutions is a natural consequence of the helplessness of infancy. The social consequences of habit have been stated once for all by

James: “Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most

precious conservative

influence. It alone is what keeps us within the bounds

of ordinance,

and

saves

the

children of fortune from the uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and

most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fishermen and the deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the country-man to his log cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow; it protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our

early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no

other for which we are fitted and it is too late to begin again. It keeps different social strata from mixing.”

The influence of habit is decisive be-

SOCIETY

337

trial of them. Habit does not preclude the use of thought, but it determines the chan-

nels within which it operates. Thinking is secreted in the interstices of habits. The sailor, miner, fisherman and farmer think, but their thoughts fall within the framework of accustomed occupations and re-

lationships. We dream beyond the limits of use and wont, but only rarely does revery become a source of acts which break bounds; so rarely that we name those in whom it happens demonic geniuses and marvel at the spectacle. Thinking itself becomes habitual along certain lines; a specialized occupation. Scientific men, philosophers, literary persons, are not men and women who have so broken the bonds of habits that pure reason and emotion undefiled by use and wont speak through them. They are persons of a specialized infrequent habit. Hence the idea that men are moved by an intelligent and calculated

regard for their own good is pure mythology. Even if the principle of self-love actuated behavior, it would still be true that the objects in which men find their

love manifested, the objects which they take as constituting their peculiar interests, are set by habirs reflecting social customs. These facts explain why the social doctrinaires of the new industrial movement had so little prescience of what was to follow in consequence of it. These facts explain why the more things changed, the

more they were the same; they account,

cause all distinctively human action has to be learned, and the very heart, blood and sinews of learning is creation of habitudes. Habits bind us to orderly and established

that is, for the fact that instead of the sweeping revolution which was expected to result from democratic political machinery, there was in the main but a transfer of vested power from one class to an-

ways of action because they generate ease,

other.

skill and interest in things to which we have grown used and because they instigate fear to walk in different ways, and

were good judges of their own true interest and good, were competent judges of the conduct of business for pecuniary

A few men, whether or not they

because they leave us incapacitated for the

profit, and of how the new governmental

PRAGMATISM

338 machinery could be made to serve their ends. It would have taken a new race of human beings to escape, in the use made of political forms, from the influence of deeply engrained habits, of old institutions and customary social status, with their inwrought limitations of expectation, desire and demand. And such a race, unless of disembodied angelic constitution, would simply have taken up the task where human beings assumed it upon emergence from the condition of anthropoid apes. In spite of sudden and catastrophic revolutions, the essential continuity of history is

doubly guaranteed. Not only are personal desire and belief functions of habit and custom, but the objective conditions which provide the resources and tools of action, together with its limitations, obstructions and traps, are precipitates of the past, perpetuating, willy-nilly, its hold and power. The creation of a tabula rasa in order to permit the creation of a new order is so impossible as to set at naught both the

hope of buoyant revolutionaries and the timidity of scared conservatives. Nevertheless, changes take place and are cumulative in character. Observation of them in the light of their recognized consequences arouses reflection, discovery, invention, experimentation. When a certain state of accumulated knowledge, of techniques and instrumentalities is attained, the process of change is so accelerated, that, as to-day, it appears externally to be the dominant trait. But there is a marked lag in any corresponding change of ideas and desires. Habits of opinion are the toughest

of all habits; when

they have become

second nature, and are supposedly thrown out of the door, they creep in again as

floating, volatile and accidentally snatched up opinions. Of course there has been an

enormous increase in the amount of knowl- | edge possessed by mankind, but it does — not equal, probably, the increase in the

amount of errors and half-truths which have got into circulation.

human

In social and

matters, especially, the develop-

ment of a critical sense and methods of discriminating judgment has not kept pace

with the growth of careless reports and of motives for positive misrepresentation. What is more important, however, is

that so much of knowledge is not knowledge in the ordinary sense of the word, but is “science.” The quotation marks are not used disrespectfully, but to suggest the technical character of scientific material. The layman takes certain conclusions which get into circulation to be science. But the scientific inquirer knows that they constitute science only in connection with the methods by which they are reached. Even when true, they are not science in virtue of their correctness, but by reason of the apparatus which is employed in reaching them. This apparatus is so highly

specialized that it requires more labor to acquire ability to use and understand it than to get skill in any other instrumentalities possessed by man. Science, in other words, is a highly specialized language, more difficult to learn than any natural language. It is an artificial language, not in the sense of being factitious, but in that of being a work of intricate art, devoted to a particular purpose and not capable of being ac-

quired nor understood in the way in which the mother tongue is learned. It is, indeed, conceivable that sometime methods

stealthily and surely as does first nature.

of instruction will be devised which will enable laymen to read and hear scientific

And as they are modified, the alteration

material with comprehension, even when

first shows itself negatively, in the disintegration of old beliefs, to be replaced by

they do not themselves use the apparatus which is science. The latter may then be-

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

come for large numbers what students of language call a passive, if not an active, vocabulary. But that time is in the future. For most men, save the scientific workers, science is a mystery in the hands of initiates, who have become adepts in virtue of following ritualistic ceremonies from which the profane herd is excluded. They are fortunate who get as far as a sympathetic appreciation of the methods which give pattern to the complicated apparatus: methods of analytic, experimental observation, mathematical formulation and deduction, constant and elaborate check and test. For most persons, the reality of the apparatus is found only in its embodiments in practical affairs, in mechanical devices and in techniques which touch life

as it is lived. For them, electricity is known by means of the telephones, bells and lights they use, by the generators and magnetos in the automobiles they drive,

by the trolley cars in which they ride. The physiology and biology they are acquainted with is that they have learned in taking precautions against germs and from the physicians they depend upon for health. The science of what might be supposed to be closest to them, of human

nature, was

for them an esoteric mystery until it was applied in advertising, salesmanship and personnel selection and management, and until, through psychiatry, it spilled over into life and popular consciousness, through its bearings upon “nerves,” the morbidities and common forms of crankiness which make it difficult for persons to get along with one another and with themselves. Even now, popular psychology is a mass of cant, of slush and of supersti-

tion worthy of the most flourishing days of the medicine man. Meanwhile the technological application of the complex apparatus which is science has revolutionized the conditions under

SOCIETY

339

which associated life goes on. This may be known as a fact which is stated in a proposition and assented to, But it is not known in the sense that men understand it. They do not know it as they know some machine which they operate, or as they know electric light and steam locomotives. They do not understand Aow the change has gone on nor how it affects their conduct. Not understanding its “how,” they cannot use and control its manifestations. They undergo the consequences, they are affected by them. They cannot manage them, though some are fortunate enough—what is commonly called good fortune—to be able to exploit some phase of the process for their own personal profit. But even the most shrewd and successful man does not in any analytic and systematic way—in a way worthy to compare with the knowledge which he has won in lesser affairs by means of the stress of experience—know the system within which he operates. Skill and ability work within a framework which we have not created and do not comprehend. Some occupy strategic positions which give them advance information of forces that affect the market; and by training and an innate turn that way they have acquired a special technique which enables them to use the vast impersonal tide to turn their own wheels. They can dam the current here and release it there. The current itself it as much beyond them as was ever the river by the side of which some ingenious mechanic, employing a knowledge which was transmitted

to him, erected

his saw-mill

to make boards of trees which he had not grown. That within limits those successful in affairs have knowledge and skill is not to be doubted. But such knowledge goes

relatively but little further than that of the competent skilled operator who manages a machine. It suffices to employ the condi-

340

PRAGMATISM

tions which are before him. Skill enables

conceptions of natural phenomena, proves

him to turn the flux of events this way or that in his own neighborhood. It gives

how inept become the conceptions of the

him no control of the flux. Why should the public and its officers, even if the latter are termed statesmen, be

wiser and more effective? The prime condition of a democratically organized public is a kind of knowledge and insight which does not yet exist. In its absence, it would be the height of absurdity to try

to tell what it would be like if it existed. But some of the conditions which must be fulfilled if it is to exist can be indicated. We can borrow that much from the spirit and method of science even if we are ignorant of it as a specialized apparatus. An obvious requirement is freedom of social inquiry and of distribution of its conclusions. The notion that men may be free in their thought even when they are not in its expression and dissemination has been sedulously propagated. It had its origin in the idea of a mind complete in itself, apart from action and from objects. Such a consciousness presents in fact the spectacle of mind deprived of its normal functioning, because it is baffled by the actualities in connection with which alone it is truly mind, and is driven back into secluded and impotent revery. There can be no public without full publicity in respect to all consequences which concern it. Whatever obstructs and restricts publicity, limits and distorts public opinion and checks and distorts thinking on social affairs. Without freedom of expression, not even methods of social inquiry can be developed. For tools can be evolved and perfected only in operation; in application to observing, reporting and organizing actual subject-matter; and this application cannot occur save through free and systematic communication. The early

history of physical knowledge, of Greek

best endowed minds when those ideas are | elaborated apart from the closest contact — with the events which they purport to state and explain. The ruling ideas and methods of the human sciences are in much the same condition to-day. They are also evolved on the basis of past gross observations,

remote

from

constant

use

in

regulation of the material of new observations. The belief that thought and its communication are now free simply because legal restrictions which once obtained have been done away with is absurd. Its currency perpetuates the infantile state of social knowledge. For it blurs recognition of our central need to possess conceptions which are used as tools of directed inquiry and which are tested, rectified and caused to grow in actual use. No man and no mind was ever emancipated merely by being left alone. Removal of formal limitations is but a negative condition; positive freedom is not a state but an act which involves methods and instrumentalities for control of conditions. Experience shows that sometimes the sense of external oppression, as by censorship, acts as a challenge and arouses intellectual energy and excites courage. But a belief in intellectual freedom where it does not exist contributes only to complacency in virtual enslavement, to sloppiness, superficiality and _recourse to sensations as a substitute for ideas: marked traits of our present estate with respect to social knowledge. On one hand, thinking deprived of its normal

course takes refuge in academic specialism, comparable in its way to what is called scholasticism.

On

the

other

hand,

the

physical agencies of publicity which exist in such abundance are utilized in ways

which constitute a large part of the present

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

meaning of publicity: advertising, propaganda, invasion of private life, the “featuring” of passing incidents in a way which violates all the moving logic of continuity,

and which leaves us with those isolated intrusions and shocks which are the essence of “sensations.” It would be a mistake to identify the conditions which limit free communication and circulation of facts and ideas, and which thereby arrest and pervert social thought or inquiry, merely with overt forces which are obstructive. It is true that those who have ability to manipulate social relations for their own advantage have to be reckoned with. They have an uncanny instinct for detecting whatever intellectual tendencies even remotely threaten to encroach upon their control. They have developed an extraordinary facility in enlisting upon their side the inertia, prejudices and emotional partisanship of the masses by use of a technique which impedes free inquiry and expression. We seem to be approaching a state of government by hired promoters of opinion called publicity agents. But the more serious enemy is deeply concealed in hidden entrenchments. Emotional habituations and intellectual habitudes on the part of the mass of men create the conditions of which the exploiters of sentiment and opinion only take advantage. Men have got used to an experimental method in physical and technical matters. They are still afraid of it in human concerns. The fear is the more efficacious because like all deep-lying fears it is covered up and disguised by all kinds of rationalizations. One of its commonest forms is a truly religious idealization of, and reverence for, established institutions; for example in our own politics, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, private property, free contract and so on. The words

341

SOCIETY

“sacred” and “sanctity” come readily to our lips when such things come under discussion. They testify to the religious aureole which protects the institutions. If “holy” means that which is not to be approached nor touched, save with ceremonial precautions and by specially anointed officials, then such things are

holy in contemporary

political life. As

supernatural matters have progressively been left high and dry upon a secluded

beach, the actuality of religious taboos has more and more gathered about secular institutions, especially those connected with the nationalistic state.? Psychiatrists have discovered that one of the commonest causes of mental disturbance is an underlying fear of which the subject is not aware, but which leads to withdrawal from reality and to unwillingness to think things through. There is a social pathology which works powerfully against effective inquiry into social institutions and conditions. It manifests itself in a thousand ways; in querulousness,

in impotent

drifting,

in

uneasy snatching at distractions, in idealization of the long established, in a facile optimism assumed as a cloak, in riotous glorification of things “as they are,” in intimidation of all dissenters—ways which depress and dissipate thought all the more effectually because they operate with subtle and unconscious pervasiveness. The backwardness of social knowledge is marked in its division into independent and insulated branches of learning. Anthropology, history, sociology, morals, economics, political science, go their own ways without constant and systematized fruitful interaction. Only in appearance is there a similar division in physical knowledge. There is continuous cross-fertilization be2 The religious character of nationalism has been forcibly brought out by Carleton Hayes, in his Essays on Nationalism, especially Chap. 4.

PRAGMATISM

342 tween astronomy, physics, chemistry and the biological sciences. Discoveries and improved methods are so recorded and or-

ganized that constant exchange and intercommunication take place. The isolation of the humane subjects from one another is

connected with their aloofness from physical knowledge.

The mind still draws

a

sharp separation between the world in which man lives and the life of man in and by that world, a cleft reflected in the

bearing upon human life. All merely physical knowledge is technical, couched in a

technical vocabulary communicable only to _ the few. Even physical knowledge which ° does affect human

conduct,

which

does

modify what we do and undergo, is also technical and remote in the degree in which its bearings are not understood and used. The sunlight, rain, air and soil have

always entered in visible ways into human experience; atoms and molecules and cells and most other things with which the sciences are occupied affect us, but not

separation of man himself into a body and a mind, which, it is currently supposed, can be known and dealt with apart. That for the past three centuries energy should have gone chiefly into physical inquiry, beginning with the things most remote from man such as heavenly bodies, was to have been expected. The history of the physical sciences reveals a certain order in which they. developed. Mathematical

experience in imperceptible ways, and their consequences are not realized, speech about them is technical; communication is by means of peculiar symbols. One would think, then, that a fundamental and everoperating aim would be to translate knowledge of the subject-matter of physical con-

tools had to be employed before a new

ditions into terms

astronomy

understood, into signs denoting human consequences of services and disservices ren-

could be constructed.

Physics

advanced when ideas worked out in connection with the solar system were used to describe happenings on the earth. Chemistry waited on the advance of physics; the sciences of living things required the material and methods of physics and chemistry in order to make headway. Human psychology ceased to be chiefly speculative opinion only when biological and physiological conclusions were available. All this is natural and seemingly inevitable. Things which had the most outlying and indirect connection with human interests had to be mastered in some degree before inquiries could competently converge upon man himself. Nevertheless the course of development has left us of this age in a plight. When we say that a subject of science is tech-

nically specialized, or that it is highly “abstract,” what we practically mean is that it is not conceived in terms of its

visibly. Because they enter life and modify

dered.

For

which

ultimately

are generally

all consequences

which enter human life depend upon physical conditions; they can be understood and mastered only as the latter are taken into account. One would think, then, that any

state of aflairs which tends to render the things of the environment unknown and incommunicable by human beings in terms of their own activities and sufferings would

be deplored as a disaster; that it would be felt to be intolerable, and to be put up with only as far as it is, at any given time, inevitable. But the facts are to the contrary. Matter

and the material are words which in the minds of many convey a note of disparagement. They are taken to be foes of whatever is of ideal value in life, instead of as

conditions of its manifestation and sustained being. In consequence of this division, they do become in fact enemies, for

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

343

whatever is consistently kept apart from human values depresses thought and ren-

science to regulate industry and trade has gone on steadily. The scientific revolution

ders values sparse and precarious in fact. There are even some who regard the ma-

of the seventeenth century was the pre-

terialism and dominance of commercialism

of modern life as fruits of undue devotion to physical science, not seeing that the split between man and nature, artificially made by a tradition which originated before there

was understanding of the physical conditions that are the medium of human activities, is the benumbing factor. The most influential form of the divorce is separation between pure and applied science. Since “application” signifies recognized bearing

upon human

experience and well-being,

honor of what is “pure” and contempt for

what is “applied” has for its outcome a science which is remote and technical, communicable only to specialists, and a conduct of human affairs which is haphazard, biased, unfair in distribution of values. What is applied and employed as the alternative to knowledge in regulation of society is ignorance, prejudice, class-interest and accident. Science is converted into knowledge in its honorable and emphatic sense only in application. Otherwise it is truncated, blind, distorted. When it is then applied, it is in ways which explain the unfavorable sense so often attached to “application” and the “utilitarian”: namely, use for pecuniary ends to the profit of a few. At present, the application of physical science is rather to human concerns than in them. That is, it is external, made in the interests of its consequences for a possessing and acquisitive class. Application in life would signify that science was absorbed and distributed; that it was the instrumentality of that common understanding and thorough communication which is the precondition of the existence of a genuine and effective public. The use of

cursor of the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth. In consequence, man has suffered the impact of an enormously enlarged control of physical energies without any corresponding ability to

control himself and his own affairs. Knowledge divided against itself, a science to whose incompleteness is added an artificial split, has played its part in generating enslavement of men, women and children in factories in which they are animated

machines to tend inanimate machines. It has maintained sordid slums, flurried and discontented careers, grinding poverty and luxurious wealth, brutal exploitation of nature and man in times of peace and high explosives and noxious gases in times of war. Man, a child in understanding of himself, has placed in his hands physical tools of incalculable power. He plays with them like a child, and whether they work harm or good is largely a matter of accident. The instrumentality becomes a master and works fatally as if possessed of a will of its own—not because it has a will but because man has not. The glorification of “pure” science under such conditions is a rationalization of an escape; it marks a construction of an asylum of refuge, a shirking of responsibility. The true purity of knowledge exists not when it is uncontaminated by contact with use and service. It is wholly a moral matter, an affair of honesty, impartiality and generous breadth of intent in search and communication. The adulteration of knowledge is due not to its use, but to vested bias and prejudice, to one-sidedness of outlook, to vanity, to conceit of possession and authority, to contempt or disre-

gard of human concern in its use. Humanity is not, as was once thought, the

344

PRAGMATISM

end for which all things were formed; it is but a slight and feeble thing, perhaps an episodic one, in the vast stretch of the universe. But for man, man is the center of interest and the measure of importance. The magnifying of the physical realm at

the cost of man is but an abdication and a flight. To make physical science a rival of human interests is bad enough, for it forms a diversion of energy which can ill be afforded. But the evil does not stop there. The ultimate harm is that the understanding by man of his own affairs and his ability to direct them are sapped at their

root when knowledge of nature is disconnected from its human function. Tt has been implied throughout that knowledge is communication as well as understanding. I well remember the saying of a man,

uneducated

from

the

stand-

point of the schools, in speaking of certain

matters: “Sometime they will be found out and not only found out, but they will be known.” The schools may suppose that a thing is known when it is found out. My old friend was aware that a thing is fully known only when it is published, shared, socially accessible. Record and communication are indispensable to knowledge. Knowledge cooped up in a private consciousness is a myth, and knowledge of social phenomena is peculiarly dependent upon dissemination, for only by distribution can such knowledge be either obtained or tested. A fact of community life which is not spread abroad so as to be a common possession is a contradiction in terms. Dissemination is something other than scattering at large. Seeds are sown, not by virtue of being thrown out at random, but by being so distributed as to take

root and have a chance of growth. Communication of the results of social inquiry is the same thing as the formation of pub-

lic opinion. This marks one of the first

ideas framed in the growth of political democracy as it will be one of the last to be fulfilled. For public opinion is judgment which is formed and entertained by those

who constitute the public and is about public affairs. Each of the two phases imposes for its realization conditions hard to

meet. Opinions

and

beliefs concerning

the

public presuppose effective and organized inquiry. Unless there are methods for detecting the energies which are at work and tracing them through an intricate network of interactions to their consequences, what passes as public opinion will be “opinion” in its derogatory sense rather than truly public, no matter how widespread the

opinion is. The number who share error as to fact and who partake of a false belief measures power for harm. Opinion casually formed and formed under the direction of those who have something at stake in having a lie believed can be public opinion only in name. Calling it by this name, acceptance of the name as a kind of warrant, magnifies its capacity to lead action estray. The more who share it, the more injurious its influence. Public opin-

ion, even if it happens to be correct, is intermittent when it is not the product of methods of investigation and reporting constantly at work. It appears only in crises. Hence its “rightness” concerns only an immediate emergency. Its lack of con-

tinuity makes it wrong from the standpoint of the course of events. It is as if

a physician were able to deal for the moment with an emergency

in disease but

could not adapt his treatment of it to the. underlying conditions which brought it about. He may then “cure” the disease— that is, cause its present alarming symptoms to subside—but he does not modify its causes; his treatment may even affect them for the worse. Only continuous in-

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

quiry, continuous in the sense of being connected as well as persistent, can provide the material of enduring opinion about public matters. There is a sense in which “opinion” rather

than

knowledge,

even

under

the

most favorable circumstances, is the proper term to use—namely, in the sense of judgment,

estimate.

For

in its strict

sense,

knowledge can refer only to what has happened and been done. What is still to be done involves a forecast of a future still contingent, and cannot escape the liability to error in judgment involved in all anticipation of probabilities. There may well be honest divergence as to policies to be pursued, even when plans spring from knowledge of the same facts. But genuinely public policy cannot be generated

unless it be informed by knowledge, and this knowledge does not exist except when there is systematic, thorough, and wellequipped search and record. Moreover, inquiry must be as nearly contemporaneous as possible; otherwise it is only of antiquarian interest. Knowledge of history is evidently necessary for connectedness of knowledge. But history which is not brought down close to the actual scene of events leaves a gap and exercises influence upon the formation of judgments about the public interest only by guess-work about intervening events. Here, only too conspicuously, is a limitation of the existing social sciences. Their material comes too late, too far after the event, to enter effectively into the formation of public opinion about the immediate public concern and what is to be done about it. A glance at the situation shows that the

physical and external means of collecting information in regard to what is happen-

ing in the world have far outrun the intellectual phase of inquiry and organiza-

SOCIETY

345

tion of its results. Telegraph, telephone, and now the radio, cheap and quick mails, the printing press, capable of swift reduplication of material at low cost, have attained a remarkable development. But when we ask what sort of material is recorded and how it is organized, when we ask about the intellectual form in which the material is presented, the tale to be told is very different. “News” signifies something which has just happened, and which is new just because it deviates from the old and regular. But its meaning depends upon relation to what it imports, to what its social consequences are. This

import cannot be determined unless the new is placed in relation to the old, to what has happened and been integrated into the course of events. Without coordination and

consecutiveness, events are not events, but mere occurrences, intrusions; an event implies that out of which a happening proceeds. Hence even if we discount the influence of private interests in procuring suppression, secrecy and misrepresentation, we have here an explanation of the triviality and “sensational” quality of so much of what passes as news. The catastrophic, namely, crime, accident, family rows, personal clashes and conflicts, are the most obvious forms of breaches of continuity; they supply the element of shock which is the strictest meaning of sensation; they are the new par excellence, even though only the date of the newspaper could inform us whether they happened last year or this, so completely are they isolated from their connections. So accustomed are we to this method of collecting, recording and presenting social changes, that it may well sound ridiculous to say that a genuine social science would manifest its reality in the daily press, while learned books and articles supply and polish tools of inquiry. But the in-

PRAGMATISM

346 quiry which alone can furnish knowledge

formed on political matters are so impor-

as a precondition of public judgments must be contemporary and quotidian. Even if social sciences as a specialized apparatus

tant, in spite of all factors to the contrary, that there is an enormous premium upon

of inquiry were more advanced than they are, they would be comparatively impotent in the office of directing opinion on matters of concern to the public as long as they are remote from application in the daily and unremitting assembly and interpretation of “news.” On the other hand, the tools of social inquiry will be clumsy as long as they are forged in places and under conditions remote from contempo-

rary events. What has been said about the formation of ideas and judgments concerning the public apply as well to the distribution of the knowledge which makes it an effective possession of the members of the public. Any separation between the two sides of the problem is artificial. The discussion of

propaganda

and

propagandism

would

alone, however, demand a volume, and could be written only by one much more experienced than the present writer. Propaganda can accordingly only be mentioned, with the remark that the present situation is one unprecedented in history. The political forms of democracy and quasi-democratic habits of thought on social matters have compelled a certain amount of public

discussion and at least the simulation of general consultation in arriving at political decisions. Representative government must at least seem to be founded on public interests as they are revealed to public belief. The days are past when government

can be carried on without any pretense of ascertaining the wishes of the governed. In , theory, their assent must be secured. Under the older forms, there was no need to muddy the sources of opinion on political

all methods which affect their formation. The smoothest road to control of political conduct is by control of opinion. As long as interests of pecuniary profit are powerful, and a public has not located and identified itself, those who have this inter-

est will have an unresisted motive for tampering with the springs of political action in all that affects them. Just as in the conduct of industry and exchange generally the technological factor is obscured,

deflected and defeated by “business,” so specifically in the management of publicity. The gathering and sale of subject-matter having a public import is part of the existing pecuniary system. Just as industry conducted by engineers on a factual techno-

logical basis would be a very different thing from what it actually is, so the assembling and reporting of news would be a very different thing if the genuine interests of reporters were permitted to work freely. One aspect of the matter concerns particularly the side of dissemination. It is often said, and with a great appearance of truth, that the freeing and perfecting of inquiry would not have any especial effect. For, it is argued, the mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate in-

vestigation. Unless these are read, they cannot seriously affect the thought and ac-

tion of members of the public; they remain in secluded library alcoves, and are studied and understood only by a few intellectuals. The objection is well taken save as the potency of art is taken into account. A technical high-brow presentation would ap-

matters. No current of energy flowed from

peal only to those technically high-brow; it would not be news to the masses. Presen-

them.

tation

To-day

the judgments

popularly

is fundamentally

important,

and

HISTORY;

CULTURE,

AND

presentation is a question of art. A news-

paper which was only a daily edition of a quarterly journal of sociology or political science would undoubtedly possess a limited circulation and a narrow influence. Even at that, however, the mere existence and accessibility of such material would have some regulative effect. But we can look much further than that. The material would have such an enormous and widespread human bearing that its bare existence would be an irresistible invitation to a presentation of it which would have a direct popular appeal. The freeing of the artist in literary presentation, in other words, is as much a precondition of the desirable creation of adequate opinion on public matters as is the freeing of social inquiry. Men’s conscious life of opinion and judgment often proceeds on a superficial and trivial plane. But their lives reach a deeper level. The function of art has always been to break through the crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness. Common things, a flower, a gleam of moonlight, the song of a bird, not things rare and remote, are means with which the deeper levels of life are touched so that they spring up as desire and thought. This

SOCIETY

347

are proofs that the problem of presentation is not insoluble. Artists have always been the real purveyors of news, for it is not the outward happening in itself which is new, but the kindling by it of emotion, perception and appreciation. We have but touched lightly and in passing upon the conditions which must be fulfilled if the Great Society is to become a Great Community; a society in which the ever-expanding and intricately ramifying consequences of associated activities shall be known in the full sense of that word, so that an organized, articulate Public comes into being. The highest and most difficult kind of inquiry and a subtle, delicate, vivid and responsive art of communication must take possession of the physical machinery of transmission and circulation and breathe life into it. When the machine age has thus perfected its machinery it will be a means of life and not its despotic master. Democracy will come into its own, for democracy is a name for a life of free and enriching communion. It had its seer in Walt Whitman. It will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.

process is art. Poetry, the drama, the novel,

Concept and Theory Formation im the Social Sciences ERNEST The study of human

institutions and

human behavior in institutional settings has been under cultivation for at least as

NAGEL long as has inquiry into physical and biological phenomena. But few will question the assertion that in no area of social study

PRAGMATISM

348 have a body of knowledge and systems of explanatory theory been achieved, which

measure the achievements

compare in scope, precision, and reliability with what the natural sciences have to offer. To be sure, systems of “social physics” have been proposed in the past as adequate for all human cultures and for

natural sciences; and they maintain that the construction of “abstract” theories

all periods of history. Most of these explanatory systems are so-called “singlefactor” theories. They identify some one “factor’—such as geography, race, economic structure, to mention but a few—

as the “basic determinant” in terms of which the organization and development of societies are to be understood. However, none of these ambitious hypotheses has been able to survive critical scrutiny; and even in restricted domains of social study, such as economics, the empirical worth of

the theories currently in development is still a seriously debated matter. In consequence, the right of any existing department of social study to the title of a “genuine science” has been repeatedly challenged. It is idle to debate an issue so stated, for it is little more than a dispute

over the use of an honorific label. In any case, it is preposterous to deny that social scientists have produced valuable descriptive studies of many social phenomena, that they have thrown much light on the interdependence of a variety of social processes, or that they have devised techniques of measurement and empirical analysis possessing varying degrees of actual and potential usefulness. On the other hand, ‘many professional students of human affairs believe it is premature to attempt comprehensive theories for their subject matters; and most of them are indeed occupied with less ambitious though doubtless also less impressive tasks. Moreover, there is an influential group of thinkers

who claim it is a fundamental error to

of the social

sciences by standards borrowed from the

which require to be warranted by objective evidence, like the theories of physics, is

not the appropriate goal of social inquiry. The social sciences thus present a scene not only of widely diverse undertakings, but also of acute methodological controversy between different schools of inquiry. Anyone who proposes to discuss the social sciences, with the intent of compar-

ing their theoretical structures and their logical methods with those of the natural sciences, is thus in a quandary. There is

little general agreement as to what social theory ought to be, and as to what social theory ought to accomplish; and in any case, whatever sense is attached to the word “theory,” there is no theoretical

treatise in these disciplines comparable in scope and authority with those current in physics, chemistry, or biology. Whatever material is selected for analysis is likely to be judged by many students as unrepre-

sentative, and the analysis itself as irrelevant to the central problems of social inquiry. But this risk is unavoidable. In this paper I wish to examine some issues that seem to me perennial in the social sciences, and to discuss them in the context of an ap-

proach in them that is extensively exploited at present. Many outstanding investigators of human affairs believe that the best hope for their disciplines lies in the systematic cultivation of “functional” analyses of social processes and institutions; and some of them even proclaim functionalism to be a full-fledged “theory” of social phenomena. It is to a few broad problems raised by functionalism that the following

somewhat dressed.

desultory

comments

are ad-

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

349

their experiments upon individual organic I

systems, their conclusions. are intended to

Since functional analysis in the social sciences is often a self-conscious attempt to adopt a type of explanation common in biology, and especially physiology, let me begin with a brief consideration of functional explanations in biological science. In biology, a functional account is an analysis of the structure and operations of various parts of an organism (or a system that includes living bodies) with the objective of exhibiting the manner in which certain characteristic activities or features of the organism (or system) are maintained, de-

be valid not only for the particular systems actually investigated, but for all systems of a stated type. In short, physiological analyses terminate in general statements or laws. Moreover, in the process of ascertaining the functions of various parts of an organic system, explicit use is made of generalized knowledge obtained in prior inquiries, and frequently of theories established by the physical sciences. In the

spite variations in its external and internal

the physical sciences are usually not of

environment. Now it is demonstrable that functional analyses in biology do not differ in kind

this nature, biologists no longer find it

or method from the so-called “causal” explanations in the physical sciences with which they are often contrasted. For in the first place, a functional account in biology traces the objective effects which follow from the operation of various components of an organic system upon that system as a whole or upon some of its other parts. In consequence, the formulations of the relations of dependence that are thus dis-

covered do not differ in content

from

formulations which simply specify the conditions (whether necessary or sufficient) under which events of a specified type occur. In fact, statements in biology that have a teleological form are translatable without loss of meaning into statements of

a nonteleological kind. To say, for example, that the function of the human kidney is to maintain a certain chemical balance in the blood is to assert nothing different from saying that in the absence of kidneys in the normal human body the chemical composition of the blood does not remain approximately constant. In the second place, though physiologists conduct

third place, though the systems studied in biology are “self-maintaining” or “goaldirected,” while the systems explored by

necessary to postulate purposes or special vital agents to account for the self-regulative character of the systems they investigate. Indeed, as the current literature on servo-mechanisms makes evident, it is now possible to define what distinguishes self-maintaining systems from those which are not, in terms that are neutral to the distinction between the living and the nonliving. In any event, biologists have succeeded in a number of cases in explaining the self-maintenance of organisms entirely in terms of the organization of their parts, and of compensatory physio-chemical changes in those parts. On the other hand, a critical biology recognizes that a teleological analysis is always relative to a specified system and a designated set of structures and activities. For the operation of a given organ will in general have a variety

of consequences, so that to ask for the function of an organ is to ask for the consequences of its operation for one among several systems of which it may be a component. But this relativity of functional explanations does not make them

illegitimate, and does not preclude the possibility of there being objective warrant

PRAGMATISM

350

for them. And finally, successful functional analysis in biology is not contingent upon the prior acceptance of any particular theory of organic processes. In particular, it does not rest upon the far-going assump-

tion that the continued existence and operation of every part is indispensable to the organism, or that the actual behavior

of each distinguishable component of an organic system is dependent on the character and mode of behavior of every other component. If by “theory” one understands an explicit formulation of determinate relations between a set of variables, in terms of which a fairly extensive class of empirically ascertainable regularities (or laws) can be explained (always provided that suitable boundary conditions for the application of the theory are supplied), and if the pursuit of functional analyses in biology is called “functionalism,” then functionalism is not a biological theory. It is at best but a precept for orienting inquiry to the study of conditions and mechanisms of self-maintenance.

aims at the explanation of anthropological facts at all levels of development by their function, by the part which they play within the integral system of culture, by the manner in which they are related to each other within the system, and by the manner in which this system is related to the physical surroundings. . . . The functional view of culture insists therefore upon the principle that in every type of civilization, every

These brief reminders of the character of teleological analyses in biology ~will prove to be pertinent to the examination of functionalism in the social sciences, to which I now turn. However, despite their conviction of its great promise, proponents of functionalism in the social sciences are not in general formal agreement as to its

content. I shall nevertheless take for my point of departure a statement of it which is by now classic, even though it is not fully representative of current functionalists’ views and even if not all professed functionalists subscribe to it in its entirety. In an account of functionalism in anthropology, Malinowski explained that a functionalist analysis of culture

material

object, idea

But what is functionalism on this statement? Is it a hypothesis concerning the interrelations of social phenomena, is it simply a program for inquiry, is it both?

The explicit insistence that every

item

discoverable in a culture is indispensable to it as a “working whole,” inclines one

to believe that it falls under the first alternative; but the remainder of the statement suggests that it is to be subsumed under the second. However, if functionalism is a “theory” about civilizations, it must agree

with 2

custom,

and belief fulfills some vital function, has some task to accomplish, represents an indispensable part within a working whole.*

available

empirical

evidence;

and

there is ample evidence to show that socie-

ties are not in general the tightly knit “organic” systems which this theory proclaims them to be, so that functionalism in this version must be judged as false. On the other hand, if functionalism is con-

strued as a methodological precept, then the above statement appears to be fully conveyed by the imperative: “There are relations of dependence between cultural objects, and between cultural objects and their physical environment. Look for them!” But if this translation is not a

complete caricature, it is difficult to understand why functionalism should be so 1 Bronislaw Malinowski, “Anthropology,” The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Supplementary Vol. -I (New York and London, 1936), pp. 132-33.

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

widely hailed as a fresh and promising approach to the study of social phenomena. In point of fact, the content of functional-

ism (whether it is construed to be a theory or a program) is meager to the vanishing point, unless formulations of it such as the above are supplemented by a variety of material assumptions about the organization and the operation of societies. At the same time, the ambiguity just noted pervades not only the writings of Malinowski, but also the literature of functionalism

in other areas of social study.

SOCIETY

35!

requirements of society, the functionalist’s injunction to study the manner in which “the integral system of culture” is maintained, is frequently a concealed endorsement of some particular social ideal. But in any event, the characterization of a process or set of conditions as “functional” or “dysfunctional,” according as it contributes to or detracts from the “integration and effectiveness” of a social system, is empirically empty unless there is an ante-

cedent specification of what is to be integrated and for what a process is effective. For every occurrence is functional for some

3

things and at the same time dysfunctional

But I hasten to more substantial issues. Although it is usually quite clear in biology what are the activities of an organic system which must be maintained if the system is to endure, the corresponding question in the social sciences does not in general admit of a ready answer. For in biology there are certain familiar and generally acknowledged inclusive functions, such as respiration or reproduction, without whose continued maintenance the organism or the species will perish. In the social sciences, on the other hand, there is much less explicit agreement as to what are the indispensable activities and struc-

tures of social systems—except when specifically biological needs of human beings are in question. The problem obviously in-

for others, as indeed a critical biology

makes plain. Some

recent

functionalists,

if I under-

stand them, seek to outflank these difficulties by frankly recognizing the relativity of teleological analyses of social systems. They propose systematically articulated “structural” categories allegedly so general as to comprehend all types of institutions. (For example, one proposal

distinguishes

between

configurations

of

institutions according as they stress norms of conduct binding upon all members of a society indiscriminately, or norms which involve reference to special relations between individuals; and the proposal further distinguishes between configurations according as they promote social stratifica-

volves complicated matters of empirical

tion on the basis of individual achieve-

fact and analysis, though it is often settled by a tacit use of moral principles. For example, though Hayek’s recent polemics against deliberate social planning

ment, or on the basis of possession of special attributes. At least four types of social structure are thus recognized.) A functional analysis will therefore show just what, and in what manner, various social processes contribute to the maintenance of designated structural features of a social system. If I am correct in my reading of this version of functionalism, it makes central the possibility of alternate patterns of

employ the arguments of an implicit functionalism, his arguments have force only

if one accepts the moral assumptions underlying them.” In the absence of explicit agreement on what are the “essential” 2F, A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution ence (Glencoe, 1952), pp. 90-92.

of Sct-

social organization. It thereby not only

PRAGMATISM

352 makes explicit the relativity of functional

analyses, but also keeps distinct questions of actual fact from questions of social policy, The present and eventual worth of

the categorical schemas thus far proposed is by no means clear, and is certainly disputable, But it is safe to say that without some

such

“structural”

categories

func-

tionalism cannot intelligibly maintain this distinction, and cannot consistently escape

conditioned interest and it alone is significant to us. It is significant because it reveals relationships which are important to us due to their connection with our values... . | The focus of attention on reality under the guidance of values which lend it significance and the selection and ordering of the phenomena which are thus affected in the light of their cultural significance is entirely different from the analysis of reality in terms of laws and general concepts.

basic confusion. Weber

4 It is therefore a mistaken claim which asserts that functional analyses (or for that matter any responsible inquiry into human affairs) are necessarily committed to some pattern of cultural values, and which concludes that “objectivity” in any relevant sense of this difficult word is impossible in the social sciences. I will begin with a quotation from Max Weber, whose views on this issue continue to exercise enormous influence. Weber maintained that it is the distinctive task of the social sciences to analyze phenomena in terms of their “cul-

tural significance,” and in this respect he was a functionalist despite his vigorous dissent from certain functionalist tendencies. But he also declared that The significance of a configuration of cultural phenomena and the basis of this sig-

nificance cannot . . . be derived and rendered intelligible by a system of analytical laws, however perfect it may be, since the significance of cultural events presupposes a value-orientation toward these events. The concept of culture is a value-concept. Empirical reality becomes ‘culture’ to us because and insofar as we relate it to value ideas. It includes those segments and only those segments of reality which have become significant to us because of this value-

relevance. Only a small portion of existing concrete reality is colored by our value-

finally concluded

that

an ‘objective’ analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to the thesis that the ideal of science is the reduction of empirical reality to ‘laws’ is meaningless. . . . The transcendental presupposition of every cultural science lies not in our finding a certain culture or any ‘culture’ in general to be valuable but rather in the fact that we are cultural beings, endowed with the capacity

and the will to take a deliberate attitude toward the world and to lend it significance.® It would take more pages than are at my disposal to unravel the ambiguities in these pronouncements, or to separate what seems to me sound in them from what is false. I must limit myself to but one point. Why is the fact that an inquirer selects his material for study in the light of the problems that interest him, of greater moment for the logic of social inquiry than it is for the logic of natural science? If a social scientist discovers that the outcome —and in this sense the “significance”— of certain forms of individual activity is the perpetuation of a free economic market, in

what way is his concentration upon processes that maintain this particular institu: tion rather than something else, of greater relevance in evaluating the adequacy of his explanation than is, for the corresponding 3 Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, 1949), pp. 76-77, 80-81.

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

question, the concern of the physiologist with processes that maintain a relatively

SOCIETY

353

prise of obtaining warranted knowledge. Doubtless such standards change with the

internal temperature of the hu-

development of science, and doubtless also

man body? Were we not human beings,

these changes are frequently associated with other cultural variations. But evidence is completely lacking to support the currently fashionable belief that even when

constant

but were nevertheless capable of engaging in inquiry, we might perhaps show

no interest either in the conditions that maintain a free market or in the conditions that make possible the homeostasis of human temperature. But there is no ascertainable difference on this score between the natural and the social sciences. The traits selected for study, with a view to discovering their conditions and consequences, may indeed be dependent on the fact that the investigator is a “cultural being”; but there is no reason whatever for believing that the validity of his conclusions is dependent on that fact in the

same way. It may be said, however, that some point of view is required in selecting materials in the conduct of social inquiry, that the “point of view determines what is important and what is unimportant in the confusing maze of human events,” and that since questions of importance involve

problems of valuation, it is impossible to eliminate bias from the study of human affairs. But this argument is a nonsequitur, and gains its apparent plausibility from confounding several senses in which valuations may enter into inquiry. It should be noted in the first place that if the argument is sound, it applies equally to inquiries in both the natural and social sciences. In the second place, it is undoubtedly correct that the scientist brings certain “values” to his investigations, and imposes certain demands upon the course of his inquiry. But the only values which are relevant in this connection are the values and standards implicit in the enter4Morris

R.

Cohen,

The

Meaning

History (La Salle, 1947), p. 80.

of Human

the specific problem initiating an inquiry is carefully formulated and understood, in- | dividuals may be so disparate in their “cultural values” as to preclude in principle: the possibility of agreement between them concerning the validity of a proposed solution for it. And in the third place, though judgments of importance are unavoidable in all inquiries, in the natural as well as the social sciences, such judgments are not necessarily “subjective” in any pejorative sense. In particular, they need not be made in terms of some “private” set of values, since standards of relative importance can be explicitly formulated, and the question whether these standards are satished in a given case can be settled, at least in principle and when sufficient evidence is available, by customary methods of empirical investigation. To be sure, men’s interests may be discordant, and the standards accepted by some in ascribing degrees of relative importance may be different from the standards accepted by others. It does not follow, however, that two apparently contradictory judgments of relative importance are necessarily incompatible; for the appearance of contradiction may merely indicate the use of different criteria by which the meaning of “relative importance” is tacitly specified. Interests may clash, they may not be arbitrable by rational methods, and they may eventuate in the adoption of alternate principles for selecting and organizing empirical material. But once the meanings

of terms have been decided upon and a principle of selection adopted, the clash of

PRAGMATISM

354 interests plays no Jogical role in establish-

ing the cognitive worth of a proposed explanation of social phenomena. It is also frequently argued, to quote one fairly typical statement of the point, that a social scientist cannot wholly detach the unifying social structure that, as a scientist’s theory, guides

his detailed investigations of human behavior, from the unifying structure which,

as a citizen’s ideal, he thinks ought to prevail in human affairs and hopes may some-

time be more fully realized. His social theory is thus essentially a program of action

along two lines which are kept in some

zation or perpetuation of some such Accordingly, the difficulty noted is a diable practical difficulty. It can be come, as is often recognized, not by

ideal. remeover- . futile

resolutions to remain unbiased, but through the self-correcting processes of

science as a social enterprise. For the tradition of modern science encourages the free exchange and criticism of ideas; and

it permits and welcomes competition in the quest for knowledge on the part of

independent investigators, whatever may be their prior doctrinal commitments. It would be ignorance to claim that these self-corrective processes have operated or

measure of harmony with each other by that theory—action in assimilating social facts for purposes of systematic understanding, and action aiming at progressively molding the social pattern, so far as he can influence it, into what he thinks it ought to be.°

are likely to operate in social inquiry as

Now it is undoubtedly difficult in many in-

4 I must now turn to issues of a different order. In the study of biological functions

quiries to prevent our hopes and wishes from coloring the conclusions we draw; and it has taken centuries of devoted effort even in the natural sciences to develop habits and techniques of investigation which safeguard the course of inquiry against the intrusion of irrelevant personal factors. But to say this is to assume the possibility of distinguishing between fact and hope, for otherwise the statement becomes unintelligible. Even if it is invariably the case, as the above quotation maintains, that social scientists pursue a double line of activity, the claim that they do so makes clear sense only if it is possible to

adjudicate between, on the one hand, contributions to theoretical understanding whose validity does not depend on allegiance to any social ideal, and on the other hand contributions toward the reali5 Edwin A. Burtt, Right Thinking 1946), p. 522.

(New York,

readily as they have in the natural sciences. But it would be a confusion in analysis

to conclude that therefore there is a basic difference in the character of warranted knowledge in these two areas of inquiry.

the imputation of motives, attitudes, and

purposes to organic systems or their parts is strictly irrelevant. In the study of social phenomena such imputation is highly pertinent. What is the significance of this fact for the objectives and the methods of the social sciences? i According to an influential school of functionalists, all socially significant human behavior is an expression of motivated psychic states, so that the “dynamism” of social processes is identified with the “value-oriented” behavior of human in-

dividuals. An inquiry that is properly a social study has been therefore said to begin only with the question: “What motives determine and lead the individual members and participants in [a given] community to behave in such a way that the community

comes

into being in the

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

first place and that it continues to exist?” © In consequence, the social scientist cannot

be satisfied with viewing social processes simply as the sequential concatenations of “externally related” events; and the estab-

lishment of correlations, or even of universal

relations

of concomitance,

cannot

be his ultimate goal. For he must not ig-

nore the fact that every social change involves the assessment and readjustment of human activities relating means to ends (or “values”). On the contrary, he must construct “ideal types” or “models of motivation,” in terms of which he seeks to “understand” overt social behavior by imputing springs of action to the actors in-

volved in it. But these springs of action are not accessible to sensory observation; and the social scientist who wishes to understand social phenomena must imaginatively identify himself with its participants, and view the situation which they face as the actors themselves view it. Social phenomena are indeed not generally the intended resultants of individual actions; nevertheless the central task of social science is the explanation of phenomena as the unintended outcome of springs of action— of psychic states which are familiar to us solely from our own “subjective” experiences as volitional agents. In consequence, there is said to be a radical difference between explanations in the social and in the natural sciences. In the

SOCIETY

355

hope. For in the words of one recent writer, proponents of behaviorism in social science

fail to perceive the essential difference from the standpoint of causation, between a paper flying before the wind and a man flying from a pursuing crowd. The paper knows no fear and the wind no hate, but without fear and hate the man would not fly nor the crowd pursue. If we try to reduce it to its bodily concomitants we merely substitute the concomitants for the reality expressed as fear. We denude the world of meanings for the sake of a theory, itself a false meaning which deprives us of all the rest. We can interpret experience only on level of experience.‘ In short, since social science seeks to estab-

nexus” of events only in an external manner; in the former we can grasp the peculiar unity of social processes, since these involve a dynamic synthesis of subjective urges, values, and goals, on the one hand, and the external environment on the other. A purely “objective” or “behavioristic” social science is thus declared to be a vain

lish “meaningful” connections and not merely relations of concomitance, its goal and method are fundamentally different from those of natural science. I will not take time to comment here at length on the psychological preconceptions underlying this rejection of behaviorism, nor on the adequacy with which behaviorism is portrayed. Only one point requires brief mention in this connection. It is surely not the case that we must ourselves undergo (whether actually or in imagination) other men’s psychic experiences in order to know that they have them, or in order to predict their overt behaviors. But if this is so, the alleged “privacy” or “subjectivity” of mental states has no bearing on the acquisition of knowledge concerning the character, the determinants, and the consequences of other men’s dispositions and actions. A historian does not have to be Hitler or even be capable of reénacting in imagination Hitler’s frenzied hatreds, to write competently of Hitler’s career and historical signifi-

“8 Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New- York, 1947), p. 107.

p. 530.

latter we allegedly understand the “causal

7R.

M. Maclver,

Society

(New

York,

1931),

PRAGMATISM

356 cance. For knowledge is not a matter of having images, whether faint or vivid; it is not a reduplication of, or a substitute for, what is claimed to be known. Knowl-

edge involves the discovery through processes of controlled inference that something is a sign of something else; it is statable in propositional form; and it is capable of being verified through sensory observation by anyone who is prepared to make the effort to do so. It is therefore just as possible to know that a man is in a state of fear or that a crowd is animated by hatred, without recreating in imagination such fears and hatreds, as it is to know that a man is running away or that a crowd is pursuing him without an imaginary exercise of one’s legs. It is possible to discover and know these things on the evidence supplied by the overt behaviors of men and crowds, just as it is possible to discover and know the atomic constitu-

tion of water on the evidence supplied by

fully” related, because of our familiarity with motivational patterns in our own experience; and the relations between A and A}, as well as between B and B’, are also of ' the same alleged kind. Accordingly, the

“external” connection between A and B is “meaningfully” explained, when each is “{nterpreted” as an expression of certain “motivational” states At and B* respectively, where the connection between the

latter is “understood” in a peculiarly intimate way. But

do

such

explanations

require

a

special kind of logic, distinctive of the social sciences? At the risk of belaboring the obvious, I must state the grounds for maintaining that the answer is negative. The imputation of emotions, attitudes, and purposes as an explanation of overt behavior is a two-fold hypothesis; it is not a self-certifying one, and evidence for it must be supplied in accordance with customary canons of empirical inquiry. The

the physical and chemical behavior of that

hypothesis

substance. But I must consider at greater length the claim that since the social sciences seek to “understand” social phenomena in terms of “meaningful” categories of human experience, the “causal-functional” approach of the natural sciences is not applicable in social inquiry. The abstract pattern of such “meaningful” explanations appears to be as follows. Let A be some complex set of conditions (e.g., membership in certain religious groups) under which a phenomenon B occurs (e.g., the development of modern forms of capitalistic enterprise). The social agents involved in A and B are then assumed to possess certain feelings, beliefs, etc.: A? (e.g., belief in the sacredness of a worldly calling) and B? (e.g., prizing of honesty, orderliness, and abstemious labor), respectively. Here A’ and B' are supposedly “meaning-

hand, it assumes that the agents participating in some social phenomenon are in

is twofold:

for on the one

certain psychological states; and on the other hand, it also assumes definite relations of concomitance between such states, and between such states and certain overt behaviors. But as the more responsible exponents of “meaningful” explanations themselves emphasize, it is in general not easy to obtain competent evidence for either assumption. We may identify ourselves in imagination with a trader in grain, and conjecture what course of action we would take were we confronted with the problems of a fluctuating market.

But conjecture is not fact, however necessary conjecture may be as part of the process of discovering what is fact. None of

the psychological states which we imagine the subjects of our study to possess may in

reality be theirs; and even if our imputa-

HISTORY,’

CULTURE,

AND

tions should be correct, none of the overt actions which allegedly issue from those states may appear to us as “understandable” or “reasonable” in the light of our own experiences. If the history of anthropological research proves anything, it surely testifies to the errors students com-

mit when they interpret the actions of men in unfamiliar cultures in terms of categories drawn uncritically from their limited personal lives. Moreover, do we “understand” the nature and operation of human motives and their issuance in overt behavior more adequately and with greater certitude, than we do the occurrences studied in the natural sciences? Do we understand more clearly and know with greater certainty why an insult tends to produce anger, than why a rainbow is produced when the sun’s rays strike raindrops at a certain angle? The question is rhetorical, for the obvious answer is “no.” We may feel assured that if an illiterate and impoverished people revolts against its masters, it does so not because of adherence to some political doctrine but because of economic ills. But this assurance may only be the product of familiarity and a limited imagination; and the sense of penetrating comprehension that we may associate with the assertion, instead of guaranteeing its universal truth, may be only a sign of our provincialism. The contrast that is drawn between “understanding” in terms of “meaningful” categories and the merely “external” knowledge of causal relations which the natural sciences are alleged to provide is indeed far from clear. When we “meaningfully” explain the flight of a man from an angry crowd by imputing to him a fear of physical violence, we surely do not postulate in him a special agency called “fear” which impels him to run; nor do we intend by such an imputation that a “

SOCIETY

BDy

certain immediate quality of the man’s experience is the determinant of his action. What I think we are asserting is that his action is an instance of a pattern of behavior which human beings exhibit under a variety of circumstances, and that since some of the relevant circumstances are realized in the given situation the person can be expected to manifest a certain particular form of that pattern. But if some-

thing like this is the content of explanations in terms of “meaningful” categories, there is no sharp gulf separating them from

explanations that involve merely “external” knowledge of causal connections. One final comment in this connection. While the “dynamism” of social processes

is in general identified by many functionalists with the “motivational” character of human action, some of them have maintained that all social change must be understood in terms of those particular variations in motivation that are called “‘values.” Thus, it has been argued that if we wish to ascertain why there has been a pronounced increase in the divorce rate in

the U.S. during the past fifty years, a satisfactory explanation must be of the type which stipulates a change in valuation affecting the status of the family. The general indication is that divorce is more prevalent in those areas where the continuity of the family through several generations has less significance in the schema of cultural values than formerly or elsewhere. More generally, the claim has been made that “In so far as we are able to discover the changes of the evaluative schema of social groups we can attain, and thus only, a unified explanation of social change.” § It is not my concern to take sides in an issue of material fact, and in any case 8R.

M. Maclver,

1942), pp. 338, 374.

Social

Causation

(New

York,

PRAGMATISM

358 I am not qualified to do so in this particular one. But it is relevant to ask how an assumed alteration in a schema of cultural values can be established. The ob-

vious procedure would be to take as evidence for such a change the explicit statements of the persons involved, whether these statements take the form of personal confessions, public speeches, or the like. However, explicit statements of the kind required are not generally available; and even when they are, they cannot always be taken: at their face value. For there is often a great disparity between what men verbally profess and what they actually practice, and individuals may continue their verbal allegiance to a set of ideals even though their mode of living has been radically transformed. Students of human affairs are thus compelled to base their conclusions as to what are the operative evaluative schemas in a given society on evidence that is largely drawn from the overt behavior of men—from their conduct of business affairs, their mode of recreation, their domestic arrangements, and so on. There is in fact a risk that explanations of social change in terms of alterations in value-schemas collapse into tautologies, which simply restate in different language what is presumably explained. For example, if a change in the divorce rate is the sole evidence for the assumption that

there has been a shift in the value associated with the continuity of the family, a proposed explanation of the former change by the latter is a spurious one. It does not follow that all explanations in terms of variations in evaluative schemas are necessarily sterile. It does follow, however, that if such sterility is to be avoided, the concept of a value-schema must be construed as a highly compact formulation of various regularities (most of which are perhaps never explicitly codified, or codi-

fied only in vague terms) between types of human behavior. The point I wish to make is that in im- ,

puting a certain schema of values to a community, one is imputing to its mem-

bers certain attitudes. But an attitude is not something that can be established by introspection, whether in the case of our own persons or of others. An attitude is a dispositional or latent trait; and it is comparable in its theoretical status with vis-

cosity or electrical resistance in physics, even if, unlike the latter,it can be use-

fully defined for socio-psychological purposes only in statistical terms. In any event, the concept is cognitively valuable only in so far as it effects a systematic organization of manifest data obtained from overt human responses to a variety of conditions, and only in so far as it makes possible the formulations of regularities in such responses. Whether, in point of fact, explanations of social changes in terms of variations in attitudes have a greater systematizing and predictive power than explanations employing different substantive concepts, is not the point at issue, and it cannot be settled by dogmatic @ priori claims. But if these comments are well taken, there

is nothing in such explanations which dif-

ferentiates them in principle from explanations in the natural sciences, or which requires for their validation a distinctive logic of inquiry. 6 I will conclude, as I have begun, with some general reflections on the social sciences. Many commentators in recent as well as in earlier years have been in

despair over the state of these disciplines, and have doubted the possibility of developing comprehensive and reliable theories of social processes. One reason, though by

no means

the only one, commonly

ad-

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

359

vanced for this scepticism is the “historical” character of social phenomena—that

what is going to happen in the years to come and we should be powerless to change

is, the variation of modes and conditions of

it by an effort of will.

social processes with different. societies and periods. It is therefore frequently asserted

But since “owing to the development of human experience, men... are always growing and changing,” so that “closed schemes cannot be made out of the data of the social sciences,” it is concluded that there cannot be a “‘social science in any valid sense of the term as employed in

that unlike a law in the natural sciences,

an assumed regularity in social matters is

at best valid only within a specified institutional setting and only for a limited

duration. Snell’s law is presumably true for the refraction of light throughout the universe; but the variation of fertility

rate with social status which obtains in one community

at one time is generally

different from what is found in the same or a different community at another time. It would be futile to dismiss such scepticism as without foundation, or to deny that human actions are modified by their cultural environment which itself is in constant change. It must be admitted, at least as a possibility, that all social “laws” may have only a narrowly restricted uni-

versality. Nevertheless, the scepticism when it is wholesale often has its source in two misconceptions upon which I wish to comment briefly. One of them is the tacit assumption that celestial mechanics is the paradigm of any science worthy of the name; the other is the failure to distinguish between instability or variability in the specific materials and organization of systems, and an abstract uniformity which may nevertheless be pervasive in all the

systems. It has been maintained, for example, that if a science of society were a true science, like that of astronomy, it would enable us to predict the essential movements of human affairs for the immediate and the indefinite future, to give pictures of society in the year 2000 or the year 2500 just as astronomers can map the appearance of the heavens at fixed points of time in the future.

Such a social science would tell us exactly

real science.” 7” It needs little argument to show that the circumstances which permit longrange predictions in astronomy do not prevail in other branches of natural sciences, and that in this respect celestial mechanics is not a typical physical science. Such predictions are possible because for all practical purposes the solar system is an isolated system which will remain isolated, so there is reason to believe, during an indefinitely long future. In most

other domains of physical inquiry, however, this condition is not in general satisfied. Moreover, in many cases we are ignorant of the appropriate initial and boundary conditions, and cannot make precise forecasts even though available theory is adequate for that purpose. We can predict with reasonable accuracy the motion of a pendulum, because both the theory and the specific factual data for the system are known; but because we have no reason to assume that the system will

continue to be immune indefinitely from external perturbations, the predictions can be made safely only for a limited period. On the other hand, we cannot predict with

great accuracy where a fallen leaf will be carried by the wind in ten minutes, because though physical theory is in principle capable of resolving the problem, we do not ®Charles A. Beard, The Nature of the Social Sciences (New York, 1934), p. 29. 4° Tbid., pps 20; 335) 37+

PRAGMATISM

360

have the requisite knowledge of the relevant initial conditions. It is clear, therefore, that inability to forecast the indefinite future is not unique to the study of human

affairs. It is, moreover, an obvious error to be-

lieve that theoretical knowledge

is pos-

sible only in those domains in which effective human control is lacking. Crude ores can be transformed into refined products not because no theory for such changes is available, but in large measure just because there is. And conversely, a domain does not cease to be a field for theoretical knowledge if, when suitable techniques have been developed, changes in that domain for which hitherto there has been no control become controllable. Will the principles of meteorology stop being valid, should we discover some day how to man-

ufacture the weather? Men are able to alter various aspects of their social organizations; but this does not establish the impossibility of a “real” science of human affairs.

The fact that social processes vary with their institutional settings, and that the

heterogeneous occurrences, and there is no antecedent reason for suspecting that they illustrate a common set of principles. But as is well known, they can all be understood ° in terms of modern electromagnetic theory;

and though different special laws hold for them, the theory can explain them all when suitable initial and boundary conditions are supplied for each instance. Despite the variability and instability of social phenomena, they may nevertheless be subsumable under a common theory in an analogous way—though whether this is

more than a fancy is at present any man’s guess. But some things are fairly clear. If a comprehensive social theory is ever achieved, it will not be a theory of historical development, according to which societies and institutions succeed one another in a series of inevitable changes. Those who are seeking a comprehensive social theory by charting the rise and decline of civilizations, are looking for it in the wrong place. The theory will undoubtedly have to be highly abstract, if it is to cut across the actual cultural differences in human be-

havior. Its concepts will have to be ap-

specific uniformities found to hold in one culture are not pervasive in all societies,

parently remote from the familiar and obvious traits found in any one society; its

does not therefore preclude the possibility

articulation will involve the use of novel algorithmic techniques; and its application to concrete materials will require

that these specific uniformities are specializations of relational structures invariant for all cultures. For the admitted differences

special training of high order. But above

between the ways in which different socie-

all, it will have to be a theory for which

ties are organized may be the consequences simply of differences in the specific elements which enter into an invariant pattern of relations. Consider the following purely physical phenomena: a lightning storm, the behavior of a mariner’s compass, and the formation of an optical image on the ground glass of a camera. These are quite

a method of evaluating evidence must be

available which does not depend on the vagaries

of special

insights and_ private

intuitions. It will have to be a theory which, in its method of articulating its concepts and evaluating its evidence, will

be continuous with the theories of the natural sciences,

‘YE SEO ReMK Gy. WE EMPIRICISM

LocicaL Empiricism, the most vigorous of the past philosophical movement quarter-century, is a product of an increasing impact upon the modern mind and temper by the spirit of scientific inquiry and the methods of the sciences. It stands in direct opposition to the traditional conception of philosophy as a description of ultimate reality or as a search for absolutes which may function as the norms for life. It declares instead that the sciences exhaust all possible knowledge and that the method of empirical science constitutes the only access to knowledge of matters of fact. If philosophy is to justify its own existence it must attach itself in some way to the scientific endeavor rather than pursue the barren course of metaphysics that yields nothing but confusion and nonsense. It must cease its pretense of being “queen” of the sciences and become their companion and servant. Accordingly, Logical Empiricism is characterized in general by a new conception of philosophy as the activity of clarifying meanings, by the method of logical analysis, a predisposition in favor of cooperative effort among philosophers such as prevails among scientists, and by an insistence that all genuine philosophical problems are scientific in the sense that universal agreement can be

achieved in their solution. In the words of Wittgenstein, The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number

of ‘philosophical propositions,’ but to make propositions clear. ... Everything that

can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.*

An inheritor of the classical traditions of both Rationalism and Empiricism, and an immediate product of the influence upon philosophy of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mathematics, logic, and theoretical and experimental physics, Logical Empiricism may be regarded historically as a serious and basic effort to construct a theory of meaning and a theory of knowledge that subscribe to the actual procedures of the sciences and reconcile the valid elements of reason and experience. In its earlier stages especially, it was an iconoclastic reaction against speculative German metaphysics and absolutistic value philosophy. Its specific problems have been largely linguistic, logical, and methodological, to which it has brought a technical mastery of mathematical logic and an uncommon knowledge of the sciences. Never before has philosophy so nearly simulated science or become so intimately associated with it. The primary foundation upon which the movement has taken its stand is Hume’s insistence that the meaningfulness of propositions expressing matters of fact is contingent upon the possibilty of their having an experiential reference. In the closing passage of his critique of the understanding, Hume anticipates the foundation principle of the present movement, that all 1Tractatus

361

Logico-Philosophicus,

4.112;

4.116.

LOGICAL

362

meaningful statements are either analytical propositions or empirical hypotheses.

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.* On its logical or rationalistic side the dominant influences upon Logical Empiricism have been the logisticians from Leibniz to Bertrand Russell. Leibniz’ careful distinction between the truths of reason and the truths of fact and his pioneer work in the analysis of propositions, particularly his treatment of the nature of an analytical proposition as a necessary formal truth, are foundations of the logic of Logical Empiricism, while the notion of a universal calculus inspired not only the creation of a symbolic notation for logic but has been as well a guiding ideal for the efforts of the encyclopedists of unified science. In 1677, Leibniz wrote,

Whence it is manifest that if we could find characters or signs appropriate for expressing all our thoughts as definitely and as exactly as arithmetic expresses numbers or geometric analysis expresses lines, we could in all subjects 7 so far as they are amenable to reasoning accomplish what is done in Arithmetic and Geometry.®

Of major importance in the background of Logical Empiricism is the development in the nineteenth century of non-Euclidean geometry and its employment in the physical sciences. Logical Empiricists are in agreement in their view that throughout its 2 An Enquiry Concerning Human ing, XII. 8 Preface to the General Science.

Understand-

EMPIRICISM

history philosophy has labored under the illusion of supposing that it is possible to have knowledge of the world independ-_ ently of any experience of the world, and _ that therefore it is possible to construct 4 priori systems of deductive metaphysics

that describe a reality that cannot be made the object of sensory experience. This er-

ror, it is held, has been largely due to the philosophers’ involvement in mathematics,

particularly geometry. Developments relative to non-Euclidean geometry, however, have destroyed confidence in nonexperiential factual knowledge by upsetting the theory of axioms and showing that geome-

try must be made empirical if it is to be a description of real space. Although Kantian and Comtean Positivism are in the background of contemporary Logical Empiricism, it is the work of the Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838-1916) that is its immediate precursor. Mach advocated a unification of science through the elimination. of metaphysics. A unity of knowledge, demanded by the economy of science and embracing physics, biology, and psychology could be achieved, he held, by formulating all propositions as statements about complexes of perceptions. Since the sentences of metaphysics have no perceptual reference

they must be eliminated from cognitive discourse. The main stream of the logical empirical movement has been the Logical Positivism that was cultivated, under the inspiration of Mach, in the Viennese Circle during the twenties at the University of Vienna. The members of the Circle undertook the development of a rigorous anti-metaphysical

philosophy that described as meaningless all the non-empirical sentences of traditional metaphysics and all value judgments

asserting intrinsic or end values. Of fundamental importance for the efforts of the

INTRODUCTION Viennese Positivists was the work. of Bertrand Russell, who, on foundations laid mainly by the mathematicians Frege,

Boole, and Peano, had brought a high degree of systematization and precision to formal logic, making it a formidable in-

strument in analysis, and had introduced highly suggestive problems relating to the nature of propositions and their relation to one another and to matters of fact. Basic also in the discussions of the Circle were studies of the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus of Ludwig Wittgenstein, which concerns numerous problems relating to the nature of symbols and their relation to that which they symbolize. The Tractatus presents suggestive insights into the nature of fact and logic and advances a theory of logical correspondence between propositions and reality. Of major importance among the products of Logical Positivism is the verifiability theory of cognitive meaning, upon which as a methodological principle the critique of metaphysics is based. According to this criterion of meaning, all cognitively meaningful sentences, i.e., sentences that are either true or false, are either formal, as with the propositions of logic and mathematics, and are therefore tautologous or contradictory and are without factual reference, or are empirical, being capable in principle of experiential test, and assert something about matters of fact. Any sentence which purports to be factual but for which it is impossible in principle to describe a method of verification, i.e., of de-

termining its truth or falsity, is held to be not a genuinely empirical statement and therefore not cognitively meaningful. To insure a theory of meaning adequate to embrace all scientific knowledge, the criterion was progressively modified from an original narrow conception demanding the possibility of actual verification to a

363 more liberal requirement of the “logical possibility of verification,’ meaning the possibility in principle of describing a method for the verification of a sentence, quite independently of whether such verification is technically possible. Moreover with most contemporary empiricists, the Logical Positivists adopted a probabilistic theory of knowledge, that there can be no absolute certainty in knowledge of matters of fact, and therefore the notion of confirmability was technically substituted for verifiability and all factual propositions were regarded as empirical hypotheses. The Positivist’s criterion of meaning, which is

found in a variety of technical formulations and has become firmly established as the fundamental tenet of Logical EmPiricism, says in effect, therefore, that a sentence has factual meaning if it is in principle logically possible to describe a method which, if it were actually employed, would yield empirical evidence for or against the truth of that sentence. On the basis of the empirical verifiability criterion the Logical Positivists have eliminated all traditional speculative metaphysics from the area of meaningful discourse, insisting that problems which are not in principle soluble by the procedures of empirical science are not genuine factual problems. It is on this ground also that they have eliminated discussion of absolute or intrinsic values, insisting that the only value judgments that are meaningful are those of the noncategorical variety commonly employed in instrumental ethics. The only science of value possible is described as the discipline of relating means to ends. Moritz Schlick, the founder of the Vienna Circle, and a major contributor to the early formulation and development of the empiricist criterion of meaning, presented in his Problems of Ethics a systematic hedonistic ethics con-

LOGICAL

364 forming to the requirements of Positivism and having basic similarities to British utilitarian and American pragmatic ethics.

Another major product of the early years of Logical Positivism is the thesis of physicalism, which was the work largely

of Otto

Neurath

and

Rudolf

Carnap.

Physicalism is an attempt to realize Leibniz’ ideal of a universal language as a basis for the unity of science. It asserts that every meaningful factual sentence is either

a physicalistic sentence or is capable of reduction without loss of meaning to a physicalistic sentence. A physicalistic or “thing” sentence is one with a physical reference, expressing quantitative descriptions in terms of simple location in space and time. Such a scientific language will, according to its advocates, be intersensory and intersubjective, and will unite all the experiential sciences, both natural and social, on a common

ground. Physics, non-

vitalistic biology, and behavioristic psychology may join thereby with descriptive sociology in producing a positive body of unified knowledge entirely free from metaphysics. Neurath was the nominal leader of the unity of science movement and was concerned also with problems relating to the methodology of the social sciences. Carnap, who has been the major influence determining the course of Logical Positivism, has been interested largely in the logical

structure of scientific language and in the achievement of a theory of language which will make possible a rigorous avoidance of cognitively meaningless sentences. In recent years his attention has been given to semantics, the formalization of logic, and problems of induction and probability.

During the decades of the thirties and forties, Logical Positivism cultivated a wide association, especially through publications and international congresses and as

EMPIRICISM

a result of the migration of European philosophers to English-speaking countries consequent to the rise of Nazism. It was

an association that broadened the interests ‘ of the Positivists and brought them into a close working relationship with a wide range of analysts, logicians, semanticists, and empiricists. As a consequence, the term “Logical Empiricism” has largely replaced “Logical Positivism” as a name to designate the broad movement which had its beginnings with the Vienna Circle. Chief among the neighbors of Positivism, and a second stream in the development of Logical Empiricism, was the Ber-

lin Group, organized in 1928 at the University of Berlin and devoted to studies in the philosophy of science and the logical problems in scientific method. Among its members were Hans Reichenbach, Carl G.

Hempel, and Richard von Mises. Through

analysis of the methods and findings of the experimental sciences, the Berlin Group explored the foundations of empirical knowledge. Reichenbach in particular, in conjunction with his study of quantum mechanics, elaborated a probability logic that proposed to assign probability values to propositions rather than describe them as true or false. Hempel’s work has indicated a strong interest in problems of concept formation and theory construction in empirical science as well as in the problem of the nature of scientific explanation.

A further source of continental influence upon the course of Logical Empiricism was the work of the Polish logicians, whose interests in logical theory, theory of signs, and the structure of scientific theory related closely to the activities of the Positivists. When the rise of Nazism brought an end to the Vienna and Berlin groups, and seriously impaired the work in Poland, the migration of scholars to America and England made possible the continuation of

their cooperative work. They then entered

INTRODUCTION

365

upon an even wider association in the cultivation of their philosophy.

pean neopositivism. And, like British analytical philosophy and Logical Positivism,

In Britain Logical Empiricism has been

its rise has been within a context of polemic

related to and has had much in common

against Idealism, Absolutism, and specula-

with the empiricism and analysis of Brit-

tive philosophy in general. Unlike

ish analytical

background of Positivism, the orientation of Pragmatism has been in the life sciences, biology, psychology, and sociology, yet its foundations in the work of Charles S. Peirce are involved in physics and mathematical logic. Peirce’s pragmatic theory of

philosophy.

Its ties with

Bertrand Russell’s logic and with the work of Wittgenstein, who was professor at Cambridge from 1939 to 1948, have already been noted. During the thirties and forties

Positivism gained ground at Oxford, where A. J. Ayer, now at London, was its chief representative and did much to popularize it. Logical Empiricism and Cambridge Analysis have had a common ground in their rejection of the traditional conception of philosophy as a concern for the

ultimate nature of reality. They have found general agreement in their empiricism, their eschewing of metaphysics, their aggressive respect for science, and in their pursuit of analysis in the interest of the clarification of thought. British Analysis, however, has largely followed the pattern laid down by Moore of seeking indubitable grounds in sense data for that which is known by commonplace methods to the “man in the street,” and has refused to identify. philosophy, _ its program and method,-with the sciences to the extent to which this is done ‘in Positivism and Logical Empiricism. Nor does it have the pronounced logical character or the tech-

nical preoccupation

with language that

characterize these others. | In the United States Pragmatism has been more or less affiliated with Logical Empiricism, Positivists and Pragmatists not uncommonly cooperating in specific

tasks, especially in relation to the unity of science program. There are numerous evidences of mutual influences between the two. Pragmatism’s traditional empiricism and probabilism and its respect for science and skeptical attitude towards metaphysics have made it a close relative of Euro-

the

meaning, fundamental to the operationalism of the physicist P. W. Bridgman, is essentially similar to the positivistic verifiability theory of meaning, while his theory of signs and symbols has been a major influence upon semanticists and philosophers of language. Moreover, although Pragmatism has been in large measure’a value philosophy, with a dominant interest in problems of ethics, while Logical Empiricism in its main origins was for the most part unconcerned with value considerations, Dewey’s instrumental theory of ethics has been recognized as according with the positivistic principle of meaning. The broader interests of Pragmatism are on the whole expanding the somewhat narrow logical and physicalistic concerns of the earlier Positivists to yield in Logical Empiricism a more balanced philosophical diet. The Pragmatist Charles Morris has for two decades been a leader in the effort to achieve a close cooperation between Positivists and Pragmatists by a recognition of their common ground and interest. Such cooperation, he has insisted, would do much to effect a genuine unity of the sciences. Morris has championed a unity of methods through adopting, as an organon of knowledge, a general theory of signs embracing (1) semantics, the relation

of signs to that which they signify; (2) syntactics, the formal relation of signs to

other signs; and (3) pragmatics, the practical relation of signs to their users.

Theory of ‘Knowledge Predictie K nowledge HANS REICHENBACH ale symbolic logic referred to in the

plicated structure, such as employed in the

preceding chapter is a deductive logic; it deals only with those thought operations that are characterized by logical necessity. Empirical science, though making wide use of deductive operations, in addition calls

hypothetico-deductive method of the scientist, are far superior to Bacon’s simple

for a second form of logic, which because of its use of inductive operations is named inductive logic.

The hypothetico-deductive method, or explanatory induction, has been much dis-

cussed by philosophers and scientists but

not contained in the premises. The conclusion that all crows are black is not logically contained in the premise that all crows

may be false while the premise is true. Induction is the instrument of a scientific method that is intended to discover something new, something going beyond a summary of previous observations—the inductive inference is the instrument of predictive knowledge. It was Bacon who clearly saw the indispensability of inductive inferences for scien- tific method, and his place in the history of

philosophy is that of a prophet of induction. But Bacon also saw the weaknesses of

inductive inference, the lack of necessity in its method, and the possibility of false conclusions. His endeavors to improve inductive inference were none too successful; inductive inferences of a more com-

be false, and the reliability of deductive logic is unattainable for predictive knowledge.

What distinguishes the inductive inference from a deductive one is the fact that it is not empty, that it leads to conclusions

so far observed were black; the conclusion

induction. But this method cannot supply logical necessity either; its conclusions may

its logical nature has often stood. Since the inference to the observational facts formed by mathematical

been misunderfrom the theory is usually permethods, some

philosophers believe that the establishment of theories can be accounted for in terms of deductive logic. This conception is untenable, because it is not the inference from

the theory to the facts, but conversely, the inference from the facts to the theory on which the acceptance of the theory is based;

and this inference is not deductive, but inductive. What is given are the observational data, and they constitute the established knowledge in terms of which the theory is to be validated. Moreover, the way this inductive infer-

ence is actually made has led some philosophers to a second form of misunder-

standing. The scientist who discovers a theory is usually guided to his discovery by 306:

THEORY

OF

367

KNOWLEDGE

guesses; he cannot name

by

data is the subject of the theory of induc-

means of which he found the theory and can only say that it appeared plausible to him, that he had the right hunch, or that

a method

tion. The study of inductive inference belongs in the theory of probability, since observa-

he saw intuitively which assumption would fit the facts. Some philosophers have mis-

tional facts can make a theory only probable but will never make it absolutely

understood this psychological description of discovery as proving that there exists no

certain. Even when this incorporation of

logical relation leading from the facts to

recognized, new forms of misunderstanding arise. It is not easy to see the logical structure of the probability inference per-

the theory; and they contend that no logical interpretation of the hypothetico-

deductive

method

is possible. Inductive

induction in the theory of probability is

sible to logical analysis. These philosophers

formed in the confirmation of theories through facts. Some logicians have believed that they have to construe confirmation as

do not see that the same

the reverse of a deductive inference; this

inference is for them guesswork inacces-

discovered

scientist who

his theory through guessing

is to say that if we can derive deductively

presents it to others only after he sees that

the facts from the theory, we can derive

his guess is justified by the facts. It is this claim of justification in which the scien-

inductively the theory from the facts. This

tist performs an inductive inference, since

he wishes to say not only that the facts are derivable from his theory, but also that

the facts make his theory probable and recommend it for the prediction of further observational facts. The inductive inference is employed not for finding a theory, but for justifying it in terms of observational data.

The mystical interpretation of the hypothetico-deductive method as an irrational guessing springs from a confusion of context of discovery and context of justification. The act of discovery escapes logical analysis; there are no logical rules in terms of which a “discovery machine”

could be constructed that would take over the creative function is not the logician’s scientific discoveries; analyze the relation

of the genius. But it task to account for all he can do is to between given facts

interpretation, however, is oversimplified. In order to make the inductive inference, much more has to be known than the deductive relation from the theory to the facts. A simple consideration makes it obvious that the inference by confirmation has a more complicated structure. A set of observational facts will always fit more than one theory; in other words, there are several theories from which these facts can be derived. The inductive inference is used to confer upon each of these theories a degree of probability, and the most probable theory is then accepted. In order to differentiate between these theories obviously more must be known than the deductive relation to the facts, which holds

for each of them. If we want to understand the nature of the inference by confirmation, we have to study the theory of probability. This

and a theory presented to him with the claim that it explains these facts. In other

mathematical

discipline

has

developed

words, logic is concerned only with the context of justification. And the justification of a theory in terms of observational

of indirect evidence, of which the inference

methods which cover the general problem that validates scientific theories is but a special case. For an illustration of the gen-

LOGICAL

368

eral problem I should like to mention the inferences made by a detective in his search:

for the perpetrator of a crime. Some data are given, such as a blood-stained hand-

kerchief, a chisel, and the disappearance of a wealthy dowager, and several explanations offer themselves for what has

EMPIRICISM

’ The study of «inductive logic, for these reasons, leads into the theory of probability. The inductive conclusion is made probable, _ riot certain, by its premises; the inductive © inference must be conceived as an operation’ belonging in the framework of the galculus of probability. In combination

happened. The detective tries to determine

with

the most probable explanation: His consid-

causal laws into probability laws, these considerations will make: it obvious why the analysis of probability is of so primary

erations follow established rules of probability; using all the factual clues and all his knowledge of human psychology, he attempts to arrive at conclusions, which in turn are tested by new observations spe-

cifically planned for this purpose. Each test, based on new material, increases or decreases the probability of the explanation; but never can the explanation constructed be regarded as absolutely certain. The logician who tries to reconstruct the in-

ferential schema of the detective finds all the necessary logical equipment:in the calculus of probability. Even though he lacks the statistical material required for exact computations of probabilities, he can at least apply the formulas of the calculus in a qualitative sense. Numerically precise results are of course unattainable, if the given material admits only of rough estimates of probabilities. The same considerations hold for the discussion of the probability of scientific theories, which are also to be selected among several possible explanations of ob-

served data. The selection is achieved by the use of the general body of knowledge, in the face of which some explanations appear more probable than others. The final probability is therefore the product of a combination of several probabilities.

The calculus of probability offers a suitable formula of this kind in the rule of Bayes,

a formula which applies to statistical problems as well as to the inferences of the detective or the inference by confirmation.

the’ development

that transformed

an import for the understanding of modern ‘science. The theory of probability sup-

plies the instrument of predictive knowledge as well as the form of the laws of nature; its subject is the very nerve of scientific method. ~

~One- would

like to believe’ that the

theory of probability has always been a

province of empiricism; but the history of probability proves that this is not the case. Rationalists of, modern times, seeing the

indispensability of probability notions, have attempted to construct a rationalist theory of probability. Leibniz’ program of a logic of probability in the form of a quantitative logic, to measure degrees’of truth, was

certainly not meant to represent an. empiricist solution of the problem of probability. The challenge was taken up by logicians who had the resources of symbolic

logic at their disposal. Boole’s logic of probability is perhaps to be classified on the rationalist side; and certainly Keynes’ symbolic theory of probability belongs on this side, with its attempt to interpret probability as a measure of rational belief.

These ideas have been taken up by some contemporary logicians who would not like to be classified

as rationalists,

but

whose work actually puts them in this group, at least as far as their interpreta‘tion of probability is concerned.

' For the rationalist, a degrée of probability is the product of reason in the ab-

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

369

sence of reasons. If-I-toss a coin, will heads

given a positive answer—or

or tails turn.up? Ido not know anything

pher has to believe in a harmony between

about it, and I have no reason to beliéve in one alternative rather than in the other: therefore I regard the two possibilities as

reason and nature, that is, in a synthetic

equally probable and ‘accord to’ each the probability

of one-half.’ The absence -of

reasons is construed as a reason to assume equality of probabilities; such is the principle of a rationalist interpretation of prob-

ability. This principle, known under the

the philoso-

a priori. -. Some philosophers have attempted to construct an analytic interpretation of the principle of indifference. According to this interpretation the statement that a probability is-one-half does not mean anything about the future, but simply expresses’ the fact that’ we have no’ more

by the rationalist as a postulate of logic. It appears to him self-evident, like logical

knowledge about the’ happening of the event than about that of the opposite event. In this interpretation the probability statement is,of course, easily justified, but it

principles.

loses its character as a guide for action.

The difficulty with this interpretation of probabilityis that it abandons the analytic character of logic and introduces a synthetic a priori. A probability statement is not empty; when .we toss a coin and say that the probability of heads turning up is one-half, we say something about future events. What we say is perhaps not easy to formulate; but there must be some reference to the future contained in the statement, since we employ it as a guide for action. For instance, we régard it as

In.other words: it is true that the transi-

name of the principle’ of indifference, or of no reason to the contrai-y, is consideréd

advisable to lay a fifty-fifty bet on heads, but would advise no one to offer higher odds for it. In fact, we employ probability statements because they bear upon future events; every act of planning requires some knowledge of the future, and if we have no perfectly certain knowledge, we are willing to use probable knowledge in its place. The principle of indifference leads rationalism into all the familiar difficulties known from the history of philosophy. Why must nature follow reason? Why must events be equally probable, if we know equally much, or equally little about them? Does nature conform to human ignorance? Questions of this type cannot be

tion from equal ignorance to equal probability is then analytic, but a synthetic transition’ remains to be. explained. If equal probabilities’ mean equal ignorance, why should we regard equal probabilities as justifying a fifty-fifty bet? In this question the very problemi returns which ‘the analytic interpretation of the principle of indifference was intended to evade.

The rationalist interpretation of probability must be regarded as a remnant of speculative philosophy and has no place in

a scientific philosophy. The philosopher of science insists that the theory of prob-

ability be inéorporated in ‘a philosophy which does not have to resort to a gan thetic a priori. The empiricist philosophy of probability is baséd on the frequency interpretation.

Probability staternents express relative frequencies of repeated events, that is, frequencies counted as a percentage of the total. They are derived from frequencies observed in the past and include the assumption

that the same

frequencies

will

hold approximately for the future. They are constructed by means of an inductive inference. If we regard the probability of

LOGICAL

3/2

EMPIRICISM

heads for the tossing of a coin as being given by one-half, we, mean that in re-

answers that in 75 per cent of cases of this

peated throws of the coin heads will turn up in 50 per cent of the cases. In this in-

this frequency statement help me? It may | be of use to the doctor, who has many patients; it will tell him what percentage of

terpretation the rules of betting are easily explained; to say that fifty-fifty is a fair bet for tossing a coin means that the use of this rule will in the long run afford equal gains to both parties. The merits of

this interpretation are obvious; what we have to study are its difficulties. In fact, there are two essential difficulties connected with the frequency interpretation. The first is the use of the inductive inference. It is true that for the frequency interpretation the degree of probability is a

matter of experience and not of reason. If we had not observed that in tossing a coin we eventually arrive at an equal frequency

for both faces, we would not speakof equal probabilities; the principle of indifference is merely a rationalist misinterpretation of a knowledge acquired from experience. This misinterpretation recalls similar rationalist fallacies, like the apriorist in-

terpretation of the laws of geometry and of the principle of causality, which modern

science has likewise revealed to be a product of experience. But the assertion that frequent repetitions of similar events are subject to numerical regularities can only be established by the use of inductive inferences and seems to involve a principle not derivable from experience. Between an empiricist philosophy and a solution of the problem of induction stands Hume’s criticism of the inductive inference, which shows that induction is neither a priori nor a posteriori.

disease the patient survives. How

does

them will not die from the disease. But I am interested only in this particular person and want to know with what probability he will live. It seems to make no sense when a probability of a single event is

stated in terms of frequencies. I shall answer the two objections one after the other, beginning with the second. It is true that we often assign a probability to a single event. But it does not follow that the meaning we usually associate with our words is a correct interpretation. Consider the previous discussion of the meaning of an implication. “If an electric current flows through the wire the magnetic needle will be deflected.” We believe that the zf-then relation has a meaning for this individual event: that the electric current necessarily produces the deflection of the needle. Logical analysis shows us that this interpretation is mistaken, that the necessity of the implication merely derives from its generality, and that all we mean by the necessary connection of the two events is

the fact that if one event happens, the

I ask the doctor about the probability

other one will always occur. In an individual instance we forget about this analysis and believe we can speak of an implication concerning this instance alone. It is not easy to get away from this interpretation. “If I turn on this faucet, the water will run.” It appears so obvious that we speak about nothing but the individual instance, that turning on this faucet produces the running of the water. When the logician explains to. us that there is a reference to generality involved in the statement, that we are speaking about all faucets in the world, we are unwilling to

that. my

believe him—and yet, we have to accept

The second difficulty of the frequency interpretation

concerns

the

applicability

of a probability statement to a single case. A close relative of mine is seriously ill and relative

will live. The

doctor

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

his interpretation if our words are to have any verifiable sense. Of the same kind is the interpretation

of the probability statement. We believe it has a meaning that there is a 75 per cent probability that Mr. X will live; yet all that is said refers to a class of persons having a similar disease. We might wish very much to know something about the individual case. But Mr. X will either live

or not live—it makes no sense to attach a degree

of probability

to an

individual

event, because one event is not capable of

being measured by degrees. Assume Mr. X survives his illness—does that fact verify the prediction which referred to a probability of 75 per cent? Obviously not, because a probability is compatible with the happening as well as with the nonhappening of the event. If we consider a great number of events, the fraction of 75 per cent is expressible and therefore testable through observation. But an individual event cannot occur to a degree. A statement about the probability of a single event is meaningless.

Yet such statements are not as unreasonable as might analysis. It may tach a meaning about a single supplies us with

appear after this logical be a good practice to atto a probability statement event, if daily experience a number of similar cases.

The man who believes that if he turns on the faucet, the water must flow, has developed a good habit in so far as his belief will lead him to correct statements about

the totality of such events. Similarly, the man who believes that a probability of 75 per cent applies to a single case has developed a good habit, because his belief will induce him to say that of a great number of similar cases 75 per cent will have the

37% a number of events of various kinds and various degrees of probabilities. We may be confronted today by a case of disease for which there is a 75 per cent probability of survival, tomorrow by a prediction of good weather of go per cent probability, the day after tomorrow by a prediction of 60 per cent probability con-

cerning the stock market—if in all these cases we assume the more probable event to happen, we will be right in the greater number of cases. The many events of everyday life constitute a series, inhomogeneous as it may be, which admits of the frequency interpretation of probability. To speak of a meaning of probability for a single event is a harmless or even useful habit, because it leads to a correct evaluation of the future as soon as this language is translated into a statement about a series of events. Linguistic habits of this kind need not make the logician unhappy. He has means to allot to such habits a place in logic. He regards expressions of this type as havying a fictitious meaning, as representing an elliptic mode of speech, which has_acquired an apparent life of its own, but

which is meaningful only because it can be translated into a statement of a different kind. The logician allows the mathematician to speak of the infinitely distant point at which two parallels intersect, because he knows that all the statement means is that the two lines do not intersect at a finite distance. The logician will also allow a man to speak of a necessary implication in a single case, or of a

probability in a single case, and regard

result referred to. This consideration ap-

such mode of speech as representing a fictitious meaning. Using a technical term he speaks of a transfer of meaning from

plies even when our daily experience does not supply us with similar events, but with

ever linguistic habits are useful, the logi-

the general to the particular case. When-

LOGICAL

37* cian will always be able to account for them. . Differences arise, not in the language of

EMPIRICISM

tell the gardener that he need not come tomorrow to water our garden. If we have information that the stock market will ,

everyday life, but when we speak about

probably go down, we sell our stock. If

the meaning of such statements. These differences concern philosophy. The logician, who sees that probability statements refer to a frequency, arrives at a peculiar evaluation of probability statements, which differentiates them from other statements. I

the doctor tells us that smoking will prob-

should like to explain this difference more closely. : Suppose somebody casts a die and you are asked to predict whether or not face

“six” will turn up. You will prefer to predict that face “six” will not turn up. Why? You do not know it for certain; but you have a greater probability, namely of 5/6, for “nonsix” than for “six.” You can-

not claim that your prediction must come true;

but it is advantageous

for you

to

make this prediction rather than the contrary one, because you will be right in the greater number of cases.

A statement of this kind I have called a posit. A posit is a statement which we treat

ably shorten our lifetime, we stop smoking. If we are told that we shall probably get

a job with higher pay by applying for a certain position, we make the application.

Although all these statements about what will happen are only maintained as probable, we treat them as true and act accordingly; that is, we employ them in the sense of posits. f ; . The concept of posit is the key to the understanding of predictive knowledge.

A statement about the future cannot be uttered with the claim that

it is true;

we

can always imagine that the contrary will happen, and we have no guarantee that future experience will not present to us as real what is imagination today. This

very fact is the rock on which every rationalist interpretation of knowledge has been wrecked. A prediction of future experiences can be uttered only in the sense of a trial; we take its possible falsehood

as true although we do not know. whether it is so. We try to select our posits in such a way that they will be true as often as possible. The degree of probability supplies a rating of the posit; it tells us how good the posit is. Such is the only function of a probability. If we have the choice between a posit of the rating 5/6 and one of the rating 2/3, we shall prefer the first, because this posit will be true more often. We see that the degree of probability has

ments as posits solves the last problem that

nothing to do with the truth of the individual statement, but that it functions as

knowledge: the problem of induction. Em-

an advice how to select our’ posits. The method of positing is applied to all kinds of probability statements. If we are

piricism broke down under Hume’s criticism of induction, because it had not freed itself from a fundamental rationalist postu-

told that the probability of a rain tomorrow is 80 per cent, we posit that it will

late, ‘the postulate that all knowledge must be demonstrable as true. For this concep-

rain, and act accordingly; for instance, we

tion the inductive method is ‘unjustifiable,

into account, and if the prediction turns out to be wrong, we are ready for another trial. The

method

of trial and

error

is

the only existing instrument of prediction. A predictive statement is a posit; instead

of knowing its truth we know

only its

rating, which is measured in terms of its probability. The interpretation of predictive stateremains

for an empiricist conception

of

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

since there exists no proof that it will lead to true conclusions. It is different when the predictive conclusion is regarded as a posit. In this interpretation it does not require a proof that it is true; all that can be asked for is a proof that it is a good posit, or even the best posit available. Such a proof can be given, and the inductive problem can thus be solved. The proof requires some further investigation; it cannot be given simply by showing that the inductive conclusion has a high probability. It requires an analysis of the methods of probability and must be based on considerations that are themselves independent of such methods. The justification of induction is to be given outside the theory of probability, because the theory of probability presupposes the use of induction. The meaning of this maxim will be made clear presently. The proof is preceded by a mathematical investigation. The calculus of probability has been constructed in an axiomatic form, comparable to the geometry of Euclid; this construction shows that all the axioms of probability are purely mathematical theorems and thus analytic statements, if the frequency interpretation of probability is accepted. The only point where a nonanalytic principle intervenes is the ascertainment of a degree of probability by means of an inductive inference. We find a certain relative frequency for a series of observed events and assume that the same frequency will hold approximately for further continuation of the series—that is the only synthetic principle on which the application of the calculus’ of probability is1 based. This result is of greatest significance. The manifold forms of induction, including the hypothetico-deductive method, are expressible in terms of deductive methods, with the sole addition of induction’ by

373 enumeration. The axiomatic method supplies the proof that all forms of induction are reducible to induction by enumeration: the mathematician of our time proves what Hume took for granted. The result may appear surprising, because the method of constructing explana. tory hypotheses, or of indirect evidence, looks so different from a simple induction by enumeration. But since it is possible

to construe all forms of indirect evidence as inferences covered by the mathematical calculus of probability, these inferences are included in the result of the axiomatic investigation. By means of the power of deduction, the axiomatic system controls the most remote applications of probability inferences, like the engineer who controls a remote missile by radio waves; even in-

volved inferential structures employed by the detective or by the scientist can be ac-

counted for in terms of the axioms. These structures are superior to.a simple induction by enumeration because they contain so much deductive logic—but their inductive content is exhaustively described as a network of inductions of the enumerative

type. I should like to illustrate how enumera‘tive inductions can be combined into a network. For centuries Europeans had

‘known white swans only, and they inferred that all swans in the world were white, ‘One day black swans were discovered in ‘Australia; so the inductive inference was shown to have led to a false conclusion. Would it have been possible to avoid the mistake?

It is a matter of fact that other

species of birds display a great variety

of color among their individuals; so the logician should have objected to the inference’ by the argument that, if color varies among the individuals ‘of other species, it may also vary among the swans. ‘The example shows that one induction can

LOGICAL

374

EMPIRICISM

be corrected by another induction. In fact, practically all inductive inferences are made, not in isolation, but within a net-

true statements, but are uttered merely in the sense of posits.

work of many inductions. A biologist once

of an event, we find that the percentage found varies with the number of observed

told me that he had tested the heredity of an artificial mutation through many generations and thus was sure that it was a genuine mutation. When I asked him

how many generations he had used for the test, he answered that he had exam-

ined fifty generations of flies. The number would appear small to an insurance statistician, who is accustomed to deal with

millions of cases before he makes an inductive inference. What is a large number? The answer can be given only on the basis of other inductions, which inform us

how large a number must be in order that we can expect an observed frequency

to persist. For a test of heredity, fifty generations is a large number.

When

a

doctor gives a Wassermann test to a patient, checking him for syphilis, he makes only one observation; so the number one ishere a large number for an inductive inference. That it is, is shown by other inductive inferences, which have established the fact that, if one test is positive or negative, so will be all further tests. ‘When I say that all inductive inferences

are reducible to induction by enumeration, I mean that they are expressible through a network of such simple inductions. The

method by which these elementary inferences are combined can be of a much more complicated structure than the one ployed in the preceding examples.

em-

- Since all inductive inferences are reducible to induction by enumeration, all

that is required for making inductive inferences legitimate is a justification of in-

duction by enumeration. Such a justification: is possible, when it is realized that inductive conclusions are not claimed to be

When

we count the relative frequency

cases, but that the variations die down with

increasing

number.

For

instance,

birth

statistics show that of 1,000 births 49 per cent were boys; increasing the number of

cases, we find 52 per cent boys among 5,000 births, 51 per cent boys among 10,000 births. Assume for a moment we

know that going on we shail finally arrive at a constant

percentage—the

mathema-

tician speaks of a limit of the frequency— what numerical value should we assume for this final percentage? The best we can do is to consider the last value found as the permanent one and to employ it as our posit. If the posit on further observation turns out to be false, we shall correct it; but if the series converges toward a final percentage, we must eventually ar-

rive at values which are close to the final value. The inductive inference is thus shown to be the best instrument of finding the final percentage, or the probability of an event, if there is such a limiting percentage at all, that is, if the series converges toward a limit.

How do we know that there is a limit of the frequency? Of course, we have no

proof for this assumption. But we know: if there is one, we shall find it by the inductive method. So if you want to find a

limit of the frequency, use the inductive inference—it is the best instrument you have, because, if your aim can be reached,

you will reach it that way. If it cannot be reached, your attempt was in vain; but’ then any other attempt must also break down.

The man who makes inductive inferences may be compared to a fisherman who casts a net into an unknown

part of the

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

ocean—he does not know whether he will catch fish, but he knows that if he wants to catch fish he has to cast his net. Every inductive prediction is like. casting a net into the ocean of the happenings of nature; we do not know whether we shall have a good catch, but we try, at least, and try by the help of the best means available. We try because we want to act—and he who wants to act cannot wait until the future has become observational knowl-

edge. To control the future—to shape future happenings according to a plan—presupposes predictive knowledge of what will happen if certain conditions are realized; and if we do not know the truth about what will happen, we shall employ our best posits in the place of truth. Posits are the instruments of action where truth is not available; the justification of induction is that it is the best instrument of action known to us. This justification of induction is very simple; it shows that induction is the best means to attain a certain aim. The aim is predicting the future—to formulate it as finding the limit of a frequency is but another version of the same aim. This formulation has the same meaning because predictive knowledge is probable knowledge and probability is the limit of a frequency. The probability theory of knowledge allows us to construct a justification of induction; it supplies a proof

that induction is the best way of finding that kind of knowledge which is the only sort attainable. All knowledge is probable knowledge and can be asserted only in the sense of posits; and induction is the instrument of finding the best posits.’ 1In his book Human Knowledge (New York, 1948) Professor Bertrand Russell has criticized my theory of probability and induction. I have always admired Professor Russell’s critical judgment; but in this case I can regard his objections only as the result of misunderstandings. For instance, he does

375 This solution of the problem of induction will be clarified if it is confronted with the rationalist theory of probability. The principle of indifference, which occupies a logical position similar to that of the principle of induction because it is used for the ascertainment of a degree of probability, is regarded by the rationalist as a self-evident principle of logic; he thus arrives at a synthetic self-evidence, at a synthetic a priori logic. Incidentally, the principle of induction by enumeration is often also regarded as a self-evident principle; this conception represents a second version of a synthetic a priori logic of probability. The empiricist conception of inductive logic is essentially different. The principle of induction by enumeration, which constitutes its only synthetic principle, is not regarded as self-evident, or as a postulate which logic could validate. What logic can prove is that the use of the principle is

advisable if a certain aim is envisaged, the aim of predicting the future. This proof, the justification of induction, is constructed in terms of analytic considerations. The not see (pp. 413-414) that in my theory good grounds are given to treat a posit as true, and that

my rule of induction cannot be shown to be invalid by constructing instances where the inductive conclusion is false. The answers to his objections are all given in my book The Theory of Probability (Berkeley, 1949), although this book does not explicitly refer to Russell’s objections, since it was printed before his book was published. But this presentation of my theory in the English language is more explicit in its formulations

than

the

original,

which

was

published

in

German in 1935 and on which Russell's criticism is based. It is to be regretted seriously that Bertrand Russell,

who

has

contributed

so

much

to

the

elimination of the synthetic a priori from mathematics, has apparently become the advocate of a synthetic a priori in the theory of probability and induction. He believes that induction presupposes “an extra-logical principle not based on experience” (p. 412). But if knowledge is interpreted as a system of posits, no such principle is needed. I should like to express the hope that Professor Russell, after reading my above mentioned presentation, will revise his views.

LOGICAL

376 empiricist is allowed to use a synthetic principle, because he does not assert that the principle is true or must lead to true conclusions or to correct probabilities or to any kind of success; all he asserts is that employ-

ing the principle is the best he can do. This renunciation of any truth claim enables him to incorporate a synthetic principle in an analytic logic and to satisfy the condition that what he asserts on the basis of his logic is analytic truth only. He can do so because

the conclusion of the inductive inference is not asserted by him, but only posited; what he asserts is that positing the conclusion is a means to his end. The empiricist principle that reason cannot make other than analytic contributions to. knowledge, that there is no synthetic self-evidence, is thus fully ‘carried through. - The quandaries of empiricism, formu-

EMPIRICISM

of the problem of predictive knowledge could be found. The search for certainty had to die down within the most precise of all sciences of nature, within mathematical physics, before the philosopher could account for scientific method.

The picture of scientific method drafted by modern philosophy is very different from traditional conceptions. Gone is the ideal of a universe whose course follows strict rules,

a predetermined cosmos that unwinds itself like an unwinding clock. Gone is the ideal

of the scientist who knows the absolute truth. The happenings of nature are like rolling dice rather than like revolving stars; they are controlled by probability laws, not

by causality, and the scientist resembles a gambler more than a prophet. He can tell

‘product of a misinterpretation of knowl‘edge and vanish for a correct interpretation

you only his best posits—he never knows beforehand whether they will come true. He is a better gambler, though, than the man at the green table, because his statistical methods are superior. And his goal is

—such

of a philosophy

‘staked higher—the goal of foretelling the

grown from the soil of modern science. The

rolling dice of the cosmos. If he is asked why he follows his methods, with what

lated in David Hume’s skepticism, were the

is the outcome

rationalist had not only presented the world with a series of untenable lative philosophy; he had empiricist interpretation inducing the empiricist

systems of specualso poisoned the of knowledge by to strive for un-

attainable aims. The conception of knowledge as a system of statements that are demonstrable

as true had to be overcome

by the evolution of science, before a solution

title he makes his predictions, he cannot answer that he has an irrefutable knowl-

edge of the future; he can only lay his best bets. But he can bets, that making do—and if a man can you ask of

prove that they are best them is the best he can does: his best, what else him?

Logic, Semantics, and Scientific Method DOO OO LOLV

COO

LCV HV VOODOO

OVO

OOOLN

CV Ooo

Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology RUDOLF CARNAP 1. THE PROBLEM OF ABSTRACT ENTITIES ) | are in general rather suspicious with respect to any kind of abstract entities like properties, classes, relations, numbers, propositions, etc. They usually feel much more in sympathy with nominalists than with realists (in the medieval sense). As far as possible they try to avoid any reference to abstract entities and to restrict themselves to what is sometimes called a nominalistic language, i.e., one not containing such references. However, within certain scientific contexts it seems hardly possible to avoid them. In the case of mathematics, some empiricists try to find a way out by treating the whole of mathematics as a mere calculus, a formal system for which no interpretation is given or can be given. Accordingly, the mathematician is said to speak not about numbers,

functions,

and

infinite

uninterpreted and uninterpretable, that part which refers to real numbers as spacetime coordinates or as values of ‘physical magnitudes, to functions, limits, etc. More probably he will just speak about all these things like anybody else but with an uneasy conscience, like ‘a man who in his everyday life does with qualms many

things which are not in accord with the high moral principles he professes on Sundays. Recently the problem of abstract entities has arisen again in connection with semantics, the theory of meaning and truth. Some seimanticists say that certain expressions designate ‘certain entities, and among these designated entities they include not only concrete material things but also abstract entities, e.g., properties as designated by predicates and propositions as designated by sentences.’ Others object strongly to this procedure as violating the basic principles of empiricism and leading back to a metaphysical ontology of the Platonic kind. It is the purpose of this article to clarify this controversial issue. The nature and implications of the acceptance of a language referring to abstract entities will first be discussed in general; it will be shown that using such a language does

classes,

but merely about meaningless symbols and formulas manipulated according to given formal rules. In physics it is more’ difficult to shun the stispected ‘entities; because the language of physics serves for the communication of reports and predictions and hence cannot be taken as a mere calculus. A physicist who is suspicious of abstract entities may perhaps try to declare a certain part of the language of physics as

1The terms “sentence” and “statement” are here used synonymously for declarative (indicative, propositional) sentences.

377

LOGICAL

378 not imply embracing a Platonic ontology but is perfectly compatible with empiricism

and strictly scientific thinking. Then the special question of the role of abstract entities in semantics will be discussed. It is hoped that the clarification of the issue will be useful to those who would like to accept abstract entities in their work in mathematics, physics, semantics, or any other field; it may help them to overcome nominalistic scruples. 2. LINGUISTIC

FRAMEWORKS

EMPIRICISM

an example the simplest kind of entities dealt with in the everyday language: the spatio-temporally ordered system of observable things and events. Once we have accepted the thing-language with its frame-, work for things, we can raise and answer

internal questions, e.g., “Is there a white piece of paper on my desk?”, “Did King Arthur actually live?”, “Are unicorns and centaurs real or merely imaginary?”, and the like. These questions are to be answered by empirical investigations. Results of observations are evaluated according to

certain rules as confirming or disconfirm-

Are there properties, classes, numbers, propositions? In order to understand more clearly the nature of these and related problems, it is above all necessary to recog-

ing evidence for possible answers. (This evaluation is usually carried out, of course,

nize a fundamental

in a rational reconstruction, to lay down explicit rules for the evaluation. This is one of the main tasks of a pure, as distinguished from a psychological epistemology.) The concept of reality occurring in these internal questions is an empirical,

distinction between

two kinds of questions concerning the existence or reality of entities. If someone wishes to speak in his language about a new kind of entities, he has to introduce a system of new ways of speaking, subject to new rules; we shall call this procedure the construction of a linguistic framework for the new entities in question. And now we must distinguish two kinds of questions of existence: first, questions of the existence of certain entities of the new kind within the framework; we call them internal questions; and second, questions concerning the existence or reality of the system of entities as a whole, called external questions. Internal questions and possible answers to them are formulated

with the help of the new forms of expressions. The answers may be found either by purely logical methods or by empirical methods, depending upon whether the framework is a logical or a factual one. An external question is of a problematic character which is in need of closer examination. The world of things. Let us consider as

as a matter of habit rather than a deliberate, rational procedure. But it is possible,

scientific, non-metaphysical

concept.

To

recognize something as a real thing or event means to succeed in incorporating it into the system of things at a particular

space-time position so that it fits together with the other things recognized as real, according to the rules of the framework.

From these questions we must distinguish the external question of the reality of the thing world itself. In contrast to the former questions, this question is raised

neither by the man in the street nor by scientists, but only by philosophers. Realists give an affirmative answer, subjective

idealists a negative one, and the controversy goes on for centuries without ever

being solved. And it cannot be solved because it is framed in a wrong way. To be real in the scientific sense means to be an element of the system; hence this concept cannot be meaningfully applied to the

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

METHOD

379

system itself. Those who raise the question of the reality of the thing world itself have perhaps in mind not a theoretical

language, although itself not of a cognitive nature, will nevertheless usually be in-

question as their formulation seems to suggest, but rather a practical question, a matter of a practical decision concerning the

like any other deliberate decision concern-

structure of our language. We have to make the choice whether or not to accept and use the forms of expression in the framework in question.

In the case of this particular example, there is usually no deliberate cause we all have accepted language early in our lives as course. Nevertheless, we may

fluenced

by theoretical

knowledge,

just

ing the acceptance of linguistic or other rules. The purposes for which the language is intended to be used, for instance, the purpose of communicating factual knowledge, will determine which factors

are relevant for the decision. The efficiency, fruitfulness, and simplicity of the use of

choice bethe thing a matter of regard it as

the thing language may be among the decisive factors. And the questions con-

a matter of decision in this sense: we are

be identified with the question of realism.

free to choose to continue using the thing language or not; in the latter case we could restrict ourselves to a language of sensedata and other “phenomenal” entities, or construct an alternative to the customary thing language with another structure, or, finally, we could refrain from speaking. If someone decides to accept the thing language, there is no objection against saying that he has accepted the world of things. But this must not be interpreted as if it meant his acceptance of a belief in the reality of the thing world; there is no such belief or assertion or assumption, because it is not a theoretical question. To accept the thing world means nothing more than to accept a certain form of lan-

They are not yes-no questions but questions of degree. The thing language in the customary form works indeed with a high degree of efficiency for most purposes of everyday life. This is a matter of fact,

guage, in other words, to accept rules for forming statements and for testing, accepting, or rejecting them. The acceptance of the thing language leads, on the basis of observations

made, also to the accept-

ance, belief, and assertion of certain statements. But the thesis of the reality of the thing world cannot be among these statements, because it cannot be formulated in the thing language or, it seems, in any other theoretical language. The decision of accepting the thing

cerning these qualities are indeed of a theoretical nature. But these questions cannot

based upon the content of our experiences. However, it would be wrong to describe this situation by saying: “The fact of the efficiency of the thing language is confirming evidence for the reality of the thing

world”; we

should

rather say instead:

“This fact makes it advisable to accept the thing language.” The system of numbers. As an example of a system which is of a logical rather

than a factual nature

let us take the

system of natural numbers. The framework for this system is constructed by introducing into the language new expressions with suitable rules: (1) numerals

like “five” and sentence forms like “there are five books on the table”; (2) The general term “number” for the new entities, and sentence forms like “five is a number”;

(3) expressions for properties of numbers

(e.g. “odd,” “prime”), relations “greater than”), and functions

(e.g., (e.g.,

“plus”), and sentence forms like “two plus three is five”; (4) numerical variables

LOGICAL

380 etc.) and quantifiers for universal sentences (“for .every 7, . 2 yeand existential sentences (“there is an ” such cea

a

J

tt

n,”

a”

that . . .”) with the customary deductive rules. Here again there are internal questions, eg., “Is there a prime number greater than hundred?” Here, however, the answers are found, not by empirical investigation based on observations, but by logical analysis based on the rules for the new expressions. Therefore the answers are here analytic, i.e., logically true. What is now the nature of the philosophical question concerning the existence or reality of numbers? To begin with, there is the internal question which, together with the affirmative answer, can be formulated in the new terms, say, by “There are numbers” or, more explicitly, “There is an such that » is a number.” This statement follows from the analytic statement “five is a number” and is therefore itself analytic. Moreover, it is rather trivial (in contradistinction to a statement like “There is a prime number greater than a million,” which is likewise analytic but far from trivial), because it does not say more than that the new system is not empty; but this is immediately seen from the rule which

states that words like “five” are substitutable for the new variables. Therefore nobody who meant the question “Are there numbers?” in the internal sense would either assert or even seriously consider a negative answer. This makes it plausible to assume that those philosophers who treat the question of the existence of numbers as a serious philosophical problem and offer lengthy arguments on either side, do not

have in mind the internal question. And, indeed, if we were to ask them: “Do you mean the question as to whether the framework of numbers, if we were to accept

it, would be found to be empty or not?”,

EMPIRICISM

they would probably reply: “Not at all; we mean a question prior to the acceptance of the new framework.” They might try to explain what they mean by saying

that it is a question. of the ontological status of numbers; the question whether or not numbers have a certain metaphysical

characteristic called reality (but a kind of ideal reality, different from the material reality of the thing world) or subsistence or status of “independent entities.” Un-

fortunately, these philosophers have so far not given a formulation of their question

in terms of the common scientific language. Therefore our judgement must be that they have not succeeded in giving to the external question and to the possible answers any cognitive content. Unless and

until they supply a clear cognitive interpretation, we are justified in our suspicion that their question is a pseudo-question, that is, one disguised in the form of a theoretical question whilein fact it is nontheoretical; in the present case it is the practical problem whether or not to incorporate into the language the new linguistic forms which constitute the framework of numbers. ;

The system of propositions. New variables, “p,” “gq,” etc., are introduced with “ce

a>

66

?

a rule to the effect that any (declarative) sentence may be substituted for a variable of this kind; this includes, in addition to the sentences of the original thing language, also all general sentences with variables of any kind which may have been introduced into the language. Further, the general term “proposition” is introduced.

“p is a proposition”- may be defined by “p or not p” (or any other sentence form yielding only analytic sentences). Therefore, every sentence of the form “. . . is a proposition” (where any sentence may stand in the place of the dots) is analytic. This holds, for example, for the sentence:

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

METHOD

381

(a) “Chicago is large is a proposition.”

erences to mental conditions occur in ex-

(We disregard here the fact that the rules of English grammar require not a sentence but a that-clause as the subject

istential statements (like (c), (d), etc.) shows that propositions are not mental

of another

sentence;

accordingly,

instead

of (a) we should have to say “That Chicago is large is a proposition.”) Predicates

may be admitted whose argument expressions are sentences; these predicates may be

either

extensional

(e.g., the customary

truth-functional connectives) or not (e.g., modal predicates like “possible,” “neces-

entities. Further, a statement of the exist-

ence sions,

of linguistic entities classes

of expressions,

(e.g., expresetc.)

must

contain a reference to a language. The fact that no such reference occurs in the existential statements here, shows that propositions are not linguistic entities. The fact that in these statements no reference to a subject (an observer or knower) occurs

sary,” etc.). With the help of the new vari-

(nothing like: “There is a p which is

ables, general sentences may

necessary for Mr. X”), shows that the propositions (and their properties, like necessity, etc.) are not subjective. Although characterizations of these or similar kinds

be formed,

e.g. (b) “For every p, either p or not-p.” (c) “There is a p such that p is not necessary and not-p is not necessary.”

(d) “There is a p such that p is a proposition.” (c) and (d) are internal assertions of existence. The statement “There are propositions” may be meant in the sense of (d); in this case it is analytic (since it follows from (a)) and even trivial. If, however,

the statement is meant in an external sense, then it is non-cognitive. It is important to notice that the system of rules for the linguistic expressions of the propositional framework (of which only a few rules have here been briefly indicated) is sufficient for the introduction of the framework. Any further explanations as to

the nature of the propositions (i.e., the elements of the system, the values of the variables “p,” “gq,” etc.) are theoretically unnecessary because, if correct, they follow from the rules. For example, are propositions mental events (as in Russell’s theory)? A look at the rules shows us that they are not, because otherwise existential statements would be of the form: “If the mental state of the person in question fulfils such and such conditions, then there is a p such that...” The fact that no ref-

are,

strictly

speaking,

unnecessary,

they

may nevertheless. be practically useful. If

they are given, they should be understood, not as ingredient parts of the system, but merely as marginal notes with the purpose of supplying to the reader helpful hints or convenient pictorial associations which may make his learning of the use of the expressions easier than the bare system of the rules would do. Such a characterization is

analogous to an extra-systematic explanation which a physicist sometimes gives to the beginner. He might, for example, tell him to imagine the atoms of a gas as small balls rushing around with great speed, or the electromagnetic field and its oscillations as quasi-elastic tensions and vibrations in an ether. In fact, however, all that can accurately be said about atoms or the field is implicitly contained in the physical laws of the theories in question.” 2In my book Meaning and Necessity (Chicago, 1947) I have developed a semantical method which takes propositions as entities designated by sentences (more specifically, as intensions of sentences). In order to facilitate the understanding of the systematic development, I added’ some: informal, extra-systematic. explanations concerning the nature of propositions. I .said that the’ term 2” «er “Droposition” “is used neither: for .a linguistic ex-

LOGICAL

382 The system of thing properties. The thing language contains words like “red,” Shard dstones; “house,” etc., which are

used for describing what things are like. Now we may introduce new variables, say “f,” “g,” etc., for which those words are substitutable and furthermore the gen-

eral term “property.” New rules are laid down which admit sentences like “Red is a property,” “Red is a color,” “These two pieces of paper have at least one color in common” (i.e., “There is an f such that

f is a color, and .. .”). The last sentence is an internal assertion. It is of an empirical, factual nature. However, the external state-

framework

EMPIRICISM

of natural numbers

we may

introduce first the (positive and negative) integers as relations among natural numbers and then the rational numbers as re-

lations

among

integers.

This

involves

introducing new types of variables, expressions substitutable for them and the general terms “integer” and “rational number.” The system of real numbers. On the basis of the rational numbers, the real

numbers may be introduced as classes of a special kind (segments) of rational numbers (according to the method developed by Dedekind and Frege). Here again a new type of variables. is introduced, expressions

ment, the philosophical statement of the

substitutable

reality of properties—a special case of the thesis of the reality of universals—is devoid of cognitive content. The systems of integers and rational numbers. Into a language containing the

the general term “real number.” The spatio-temporal coordinate system for physics. The new entities are the space-time points. Each is an ordered quadruple of four real numbers, called its coordinates, consisting of three spatial and one temporal coordinates. The physical state of a spatio-temporal point or region is described either with the help of qualitative predicates (e.g., “hot”) or by ascribing numbers as values of a physical magnitude (e.g., mass, temperature, and the like). The step from the system of things (which does not contain spacetime points but only extended objects with spatial and temporal relations between them) to the physical coordinate system is again a matter of decision. Our choice of certain features, although itself not theoretical, is suggested by theoretical knowl-

pression nor for a subjective, mental occurrence, but rather for something objective that may or may not be exemplified in nature. . . . We apply the term ‘proposition’ to any entities of a certain logical type, namely, those that may be expressed by (declarative) sentences in a language”’ (p. 27). After some more detailed discussions concerning the relation between propositions and facts, and the nature of false propositions, I added: “It has been the purpose of the preceding remarks to facilitate the understanding of our conception. of propositions. If, however, a reader should find these explanations more puzzling than clarifying, or even unacceptable, he may disregard them” (p. 31) (that is, disregard these extra-systematic explanations, not the whole theory of the propositions as intensions

of sentences,

as one

reviewer

for them

(e.g., “/2’ *), and

understood). In spite of this warning, it seems that some of those readers who were puzzled by the explanations, did not disregard them but thought that by raising objections against them they could refute the theory. This is analogous to the procedure of some laymen who by (correctly) criticizing the ether picture or other visualizations of physical theories, thought they had refuted those theories, Perhaps the discussions in the present paper will help in clarifying the role of the system of linguis-

of experience but mainly due to considerations of mathematical simplicity. The re-

tic rules for the introduction of a framework of

striction to rational coordinates would not

entities on the one hand, and that of extra-systematic explanations concerning the nature of the entities on the other.

edge, either logical or factual. For example, the choice of real numbers rather than rational numbers or integers as coordinates is not much influenced by the facts

be in conflict with any experimental knowledge we have, because the result of any

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

measurement is a rational number. However, it would prevent the use of ordinary

geometry (which says, e.g., that the diagonal of a square with the side 1 has the irrational value \/2) and thus lead to great complications. On the other hand, the de-

cision to use three rather than two or four spatial coordinates is strongly suggested, but still not forced upon us, by the result of common observations. If certain events allegedly observed in spiritualistic séances, e.g., a ball moving out of a sealed box, were

confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt, it might seem advisable to use four spatial coordinates. Internal questions are here, in general, empirical questions to be answered by empirical investigations. On the other hand, the external questions of the reality of physical space and physical time are pseudo-questions. A question like “Are there (really) space-time points?” is ambiguous. It may be meant as an internal question; then the affirmative answer is, of course, analytic and trivial. Or it may be meant in the external sense: “Shall we introduce such and such forms into our language?”; in this case it is not a theoretical but a practical question, a matter of decision rather than assertion, and hence

the proposed formulation would be misleading. Or finally, it may be meant in the following sense: “Are our experiences such that the use of the linguistic forms in question will be expedient and fruitful?” This is a theoretical question of a factual, empirical nature. But it concerns a matter of degree;

therefore

a

formulation

in the

form “real or not?” would be inadequate. 3. WHAT DOES ACCEPTANCE OF A KIND OF ENTITIES MEAN? Let

us

now

summarize

the

essential

characteristics of situations involving the introduction of a new kind of entities,

METHOD

383

characteristics which are common

to the

various examples outlined above. The acceptance of a new kind of entities is represented in the language by the

introduction

of a framework

of

new

forms of expressions to be used according to a new set of rules. There may be new names for particular entities of the kind in question; but some such names may already occur in the language before the introduction of the new _ framework. (Thus, for example, the thing language contains certainly words of the type of “blue” and “house” before the framework of properties is introduced; and it may contain words like “ten” in sentences of the form “I have ten fingers” before the framework of numbers is introduced.) The latter fact shows that the occurrence of constants of the type in question—regarded as names of entities of the new kind after the new framework is introduced—is not a sure sign of the acceptance of the new kind of entities. Therefore the introduction of such constants is not to be regarded as an essential step in the introduction of the framework. The two essential steps are rather the following. First, the introduction of a general term, a predicate of higher level, for the new kind of entities, permitting us to say of any particular entity that it belongs to this kind (e.g., “Red is a property,” “Five is a number”). Second, the introduction of variables of the new type. The new entities are values of these variables; the constants (and the closed compound expressions, if any) are substitutable for the variables.* With the help of 3 W. V. Quine was the first to recognize the importance of the introduction of variables as indicating the acceptance of entities. ““The ontology to which one’s use of language commits him comprises simply the objects that he treats as falling . within the range of values of his variables.” (“Notes on Existence and Necessity,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 40 (1943), pp. 113-127, see p. 118; compare also his “Designation and Exist-

LOGICAL

384 the variables, general sentences concerning

the new entities can be formulated. After the new forms are introduced into the language, it is possible to formulate with their help internal questions and possible answers to them. A question of this

kind may be either empirical or logical; accordingly a true answer is either factually true or analytic. From the internal questions we must clearly distinguish external questions, i.e., philosophical questions concerning the ex-

EMPIRICISM

whether or not to accept the new linguistic forms. The acceptance cannot be judged

as being either true or false because it is_ not an assertion. It can only be judged as ’

being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended. Judgments of this kind supply the motivation for the decision of accepting or rejecting the kind of entities.* Thus it is clear that the acceptance of a framework must not be regarded as im-

plying a metaphysical doctrine concerning

istence or reality of the total system of the

the reality of the entitiesin question. It

new entities. Many philosophers regard a

seems to me due to a neglect of this important distinction that some contemporary nominalists label the admission of variables of abstract types as “platonism.” © This is, to say the least, an extremely misleading terminology. It leads to the absurd conse-

question of this kind as an ontological question which must be raised and answered before the introduction of the new language forms. The latter introduction, they believe, is legitimate only if it can be justified by an ontological insight supplying an affirmative answer to the question of reality. In contrast to this view, we take the position that the introduction of the new ways of speaking does not need any theoretical justification because it does not imply any assertion of reality. We may

still speak (and have done so) of “the acceptance of the new entities” since this form of speech is customary; but one must keep in mind that this phrase does not mean for us anything more than acceptance of the new framework, i.e., of the new linguistic forms. Above all, it must not be interpreted as referring to an assumption, belief, or assertion of “the reality

of the entities.” There is no such assertion. An alleged statement of the reality of the system of entities is a pseudo-statement without cognitive content. To be sure, we have to face at this point an important question; butit is a practical, not a theoretical question; it is the question of ence,” ibid., Vol. 36 (1939), pp. 701-9, and “On Universals,”

Journal

(1947); pp. 74-84).

of Symbolic

Logic,

Vol.

12

#For a closely related point of view on these questions see the detailed discussions in Herbert

Feigl, “Existential Hypotheses,” in PAilosophy of Science, 1950. >Paul Bernays, “Sur le platonisme dans les mathematiques,” L’Enseignement math., Vol. 34

(1935), pp. 52-69. W. V. Quine, see footnote 3, and a recent paper “On What There Is,” Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 2 (1948), pp. 21-38. Quine does not acknowledge the distinction which I emphasize above, because according to his general conception there are no sharp boundary lines between logical and factual truth, between questions of meaning and questions of fact, between the acceptance of a language structure and the acceptance of an assertion formulated in the language. This conception, which seems to deviate considerably from customary ways of thinking, will be explained in his article, Proc. Amer. Acad. of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 80 (1951), pp. 90-96. When Quine in the article of 1948 classifies my logicistic conception of mathematics (derived from Frege and Russell) as “platonic realism” (p. 33), this is meant (according to.a personal communication from him) not as ascribingto me agreement with

Plato’s

metaphysical

doctrine

of universals,

but merely as referring to the fact that I accept a language of mathematics containing variables of higher levels. With respect to the basic attitude to take in choosing a language form (an “ontology” in Quine’s terminology, which seems to me misleading), there appears now to be agreement between us: “the obvious counsel is tolerance and an experimental spirit” (op. cit., p. 38).

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

quence, that the position of everybody who accepts the language of physics with its

real number variables (as a language of communication, not merely as a would be called platonistic, even a strict empiricist who rejects metaphysics. A brief historical remark may

calculus) if he is platonic here be

inserted. The non-cognitive character of the questions which we have called here external questions was recognized and emphasized already by the Vienna Circle under the leadership of Moritz Schlick, the group from which the movement of logical empiricism originated. Influenced by ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Circle re-

jected both the thesis of the reality of the external world and the thesis of its irreality as pseudo-statements;® the same was the case for both the thesis of the reality of universals (abstract entities, in our present terminology) and the nominalistic thesis that they are not real and that their alleged names are not names of

anything but merely flatus vocis. (It is obvious that the apparent negation of a pseudo-statement must also be a pseudostatement.) It is therefore not correct to

classify the members of the Vienna Circle as nominalists, as is sometimes done. How-

METHOD

385

4. ABSTRACT ENTITIES SEMANTICS

IN

The problem of the legitimacy and the status of abstract entities has recently again led to controversial discussions in connection with semantics. In a semantical meaning analysis certain expressions in a lan-

guage are often said to designate

(or

name or denote or signify or refer to) cer-

tain extra-linguistic entities.’ As long as physical things or events (e.g., Chicago or Caesar’s

death)

are

taken

as designata

(entities designated), no serious doubts arise. But strong objections have been raised, especially by some empiricists, against abstract entities as designata, e.g.,

against semantical statements of the following kind:

(1) “The word ‘red’ designates a property of things”; — (2) “The word ‘color’ designates a property of properties of things”; (3) “The word ‘five’ designates a number’? (4) “The word ‘odd’ designates a property of numbers”;

(5) “The sentence

‘Chicago is large’

designates a proposition.” Those who criticize these statements do not, of course, reject the use of the ex-

ever, if we look at the basic anti-meta-

pressions in question, like “red” or “five”;

physical and pro-scientific attitude of most nominalists (and the same holds for many

nor would they deny that these expressions

materialists and realists in the modern disregarding occasional sense), their pseudo-theoretical formulations, then it is, of course, true to say that the Vienna Circle was much closer to those philosophers than to their opponents.

are meaningful. But to be meaningful, they would say, is not the same as having a meaning in the sense of an entity desig7See Introduction to Semantics (Cambridge, 1942); Meaning and Necessity (Chicago, 1947). The distinction I have drawn in the latter book

between

the method

of the name-relation

the method of intension and extension

and

is not es-

sential for our present discussion. The term “‘desig8See Carnap, Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie; das Fremdpsychische und der Realismusstreit (Berlin, 1928). Moritz Schlick, Positivismus und Realismus, reprinted in Gesammelte Aufsatze (Wien, 1938).

nation” is in the present article used in a neutral way; it may be understood as referring to the name-relation or to the intension-relation or to

the extension-relation or to any similar relations used in other semantical methods.

LOGICAL

386

EMPIRICISM

nated. They reject the belief, which they

Further, to make the statement (a) pos-

regard as implicitly presupposed by those semantical statements, that to each expres-

sible, L must contain an expression like

sion of the types in question (adjectives like “red,” numerals like “five,” etc.) there

is a particular real entity to which the expression stands in the relation of designation. This belief is rejected as incompatible with the basic principles of empiricism

or of scientific thinking. Derogatory labels like “Platonic realism,” “hypostatization,”

or “‘Fido’-Fido

principle” are attached

to it. The latter is the name given by Gilbert Ryle ® to the criticized belief, which, in his view, arises by a naive inference of analogy: just as there is an entity well known to me, viz., my dog Fido, which is designated by the name “Fido,” thus there must be for every meaningful expression a particular entity to which it stands in the relation of designation or naming, i.e.,

the relation exemplified by “Fido’-Fido. The belief criticized is thus a case of hypostatization, 1e., of treating as names expressions which are not names. While “Fido” is a name, expressions like “red,” “five,” etc., are said not to be names, not to designate anything. Our previous discussions concerning the acceptance of frameworks enables us now to clarify the situation with respect to abstract entities as designata. Let us take as an example the statement: (a) “ ‘Five’ designates a number.” The formulation of this statement presupposes that our language L contains the forms of expressions corresponding to what we have called the framework of numbers, in particular, numerical variables and the general term “number.” If L contains these forms, the following is an analytic statement in L:

(b) “Five is a number.” 8 G. Ryle, ‘Meaning and Necessity,” Philosophy,

Vol. 24 (1949), pp. 69-76.

“designates” or “is a name of” for the semantical relation of designation. If suit-’ able rules for this term are laid down, the

following is likewise analytic: (c) “ ‘Five’ designates five.” (Generally speaking, any expression of the form: “‘).. [ sdesignates qy."-. 45 am

analytic statement provided the term“. . . is a constant in an accepted framework.

>

If the latter condition is not fulfilled, the

expression is not a statenient.) Since (a) follows from (c) and (b), (a) is likewise analytic.

Thus it is clear that 7f someone accepts the framework of numbers, then he must

acknowledge (c) and (b) and hence (a) as true statements. Generally speaking, if

someone accepts a framework for a certain kind of entities, then he is bound to admit the entities as possible designata. Thus the question of the admissibility of entities of a certain type or of abstract entities in general as designata is reduced to the question of the acceptability of the linguistic framework for those entities. Both the nominalistic critics, who refuse the status

of designators or names to expressions like “red,” “five,” etc., because they deny the existence of abstract entities, and the skep-

tics, who express doubts concerning the existence and demand evidence for it, treat

the question of existence as a theoretical question. They do, of course, not mean the internal question; the affirmative answer to this question is analytic and trivial and too obvious for doubt or denial, as

we have seen. Their doubts refer rather to the system of entities itself; hence: they mean the external question. They believe

that only after making sure that there really is a system of entities of the kind in

question are we justified in accepting the framework by incorporating the linguistic

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

METHOD

387

forms into our language. However, we have seen that the external question is not a theoretical question but rather the

for affirming with warrant that there are

practical question whether or not to ac-

quired in these cases—in distinction to the empirical evidence in the case of electrons —as “in the broad sense logical and dialectical.” Beyond this no hint is given as to what might be regarded as relevant evidence. Some nominalists regard the acceptance of abstract entities as a kind of superstition or myth, populating the world with fictitious or at least dubious entities, analogous to the belief in centaurs or demons. This shows again the confusion mentioned, because a superstition or myth is a false (or dubious) internal statement. Let us take as example the natural numbers as cardinal numbers, i.e., in contexts like “Here are three books.” The linguistic forms of the framework of numbers, including variables and the general term “number” are generally used in our common language of communication; and it is easy to formulate explicit rules for their use. Thus the logical characteristics of this framework are sufficiently clear (while many internal questions, i.e., arithmetical

cept those linguistic forms. This acceptance is not in need of a theoretical justi-

fication (except with respect to expediency and fruitfulness), because it does not imply a belief or assertion. Ryle says that the “Fido’-Fido principle is “a grotesque theory.” Grotesque or not, Ryle is wrong

in calling it a theory. It is rather the practical decision to accept certain frameworks. Maybe Ryle is historically right with respect to those whom he mentions as previous representatives of the principle, viz., John Stuart Mill, Frege, and Russell. If these philosophers regarded the acceptance of a system of entities as a theory, an assertion, they were victims of the same old, metaphysical confusion. But it is certainly wrong to regard my semantical method as involving a belief in the reality of abstract entities, since I reject a thesis

of this kind as a metaphysical pseudostatement. The critics of the use of abstract entities in semantics overlook the fundamental difference between the acceptance of a system of entities and an internal assertion, e.g., an assertion that there are elephants or electrons or prime numbers greater than a million. Whoever makes an internal assertion is certainly obliged to justify it by providing evidence, empirical evidence in the case of electrons, logical proof in the

such entities as infinitesimals or proposi-

tions.” He characterizes the evidence re-

questions,

are, of course,

still open). In

spite of this, the controversy concerning the external question of the ontological reality of the system of numbers continues. Suppose that one philosopher says: “I be-

lieve that there are numbers as real entities. This gives me the right to use the linguistic forms of the numerical framework and to make semantical statements about num-

case of the prime numbers. The demand for a theoretical justification, correct in the case of internal assertions, is sometimes wrongly applied to the acceptance of a system of entities. Thus, for example, Ernest Nagel ® asks for “evidence relevant

bers as designata of numerals.” His nominalistic opponent replies: “You are wrong; there are no numbers. The numerals may still be used as meaningful expressions. But

9E. Nagel, Review of Carnap, Meaning and Necessity, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 45 (1948),

not be used (unless a way were found to

pp. 467-72.

Le

they are not names,

there are no entities

designated by them. Therefore the word “number” and numerical variables must introduce

them

as

nearly

abbreviating

LOGICAL

388 devices, a way of translating them into the

nominalistic thing language).” I cannot think of any possible evidence that would be regarded as relevant by both philosophers, and therefore, if actually found.

would decide the controversy or at least make one of the opposite theses more probable than the other. (To construe the numbers as classes or properties of the sec-

ond level; according to the Frege-Russell method does, of course, not solve the con-

troversy,

because

the

first philosopher

would affirm and the second deny the existence of the system of classes or properties of the second level.) Therefore I feel compelled to regard the external question as a pseudo-question, until both parties to the controversy offer a common interpretation of the questionas a cognitive question; this would involve an indication of

possible evidence regarded as relevant by both sides... There is a particular kind of misinterpretation of the acceptance* of abstract en-

tities in various fields of science and in semantics, that needs to be cleared up. Certain early British empiricists (e.g.,

Berkeley and Hume) denied the existence of abstract entities on the ground that immediate experience presents us only with particulars, not with universals, e.g., with this red patch, but not with Redness or Color-in-General; with this scalene triangle, but not with Scalene Triangularity or

Triangularity-in-General. Only entities belonging to a type of which examples were to be found within immediate experience could be accepted as ultimate constituents of reality. Thus, according to this way of thinking, the existence of abstract entities could be asserted only if one could show

EMPIRICISM

found no abstract entities within the realm of sense-data, they either denied their existence, or else made a futile attempt to define universals in terms of particulars.) Some contemporary philosophers, especially English philosophers following Ber-

trand Russell, think in basically similar terms. They emphasize a distinction be-

tween the data (that which is immediately given in consciousness, e.g. sense-data, immediately past experiences, etc.) and the

constructs based on the data. Existence or reality is ascribed only to the data; the constructs are not real entities; the corresponding linguistic expressions are merely ways of speech not actually desig-

nating anything (reminiscent of the nominalists’ flatus vocis). We shall not criticize here this general conception. (As far as it is a principle of accepting certain entities and not accepting others, leaving aside any ontological, phenomenalistic and nominalistic pseudo-statements, there cannot be any theoretical objection to it.)

But if this conception leads to the view that other philosophers or scientists who accept abstract entities thereby assert or imply their occurrence as immediate data, then such a view must be rejected as a misinterpretation. References to space-time points, the electromagnetic field, or electrons in physics, to real or complex numbers and their functions in mathematics, to

the

excitatory

potential

or

unconscious

complexes in psychology, to an inflationary trend in economics, and the like, do not

imply the assertion that entities of these kinds occur as immediate data. And the same holds for references to abstract entities as designata in semantics. Some of

the criticisms

by English

philosophers

either that some abstract entities fall within

against such references give the impres-

the given, or that abstract entities can be defined in terms of the types of entity which are given. Since these empiricists

sion that, probably due to the misinterpretation just indicated, they accuse the semanticist not so much of bad meta-

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

METHOD

389

physics (as some nominalists would do)

matter

but of bad psychology. The fact that they regard a semantical method involving abstract entities not merely as doubtful and

phers who have carried out semantical

of degree. Among

those philoso-

of entities do and which do not occur as

analyses and thought about suitable tools for this work, beginning with Plato and Aristotle and, in a more technical way on the basis of modern logic, with C. S. Peirce and Frege, a great majority accepted abstract entities. This does, of course, not prove the case. After all, semantics in the technical sense is still in the initial phases of its development, and we must be prepared for possible fundamental changes in methods. Let us therefore admit that the nominalistic critics may possibly be right. But if so, they will have to offer better arguments than they did so far. Appeal to ontological insight will not carry much weight. The critics will have to show that it is pos-

immediate data is entirely irrelevant for semantics, just as it is for physics, mathematics, economics, etc., with respect to the examples mentioned above.’

which avoids all references to abstract entities and achieves by simpler means essentially the same results as the other

perhaps wrong, but as manifestly absurd,

preposterous and grotesque, and that they

show a deep horror and indignation against this method, is perhaps to be explained by a misinterpretation of the kind described. In fact, of course, the semanticist does not in the least assert or imply that the abstract entities to which he refers can be experienced as immediately given either by sensation or by a kind of rational intui-

tion. An assertion of this kind would indeed be very dubious psychology. The psychological question as to which kinds

sible to construct

a semantical

method

methods.

5. CONCLUSION For those who want to develop or use semantical methods, the decisive question

is not the alleged ontological question of the existence of abstract entities but rather the question whether the use of abstract linguistic forms or, in technical terms, the use of variables beyond those for things (or phenomenal data), is expedient and fruitful for the purposes for which semantical analyses are made, viz., the analysis, interpretation, clarification, or construction of languages of communication, especially languages of science. This question is here neither decided nor even discussed. It is not a question simply of yes or no, but a 10 Wilfrid Sellars, “Acquaintance and Description Again,” in Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 46 (1949), pp. 496-504, see pp. 502 f., analyzes clearly the roots of the mistake “of taking the designation relation of semantic theory to be a

reconstruction of being present to an experience.”

The acceptance or rejection or abstract linguistic forms, just as the acceptance or rejection of any other linguistic forms in any branch of science, will finally be decided by their efficiency as instruments, the ratio of the results achieved to the amount and complexity of the efforts required. To decree dogmatic prohibitions of certain linguistic forms instead of testing them by their success or failure in practical use, is worse than futile; it is positively harmful because it may obstruct scientific progress. The history of science shows examples of such prohibitions based on prejudices deriving from religious, mythological, metaphysical, or other irrational sources, which slowed up the developments for shorter or longer periods of time. Let us learn from

the lessons of history. Let us grant to those who work in any special field of investigation the freedom to use any form of expression which seems useful to them; the

LOGICAL

390 work in the field will sooner or later lead to the elimination of those forms which have no useful function. Lez us be cautious

EMPIRICISM

in making assertions and critical in examining them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic forms.

Meamng and Verification

MORITZ SCHLICK use. The simplest form of an ostensive

definition is a pointing gesture combined .

°

°

Whenever

we

.

ask about

°

©

a sentence,

“What does it mean?”, what we expect is instruction as to the circumstances in which the sentence is to be used; we want

a description which the proposition, it false. The bination of

of the conditions

under

sentence will form a true and of those which will make meaning of a word or a comwords is, in this way, deter-

mined by a set of rules which regulate their use and which, following Wittgenstein, we may call the rules of their grammar, taking this word in its widest sense.

Stating the meaning of a sentence amounts to stating the rules according to which the sentence is to be used, and this is the same as stating the way in which it

can be verified (or falsified). The meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification. The “grammatical” rules will partly consist of ordinary definitions, 7. e., explanations of words by means of other words,

partly of what are called “‘ostensive” definitions, 7. ¢., explanations by means of a procedure which puts the words to actual

with

the pronouncing

of the word,

as

when we teach a child the signification of the sound ‘blue’ by showing a blue object. But in most cases the ostensive definition is of a more complicated. form; we cannot point to an object corresponding to words like “because,” “immediate,” “chance,” “again,” etc. In these cases we require the presence of certain complex situations, and the meaning of the words is defined by the way we use them in these

different situations. It is clear that in order to understand a verbal definition we must know the sig-

nification of the explaining words beforehand, and that the only explanation which can work without any previous knowledge is the ostensive definition. We conclude that there is no way of understanding any meaning without ultimate reference to ostensive definitions, and this means, in an obvious sense, reference to “experience” or “possibility of verification.” This is the situation, and nothing seems to me simpler or less questionable. It is this situation and nothing else that we de-

scribe: when we affirm that the meaning of a proposition can be given only by giving the rules of its verification in experience. (The addition, “in experience,” is really

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

METHOD

39t

superfluous, as no other kind of verification

who think that Einstein’s philosophical op-

has been defined.)

ponents were right.

This view has been called the “experimental theory’ of meaning”; but it certainly is no theory at all, for the term “theory” is used for a set of hypotheses about a certain subject-matter, and there are no hypotheses involved in our view, which proposes to be nothing but a simple statement of the way in which meaning is actually assigned to propositions, both in everyday life and in science. There has never been any other way, and it would be a grave error to suppose that we believe we have discovered a new conception of meaning which is contrary to common opinion and which we want to introduce into philosophy. On the contrary, our conception is not only entirely in agreement with, but even derived from, common sense and scientific procedure. Although our criterion of meaning has always been employed in practice, it has very rarely been formulated in the past, and this is perhaps the only excuse for the attempts of so many philosophers to deny its feasibility. The most famous case of an explicit formulation of our criterion is Einstein’s answer to the question, What do we mean when we speak of two events at distant places happening simultaneously? This answer consisted in a description of an ex-

perimental method by which the simultaneity of such events was actually ascer-

tained. Einstein’s philosophical opponents maintained—and some of them still maintain—that they knew the meaning of the

above

question

independently

of any

method of verification. All I am trying to do is to stick consistently to Einstein’s position and to admit no exceptions from it. (Professor Bridgman’s book on The Logic of Modern Physics is an admirable attempt to carry out this program for all concepts

of physics.) I am not writing for those

II Professor C. I. Lewis, in a remarkable

address on “Experience and Meaning”? has justly stated that the view developed above (he speaks of it as the “empiricalmeaning requirement”) forms the basis of the whole philosophy of what has been called the “logical positivism of the Viennese Circle.” He criticizes this basis as in-

adequate chiefly on the ground that its acceptance would impose certain limitations upon “significant philosophic discussion” which, at some points, would make such discussion altogether impossible and, at other points, restrict it to an intolerable

extent. Feeling responsible as I do for certain features of the Viennese philosophy (which I should prefer to call Consistent Empiri-

cism), and being of the opinion that it really does not impose any restrictions upon significant philosophizing at all, I shall try to examine Professor Lewis’s chief arguments and point out why I think that they do not endanger our position— at least as far as I can answer for it myself. All of my own arguments will be

derived from the statements made in Section I. Professor Lewis describes the empiricalmeaning requirement as demanding “that any concept put forward or any proposi-

tion asserted shall have a definite denotation; that it shall be intelligible not only verbally and logically but in the further sense that one can specify those empirical items which would determine the applicability of the concept or constitute the verification of the proposition.” * Here it

seems to me that there is no justifica1 See above, Section III, Pragmatism. 2 See above, p. 277.

LOGICAL’

392 tion for the words “but in the further sense ...,” 7. €. for the distinction of two (or three?) senses of intelligibility. The remarks in Section I show that, according to our opinion, “verbal and logical” understanding consists in knowing how the proposition in question could be verified. For, unless we mean by “verbal understanding” that we know how the words are actually used, the term could hardly mean anything but a shadowy feeling of being acquainted’ with the words, and in a philosophical discussion it does

not seem advisable to call such a feel-

EMPIRICISM

given, and I am glad to say that his suggestions appear to me to be in perfect agreement with my own views and ‘those

of my philosophical friends. It will be easy ' to show that there is.no serious divergence between the point. of view of ‘the pragmatist as Professor Lewis conceives it and that of the Viennese Empiricist. And if in

some special questions they arrive at different conclusions, it may be hoped that a careful examination will bridge the difference. How do we define verifiability? In the first place I should like to point out that when we say that, “a proposition

has meaning only if it is verifiable” we are

ing “understanding.” Similarly, I should not advise that we speak of a sentence as being “logically intelligible’ when we just feel convinced that its exterior form is that of a proper proposition (if, e. g., it has the form, substantive copula—adjective, and therefore appears to predicate a property of a thing). For it seems to me.that by such

not saying “... if it is verified.” This simple remark does away with one of the chief objections; the “here and now pre: dicament,” as Professor Lewis calls it, does not exist any more. We fall into the snares of this predicament only if we: regard

a phrase we want to say much

ing, instead of “possibility of verification”

more,

verification. itself as the criterion of mean-

namely, that we are completely aware of

( = verifiability); this would indeed lead

the whole grammar

to a.“reduction to absurdity of meaning.” Obviously the predicament arises through some fallacy by which these two notions are confounded. I do not know if Russell’s statement, “Empirical: knowledge is confined to what we actually observe,”.* must

of the sentence, 7. e.,

that we know exactly the circumstances to which it is fitted. Thus knowledge of how

a proposition is verified is not anything over and above its verbal and logical understanding, but is identical with’ it. It seems to me, therefore, that when we demand that a proposition be verifiable we are not adding a new requirement but are simply formulating the conditions which

have actually always been acknowledged as necessary for meaning and intelligibility. The mere statement that no sentence has meaning unless we aré able to indicate a way of testing its truth or falsity is not very useful if we do not explain very

carefully the signification of the phrases “method of testing’ and “verifiability.” Professor Lewis is quite right when he asks for such an explanation. He himself suggests some ways in which it might be

be interpreted as containing this fallacy, but it would certainly be worth while to discover its genesis.

Let us consider the following argument which Professor Lewis discusses, but which he does not want to impute to anyone: * Suppose it maintained that no issue is meaningful unless it can be put to the test of decisive verification. And no verification can take place except in the immediately present experience of the subject. Then

nothing can be meant except what is actu8 Quoted by Professor Lewis, see above, p. 281. 4 See above, p. 281.

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

ally present in the experience in which that

meaning is entertained.

.

This argument has the form of a conclusion drawn from two premisses. Let us for the moment assume ‘the second premiss to be meaningful and true. You will observe that even then the conclusion does not follow. For the first premiss assures us that the issue has meaning if it can be verified; the verification does not have to take place, and therefore it is

quite irrelevant whether it can take place in the future or in the present only. Apart from this, the second premiss is, of course,

nonsensical; for what fact could possibly be described by the sentence “verification can take place only in present experience”? Is not verifying an act or process like hearing or feeling bored? Might we not just as well say that I can hear or feel bored only in the present moment? And what could I mean by this? The particular nonsense involved in such phrases will become clearer when we speak of the “egocentric predicament” later on; at present we are content to know that our empirical-meaning postulate has nothing whatever to do with the now-predicament. “Verifiable” does not even mean “verifiable here now”; much less does it mean “being verified now.” Perhaps it will be thought that the only way of making sure’ of the verifiability of a proposition would consist in its actual

verification. But we shall soon see that this is not the case.

There seems to be a great temptation

METHOD

393

intérpreted as implying that a proposition about future events did not really refer to the future at all but asserted only the present existence of certain expectations

(and, similarly, speaking about the past would really mean speaking about present memories). But it is certain that the author of that book does not hold such a view now, and that it cannot be regarded as

a teaching of the new positivism. On the contrary, we have pointed out from the beginning that our definition of meaning does not imply such absurd consequences, and when someone

asked, “But how can

you verify a proposition about a future event?”, we replied, “Why, for instance, by waiting for it to happen! “Waiting” is a perfectly legitimate method of verification.”

ist,

®one + Thus I think that everybody—including

the Consistent Empiricist—agrees that it would be nonsense to say, “We can mean nothing but the immediately given.” If in this sentence we replace the word “mean” by the word “know” we arrive at a statement similar to Bertrand Russell’s mentioned above. The temptation to formulate phrases of this sort arises, I believe, from a certain ambiguity of the verb “to know” which is the source of many metaphysical troubles and to which, therefore, I have often had to call attention on other occasions.® In the first place the word may stand simply for “being aware of a datum,” 1: €., for the mere presence of a feeling, a color, a sound, etc.; and if the word “knowledge” is taken in this sense the

assertion

“Empirical

knowledge

is con-

to connect meaning and the “immediately given” in the wrong way; and some of the Viennese positivists may have yielded to this temptation, thereby getting danger-

fined to what we actually observe” not say anything at all, but is a tautology. (This case, I think, would respond to what Professor Lewis

ously near to the fallacy we have just been describing. Parts of Carnap’s Logischer

“Gdentity-theories”

Aufbau

der Welt, for instance, might be

of

the

does mere corcalls

“knowledge-

5 See, e.g., Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, 2nd ed. (1925), §. 12.

LOGICAL

394 relation.” Such theories, resting on a tautology of this kind, would be empty

verbiage without significance.) In the second place the word “knowledge” may be used in one of the significant meanings which it has in science and ordinary life; and in this case Russell’s assertion would obviously (as Professor Lewis remarked) be false. Russell himself, as is well known, distinguishes between “knowledge by acquaintance,” and “knowledge by description,” but perhaps it should be noted that this distinc-

tion does not entirely coincide with the one we have been insisting upon just now. II Verifiability means possibility of verification. Professor Lewis justly remarks that to “omit all examination of the wide range

of significance which could attach to ‘possible verification, would be to leave the whole conception rather obscure.” © For our purpose it suffices to distinguish between two of the many ways in which the word “possibility” is used. We shall call

EMPIRICISM

of human beings on this planet, and so forth). If we chose the latter definition (which seems to have been in Professor

Lewis’s mind when he spoke of “possible ‘ experience as conditioned by the actual”7), we should not get the sharp boundaries we need for our present purpose. So “empirical possibility” is to mean

“compatibility with natural laws.” Now, since we cannot boast of a com-

plete and sure knowledge of nature’s laws, it is evident that we can never assert with certainty the empirical possibility of any fact, and here we may be permitted to

speak of degrees of possibility. Is it possible for me to lift this book? Surely!— This table? I think so!—This billiard table? I don’t think so!—This automobile? Certainly not!—It is clear that in these cases the answer is given by experience, as the result of experiments performed in the past. Any judgment about empirical possibility is based on experience and will often be rather uncertain; there will be

no sharp boundary between possibility and impossibility.

them “empirical possibility” and “logical

Is the possibility of verification which

possibility.” Professor Lewis describes two meanings of “verifiability” which corre-

we insist upon of this empirical sort? In that case there would be different degrees

spond exactly to this difference; he is fully

of verifiability, the question of meaning

aware of it, and there is hardly anything left for me to do but carefully to work out the distinction and show its bearing upon our issue. I propose to call “empirically possible” anything that does not contradict the laws of nature. This is, I think, the largest sense in which we may speak of empirical possibility; we do not restrict the term to happenings which are not only in accordance with the laws of nature but also with the actual state of the universe (where “actual” might refer to the present moment of our own lives, or to the condition § See above, p. 285.

would be a matter of more

or less, not a

matter of yes or no. In many disputes concerning our issue it is the empirical pos-

sibility of verification which is discussed; the various examples of verifiability given by Professor Lewis, e. g., are instances of different empirical circumstances in which the verification is carried out or prevented

from being carried out. Many of those who refuse to accept our criterion of mean-

ing seem to imagine that the procedure of its application in a special case is some-

what like this: A proposition is presented to us ready made, and in order to discover ™ See above, p. 288.

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

its meaning we have to try various methods of verifying or falsifying it, and if one of

METHOD

395

these methods works we have found the

established post festum. You have to be sure of it before you can consider the empirical circumstances and investigate

meaning of the- proposition; but if not, we say it has no meaning. If we really had

they will permit of verification. The em-

to proceed in this way, it is clear that the

pirical

determination of meaning would be entirely a matter of experience, and that in many cases no sharp and ultimate decision could be obtained. How could we

when you want to know if a proposition is true (which is the concern of the

ever know that we had tried long enough, if none of our methods were successful? Might not future efforts disclose a meaning which we were unable to find before? This whole conception is, of course, en-

urely erroneous. It speaks of meaning as if it were a kind of entity inherent in a sentence and hidden in it like a nut in its

whether or no or under what conditions circumstances

are

all-important

scientist), but they can have no influence on the meaning of the proposition (which is the concern of the philosopher). Professor Lewis has seen and expressed this very clearly,* and our Vienna positivism, as far as I can answer for it, is in complete agreement with him on this point. It must be emphasized that when we speak of verifiability we mean /ogical possibility of verification, and nothing but this.

shell, so that the philosopher would have

*

*

*

to crack the shell or sentence in order to reveal the nut or meaning. We know from our considerations in Section J that a proposition cannot be given “ready made”; that meaning does not inhere in a sentence where it might be discovered, but that it must be bestowed upon it. And this is done by applying to the sentence the rules of the logical grammar of our language, as explained in Section I, These rules are not facts of nature which could be “discovered,” but they are prescriptions stipulated by acts of definition. And these definitions have to be known to those who pronounce the sentence in question and to those who hear or read it. Otherwise they

dress which was bright green”; “The companile is 100 feet and 150 feet high”; “The child was naked, but wore a long white

are not confronted with any proposition at

nightgown,”

all, and there is nothing they could try to verify, because you can’t verify or falsify a mere row of words. You cannot even start verifying before you know the meaning, 7. e., before you have established the

which, in ordinary English, govern the use of the words occurring in the sentences. They do not describe any facts at all; they are meaningless, because they represent logical impossibilities. It is of the greatest importance (not only

possibility of verification.

I call a fact or a process “logically possible” if it can be described, 1. e., if the

sentence which is supposed to describe it obeys the rules of grammar we have stipulated for our language. (I am expressing myself rather incorrectly. A fact which could not be described would, of course, not be any fact at all; any fact is logically possible. But I think my meaning will be understood.) Take some examples. The sentences, “My friend died the day after

tomorrow”; “The lady wore a dark red

obviously violate the rules

In other words, the possibility of verifica-

for our present issue but for philosophical

tion which is relevant to meaning cannot

problems in general) to see that whenever

be of the empirical

sort; it. cannot~ be

S'See above: p. 288.

LOGICAL

396 we speak of logical impossibility we are referring to a discrepancy between the definitions of our terms and the way in

which we use them. We must avoid the severe mistake committed by some of the former Empiricists like Mill and Spencer, who regarded logical principles (e. g., the Law of Contradiction) as laws of nature governing the psychological process of thinking. The nonsensical statements alluded to above do not correspond to thoughts which, by a sort of psychological experiment, we find ourselves unable to think; they do not correspond to any thoughts at all. When we hear the words, “A tower which is both 100 feet and 150 feet: high,” the image of two towers of different heights may be in our mind, and

we may find it psychologically (empirically) impossible to combine the two pictures into. one image, but it is not this fact which is denoted by the words “logical impossibility.”: The height of a tower cannot be roo feet and 150 feet at the same time;

a child cannot be naked and dressed at the same time—not because we are unable to imagine it, but because our definitions of “height,” of the numerals, of the terms “naked” and “dressed,” are not compatible with the particular combinations of those words in our examples. “They are not compatible with such combinations” means that the rules of our language have not provided any use for such combinations; they do not describe any fact. We could change these rules, of course, and thereby arrange a meaning for the terms “both red and green,’ “both naked and dressed”; but if we decide to stick to the

ordinary definitions (which reveal themselves in the way we actually use our words) we have decided to regard those combined terms as meaningless, 7. e., not to use them as the description of any fact. Whatever fact we may or may not imagine,

if the word’ “naked”

EMPIRICISM (or “red”) occurs

in its description we have decided that the word “dressed” (or “green”) cannot be put in its place in the same description. If

we do not follow this rule it means that — we want to introduce a new definition of the words, or that we don’t mind using words without meaning and like to indulge in nonsense. (I am far from con-

demning this attitude under all circumstances; on certain occasions—as

in Alice

in Wonderland—it may be the only sensible attitude and far more delightful than any treatise on Logic. But in such a treatise we have a right to expect a different attitude.) The result of our considerations is this: Verifiability, which “is the sufficient and necessary condition of meaning, is a pos-

sibility of the logical order; it is created by constructing the sentence in accordance with the rules by which its terms are defined. The only case in which verification is (logically) impossible is the case where you have made it impossible by not

setting any rules for its verification. Grammatical rules are not found anywhere in nature, but are made by man and are, in principle, arbitrary; so you cannot give meaning to a sentence by discovering a method of verifying it, but only by s#ipulating how it shall be done. Thus logical

possibility or impossibility of verification is always self-imposed. If we utter a sentence without meaning it is always. our own fault.

The tremendous philosophic importance

of this last remark will be realized when we consider that what we said about the meaning of assertions applies also to the meaning of questions. There are, of course,

many questions which can never be answered by human beings. But the impos-

sibility of finding the answer may be of two different kinds. If it is merely empiri-

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

cal in the sense defined, if it is due to

the chance circumstances to which our human existence is confined, there may be

reason to lament our fate and the weakness of our physical and mental powers, but the problem could never be said to be absolutely insoluble, and there would always be some hope, at least for future generations. For the empirical circumstances may alter, human facilities may develop, and even the laws of nature may change (perhaps even suddenly and in such a way that the universe would be thrown open to much more extended investigation). A problem of this kind might be called practically unanswerable or technically unanswerable, and might cause the scientist great trouble, but the philosopher, who is concerned with general principles only, would not feel terribly excited about it. But what about those questions for which it is Jogically impossible to find an answer? Such problems would remain insoluble under all imaginable circumstances; they would confront us with a definite hopeless

Ignorabimus;

and

it is of the

greatest importance for the philosopher to know whether there are any such issues. * Now it is easy to see from what has been said before that this calamity could happen only if the question itself had no meaning. It would not be a genuine question at all, but a mere row of words with a question-mark at the end. We must say that a question is meaningful, if we can understand it, 1. e., if we are able to decide for any given proposition whether, if

true, it would be an answer to our question. And if this is so, the actual decision could only be prevented by empirical circumstances, which means that it would not be logically impossible. Hence no meaningful problem can be insoluble in principle. If in any case we find an answer to be logically impossible we know that we really

SCIENTIFIC

METHOD

397

have not been asking anything, that what sounded like a question was actually a nonsensical combination of words. A genuine question is one for which an answer is logically possible. This is one of the most characteristic results of our empiricism. It means that in principle there are no limits to our knowledge. The boundaries which must be acknowledged are of an empirical nature and, therefore, never ultimate; they can be pushed back further and further; there is no unfathomable mystery in the world. *

*

*

The dividing line between logical possibility and impossibility of verification is absolutely sharp and distinct; there is no gradual transition between meaning and nonsense. For either you have given the grammatical rules for verification, or you

have not; tertium non datur. Empirical

possibility is determined

by

the laws of nature, but meaning and verifiability are entirely independent of them. Everything that I can describe or define is logically possible—and definitions are in no way bound up with natural laws. The proposition “Rivers flow uphill” is meaningful, but happens to be false because the fact it describes is physically impossible. It will not deprive a proposition of its meaning if the conditions which I stipulate for its verification are incompatible with the laws of nature; I may prescribe conditions, for instance, which could be fulfilled only if the velocity of light were greater than it actually is, or if the Law of Conservation of Energy did not hold, and so forth. An opponent of our view might find a dangerous paradox or even a contradiction in the preceding explanations, because on the one hand we insisted so strongly on what has been called the “empirical-

LOGICAL

398 meaning requirement,” and on the other hand we assert most emphatically that meaning and verifiability do not depend on

EMPIRICISM

same time; he must be one if he wants to understand what he himself is doing. *

*

*

any empirical conditions whatever, but are

determined by purely logical possibilities. The opponent will object: if meaning 1s a matter of experience, how can it be a matter of definition and logic? In reality there is no contradiction or difficulty. The word “experience” is am-

biguous. Firstly, it may be a name of any so-called “immediate data”—which is a comparatively modern use of the word— and secondly we can use it in the sense in which we speak e. g., of an “experienced traveller,’ meaning a man who has not only seen a great deal but also knows how to profit from it for his actions. It is in this second sense (by the way, the sense the word has in Hume’s and Kant’s phi-

losophy)

that verifiability must

be de-

clared to be independent of experience. The possibility of verification does not rest on any “experiential truth,” on a law of

nature or any other true general proposition, but is determined solely by our definitions, by the rules which have been fixed for our language, or which we can fix arbitrarily at any moment. All of these rules ultimately point to ostensive definitions, as we have explained, and through them verifiability is linked to experience in the first sense of the word. No rule of expression presupposes any law or regularity in the world (which is the condition of “‘experience” as Hume and Kant use the

word), but it does presuppose data and situations, to which names can be attached.

The rules of language are rules of the application of language; so there must be something to which it can be applied. Expressibility and verifiability are one and the same thing. There is no antagonism

IV

Let us glance at some examples in order to illustrate the consequences of our attitude in regard to certain issues of traditional philosophy. Take the famous case of the reality of the other side of the moon (which is also one of Professor Lewis’s examples). None of us, I think, would be willing to accept a view according to which it would be nonsensé to speak of the averted face of our satellite. Can there be the slightest doubt that, according to our explanations, the conditions of meaning are amply satisfied in this case?

I think there can be no doubt. For the question, “What is the other side of the moon like?”, could be answered, for instance, by a description of what would be seen or touched by a person located somewhere behind the moon. The question whether it be physically possible for a human being—or indeed any other living being—to travel around the moon does not even have to be raised here; it is en-

tirely irrelevant. Even if it could be shown that a journey to another celestial body were absolutely incompatible with the known laws of nature, a proposition about

the other side of the moon would still be meaningful. Since our sentence speaks of certain places in space as being filled with matter (for that is what the words “side of the moon” stand for), it will have meaning if we indicate under what circumstances a proposition of the form, “this place is filled with matter,” shall be called

between logic and experience. Not only

true or false. The concept “physical substance at a certain place” is defined by our language in physics and geometry. Geome-

can the logician be an empiricist at the

try itself is the grammar of our proposi-

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

METHOD

399

tions about “spatial” relations, and it is

too readily a psychological explanation of

not very difficult to see how assertions

verifiability.

about physical properties and spatial relations are connected with “sense-data” by

ostensive definitions. This connection, by

We must not identify meaning with any of the psychological data which form the material of a mental sentence (or

the way, is oz such as to entitle us to say that physical substance is “a mere construc-

“thought”) in the same sense in which articulated sounds form the material of a

tion put upon sense-data,” or that a physical body is “a complex of sense-data”— unless we interpret these phrases as rather

spoken sentence, or black marks on paper the material of a written sentence. When you are doing a calculation in arithmetic

inadequate abbreviations of the assertion that all propositions containing the term “physical body” require for their verification the presence of sense-data. And this is certainly an exceedingly trivial state-

it is quite irrelevant whether you have before your mind the images of black num-

ment. In the case of the moon we might perhaps say that the meaning-requirement is

fulfilled if we are able to “imagine” (picture mentally) situations which would verify our proposition. But if we should say in general that verifiability of an assertion implies possibility of “imagining” the asserted fact, this would be true only in a

restricted sense. It would not be true in so far as the possibility

is of the em-

pirical kind, 7. e., implying specific human capacities. I do not think, for instance, that we can be accused of talking nonsense, if we speak of a universe of ten dimensions, or of beings possessing sense-organs and having perceptions entirely different from ours; and yet it does not seem right to say that we are able to “imagine” such beings and such perceptions, or a tendimensional world. But we must be able to say under what observable circumstances we should assert the existence of the beings or sense-organs just referred to. It is clear

that I can speak meaningfully of the sound of a friend’s voice without being able actually to recall it in my imagination. This is not the place to discuss the logical grammar of the word “to imagine”; these few remarks may caution us against accepting

bers or of red numbers, or no visual pic-

ture at all. And even if it were empirically impossible for you to do any calculation without imagining black numbers at the same time, the mental pictures of those black marks could, of course, in no way be considered as constituting the meaning, or part of the meaning, of the calculation. Carnap is right in putting great stress upon the fact (always emphasized by the critics of “psychologism”) that the question of meaning has nothing to do with the psychological question as to the mental processes of which an act of thought may consist. But I am not sure that he has seen with equal clarity that reference to ostensive definitions (which we postulate for meaning) does not involve the error of a confusion of the two questions. In order to understand a sentence containing, e. g.,

the words “red flag,” it is indispensable that I should be able to indicate a situation where I could point to an object which I should call a “flag,” and whose color I could recognize as “red” as distinguished from other colors. But in order to do this it is not necessary that I should actually call up the image of a red flag. It is of the utmost importance to see that these two things have nothing in common, At this moment I am trying in vain to imagine

the shape of a capital G in German print; nevertheless I can speak about it without

LOGICAL

400 talking nonsense, and I know I should recognize it if I saw the letter. Imagining a red patch is utterly: different from referring to an ostensive definition of “red.” Verifiability has nothing to do with any images that may be associated with the words of the sentence in question. *

*

%

No more difficulty than in the case of ' the other side of the moon will be found in discussing, as another significant example, the question of “immortality,” which

Professor Lewis calls, and which is usually called, a metaphysical problem. I take it for granted that “immortality” is not supposed to signify never-ending life (for that might possibly be meaningless on account of infinity being involved), but that we are concerned with the question of sur-

vival after “death.” I think we may agree with Professor Lewis when he says about this hypothesis: “Our understanding of what would verify it has no lack of clarity.” In fact, I can easily imagine, e. g., witnessing the funeral of my own body and continuing to exist without a body, for nothing is easier than to describe a world which differs from our ordinary world only in the complete absence of all data which I would call parts of my own body. We must conclude that immortality, in the sense defined, should not be regarded as a “metaphysical problem,” but is an empirical hypothesis, because it possesses logi-

cal verifiability. It could be verified by following the prescription: “Wait until you

die!” Professor Lewis seems to-hold that this method is not satisfactory from the point of view of science. He says:® The hypothesis of immortality is unverifiable in an obvious sense, . . . If it be

maintained that only what is scientifically verifiable has meaning, then this concep9 See above, p. 289.

EMPIRICISM

tion is a case in point. It could hardly be verified by science; and there is no observation or experiment

which

science could

make, the negative result of which would , disprove it. I fancy that in these sentences the private method of verification is rejected as being

unscientific because it would apply only to the individual case of the experiencing

person himself, whereas a scientific statement should be capable of a general proof, open to any careful observer. But I see no reason why even this should be declared

to be impossible. On the contrary, it is easy to describe experiences such that the hypothesis of an invisible existence of human beings after their bodily death would be the most acceptable explanation

of the phenomena observed. These phenomena, it is true, would have to be of a much more convincing nature than the ridiculous happenings alleged to have occurred in meetings of the occultists—but I think there cannot be the slightest doubt

as to the possibility (in the logical sense) of phenomena which would form a scientific justification of the hypothesis of survival after death, and would permit an investigation by scientific methods of that form of life. To be suré, the hypothesis

could never be established as absolutely true, but it shares this fate with all hypotheses. If it should be urged that the souls of the deceased might inhabit some super-

celestial space where they would not be accessible to our perception, and that therefore the truth or falsity of the assertion

could never be tested, the reply would be that if the words “super-celestial space” are to have any meaning at all, that space must

be defined in such a way that the impossibility of reaching thing in it would that some means ficulties could at

it or of perceiving anybe merely empirical, so of overcoming the difleast be described, al-

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

though it might be beyond human power to put them into use. Thus our conclusion stands. The hypothesis of immortality is an empirical statement which owes its meaning to its verifiability, and it has no meaning beyond the possibility of verification. If it must be admitted that science could make no experiment the negative result of which would

METHOD

401

disprove it, this is true only in the same sense in which it is true for many other hypotheses of similar structure—especially those that have sprung up from other motives than the knowledge of a great many

facts of experience which must be regarded as giving a high probability to the hypothesis. .

°

e

e

e

.

e

.

Logic and M caning LUDWIG I me L.II

r12

1.13 {2 1.21

2 2.01

WITTGENSTEIN

The world is everything that is the case." The world is the totality of facts, not of things. The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts. For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case. The facts in logical space are the world. The world divides into facts. Any one can either be the case or not be the case, and everything else remain the same. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things).

1 The decimal figures as numbers of the separate propositions indicate the logical importance of the propositions, the emphasis laid upon them in my exposition. The propositions 7.1, 7.2, 7.3,

etc., are comments on proposition No. n; the propositions ”.m1, m.m2, etc., are comments on the proposition No. 7.m; and so on.

2.011

2.012

2.0121

It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact. In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged in the thing. It would, so to speak, appear as an accident, when to a thing that could exist alone on its own account, subsequently a state of affairs could be made to fit. If things can occur in atomic facts, this possibility must already lie in them, (A logical entity cannot be merely possible. Logic treats of every possibility, and all possibilities are its facts.) Just as

we

cannot

think

of

spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from

time, so we

cannot

think

of any object apart from the pos-

LOGICAL

402

sibility of its connexion

2.0122

rence in atomic facts is the form

with

other things. If I can think of an object in the context of an atomic fact, I cannot think of it apart from the possibility of this context. The thing is independent, in so far as it can occur in all possible circumstances, but this form of independence is a form of connexion with the atomic fact, a

of the object. 2.02 2.0201

2.01231

If I know an object, then I also know all the possibilities of its occurrence in atomic facts. (Every such possibility must lie in the nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot subsequently be found. In order to know an object, I

2.021

2.0032

all its internal qualities. If all objects are given, then thereby are all possible atomic facts also given.

2.0211

2.0212

2.023 2.0231

2.0141

If the world had no substance,

then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true. It would then be impossible to form a picture of the world (true It is clear that however dif-

This fixed form consists of the objects. The substance of the world can

only determine a form and not any material properties. For these are first presented by the proposi-

tions—first formed by the configuration of the objects. Roughly speaking: objects are colourless. Two objects of the same logical form are—apart from their

space.

2.014

Objects form the substance of

ferent from the real one an imagined world may be, it must have something—a form—in common with the real world.

Everything is, as it were, in a

A spatial object must lie in infinite space. (A point in space is a place for an argument.) A speck in a visual field need not be red, but it must have a colour: it has, so to speak, a colour space round it. A tone must have a pitch, the object of

the

or false). 2.022

space of possible atomic facts. I can think of this space as empty, but not of the thing without the 2.0131

describe

the world. Therefore they cannot be compound.

must know not its external but 2.0124

completely

complexes.

different ways, alone and in the proposition.) 2.0123

The object is simple. Every statement about com- , plexes can be analysed into a statement about their constituent parts, and into those propositions which

form of dependence. (It is impossible for words to occur in two

EMPIRICISM

external properties—only differentiated from one another in that they are different. 2.02331

the sense of touch a hardness, etc.

Either a thing has properties which no other has, and then one can distinguish it straight away

Objects contain the possibility

from the others by a description

of all states of affairs. The possibility of its occur-

and refer to it; or, on the other hand, there are several things

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

which have the totality of their properties in common, and then it is quite impossible to point to any one of them.

2.024 2.025 2.0251

For if a thing is not distinguished by anything, I cannot distinguish it—for otherwise it would be distinguished. Substance is what exists independently of what is the case. It is form and content.

2.061 2.062

existence of an atomic fact we

2.063 2,1

2.11

Space, time and colour (colOnly if there are objects can there be a fixed form of the world. The fixed, the existent and the object are one.

The object is the fixed, the

2.0272

2.03

2.031 2.032

2.033 2.034

2.05

facts is the world. The totality of existent atomic facts also determines which atomic facts do not exist.

-I4I

2.151

2.1511

The existence and non-existence of atomic facts is the reality.

2.1512

(The existence of atomic facts we also call a positive fact, their

We make to ourselves pictures of facts. The picture presents the facts in logical space, the existence and non-existence of atomic facts. The picture is a model of reality. To the objects correspond in picture. The elements of the picture stand, in the picture, for the objects. The picture consists in the fact that its elements are combined with one another in a definite

way. iS)

The structure of the fact con-

2.04

2.06

2.131

In the atomic fact objects hang

sists of the structures of the atomic facts. The totality of existent atomic

The total reality is the world.

the picture the elements of the

existent; the configuration is the changing, the variable. The configuration of the objects forms the atomic fact. one in another, like the members of a chain. In the atomic fact the objects are combined in a definite way. The way in which objects hang together in the atomic fact is the structure of the atomic fact. The form is the possibility of the structure. ,

403

non-existence a negative fact.) Atomic facts are independent of one another. From the existence or noncannot infer the existence or nonexistence of another.

ouredness) are forms of objects. 2.026

METHOD

215127

The picture is a fact. That the elements of the picture are combined with one another in a definite way, represents that the things are so combined with one another. This connexion of the elements of the picture is called its structure, and the possibility of this structure is called the form of representation of the picture. The form of representation is the possibility that the things are combined with one another as are the elements of the picture. Thus the picture is linked with reality; it reaches up to it. It is like a scale applied to reality. Only the outermost points of

LOGICAL

404 2.1513

2.1514

the dividing lines touch the ob-

represent

ject to be measured. According to this view the representing relation which makes it a picture, also belongs to the picture. The representing relation consists of the co-ordinations of the

falsely—is the logical form, that

2.16

2.161

2.17

23191

2.172

2073

things. These co-ordinations are as it were the feelers of its elements with which the picture touches reality. In order to be a picture a fact must have something in common with what it pictures.

2.18

If the form of representation 1s

2.182

the logical form, then the picture is called a logical picture. Every picture is also a logical

2.19

2.2

2.201

In the picture and the pictured there must be something identical in order that the one can be a picture of the other at all. What the picture must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it after its manner—rightly or falsely—is its form of representation. The picture can represent every reality whose form it has. The spatial picture, everything spatial, the coloured, everything coloured, etc. The picture, however, cannot

2.202

represent its form of representa-

B2BE

tion; it shows it forth. The picture represents its object from without (its standpoint

2.222

picture. (On the other hand, for example, not every picture is spatial.) The logical picture can depict the world.

The picture has the logical form of representation in common with what The picture representing a existence and atomic facts. The picture

it pictures. depicts reality by possibility of the non-existence of represents a pos-

sible state of affairsin logical space. 2.203

2:21

2.22

therefore the picture represents its object rightly or falsely. But the picture cannot place itself outside of its form of representation. What every picture, of what-

2.223

ever form, must have in common

2.225

with reality in order to be able to

or

is, the form of reality.

is its form of representation),

2.174

it at all—rightly

2.181

elements of the picture and the 2.1515

EMPIRICISM

2.224

The picture contains the possibility of the state of affairs which it represents. The picture agrees with reality or not; it is right or wrong, true or false.

The picture represents what it represents, independently of its truth or falsehood, through the form of representation. What the picture represents is its sense. In the agreement or disagreement of its sense with reality, its truth or falsity consists. In order to discover whether the picture is true or false we must compare it with reality. It cannot be discovered from the picture. alone whether it is

true or false. There is no picture which is a priori true.

LOGIC,

3

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

The logical picture of the facts

4.001

“An atomic fact is thinkable” —means:

4.002

we can imagine it.

3.01

The totality of true thoughts

3.02

is a picture of the world. The thought contains the possibility of the state of affairs What is thinkable is also posWe cannot think anything unlogical, for otherwise we should have to think unlogically. It used to be said that God could create everything, except what was contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is, we could not

ternal form of the clothes one

say of an “unlogical” world how 3.032

3.0321

it would look. To present in language anything which “contradicts logic” is as impossible as in geometry to present by its co-ordinates a figure which contradicts the laws of space; or to give the co-ordinates of a point which does not exist. We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of

geometry.

3.04 505

4

An a priori true thought would be one whose possibility guaranteed its truth. We could only know a priori that a thought is true if its truth was to be recognized from the thought itself (without an object of comparison).

The thought is the significant proposition.

Man possesses the capacity of constructing languages, in which every sense can be expressed, what each word means—just as one speaks without knowing how the single sounds are produced. Colloquial language is a part of the human organism and is not less complicated than it. From it it is humanly impossible to gather immediately the logic of language. Language _— disguises _—_ the thought; so that from the ex-

sible.

3.031

The totality of propositions is

without having an idea how and

which it thinks.

3:03

405

the language.

is the thought.

3.001

METHOD

4.003

cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized. The silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated. Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We can-

not, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language. (They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.) And so it is not to be wondered at that the deepest problems are really no problems.

LOGICAL

406 4.0031

To all of them

All philosophy is “Critique of language”

Mauthner’s

(but not

at all in

“sense).

Russell’s

(Like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the | story. They are all in a certain

sense one.)

proposition need not be its real 4.01

4.0141

is able to read the symphony out of the score, and that there is a

rule by which one could recon-

It is obvious that we perceive a proposition of the form aRé as a picture. Here the sign is obviously a likeness of the signi-

fied. 4.013

struct the symphony from the line on a gramophone record and from this again—by means of

At the first glance the proposition—say as it stands printed on paper—does not seem to be a picture of the reality of which it treats. But nor does the musical score appear at first sight to be a picture of a musical piece; nor does our phonetic spelling (letters) seem to be a picture of our spoken language. And yet these symbolisms prove to be pictures —even in the ordinary: sense of the word—of what they repre-

sent. 4.012

And if we penetrate to the essence of this pictorial nature we see that this is not disturbed by apparent irregularities (like the use of # and } in the score). For these irregularities also picture what they are to express;

the first rule—construct the score,

herein lies the internal similarity

between these things which at first sight seem to be entirely different. And the rule is the law of projection which projects the symphony into the language of

the musical score. It is the rule

4.015

4.016

The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one

of translation of this language into the language of the gramophone record. The possibility of all similes, of all the imagery of our language, rests on the logic of representation.

In order to understand the essence of the proposition, consider hieroglyphic writing, which pictures the facts it describes. And from it came the alphabet without the essence of the representation being lost.

4.02

only in another way. 4.014

In the fact that there is a gen-

eral rule by which the musician

the reality as we think it is. 4.011

the logical

structure is common.

merit is to have shown that the apparent logical form of the form. The proposition is a picture of reality. The proposition is a model of

EMPIRICISM

This we see from the fact that we understand the sense of the propositional sign, without haying had it explained to us.

another in that pictorial internal

The proposition is a picture of reality, for I know the state of affairs presented by it, if I un-

relation, which holds between language and the world.

understand the proposition, with-

4.021

derstand the proposition. And I

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS, out

its sense

AND

having been

SCIENTIFIC ex-

4.023

4.024

The proposition shows its sense, The proposition shows how things stand, /f it is true. And it says, that they do so stand. The proposition determines reality to this extent, that one only needs to say “Yes” or “No” to it to make it agree with reality. Reality must therefore be completely described by the proposition. A proposition is the description of a fact. As the description of an object describes it by its external properties so propositions describe reality by its internal properties. The proposition constructs a world with the help of a logical scaffolding, and therefore one can actually see in the proposition all the logical features possessed by reality if it is true. One can draw conclusions from a false proposition. To understand a proposition means to know what is the case,

4.025

if it is true. (One can therefore understand it without knowing whether it is true or not.) One understands it if one understands its constituent parts. The translation of one language into another is not a process of translating each proposition of the one into a proposition of the other, but only the constituent parts of propositions are translated. (And the dictionary does not

407

only translate substantives but also adverbs and conjunctions, etc., and it treats them all alike.)

plained to me. 4.022

METHOD

4.026

The meanings of the simple signs (the words) must be explained to us, if we are to understand them. By means of propositions we

explain ourselves. 4.027

It is essential to propositions, that they can communicate a new

sense to us.

4.03

A proposition must communi-

cate a new sense with old words. The proposition communicates to us a state of affairs, therefore

4.031

it must be essentially connected with the state of affairs. And the connexion is, in fact, that it is its logical picture. The proposition only asserts something, in so far as it is a picture. In the proposition a state of

affairs is, as it were, put together

4.0311

4.0312

4.032

for the sake of experiment. One can say, instead of, This proposition has such and such a sense, This proposition represents such and such a state of affairs. One name stands for one thing, and another for another thing, and they are connected together. And so the whole, like a living picture, presents the atomic fact. The possibility of propositions is based upon the principle of the representation of objects by signs. My fundamental thought is that the “logical constants” do not represent. That the logic of the facts cannot be represented. The proposition is a picture of

its state of affairs, only in so far as it is logically articulated.

LOGICAL

408

Reality is compared with the

(Even the proposition “ambulo” is composite, for its stem gives a different sense with an-

4.04

proposition. Propositions

or

In the proposition there must

pendent of the facts, one can

propositions have a sense indeeasily believe that true and false are two relations between signs and things signified with equal rights. One could then, for example, say that “p” signifies in the true way what “~ p” signifies in the false way, etc.

multiplicity (cf. Hertz’s Mechanics, on Dynamic Models). This mathematical multiplicity 4.062

side it in the representation. If we tried, for example, to express what is expressed by betore fx, liker- “Gen. fxs" cit would not do, we should not know what was generalized. If we tried to show it by an index g, like: “f(xg)” it would not do —we should not know the scope of the generalization. If we were to try it by introducing a mark in the argument places, like “(G,G).F (G,G),” it would not do—we could not determine the identity of the variables, etc. All these ways of symbolizing are inadequate because they have not the necessary mathematical multiplicity. For the same reason the idealist explanation of the seeing of spatial relations through “spatial spectacles” does not do, because

it cannot explain the multiplicity of these relations.

Can we not make ourselves understood by means of false propositions as hitherto with true ones, so long as we know that they are meant to be false? No! For a proposition is true, if what we assert by means of it is the case; and if by “p” we mean

“(x).fx” by putting an index

4.0412

be true

be exactly as many things distinguishable as there are in the

naturally cannot in its turn be represented. One cannot get out4.0411

can

false only by being pictures of the reality. If one does not observe that

other termination, or its termination with another stem.)

state of affairs, which it represents. They must both possess the same logical (mathematical)

4.041

EMPIRICISM

~ p, and what we mean is the case, then “p” in the new conception is true and not false. That, however, the signs “p” and “~ p” can say the same thing is important, for it shows that the sign “~” corresponds to nothing in reality. That negation occurs in a propCt

4.0621

ars

osition, is no characteristic of its

sense (~ ~ p=p). The propositions oy “p” and “—~ p” have opposite senses, but to them corresponds one and the same reality.

4.063

An illustration to explain the concept of truth. A black spot on white paper; the form of the spot can be described by saying of each point of the plane whether it is white or black. To

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

the fact that a point is black corresponds a positive fact; to the fact that a point is white (not

denied proposition, shows that what is denied is already a propo-

etc.

sition and not merely the prelimi-

But to be able to say that a point is black or white, I must first know under what conditions a point is called white or black; in order to be able to say “p” is true (or false) I must have determined under what conditions I call “p” true, and thereby I determine the sense of the proposition. The point at which the simile breaks down is this: we can indicate a point on the paper, without knowing what white and black are; but to a proposition without a sense corresponds nothing at all, for it signifies no thing (truth-value) whose properties are called “false” or “true”;

nary to’a proposition. A proposition presents the existence and non-existence of atomic facts. The totality of true propositions is the total natural science

4.11

(or the totality of the natural

thought—but that which “is true” must already contain the verb. Every proposition must already

sciences). Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. (The word “philosophy” must mean something which stands above or below, but not beside the natural sciences.) The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of “philosophical propositions,” but to make propositions clear. Philosophy should make clear

have a sense; assertion cannot

and delimit sharply the thoughts

give it a sense, for what it asserts is the sense itself. And the same holds of denial, etc. One could say, the denial is already related to the logical place determined by the proposition

which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred. Psychology is no nearer related to philosophy, than is any other natural science. The theory of knowledge is the philosophy of psychology. Does not my study of signlanguage correspond to the study of thought processes which phi-

A.III

4.112

the verb of the proposition is not “is true” or “is false”—as Frege

4.0641

409

The denying proposition determines a logical place, with the help of the logical place of the proposition denied, by saying that it lies outside the latter place. That one can deny again the

black), a negative fact. If I indicate a point of the plane (a truthvalue in Frege’s terminology), this corresponds to the assumption proposed for judgment, etc.

4.064

METHOD

that is denied. The denying proposition determines a logical place other than does the proposition denied.

4.1121

LOGICAL

410

The propositions show the logical form of reality.

losophers held to be so essential to the philosophy of logic? Only

4.1122

4.113 4.114

They exhibit it.

they got entangled for the most part in unessential psychological investigations, and there is an analogous danger for my method. The Darwinian theory has no more to do with philosophy than

has any other hypothesis of natural science. Philosophy limits the disputable sphere of natural science. It should limit the thinkable

The propositions of logic are tautologies. The propositions of logic therefore say nothing. (They are the

analytical propositions.) 6.111

are always false. One could, e.g.,

believe that the words “true” and “false” signify

It should limit the unthinkable from within through the think-

4.116

proposition “All roses are either yellow or red” would sound even

Everything that can be said can be said clearly. Propositions can represent the whole reality, but they cannot represent what they must have in common with reality in order to cal form.

if it were true. Indeed our proposition now gets quite the character of a proposition of natural science and this is a certain symptom of its being falsely un-

derstood. 6.112

peculiar position among all propositions. 6.113

It is the characteristic mark of logical propositions that one can

outside the world. 4.121

The correct explanation of logi-

cal propositions must give them a

To be able to represent the logical form, we should have to be able to put ourselves with the propositions outside logic, that is

properties

it would appear as a remarkable fact that every proposition possesses one of these properties. This now by no means appears self-evident, no more so than the

able. It will mean the unspeakable by clearly displaying the speakable. Everything that can be thought

be able to represent it—the logi-

two

among other properties, and then

at all can be thought clearly.

4.12

Theories which make a prop-

osition of logic appear substantial

and thereby the unthinkable.

4.115

EMPIRICISM

perceive in the symbol alone that

Propositions cannot represent the logical form: this mirrors itself in the propositions.

they are true; and this fact contains in itself the whole philoso-

That which mirrors itself in language, language cannot represent.

one of the most important facts

phy of logic. And so also it is that the truth or falsehood of non-logical propositions can not be recognized from the proposi-

That which expresses itself in

language, we cannot express by language.

tions alone. 6.12

The fact that the propositions —

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

of logic are tautologies shows the

formal—logical—properties language, of the world.

6.125

_ of

6.124

.

.

“true” logical propositions. 6.1251 6.126

e

.

is their connexion with the world. It is clear that it must show something about the world that certain combinations of symbols —which essentially have a defiHerein

We

tautologies.

lies the decisive

point.

6.1261

said that in the symbols

which we use something is arbitrary, something not. In logic only this expresses: but this means that in logic it is not we who express, by means of signs, what we want, but in logic the nature of the essentially necessary signs itself asserts. That is to say, if we know the logical syntax of any sign language, then

all the propositions of logic are already given.

Hence there can never be surprises in logic. Whether a proposition belongs to logic can be calculated by calculating the logical properties of the symbol. And this we do when we prove a logical proposition. For without troubling ourselves about a

sense and a meaning, we form

The logical propositions describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather they present it. They “treat” of nothing. They presuppose that names have meaning, and that elementary propositions have sense. And this

nite character—are

It is possible, also with the old conception of logic, to give

erties of structure. .

4Il

at the outset a description of all

That its constituent parts connected together in this way give a tautology characterizes the logic of its constituent parts. In order that propositions connected together in a definite way may give a tautology they must have definite properties of structure. That they give a tautology when so connected shows therefore that they possess these prop-

.

METHOD

the logical propositions out of others by mere symbolic rules. We prove a logical proposition by creating it out of other logical propositions by applying in succession certain operations, which again generate tautologies out of the first. (And from a tautology only tautologies follow.) Naturally this way of showing that its propositions are tautologies is quite unessential to logic. Because the propositions, from which the proof starts, must show without proof that they are tautologies. In logic process and result are equivalent. (Therefore no sur-

prises.) 6.1262

6.1263

Proof in logic is only a mechanical expedient to facilitate the recognition of tautology, where it is complicated. It would be too remarkable, if one could prove a significant proposition logically from another, and a logical proposition also. It is clear from the beginning that the logical proof of a significant proposition and the

LOGICAL

412 proof in logic must be two quite different things.

6.374

x

6.362

What

can be described

can

happen too, and what is excluded

by the law of causality cannot be described. 6.363

The process of induction is the

6.375

process of assuming the simplest

law that can be made to har6.3631

monize with our experience. This process, however, has no logical foundation but only a psy-

6.3751

6.371

A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only Jogical necessity. At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

6.372

So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate. And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were

clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as though everything were explained.

6.373

The world is independent of my will.

be, so to speak, a favour of fate, for there is no /ogical connexion between will and world, which would guarantee this, and the assumed physical connexion itself we could not again will. As there is only.a /ogical necessity, so there is only a logical impossibility. For two colours, e.g., to be at one place in the visual field, is

structure of colour. ‘Let us consider how this contradiction presents itself in phys-

It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest course of events will really happen. That the sun will rise tomorrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know

ics. Somewhat as follows: That a particle cannot

at the same

time have two velocities, 7.e., that

at the same time it cannot be in two places, z.e., that particles in different places at the same time cannot be identical. (It is clear that the logical product of two elementary propositions can neither be a tautology nor a contradiction. The assertion that a point in the visual field has two different colours at

whether it will rise. 6.37

Even if everything we wished were to happen, this would only

impossible, logically impossible, for it is excluded by the logical

chological one.

6.36311

EMPIRICISM

the

6.4 6.41

same

time,

is a contradic-

tion.) All propositions are of equal value. The sense of the world must

lie outside

the world.

In the

world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it

there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all hap-

pening and being-so is accidental.

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world. Hence also there can be no

6.431

ethical propositions.

6.421

Propositions cannot express anything higher. It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.

6.4311

Ethics are transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one.) 6.422

The first thought in setting up an ethical law of the form “thou shalt . . .” is: And what if I do not do it. But it is clear that

6.4312

ethics has nothing to do with

6.423

punishment and reward in the ordinary sense. This question as to the consequences of an action must therefore be irrelevant. At least these consequences will not be events. For there must be something right in that formulation of the question. There must be some sort of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but this must lie in the action itself. (And this is clear also that the reward must be something acceptable, and the punishment something unacceptable.) Of the will as the subject of

the ethical we cannot speak.

6.43

And the will as a phenomenon is only of interest to psychology. If good or bad willing changes the world, it can only change the limits of the world, not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in language. In brief, the world must

thereby become quite another, It

METHOD

413

>

must so to speak wax or wane as a whole. The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy. As in death, too, the world does not change, but ceases. Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through. If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present. Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit. The temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say, its eternal survival after death, is not

only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive for ever? Is this eternal life not as

enigmatic as our present one?

6.432

6.4321

6.44

The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. (It is not problems of natural science which have to be solved.) How the world is, is completely indifferent for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world. The facts all belong only to the task and not to its performance. Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.

6.45

The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole. The feeling of the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling.

LOGICAL

414 6.5

For an answer which cannot be

6.53

expressed the question too cannot be expressed. | The riddle does not exist.

If a question can be put at all, 6.51

and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propo-

For doubt can only exist where

sitions. This method would be

can be said. 6.52

sense consisted?) 6.522

There is indeed the inexpress‘ible. This shows itself; it is the | |mystical.

i.e., something-thathas

nothing to do with philosophy:

there is a question; a question only where there is an answer, and this only where-something We feel that even ifall possible scientific questions be answered, ey the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer. 6.521 The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. (Is not this the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then say wherein this

The right method ofphiloso* phy would be this. To say noth= except what can be said, , the propositionsof natural | , pray

then it can also be answered. Scepticism is not irrefutable, but palpably senseless, if it would doubt where a question cannot be asked.

EMPIRICISM

6.54

unsatisfying to the other—he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy —butitwould be the only-strictly _ correct method. My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after | he

has climbed up on it.) of He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. Whereof

one

cannot

_speak,

thereof one must be silent.

_

Ethics and Theory of Value SSS

SS

OOOO

Meanings in Ethical Discourse

HERBERT FEIGL A LITTLE reflection suffices to show that

terms as “ought,” “should,” “right,” “good,” “duty,” etc., lies the irreducibly directive component of moral value-judgments. An ethical imperative like the Golden Rule simply means: “Would that everybody behaved toward his fellow men as he expects them to behave toward him.” This sentence, having its accent in the emotive appeal, could not possibly be deduced from a knowledge of facts only; it is neither true nor false. It is rather an invitation (suggestion, request, exhortation, or command) to make the contained factual sentence true. In traditional metaphysically or theologically oriented moral philosophies the attempt was made to vali-

the meaning of the term “ethics” is highly ambiguous and that it designates at least five different types of endeavor: (1) Moral “vision,” i.e., the recognition, discovery, or

(alleged) demonstration of a “right” or “good” way of life or of an uppermost standard of moral evaluation; (2) Moral exhortation, education, and propaganda;

(3) Empirical studies of actual moral evaluations, either descriptive or explanatory;

(4) The technology of the “good” life— a branch of applied science concerned with the discernment and perfecting of means (instrumental values) in view of certain

ends (terminal values); (5) The logical

date the fundamental

analysis of ethical terms and sentences— either by the casuistic Socratic method or

by the elaboration of a hypothetico-deductive system of ethical norms. The five-fold division just outlined is itself a result of the Socratic type of approach. (Quite analogous distinctions apply to aesthet-

ics.) Ethical norms

proclaimed or merely abstractly assumed and their specific content left open. From

the logico-empirical point of view all of these approaches involve confusions of meaning or assumptions incapable of test. Absolute values as well as categorical imperatives can be expressed only in emotive language. Relative values in the sense of instrumental values which are determined by needs and interests and hypothetical im-

or imperatives as dis-

covered or intuited in (1), proclaimed and advocated in (2), factually studied in (3), practically implemented in (4), and sub-

jected to a meaning analysis in (5) may be reconstructed as sentences referring to a possible (usually not actualized) state of affairs and expressed with an emotionalmotivational appeal. In the use of such

standards on the

basis of revelation, @ priori intuition, or logical proof. Absolute values were thus either concretely specified and dogmatically

peratives which state empirically confirmable means-ends relations are factually-

415

LOGICAL

416

meaningful. Here the questions of truth or falsity make sense. As long as disagree-

ment in morals depends merely upon differences in opinion or belief regarding the efficacy of contending means, such disagreement is in principle capable of settlement

by the empirical method. True enough, means and ends are often so closely related and intertwined that it would be an oversimplification to assume a clearcut hierarchy of instrumental values crowned by uppermost fixed terminal values. Dewey has taught us to drop even this last remnant of value-rationalism, Nevertheless there are leading standards, thoroughly empirical, to be sure, in the light of which we evaluate the mutual adjustment and harmonization of ends and means. These guiding principles themselves are, as a matter of fact, judged and evaluated by their correspondence to human wants and desires. The question raised (and sometimes answered negatively) by metaphysicians, “Is the satisfying of human interests morally valuable?” is therefore not a factual question at all, As long as it is not specified to whose interests or to which interests reference is being made, it is the vagueness of the question that renders it meaningless. If, however, some such specifications are made it still does not acquire factual meaning because the term “valuable’ (in the non-instrumental sense) is used as a purely emotive device for the direction or redirection of attitudes. If,

finally, in some moral system a definite locus has been given for the application of such terms as “valuable,” “good,” “right” and the like, then such a material definition renders answers to our question either analytic or contradictory, as the case may be, and thus again lacking in factual meaning. The often emphasized indefinability of “good” is now clarified as due to the motivational character of the term. The

EMPIRICISM

ever present possibility of asking the question “But is this really good?” shows that no descriptively delimited locus of valuableness forces its acceptance upon us as an ultimate criterion. We do not deny here that in the immediate experience of persons living in a given cultural context value

judgments may bear the mark of intuitive self-evidence. But their very dependence upon and variability with that cultural context are a sufficient proof of their relative nature.

The quest for certainty, here in-the field of morals just as elsewhere, may lead to emotionally soothing or edifying results. But the acceptance of an absolute authority or extramundane sanction for morality; like the belief in an absolute source of

factual truth, manifests a not fully liberated, pre-scientific type of mind. A completely grown-up mankind will have to

shoulder the responsibility for its outlook and conduct; and in the spirit of an empirical and naturalistic humanism it will acknowledge no other procedure than the experimental and no other standards than

those prescribed by human nature and by our own insights into the possibilities of improving human nature. The Scylla of metaphysical absolutism in value-theory can thus be avoided. But how

about the Charybdis of an anarchical relativism of values? Historians, ethnologists, social psychologists are apt to arrive at the opinion that, with human interests and attitudes subject to so much variety (de-

pending economic

on

epoch, climate, and_ socio-

setting), each moral system is

equally justified. They hold that there can be no unique system of morals binding upon all. Empiricism may often have been misled into this sort of reductive fallacy, yet a truly empirical study of human nature and social conduct discloses a considerable common denominator in at least

ETHICS

AND

THEORY

OF

VALUE

the basic needs of all individuals living in the context of cooperation and mutual dependence. Around this nucleus as a center of orientation, all social, political, legal, économic, and educational reforms must operate if they are to achieve their aim to any degree at all. The salient evils and maladjustments of the life we call civilized can only be eliminated or mitigated if by conscious effort and planning reforms are

democratically undertaken and widely supported. Human

interests, and with them,

human satisfaction and happiness, are flexible, educable. What originally may have had value only as a means may, through use and habituation, acquire value as an end. Even if Hobbes’ pessimistic opinions concerning the utterly selfish nature of human attitudes were correct (and there

is some evidence to the contrary) it would yet be plausible that out of the use of cooperative and reciprocal-help procedures as

mere means mankind does (or will) gradually develop genuinely kind and altruistic attitudes. Ethical relativism (i.e., the as-

sertion that evaluations depend on needs and

interests,

and

that these needs

and

interests, though fairly constant in their basic aspects, are not eternally fixed or

417

a priori established) does not imply moral cynicism or pessimism. The standards of

justice and fairness developed in the social process have themselves become objects of greatest interest. Most civilized people are highly sensitive to them and most indignant about their violation. Yet, it should be noted that ethical relativism does not necessarily imply that the majority should rule in the determination of the good life. Breaking through older and majorityendorsed standards to a new form of morality may be envisaged at first only by a few but may nevertheless be justifiable on the basis of the expected results of the new measures for the totality of mankind. The concrete implementation of any program of action lies outside the competence of the philosopher qua logical analyst. The gap between ascertained knowledge and the knowledge required for action will always prove inhibiting to the reflective thinker. Nevertheless his contributions

should not be underestimated. By remoying prejudice and confusion, by spreading enlightenment through the clarification of basic ideas, he occupies an indispensable role as a guide on the however tortuous path of human progress.

Philosophy. of Religion PODODOODODOOQODHVOOHO LO LOLO LO OOOO LO _ovovereoa

Critique of Theology ALERED ‘he is now generally admitted, at any rate by philosophers, that the existence of a being having the attributes which define the god of any non-animistic religion cannot be demonstratively proved. To see that this is so, we have only to ask ourselves

what are the premises from which the ex-

istence of such a god could be deduced. If the conclusion that a god exists is to be demonstratively certain, then these premises must be certain; for, as the conclusion of a

deductive argument is already contained in the premises, any uncertainty there may be about the truth of the premises is necessarily shared by it. But we know that no empirical proposition can ever be anything more than probable. It is only @ priori propositions that are logically certain. But we cannot deduce the existence of a god from an a prior: proposition. For we know that the reason why a priori propositions are certain is that they are tautologies. And from a set of tautologies nothing but a further tautology can be validly deduced. It follows that there is no possibility of demonstrating the existence of a god. What is not so generally recognised is that there can be no way of proving that the existence of a god, such as the God of Christianity, is even probable. Yet this also is easily shown. For if the existence of such a god were probable, then the proposition that he existed would be an

[epAgyara empirical hypothesis. And in that case it would be impossible to deduce from it, and other empirical hypotheses, certain experiential propositions which were not deducible from those other hypotheses alone. But in fact this is not possible. It is sometimes claimed, indeed, that the existence of a certain sort of regularity in nature constitutes sufficient evidence for the existence of a god. But if the sentence “God exists” entails no more than that certain types of phenomena occur in certain sequences, then to assert the existence of a

god will be simply equivalent to asserting that there is the requisite regularity in nature; and no religious man would

admit that this was all he intended to assert in asserting the existence of a god. He

would say that in talking about God, he was talking about a transcendent

being

who might be known through certain empirical manifestations, but certainly could

not be defined in terms of those manifestations. But in that case the term “god” is a metaphysical term. And if “god” is a metaphysical term, then it cannot be even probable that a god exists. For to say that “God exists” is to make a metaphysical

utterance which cannot be either true or false. And by the same criterion, no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any

literal significance. 418

PHILOSOPHY

OF

It is important not to confuse this view of religious assertions with the view that is adopted by atheists, or agnostics.? For it is characteristic of an agnostic to hold

that the existence of a godis a possibility in which there is no good reason either to believe or disbelieve; and it is character-

istic of an atheist to hold that it is at least probable that all God are identical

that no god exists. And our view utterances about the nature of nonsensical, so far from being with, or even lending any sup-

port to, either of these familiar contentions,

is actually incompatible with them. For if the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist’s assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted. As for the agnostic, although he refrains from saying either that there is or that there is not a god, he does not deny that the question whether a transcendent god exists is a genuine question. He does not deny that the two sentences “There is a transcendent god” and “There is no transcendent god” express propositions one of which is actually true and the other false. All he says is that we have no means of telling which of them is true, and therefore ought not to commit ourselves to either. But we have seen that the sentences in question do not express propositions at all. And this means that agnosticism also is ruled out. Thus we offer the theist the same comfort as we gave to the moralist. His assertions cannot possibly be valid, but they cannot be invalid either. As he says nothing at all about

the

419

RELIGION

world,

he

cannot

justly be accused of saying anything false, or anything for which he has insufficient grounds. It is only when the theist claims that in asserting the existence of a tran1 This point was suggested to me by Professor Fteeile Price?

scendent god he is expressing a genuine proposition that we are entitled to disagree with him. It is to be remarked that in cases where deities are identified with natural objects, assertions concerning them may be allowed to be significant. If, for example, a man tells me that the occurrence of thunder is alone both necessary and sufficient to establish the truth of the proposition that Jehovah is angry, I may conclude that, in his usage of words, the sentence “Jehovah is angry” is equivalent to “It is thundering.” But in sophisticated religions, though they may be to some extent based on men’s awe of natural process which they cannot sufficiently understand, the “person” who is supposed to control the empirical world is not himself located in it; he is held to be superior to the empirical world, and so outside it; and he is endowed with superempirical attributes. But the notion of a person whose essential attributes are nonempirical is not an intelligible notion at all. We may have a word which is used as if it named this “person,” but, unless the sentences in which it occurs express propositions which are empirically verifiable, it cannot be said to symbolize anything. And this is the case with regard to the word “god,” in the usage in which it is intended to refer to a transcendent object. The mere existence of the noun is enough to foster the illusion that there is a real, or

at any rate a possible entity corresponding to it. It is only when we enquire what God’s attributes are that we discover that “God,” in this usage, is not a genuine

name. It is common to find belief in a transcendent god conjoined with belief in an after-life. But, in the form which it usually takes, the content of this belief is not a genuine hypothesis. To say that men do not ever die, or that the state of death is

420 merely a state of prolonged insensibility, is indeed to express a significant proposition,

though all the available evidence goes to show that it is false. But to say that there is something imperceptible inside a man, which is his soul or his real self, and that it goes on living after he is dead, is to make a metaphysical assertion which has no more factual content than the assertion that there is a transcendent god. It is worth mentioning that, according to the account which we have given of religious assertions, there is no logical ground for antagonism between religion and natural science. As far as the question of truth or falsehood is concerned, there is no opposition between the natural scientist and the theist who believes in a transcendent god. For since the religious utterances of the theist are not genuine propositions at all, they cannot stand in any logical relation to the propositions of science. Such antagonism as there is between religion and science appears to consist in the fact that science takes away one of the motives which make men religious. For it is acknowledged that one of the ultimate sources of religious feeling lies in the inability of men to determine their own destiny; and science tends to destroy the feeling of awe with which men regard an alien world, by making them believe that they can understand and anticipate the course of natural phenomena, and even to

some extent control it. The fact that it has recently become fashionable for physicists themselves to be sympathetic towards religion is a point in favour of this hypothesis. For this sympathy towards religion marks the physicists’ own lack of confdence in the validity of their hypotheses, which is a reaction on their part from the anti-religious dogmatism of nineteenth-

century scientists, and a natural outcome

LOGICAL

EMPIRICISM

of the crisis through which physics has just passed. It is not within the scope of this en-

quiry to enter more deeply into the causes | of religious feeling, or to discuss the prob:

ability of the continuance of religious be-. lief. We are concerned only to answer those

questions which arise out of our discussion of the possibility of religious knowledge. The point which we wish to establish is that there cannot be any transcendent truths of religion. For the sentences which the theist uses to express such

“truths” are not literally significant. An interesting feature of this conclusion is that it accords with what many theists are accustomed to say themselves. For we are often told that the nature of God is a mystery which transcends the human understanding. But to say that something transcends the human understanding is to say that it is unintelligible. And what is

unintelligible cannot significantly be described. Again, we are told that God is not an object of reason but an object of faith. This may be nothing more than an admission that the existence of God must be taken on trust, since it cannot be proved. But it may also be an assertion that God is the object of a purely mystical intuition, and cannot therefore be defined in terms which are intelligible to the reason. And I think there are many theists who would assert this. But if one allows that it is impossible to define God in intelligible terms, then one is allowing that it is impossible for a sentence both to be significant and to be about God- If a mystic admits that the object of his vision is something which cannot be described, then he must also admit that he is bound to talk nonsense when he describes it.. For his part, the mystic may protest that his intuition does reveal truths to him, even

though he cannot explain to othérs what

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

421

these truths are; and that we who do not

ment from religious experience, which many philosophers still regard as a valid argument in favour of the existence of a god. They say that it is logically possible for men to be immediately acquainted with God, as they are immediately acquainted with a sense-content, and that there is no reason why one should be prepared to believe a man when he says that he is seeing a yellow patch, and refuse to believe him when he says that he is seeing God. The answer to this is that if the man who asserts that he is seeing God is merely asserting that he is experiencing a peculiar kind

possess this faculty of intuition can have no ground for denying that it is a cognitive faculty. For we can hardly maintain a prior: that there are no ways of discovering true propositions except those which we ourselves employ. The answer is that we set no limit to the number of ways in which one may come to formulate a true proposition. We do not in any way deny that a synthetic truth may be discovered by purely intuitive methods as well as by the rational method of induction. But we do say that every synthetic proposition, however it may have been arrived at, must be subject to the test of actual experience. We do not deny a priori that the mystic is able to disover truths by his own special methods. We wait to hear what are the propositions which embody his discoveries, in order to see whether they are verified or confuted by our empirical observations. But the mystic, so far from producing propositions which are empirically verified, is unable to produce any intelligible propositions at all. And therefore we say that his intuition has not revealed to him any facts. It is no use his saying that he has apprehended facts but is unable to express them. For we know that if he really had acquired any information, he would be able to express it. He would be able to indicate in some way or other how the genuineness of his discovery might be empirically determined. The fact that he cannot reveal what he “knows,” or even himself devise an empirical test to validate his “knowledge,” shows that his state of mystical intuition is not a genuinely cognitive state. So that in describing his vision the mystic does not give us any information about the external world; he merely gives us indirect information about the condition

of his own mind. These considerations dispose of the argu-

of sense-content, then we do not for a mo-

ment deny that his assertion may be true. But, ordinarily, the man who says that he is seeing God is saying not merely that he is experiencing a religious emotion, but also that there exists a transcendent being who is the object of this emotion; just as the man who says that he sees a yellow patch is ordinarily saying not merely that his visual sense-field contains a yellow sense-content, but also that there exists a yellow object to which the sense-content belongs. And it is not irrational to be prepared to believe a man when he asserts the existence of a yellow object, and to refuse to believe him when he asserts the existence of a transcendent god. For whereas the sentence “There exists here a yellow-coloured material thing” expresses a genuine synthetic proposition which could be empirically verified, the sentence “There exists a transcendent god” has, as we have seen, no literal significance. We

conclude,

therefore, that the argu-

ment from religious experience is altogether fallacious. The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from the psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as religious knowledge, any more than our having moral experiences implies

422 that there is such a thing as moral knowl-

edge. The theist, like the moralist, may believe that his experiences are cognitive experiences, but, unless he can formulate his “knowledge” in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we may be sure that he is deceiving himself. It follows that those philosophers who fill their books with assertions that they intuitively “know”

LOGICAL

EMPIRICISM

this or that moral or religious “truth” are merely providing material for the psychoanalyst. For no act of intuition can be said to reveal a truth about any matter of fact unless it issues in verifiable propositions. And all such propositions are to be incorporated in the system of empirical propositions which constitutes science.

Philosophy of

History, Culture, and Society SOOO

DOOO

OOO

OOO VB VO DOD

OD

SOD ODO DD

The Function of General Laws in History CARL G. HEMPEL 1. It is a rather widely held opinion

cases, irrelevant for our purpose, we shall

that history, in contradistinction to the sofrequently use the term “hypothesis of unicalled physical sciences, is concerned with versal form” or briefly “universal hypoththe description of particular events of the esis” instead of “general law,” and state past rather than with the search for genthe condition of satisfactory confirmation eral laws which might govern those events. separately, if necessary. In the context of As a characterization of the type of probthis paper, a universal hypothesis may be lem in which some historians are mainly assumed to assert a regularity of the folinterested, this view probably can not be lowing type: In every case where an event denied; as a statement of the theoretical of a specified kind C occurs at a certain place and time, an event of a specified kind function of general laws in scientific hisE will occur at a place and time which is torical research, it is certainly unacceptable. related in a specified manner to the place The following considerations are an atand time of the occurrence of the first tempt to substantiate this point by showevent. (The symbols “C” and “E” have ing in some detail that general laws have been chosen to suggest the terms “cause” quite analogous functions in history and and “effect,” which are often, though by in the natural sciences, that they form an no means always, applied to events related indispensable instrument of historical research, and that they even constitute the » by a law of the above kind.) 2.1 The main function of general laws common basis of various procedures which in the natural sciences is to connect events are often considered as characteristic of the in patterns which are usually referred to social in contradistinction to the natural as explanation and prediction. sciences. The explanation of the occurrence of an By a general law, we shall here underevent of some specific kind E at a certain stand a statement of universal conditional place and time consists, as it is usually exform which is capable of being confirmed or disconfirmed by suitable empirical find- pressed, in indicating the causes or determining factors of E. Now the assertion ings. The term “law” suggests the idea that a set of events—say, of the kinds C,, that the statement in question is actually C,, .. +, Cy—have caused the event to well confirmed by the relevant evidence be explained, amounts to the statement available; as this qualification is, in many

423

LOGICAL

424

EMPIRICISM

that, according to certain general laws, a

decreasing temperature, if the volume re-

set of events of the kinds mentioned is regularly accompanied by an event of kind E. Thus, the scientific explanation of the event in question consists of

mains constant or decreases; when the water freezes, the pressure again increases.

(1) a set of statements asserting the occurrence of certain events C,, ... Cy at certain times and places,

(2) a set of universal hypotheses, such that (a) the statements of both groups are reasonably well confirmed by empirical evidence,

(b) from the two groups of statements the sentence asserting the occurrence of event E can be

Finally, this group would have to include a quantitative law concerning the change of pressure of water as a function of its temperature and volume. From statements of these two kinds, the conclusion that the radiator cracked during the night can be deduced by logical reasoning; an explanation of the considered event has been established. 2.2 It is important to bear in mind that

the symbols “HE,” °C,” “Cl 7G, settee

explanation is based; they imply the state-

which were used above, stand for kinds or properties of events, not for what is sometimes called individual events. For the object of description and explanation in every branch of empirical science is always the occurrence of an event of a certain kind (such as a drop in temperature by 14° F., an eclipse of the moon, a cell-division, an earthquake, an increase in employment, a political assassination) at a given place

ment that whenever events of the kind de-

and time, or in a given empirical object

scribed in the first group occur, an event

(such as the radiator of a certain car, the planetary system, a specified historical per-

logically deduced.

In a physical explanation, group

(1)

would describe the initial and boundary conditions for the occurrence of the final event; generally, we shall say that group

(1) states the determining conditions for the event to be explained, while group (2) contains the general laws on which the

of the kind to be explained will take place. Illustration: Let the event to be ex-

sonality, etc.) at a certain time.

plained consist in the cracking of an automobile radiator during a cold night. The sentences of group (1) may state the following initial and boundary conditions: The car was left in the street all night, Its radiator, which consists of iron, was com-

What is sometimes called the complete description of an individual event (such as the earthquake of San Francisco in 1906 or the assassination of Julius Caesar) would

pletely filled with water, and the lid was

dividual object involved, for the period of time occupied by the event in question. Such a task can never be completely accomplished. A fortiori, it is impossible to explain an

screwed on tightly. The temperature during the night dropped from 39° F. in the

evening to 25° F, in the morning; the air pressure was normal. The bursting pres-

sure of the radiator material is so and so much.—Group (2) would contain em-

require a statement of all the properties exhibited by the spatial region or the in-

individual eyent in the sense of accounting

32° F., under normal atmospheric _pres-

for all its characteristics by means of universal hypotheses, although the explanation of what happened at a specified place and

sure, water freezes. Below 39.2° F., the pressure of a mass of water increases with

time may gradually be made more and more specific and comprehensive.

pirical laws such as the following: Below

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

But there is no difference, in this respect, between history and the natural sciences: both can give an account of their subjectmatter only in terms of general concepts, and history can “grasp the unique individuality” of its objects of study no more and no less than can physics or chemistry. 3. The following points result more or

less directly from the above study of scientific explanation and are of special importance for the questions here to be discussed. 3.1 A set of events can be said to have caused the event to be explained only if general laws can be indicated which connect “causes” and “effect” in the manner characterized above. 3.2 No matter whether the cause-effect terminology is used or not, a scientific explanation has been achieved only if empirical laws of the kind mentioned under

(2) in 2.1 have been applied.? 3.3 The use of universal empirical hypotheses as explanatory principles distinguishes genuine from pseudo-explanation, such as, say, the attempt to account for certain features of organic behavior by reference to an entelechy, for whose functioning no laws are offered, or the explanation of the achievements of a given person in terms of his “mission in history,” his

“predestined fate,” or similar notions. Ac-

SOCIETY

425

rather than laws; they convey pictorial and emotional appeals instead of insight into factual connections; they substitute vague analogies and intuitive “plausibility”

for deduction from testable statements and are therefore unacceptable as scientific explanations. Any explanation of scientific character is amenable to objective checks; these include

(a) an empirical test of the sentences which state the determining conditions;

(b) an empirical test of the universal hypotheses on which the explanation rests;

(c) an investigation of whether the explanation is logically conclusive in the sense that the sentence describing the event to be explained follows

from the statements of groups (1) and (2).

4. The function of general laws in scientific prediction can now be stated very briefly. Quite generally, prediction in empirical science consists in deriving a statement about a certain future event (for example, the relative position of the planets

to the sun, at a future date) from (1) statements describing certain known (past

or present) conditions (for example, the

1 Maurice Mandelbaum, in his generally very clarifying analysis of relevance and causation in history (The Problem of Historical Knowledge, New York, 1938, Chaps. 7, 8) seems to hold that there is a difference between the “causal analysis” or ‘“‘catisal explanation” of an event

positions and momenta of the planets at a past or present moment), and (2) suitable general laws (for example, the laws of celestial mechanics). Thus, the logical structure of a scientific prediction is the same as that of a scientific explanation, which has been described in 2.1. In particu-

and the establishment of scientific laws governing

lar, prediction no less than explanation

counts of this type are based on metaphors

it in the sense stated above. He argues that “sci-

entific laws can only be formulated on the basis of causal analysis,’ but that “they are not substitutes for full causal explanations” (p. 238). For the reasons outlined above, this distinction does not appear to be justified: every “causal explanation”

is an “explanation by scientific laws”; for in no other way than by reference to empirical laws can the assertion of a causal connection between certain events be scientifically substantiated.

throughout empirical science involves reference to universal empirical hypotheses. The customary distinction between explanation and prediction rests mainly on a pragmatical difference between the two: While in the case of an explanation, the final event is known to have happened,

LOGICAL

426

and its determining conditions have to be sought, the situation is reversed in the case of a prediction: here, the initial conditions are given, and their “effect”—which in the typical case, has not yet taken place

—is to be determined. In view of the structural equality of explanation and prediction, it may be said

that an explanation as characterized in 2.1 is not complete unless it might as well have functioned as a prediction: If the

final event can be derived from the initial conditions and universal hypotheses stated

in the explanation, then it might as well have

been

predicted,

before

it actually

happened, on the basis of a knowledge of the initial conditions and the general laws. Thus, e.g., those initial conditions and general laws which the astronomer would adduce in explanation of a certain eclipse of the sun are such that they might also have served as a sufficient basis for a forecast of the eclipse before it took place. However, only rarely, if ever, are explanations stated so completely as to ex-

hibit this predictive character (which the test referred to under serve

to

reveal).

Quite

(c) in 3.3 would commonly,

the

explanation offered for the occurrence of an event is incomplete. Thus, we may hear the explanation that a barn burnt down “because” a burning cigarette was dropped in the hay, or that a certain political movement has spectacular success “because” it takes advantage of widespread racial prejudices. Similarly, in the case of the broken radiator, the customary way of formulating an explanation would be restricted to pointing out that the car was left in the cold, and the radiator was filled with water——In explanatory statements like these, the general laws which confer upon the stated conditions the character of “causes” or “determining factors” are com-

EMPIRICISM

pletely omitted (sometimes, perhaps, as a “matter of course”), and, furthermore, the enumeration

of the determining

condi-

tions of group (1) is incomplete; this is ; illustrated by the preceding examples, but even by the earlier analysis of the broken-. radiator case: as a closer examination would reveal, even that much more detailed statement of determining conditions and universal hypotheses would require amplifica-

tion in order to serve as a sufficient basis for the deduction of the conclusion that the radiator broke during the. night. In some instances, the incompleteness of a given explanation may be considered as

inessential. Thus, e.g., we may feel that the explanation referred to in the last example could be made complete if we so desired;

for we have reasons to assume that we know the kind of determining conditions and of general laws which are relevant in this context. Very frequently, however, we encounter “explanations” whose incompleteness can not simply be dismissed as inessential. The methodological consequences of this situation will be discussed later (especially in

5.3 and 5.4). 5-1 The preceding considerations apply to explanation in history as well as in any other branch of empirical science. Historical explanation, too, aims at showing that the event in question was not “a matter of chance,” but was to be expected in view of certain antecedent or simultaneous conditions. The expectation referred to is not

prophecy or divination, but rational scientific anticipation which rests on the assumption of general laws. If this view is correct, it would seem strange that while most historians do suggest explanations of historical events, many of them deny the possibility of resorting to any general laws in history. It is, however,

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

427

possible to account for this situation by a

explicitly with sufficient precision and at

closer study of explanation in history, as may become clear in the course of the following analysis. 5-2 In some cases, the universal hypotheses underlying a historical explanation are rather explicitly stated, as is illustrated

the same time in such a way that they are in agreement with all the relevant empirical evidence available. It is highly instructive, in examining the adequacy of a suggested explanation, to attempt a reconstruction of the universal hypotheses on which it rests. Particularly, such terms as

by the italicized passages in the following attempt to explain the tendency of government agencies to perpetuate themselves and to expand:

“hence,” “therefore,” “consequently,” “because,’ “naturally,” “obviously,” etc., are

As the activities of the government are enlarged, more people develop a vested interest in the continuation and expansion of governmental functions. People who have jobs do not like to lose them; those who are habituated to certain skills do not welcome

up the initial conditions with the event to

change;

those

who

have

become

accus-

tomed to the exercise of a certain kind of power do not like to relinquish their control—if anything, they want to develop greater power and correspondingly greater prestige... . Thus, government offices and bureaus, once created, in turn institute drives, not only to fortify themselves against assault, but to enlarge the scope of their operations.” Most explanations offered in history or sociology, however, fail to include an explicit statement of the general regularities they presuppose; and there seem to be at least two reasons which account for this: First, the universal hypotheses in ques-

tion frequently relate to individual or social psychology, which somehow is supposed to be familiar to everybody through his everyday experience; thus, they are tacitly taken for granted. This is a situation quite similar to that characterized in 4. Second, it would often be very difficult to formulate the underlying assumptions 2Donald W. McConnell, Economic (New York, 1939), pp. 894-895.

Behavior

9

«6

often indicative of the tacit presupposition of some general law: they are used to tie be explained; but that the latter was “naturally” to be expected as “a consequence” of the stated conditions follows only if suitable general laws are presupposed. Consider, for example, the statement that the Dust Bowl farmers migrate to California “because” continual drought and sandstorms render their existence increasingly precarious, and because California seems to them to offer so much better living conditions. This explanation rests on some such universal hypothesis as that populations will tend to migrate to regions which offer better living conditions. But it would obviously be difficult accurately to state this hypothesis in the form of a general law which is reasonably well confirmed by all the relevant evidence available. Similarly, if a particular revolution is explained by reference to the growing discontent, on the part of a large part of the population, with certain prevailing conditions, it is clear that a general regularity is assumed in this explanation, but we are hardly in a position to state just what extent and what specific form the discontent has to assume, and what the environmental conditions have to be, to bring about a revolution. Analogous remarks apply to all historical explanations in terms of class struggle, economic or geographic conditions, vested in-

LOGICAL

428

terests of certain groups, tendency to conspicuous consumption, etc.: All of them

rest on the assumption of universal hypotheses * which connect certain characteristics of individual or group life with others; but in many cases, the content of the hypotheses which are tacitly assumed in a given explanation can be reconstructed only quite approximately.

EMPIRICISM

contagion will occur can be asserted only with a high probability.

Many an explanation offered in history seems to admit of an analysis of this kind: ° if fully and explicitly formulated, it would state certain initial conditions, and certain

probability hypotheses,* such that the occurrence of the event to be explained is made highly probable by the initial condi-

5.3 It might be argued that the phe-

tions in view of the probability hypoth-

nomena covered by the type of explanation just mentioned are of a statistical character, and that therefore only probability hypotheses need to be assumed in their explanation, so that the question as to the “underlying general laws” would be based on a false premise. And indeed, it seems possible and justifiable to construe certain explanations offered in history as based on the assumption of probability hypotheses rather than of general “deterministic” laws, i.e., laws in the form. of universal conditions. This claim may be extended to many of the explanations offered in other fields of empirical science as well. Thus, e.g., if Tommy comes down with the

eses. But no matter whether explanations in history be construed as “causal” or as

measles two weeks after his brother, and

if he has not been in the company of other persons having the measles, we accept the explanation that he caught the disease from his brother. Now, there is a general hypothesis underlying this explanation; but it can hardly be said to be a general law to the effect that any person who has not had the measles before will get them without fail if he stays in the company of somebody else who has the measles; that a 3 What is sometimes, misleadingly, called an explanation by means of a certain concept is, in empirical science, actually an explanation in terms of universal hypotheses containing that concept. “Explanations” involving concepts which do nat function in empirically testable hypotheses—such as “‘entelechy” in biology, “historic destination of a race” or “‘self-unfolding of absolute reason” in history—are mere metaphors without cognitive content,

“probabilistic” in character, it remains true that in general the initial conditions and especially the universal hypotheses involved are not clearly indicated, and can not unambiguously be supplemented. (In the case of probability hypotheses, for example, the probability values involved will at best

be known quite roughly.) 5.4 What the explanatory analyses of historical events offer is, then, in most cases not an explanation in one of the meanings

developed above, but something that might be called an explanation sketch. Such a sketch consists of a more or less vague indication of the laws and initial conditions considered as relevant, and it needs: “filling out” in order to turn into a full-fledged explanation. This filling-out requires further empirical research, for which the sketch suggests the direction. (Explanation

sketches are common also outside of history; many explanations in psychoanalysis, for instance, illustrate this point.) Obviously, an explanation sketch does not admit of an empirical test to the same 4E, Zilsel, in a very stimulating paper on “Physics and the Problem of Historico-Sociological

Laws”

(Philosophy of Science, Vol. 8, 1941, pp.

567-579), suggests that all specifically historical laws are of a statistical character similar to that of the “‘macro-laws” in physics. The abcve remarks, however, are not restricted to specifically historical laws since explanation in history rests to a large extent on non-historical laws (cf. section 8 of this paper).

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

extent as does a complete explanation; and yet, there is a difference between a scien-

tifically acceptable explanation sketch and a pseudo-explanation (or a pseudo-explanation

sketch).

A

scientifically

acceptable

explanation sketch needs to be filled out by more specific statements; but it points

into the direction where these statements are to be found; and concrete research may tend to confirm or to infirm those indications; i.e., it may show that the kind of initial conditions suggested are actually relevant; or it may reveal that factors of a quite different nature have to be taken into account in order to arrive at a satisfactory explanation.—The filling-out process required by an explanation sketch will, in general, assume the form of a gradually increasing precision of the formulations involved; but at any stage of this process, those formulations will have some empirical import: it will be possible to indicate, at least roughly, what kind of evidence would be relevant in testing them, and what findings would tend to confirm them. In the case of non-empirical explanations or explanation sketches, on the other hand—say, by reference to the historical destination of a certain race, or to a principle of historical justice—the use of empirically meaningless terms makes it impossible even roughly to indicate the type

of investigation that would have a bearing upon those formulations, and that might lead to evidence either confirming or infirming the suggested explanation. 5.5 In trying to appraise the soundness of a given explanation, one will first have to attempt to reconstruct as completely as possible the argument constituting the explanation or the explanation sketch. In

particular, it is important to realize what the underlying explaining hypotheses are,

and to judge of their scope and empirical foundation. A resuscitation of the assump-

SOCIETY

429

tions buried under the gravestones “hence,” “therefore,” “because,” and the like will often reveal that the explanation offered is poorly founded or downright unacceptable. In many cases, this procedure will bring to light the fallacy of claiming that a large number of details of an event have been explained when, even on a very liberal interpretation, only some broad characteristics of it have been accounted for. Thus,

for example, the geographic or economic conditions under which a group lives may account for certain general features of, say, its art or its moral codes; but to grant this

does not mean that the artistic achievements of the group or its system of morals has thus been explained in detail; for this would imply that from a description of the prevalent geographic or economic conditions alone, a detailed account of certain aspects of the cultural life of the group

can be deduced by means of specifiable general laws. A related error consists in singling out one of several important groups of factors

which would have to be stated in the initial conditions, and then claiming that the phenomenon in question is “determined” by and thus can be explained in terms of

that one group of factors. Occasionally, the adherents of some particular school of explanation or interpretation in history will adduce, as evidence in favor of their approach, a successful historical prediction which was made by a representative of their school. But though the predictive success of a theory is certainly relevant evidence of its soundness, it is important to make sure that the suc-

cessful prediction is in fact obtainable by means of the theory in question. It happens sometimes that the prediction is actually an ingenious guess which may have been influenced by the theoretical outlook of its author, but which can not be arrived

LOGICAL

430

EMPIRICISM

at by means of his theory alone. Thus, an adherent of a quite metaphysical “theory”

particular motivations

of his heroes; he

of history may have 4 sound feeling for

general rule and uses the latter as an ex-

historical developments and may be able to make correct predictions, which he will even couch in the terminology of his

actions of the persons involved. Now, this procedure may sometimes prove heuristi-

theory, though they could not have been attained by means of it. To guard against

cally helpful; but its use does not guarantee the soundness of the historical explana-

tentatively generalizes his findings into a planatory principle in accounting for the’

such pseudo-confirming cases would be

tion to which it leads. The latter rather

one of the functions of test (¢) in 3.3. 6. We have tried to show that in history

depends upon the factual correctness of the empirical generalizations which the method of understanding may have sug-

no less than in any other branch of empirical inquiry, scientific explanation can be achieved only by means of suitable general hypotheses, or by theories, which are bodies of systematically related hypotheses. This thesis is clearly in contrast

with the familiar view that genuine explanation in history is obtained by a method which characteristically distinguishes the social from the natural sciences, namely, the method of empathetic understanding: The historian, we are told, imagines himself in the place of the persons involved in the events which he wants to explain; he tries to realize as completely as possible the circumstances under which they acted, and the motives which influenced their actions; and by this imaginary self-identification with his heroes, he arrives at an understanding and thus at an adequate explanation of the events with

which he is concerned. This method of empathy is, no doubt, frequently applied by laymen and by experts in history. But it does not in itself constitute an explanation; it rather is essentially a heuristic device; its function is

gested.

;

Nor is the use of this method indispensable for historical explanation. A historian may, for example, be incapable of feeling himself into the role of a paranoiac historic personality, and yet he may well be able to explain certain of his actions; notably by reference to the principles of abnormal psychology. Thus, whether the historian is or is not in a position to identify himself with his historical hero, is irrelevant for the correctness of his explanation; what counts, is the soundness of the general hypotheses involved, no matter whether they were suggested by empathy or by a strictly behavioristic procedure.

Much of the appeal of the “method of understanding” seems to be due to the fact that it tends to present the phenomena in question as somehow “plausible” or “natural” to us;° this is often done by means of attractively worded metaphors. But the kind of “understanding” thus conveyed

must clearly be separated from scientific understanding. In history as anywhere else in empirical science, the explanation of a

to suggest certain psychological hypotheses

phenomenon consists in subsuming it un-

which might serve as explanatory principles in the case under consideration. Stated

der general empirical laws; and the crite-

in crude terms, the idea underlying this function is the following: The historian

tries to realize how he himself would act under the given conditions, and under the

rion of its soundness

is not whether

it

5 For a criticism of this kind of plausibility, cf. Zilsel, loc. cit., pp. 577-578, and sections 7 and 8 in the same author’s Problems of Empiricism, Vol. II, No. 8, in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. 3

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

431

SOCIETY

appeals to our imagination, whether it is

social institutions great emphasis is laid

presented

upon an analysis of the development of the institution up to the stage under considera-

in suggestive

analogies,

or is

otherwise made to appear plausible—all this may occur in pseudo-explanations as well—but exclusively whether it rests on empirically well confirmed assumptions concerning initial conditions and general laws. 7.1 So far, we have discussed the importance of general laws for explanation

and prediction, and for so-called understanding in history. Let us now survey more briefly some other procedures of historical research which involve the as-

sumption of universal hypotheses. Closely related to explanation and understanding is the so-called interpretation of historical phenomena in terms of some particular approach or theory. The in-

terpretations which are actually offered in history consist either in subsuming the phenomena in question under a scientific explanation or explanation sketch; or in an attempt to subsume them under some general idea which is not amenable to any empirical test. In the former case, interpretation clearly is explanation by means of universal hypotheses; in the latter, it amounts to a pseudo-explanation which may have emotive appeal and evoke vivid pictorial associations, but which does not further our theoretical understanding of the phenomena under consideration. 7.2 Analogous remarks apply to the procedure of ascertaining the “meaning’’ of given historical events; its scientific import consists in determining what other events are relevantly connected with the event in question, be it as “causes,” or as “effects”;

and the statement of the relevant connections assumes, again, the form of explanations or explanation sketches which involve universal hypotheses; this will be seen more

clearly in the subsequent section. 7.3 In the historical explanation of some

tion. Critics of this approach have objected

that a mere description of this kind is not a genuine explanation. This argument may be given a slightly different aspect in terms of the preceding reflections: A description of the development of an institution is obviously not simply a statement of ail the events which temporally preceded it; only those events are meant to be included

which are “relevant” to the formation of that institution. And whether an event is relevant to that development is not a question of the value attitude of the historian, but an objective question depend-

ing upon

what is sometimes

called a

causal analysis of the rise of that institution.® Now, the causal analysis of an event consists in establishing an explanation for it, and since this requires reference to general hypotheses, so do assumptions about relevance, and, consequently, so does the adequate analysis of the historical development of an institution. 7.4 Similarly, the use of the notions of determination and of dependence in the empirical sciences, including history, involves reference to general laws.’ Thus, 6 See the detailed and clear exposition point in M. Mandelbaum’s

book;

Chaps.

of this 6-8.

T According to Mandelbaum, history, in contradistinction to the physical sciences, consists “‘not in the formulation of laws of which the particular case is an instance, but in the description of the events in their actual determining relationships to each other; in seeing events as the products and producers of change” (pp. 13-14). This is essentially a view whose untenability has been pointed out already by Hume; it is the belief that a careful examination of two specific events alone, without any reference to similar cases and to general regularities, can reveal that one of the events produces

or determines the other. This thesis does not only run counter to the scientific meaning of the concept of determination which clearly rests on that of general law, but it even fails to provide any

objective criteria which

would

be indicative of

432

LOGICAL

e.g., we may say that the pressure of a gas depends upon its temperature and volume, or that temperature and volume determine the-pressure, in virtue of Boyle’s law. But unless the underlying laws are stated

EMPIRICISM

The elaboration of such laws with as much precision as possible sems clearly to be the direction in which progress in scientific

explanation and understanding has to be | sought.

explicitly, the assertion of a relation of de-

8. The considerations developed in this

pendence or of determination between certain magnitudes or characteristics amounts at best to claiming that they are connected by some unspecified empirical law; and that is a very meager assertion indeed: If, for example, we know only that there is some empirical law connecting two metri-

paper are entirely neutral with respect to the problem of “specifically historical laws’’: neither do they presuppose a particular way of distinguishing historical from sociological and other laws, nor do they imply or deny the assumption that empirical laws can be found. which are his-

cal magnitudes (such as length and tem-

torical in some specific sense, and which are well confirmed by empirical evidence. But it may be worth mentioning here

perature of a metal bar), we can not even be sure that a change of one of the two will be accompanied by a change of the other (for the law may connect the same value of the “dependent” or “determined” magnitude

with

different

values

of the

other), but only that with any specific value of one of the variables, there will always be associated one and the same value of the other; and this is obviously much less than most authors mean

to as-

sert when they speak of determination or dependence in historical analysis. Therefore, the sweeping assertion that

economic

(or geographic, or any other

kind of) conditions “determine” the development and change of all other aspects

of human society, has explanatory value only in so far as it can be substantiated by

explicit laws which state just what kind of change in human culture will regularly follow upon specific changes in the economic (geographic, etc.) conditions. Only the establishment of concrete laws can fill

the general thesis with scientific content, make it amenable to empirical tests, and confer upon it an explanatory function. the

intended

relationship

of

determination

or

production. Thus, to speak of empirical determination independently of any reference to general laws means to use a metaphor without cognitive

content.

that those universal hypotheses to which historians explicitly or tacitly refer in offering explanations, predictions, interpretations, judgments of relevance, etc., are

taken from various fields of scientific research, in so far as they are not prescientific generalizations of everyday experiences. Many of the universal hypotheses underlying historical explanation, for in-

stance, would commonly be classified as psychological, economical, sociological, and partly perhaps as historical laws; in addition, historical research has frequently to resort to general laws established in physics, chemistry, and biology. Thus, e.g,, the explanation of the defeat of an army by reference to lack of food, adverse weather conditions, disease, and the like, is based on a—usually tacit—assumption of such laws. The use of tree rings in dating events in history rests on the application of certain biological regularities. Various methods of testing the authenticity of documents, paintings, coins, etc., make use of

physical and chemical theories. The last two examples illustrate another point which is relevant in this context: Even if a historian should propose to restrict his research to a “pure description”

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

of the past, without any attempt at offering explanations, statements about relevance and determination, etc., he would continu-

ally have to make use of general laws. For the object of his studies would be the past forever inaccessible to his direct exami-

nation. He would have to establish his knowledge by indirect methods: by the use of universal hypotheses which connect his present data with those past events. This fact has been obscured partly because some

SOCIETY

methodologically

433

autonomous

and _ inde-

pendent of the other branches of scientific

research, it would seem that the problem of the existence of historical laws ought to lose some of its weight. The remarks made in this section are but special illustrations of two broader principles of the theory of science: first, the separation of “pure description” and “hypothetical generalization and theory-construction” . in empirical science is unwarranted; in the

of the regularities involved are so familiar that they are not considered worth men-

building of scientific knowledge the two

tioning at all; and partly because of the habit of relegating the various hypotheses and theories which are used to ascertain knowledge about past events, to the “auxiliary sciences” of history. Quite probably, some of the historians who tend to minimize, if not to deny, the importance of general laws for history, are actuated by the feeling that only “genuinely historical laws” would be of interest for history. But once it is realized that the discovery of historical laws (in some specified sense of this very vague notion) would not make history

similarly unwarranted and futile to attempt the demarcation of sharp boundary lines between the different fields of scientific research, and an autonomous development of each of the fields. The necessity, in historical inquiry, to make extensive use of universal hypotheses of which at least the overwhelming majority come from fields of feseatch traditionally distinguished from history is just one of the as-

aré inseparably linked. And, second, it is

pects of what may be called the methodological unity of empirical science.

Has History Any Meaning? KARL

R. POPPER

Is there a meaning in history? I do not wish to entet here into the problem of the meaning of “meaning”; I take it for granted that most people know with sufficient clarity what they mean when they speak of the “meaning of history” or of the

“meaning of life.” And in this sense, in the sense in which

the question of the

meaning of history is asked, I answer: History has no meaning. In order to give reasons for this opinion, I must first say something about that “history” which people have in mind when they ask whether it has meaning. So far, I have myself spoken about “history” as if it did not need any explanation. That is no

LOGICAL

434 longer possible; for I wish to make it clear that “history” people speak and this is at that it has no

in the sense in which most of it simply does not exist; least one reason why I say meaning.

How do most people come to use the term “history”? (I mean “history” in the sense in which we say of a book that it is about the history of Europe—not in the sense in which we say that it is a history

of Europe.) They learn about it in school and at the university. They read books about it. They see what is treated in the books

under

the name

“history of the

world” or “the history of mankind,” and they get used to looking upon it as a more or less definite series of facts. And these facts constitute, they believe, the history of mankind.

EMPIRICISM

history of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history of power politics 1s nothing but the history of international crime

and mass murder (including, it is true, some of the attempts to suppress them).

This history is taught in schools, and some of the greatest criminals are extolled as its heroes.

But is there really no such thing as a _ universal history in the sense of a concrete

history of mankind? There can be none. This must be the reply of every humanitarian, I believe, and especially that of every Christian. A concrete history of mankind, if there were any, would have to be

the history of all men. It would have to be the history of all human hopes, strug-

Cer-

gles, and sufferings. For there is no one man more important than any other. Clearly, this concrete history cannot be written. We must make abstractions, we must neglect, select. But with this we arrive at the many histories; and among them, at that history of international crime and mass murder which has been adver-

tainly, none of these is the history of mankind (nor all of them taken together).

tised as the history of mankind. But why has just the history of power

What

been selected, and not, for example, that of religion, or of poetry? There are several reasons. One is that power affects us all, and poetry only a few. Another is that men are inclined to worship power. But there

But we have already seen that the realm of facts is infinitely rich, and that there must be selection. According to our interests, we could, for instance, write about the history of art; or of language; or of

feeding habits; or of typhus fever (see Zinsser’s

Rats, Lice, and History).

people have in mind

when

they

speak of the history of mankind is, rather, the history of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman empires, and so on, down to our own day. In other words: They speak about the Aistory of mankind, but what they mean, and what

they have learned about in school, is the history of political power. There is no history of mankind, there

is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And

one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent conception of mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the

can be no doubt that the worship of power is one of the worst kinds of human idolatries, a relic of the time of the cage, of human servitude. The worship of power is born of fear, an emotion which is rightly despised. A third reason why power poli‘tics has been made the core of “‘history”’ is that those in power wanted to be wor-

shipped and could enforce their wishes. Many historians wrote under the supervision of the emperors, the generals, and

the dictators.

HISTORY,

CULTURE;

AND

I know that these views will meet with the strongest opposition from many sides, including some apologists for Christianity;

for although there is hardly anything in the New Testament to support this doctrine, it is often considered a part of the Christian dogma that God reveals Himself in history; that history has meaning; and

that its meaning is the purpose of God. Historicism is thus held to be a necessary element of religion. But I do not admit this. I contend that this view is pure idolatry and superstition, not only from the point of view of a rationalist or humanist but from the Christian point of view itself. What is behind this theistic historicism? With Hegel, it looks upon history—political history—as a stage, or rather, as a kind of lengthy Shakespearian play; and the audience conceive either the “great historical personalities,” or mankind in the abstract, as the heroes of the play. Then they ask, “Who has written this play?” And they think that they give a pious answer when they reply, “God.” But they are mistaken. Their answer is pure blasphemy, for the play was (as they know it) written not by God, but, under the supervision of generals and dictators, by the professors of history. I do not deny that it is as justifiable to interpret history from a Christian point of view as it is to interpret it from any

SOCIETY

435

science can judge us and not our worldly success. The theory that God reveals Himself and His judgment in history is indistinguishable from the theory that worldly success is the ultimate judge and justification of our actions; it comes

to the same

thing as the doctrine that history will judge, that is to say, that future might is right; it is the same as what I have called “moral futurism.” To maintain that God reveals Himself in what is usually called “history,” in the history of international crime and of mass murder, is indeed blasphemy; for

what really happens within the realm of human lives is hardly ever touched upon by this cruel and at the same time childish affair. The life of the forgotten, of the unknown individual man; his sorrows and his joys, his suffering and death, this is the real content of human experience down the ages. If that could be told by history, then I should certainly not say that it is blasphemy to see the finger of God in it. But such a history does not and cannot exist; and all the history which exists, our history of the Great and the Powerful, is at best a shallow comedy; it is the opera buffa played by the powers behind reality

(comparable to Homer’s opera buffa of the Olympian powers behind the scene of hu-

man struggles). It is what one of our worst instincts, the idolatrous worship of power, of success, has led us to believe to be real. And in this not even man-made,

same time, the only rational as well as the only Christian attitude even towards the history of freedom is that we are ourselves

but man-faked “history,” some Christians dare to see the hand of God! They dare to understand and to know what He wills when they impute to Him their petty historical interpretations! “On the contrary,” says K. Barth, the theologian, in his Credo, “we have to begin with the admission ... that all that we think we

responsible for it, in the same sense in

know when we say ‘God’ does not reach

which we are responsible for what we make of our lives, and that only our con-

or comprehend Him . . . , but always one of our self-conceived and self-made idols,

other

point of view;

and

it should

cer-

tainly be emphasized, for example, how much of our Western aims and ends, humanitarianism, freedom, equality, we owe

to the influence of Christianity. But at the

LOGICAL

436

EMPIRICISM

whether it is ‘spirit’ or ‘nature,’ ‘fate’ or

few fishermen have given the world.” And

titude that Barth characterizes the “Neo-

tempts to see in history as it is recorded,

Protestant doctrine of the revelations of God in history” as “inadmissible” and as

i.e., in the history of power, and in histor- | ical success, the manifestation of God’s will.

‘idea’. . . .” (It is in keeping with this at-

an encroachment upon “the kingly office of Christ.”) But it is, from the Christian point of view, not only arrogance that underlies such attempts; it is, more specifically,

an

anti-Christian

attitude.

For

Christianity teaches, if anything, that worldly success is not decisive. Christ

yet all theistic interpretation of history at-

To this attack upon the “doctrine of the revelation of God in history,” it will probably be replied that it is success, His success after His death, by which Christ’s unsuccessful life on earth was finally revealed to mankind as the greatest spiritual

“suffered under Pontius Pilate.” I am quoting Barth again: “How does Pontius Pilate get into the Credo? The simple

victory; that it was the success, the fruits of His teaching which proved it and justi-

answer can at once be given: it is a matter of date.” Thus the man who was success-

last shall be first and the first last” has

ful, who represented the historical power of that time, plays here the purely tech-

the historical

nical role of indicating when these events happened. And what were these events? They had nothing to do with power-

manifested itself. But this is a most dangerous line of defence. Its implication that

fied it, and by which the prophecy “The been verified. In other words, that it was

success

of the Christian

Church through which the will of God

the worldly success of the Church is an

political success, with “history,” They were

argument in favor of Christianity clearly

not even the story of an unsuccessful non-

violent nationalist revolution (a /a Gandhi)

reveals lack of faith. The early Christians had no worldly encouragement of this

of the Jewish people against the Roman

kind. (They believed that conscience must

conquerors. The events were nothing but

judge

the sufferings of a man. Barth insists that the word “suffers” refers to the whole of

round.) Those who hold that the history of

the life of Christ and not only to His death; he says: “Jesus suffers. Therefore He does

not conquer. He does not triumph. He has mo success. . ... He achieved nothing except...

. His crucifixion. The same could

be said of His relationship to His people and to His disciples.” My intention in quoting Barth is to show that it is not only my “rationalist” or “humanist” point of view from which the worship of historical success appears as incompatible with the

spirit of Christianity, What

matters

to

Christianity is not the historical deeds of

the powerful Roman conquerors but (to use a phrase of Kierkegaard’s) “what a

power,

and

not

the

other

way

the success of Christian teaching reveals the will of God should ask themselves whether this success was really a success of the spirit of Christianity; and whether this spirit did not triumph at the time when the Church was persecuted, rather than at the time when the Church was trium-

phant. Which

Church incorporated this

spirit more purely, that of the martyrs, or the victorious Church of the Inquisition?

There seem to be many

who would

admit much of this, insisting as they do that the message of Christianity is to the meek, but who still believe that this mes-

sage is one of historicism. An outstanding

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

437

representative of this view is J. Macmurray, who, in The Clue to History, finds the essence of Christian teaching in historical prophecy, and who sees in its founder the discoverer of a dialectical law of “human nature.” Macmurray holds that, according to this law, political history must inevitably bring forth “the socialist commonwealth of

plication, sees the greatest achievement of Christianity in the fact that its founder was a forerunner of Hegel—a superior one, admittedly. My insistence that success should not be

the world. The fundamental law of human nature cannot be broken. ... It is the meek who will inherit the earth.” But this

that in this attitude I concur with what

historicism,

with

its substitution

of cer-

tainty for hope, must lead to a moral futurism. “The law cannot be broken.” So we can be sure, on psychological grounds, that whatever we do will lead to the same result; that even fascism must, in the end, lead to that commonwealth; so that the final outcome does not depend upon our moral decision, and that there is no need to worry over our responsibilities. If we are told that we can be certain, on scientific grounds, that “the last will be first and the first last,” what else is this but the substitution of historical prophecy for conscience? Does not this theory come dangerously close (certainly against the intentions of its author) to the admonition: “Be wise, and take to heart what the founder of Christianity tells you, for he was a great psychologist of human nature

and a great prophet of history. Climb in

worshipped, that it cannot be our judge, and that we should not be dazzled by it, and in particular, my attempts to show I believe to be the true teaching of Chris-

tianity, should not be misunderstood. They are not intended to support the attitude of “otherworldliness” which I have criticized in the last chapter. Whether Christianity is otherworldly, I do not know, but it certainly teaches that the only way to prove one’s faith is by rendering practical (and

worldly) help to those who need it. And it is certainly possible to combine an atti-

tude of the utmost reserve and even of contempt towards worldly success in the sense of power, glory, and wealth, with the attempt to do one’s best in this world, and to further the ends one has decided to adopt with the clear purpose of making them succeed; not for the sake of success

or of one’s justification by history, but for their own sake. A forceful support of some of these views, and especially of the incompati-

bility of historicism and Christianity, can

be found in Kierkegaard’s criticism of Hegel. Although Kierkegaard never freed time upon the band wagon of the meek; himself entirely from the Hegelian tradifor according to the inexorable scientific tion in which he was educated, there was laws of human nature, this is the surest hardly anybody who recognized’ more way to come out on top!” Such a clue to clearly what Hegelian historicism meant. history implies the worship of success; it “There were,” Kierkegaard wrote, “phiimplies that the meek will be justified belosophers who tried, before Hegel, to excause they will be on the winning side. It translates Marxism, and especially what — plain . . . history. And providence could really not but smile when it saw these atI have described as Marx’s historicist moral tempts. But providence did not laugh outtheory, into the language of a psychology right, for there was a human, honest sinof human nature, and of religious prophcerity about them. But Hegel—! Here I ecy. It is an interpretation which, by im??

LOGICAL

438 need Homer’s language. How did the gods roar with laughter! Such a horrid little

EMPIRICISM

is to say, instead of a position like “What really matters are human individuals, but

professor who has simply seen through the necessity of anything and everything there is, and who now plays the whole affair on his barrel organ: listen, ye gods of Olympus!” And Kierkegaard continues, referring to the attack by the atheist Schopenhauer upon the Christian apologist Hegel: “Reading Schopenhauer has given me more pleasure than I can express. What he

I do not take this to mean that it is I who matters very much”—a romantic combina- |

says is perfectly true; and then—it serves

als, the other men, but does not admit of reasonable personal relations. “Dominate or submit” is, by implication, the device of this attitude; either be a Great Man, a Hero wrestling with fate and earning fame (“the greater the fall, the greater the fame,” says Heraclitus), or belong to “the

the Germans right—he is as rude as only a German can be.” But Kierkegaard’s own expressions are nearly as blunt as Schopenhauer’s; for Kierkegaard goes on to say that Hegelianism, which he calls “this brilliant spirit of putridity,” is the “most repugnant of all forms of looseness”; and he speaks of its “mildew of pomposity,” its “intellectual voluptuousness,” and its “infamous splendor of corruption.” And, indeed, our intellectual as well as our ethical education is corrupt. It is perverted by the admiration of brilliance,

of the way things are said, which takes the place of a critical appreciation of the things that are said (and the things that are done). It is perverted by the romantic idea of the splendor of the Stage of History on which we are the actors. We are educated to act with an eye to the gallery. The whole problem of educating man to a sane appreciation of his own importance relative to that of other individuals is

thoroughly muddled by these ethics of fame and fate, by a morality which perpetuates an educational system that is still based upon the classics with their romantic view of the history of power and their romantic tribal morality which goes back to Heraclitus; a system whose ultimate

basis is the worship of power. Instead of a sober combination of individualism and altruism (to use these labels again)—that

tion of egoism and collectivism is taken

for granted. That is to say, the importance of the self, of its emotional life and its “self-expression,” is romantically exaggerated; and with it, the tension between the

“personality” and the group, the collective. This takes the place of the other individu-

masses” and submit yourself to leadership and sacrifice yourself to the higher cause of your collective. There is a neurotic, a hysterical element in this exaggerated stress on the importance of the tension between the self and the collective, and I do not doubt that this hysteria, this reaction to the strain of civilization, is the secret of the strong emotional appeal of the ethics of hero-worship, of the ethics of domination and submission. .

.

e

e

e

°

History has no meaning, I contend. But

this contention does not imply that all we can do about it is to look aghast at the history of political power, or that we must look on it as a cruel joke. For we can

interpret it, with an eye to those problems of power politics whose solution we choose to attempt in our time. We can interpret the history of power politics from the point of view of our fight for the open society, for a rule of reason, for justice, freedom, equality, and for the control of interna-

tional crime. Although history has no ends, we can impose these ends of ours upon it;

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

439

and into history. Men are not equal; but

tion. For it assumes that we can reap where we have not sown; it tries to persuade us that if we merely fall into step with history everything will and must go right, and that no fundamental decision on our part is required; it tries to shift our responsibility on to history, and thereby on to the play of demoniac powers beyond ourselves; it tries to base our actions upon the hidden intentions of these powers, which can be revealed to us only in mys-

we can decide to fight for equal rights.

tical inspirations and intuitions; and it thus

Human institutions such as the state are not rational, but we can decide to fight to make them more rational. We ourselves and our ordinary language are, on the

puts our actions and ourselves on the moral level of a man who, inspired by heroscopes and dreams, chooses his lucky number in a lottery. Like gambling, historicism is born

and although history has no meaning, we

can give it a meaning. It is the problem of nature and convention which we meet here again. Neither nature nor history can tell us what we ought to do. Facts, whether those of nature or those of history, cannot make the decision for us, they cannot determine the ends we are going to choose. It is we who in-

troduce purpose and meaning into nature

whole, emotional rather than rational; but

of our despair in the rationality and re-

we can try to become a little more rational, and we can train ourselves to use our language as an instrument not of self-expression (as our romantic educationalists would say) but of rational communication. History itsel{—I mean the history of power politics, of course, not the nonexistent story of the development of mankind—has no end nor meaning, but we can decide to give it both. We can make it our fight for the open society and against its enemies (who, when in a corner, always protest

sponsibility of our actions. It is a debased hope and a debased faith, an attempt to replace the hope and the faith that springs from our moral enthusiasm and the contempt for success by a certainty that springs from a pseudo-science; a pseudo-science of

their humanitarian

sentiments, in accord-

ance with Pareto’s advice); and we can interpret it accordingly. Ultimately, we may say the same about the “meaning of life.” It is up to us to decide what shall be our purpose in life, to determine our ends. This dualism of facts and decisions is, I

believe, fundamental. Facts as such have no meaning; they can gain it only through our decisions. Historicism is only one of many attempts to get over this dualism; it is born of fear, for it shrinks from realiz-

ing that we bear the ultimate responsibility even for the standards we choose. But such

an attempt seems to me to represent precisely what is usually described as supersti-

the stars,

or of “human

nature,”

or of

historical destiny. Historicism, I assert, is not only rationally untenable,

it is also in conflict with

any religion that teaches the importance of conscience. For such a religion must agree with the rationalist attitude towards

history in its emphasis on our supreme responsibility for our actions, and for their repercussions upon the course of history. True, we need hope; to act, to live without

hope goes beyond our strength. But we do not need more, and we must not be given more. We do not need certainty. Religion, in particular, should not be a substitute for

dreams and wish-fulfillment; it should resemble neither the holding of a ticket in a lottery, nor the holding of a policy in an insurance company. The historicist element

in religion is an element of idolatry, of superstition. This emphasis upon the dualism of facts

440

LOGICAL

EMPIRICISM

and decisions determines also our attitude

that progress rests with us, with our watch-

towards such ideas as “progress.” If we think that history progresses, or that we are bound to progress, then we commit

our conception of our ends, and with the realism of their choice.

the same mistake as those who believe that history has a meaning that can be discovered in it and need not be given to it.

For to progress is to move towards some kind of end, towards an end which exists for us as human beings. “History” cannot do that; only we, the human individuals,

fulness, with our efforts, with the clarity of

Instead of posing as prophets we must become the makers of our fate. We must learn to do things as well as we can, and

to look out for our mistakes. And when we have dropped the idea that the history of power will be our judge, when we have given up worrying whether or not history

can do it; we can do it by defending and

will justify us, then one day perhaps we

strengthening those democratic institutions upon which freedom, and with it progress, depends. And we shall do it much better as we become more fully aware of the fact

may succeed in getting power under control. In this way we may even justify

history, in our turn. It badly needs such justification,

Ves are NiOiVer NO).L OGY ADHD) obi Sol snl PalaN coi Bay Bd Bea

PHENOMENOLOGY is somewhat similar to Logical Empiricism in its ideal that philosophy should be a cooperative scientific venture with a rigorous method devoted to the achievement of a body of exact verifiable knowledge that is universally valid and binding. It agrees with Logical Empiricism in its efforts to clarify concepts and eliminate unexamined assumptions. They are further alike in their claims to be adequate reconciliations of Rationalism and Empiricism and in their search for a basic scientific language and a unity of science. Quite like Logical Empiricism, moreover, Phenomenology arose within a context of German-Austrian science, mathematics, and philosophy and now has a vigorous though small following in America. But unlike Logical Empiricism, Phenomenology is oriented in psychology rather than in physical science; its main inherit-

nology have been those of the Austrian psychologist and philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) in Logische Untersuchungen (1900-1901) and Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913). His work is related to that of Meinong, Scheler, Stumpf, and Geiger, and is now represented in the United States by,

ance

philosophers. The scholastic notion of “in-

is Cartesian

rather

than

among

Humean;

its method is psychological and subjective rather than logical and objective; its temper @ priori rather than experimental. It is compatible with metaphysics, and its program for the unity of science entails synoptic generalization rather than logical or linguistic analysis. Indeed, Phenomenology has much in common with the new Realism and with Idealism, and it has a definite historical and methodological relationship to Existentialism.

The chief formulations

others,

Marvin

Farber,

editor

of

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. The major influence in the background of Phenomenology was the work of Franz Brentano (1838=1917), from whom Husserl derived the ideal of philosophy as a rigorous science and the concept of mind upon which the phenomenological method is founded. Brentano, an empirical psychologist whose philosophy was developed under strong Aristotelian, Scholastic, and Cartesian influences, was the center of the rise of the new realism among continental tentionality” was adopted by Brentano as the key to the nature of mind and its activity. The “intending of” or “consciousness of” some content or object, the ability

of the mind to refer to something beyond itself, was taken as the differentiation of the psychical from the physical. The influence of Brentano and of the Gegenstandstheorie of his associate Alexius Meinong (1853-1921) is at present acknowledged by widely diverse schools of value philosophy. Though Husserl radically re-

of Phenome-

441

442

PHENOMENOLOGY

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

vised Brentano’s concept of intentionality,

in character, is never found in space and

it became the basis of his own philosophy and method. The subjectivism and methodological doubt of Descartes inspired the internal analysis and phenomenological “reduction” of Phenomenology. An important aspect of Phenomenology as a method has been the attempt to establish an @ priori discipline for psychology

time, and is neither a particular fact nor dependent upon particular facts. Yet it is not a platonic form independent of the

upon the basis of which an empirical psychology might be erected. This has meant the development of a “pure psychology”

which separates the psychical from the physical by reflection upon the phenomena of immediate experience. By its examination of the nature of intentional experience, Phenomenology has contributed significantly to psychological theory in general and the problem of the nature of mind in particular. More important for philosophy, how-

world of particulars. It cannot be known by sensory experience, but requires the grasp of a direct and pure intuition, an intuition

that immediately apprehends the intended object. The phenomenological method, with its stream of pure consciousness, is a priori in that it abstracts the object from

the

context

of experience.

It obtains

knowledge, according to its claimants, of pure essences rather than of existences. This is to be accomplished by a twofold

method: (1) Eidetic reduction, which considers the object as essence or form, in terms of the characteristics that define it as what it is rather than the particular circumstances that make it unique and spe-

cific, (2) Transcendental reduction, a sus-

ever, is the attempt to develop a methodological framework that can be made the

pension

basis for a general revision and unification of all scientific knowledge. Husserl came to the study of philosophy partly through mathematics and logic, in which studies he had developed not only an appreciation for exactness and rigor, but as well a concern for forms and essences. Phenomenology, though not identifiable simply as a method, presents a method of analysis that claims to be a way of discovery that will not only make of philosophy a strict and autonomous science, but if faithfully pursued will make possible the solution of

ments, leaving the stream of pure consciousness dissociated from its natural connections. By these techniques Phenomenology seeks to establish an immediate intuition of essences which constitutes gen-

all philosophical problems. The goal of Phenomenology is nothing less than absolute knowledge, which it proposes to achieve by complete elimination of presuppositions in knowledge and by enabling the subject matter to appear in the mind in its pre-conceptual purity, free from irrelevancies. The genuine object of reason

is held to be an ideal entity that is general

of judgment

that eliminates

or

“brackets” the objects of all existence judg-

uine knowledge of reality, certain knowledge based on direct evidence. As compared with the naive

uncriti-

cized ground of natural experience, the radical subjective transcendental and method thus presents a ground of genuine intentional experience which may be taken as an absolute basis for scientific philoso-

phy. Far from denying or neglecting the world of experience, the phenomenological reduction, its advocates insist, makes pos-

sible its more adequate and critical investigation. Although Husserl, who throughout his life had psychological interests, undertook

a large-scale analysis of consciousness by the phenomenological method, it is the

443

INTRODUCTION method itself that has been most important

in contemporary philosophy. His followers and associates, for example, Nicolai Hartmann, have employed it in various investi-

yet to find a genuinely appreciative and understanding following.

It is true that Existentialism has reached its fruition in a time of social distress and

gations embracing not only metaphysics, where it is held to be compatible with any

failure, ata moment of change and revolu-

theory of the nature of reality, but as well

deep, and it is quite impossible to appraise

in such diverse fields as ethics, history, law, mathematics, art, religion, and so-

ciology. The phenomenological method as well as the ontology of Husserl relates Phenomenology to the contemporary movement of Existentialism. The phenomenological method is employed by some Existentialists, particularly Heidegger and

Sartre, as the most adequate means to genuine knowledge. Husserl’s concern for the general and constant in reality compensates for the excessive individualism and subjectivism of Kierkegaard, while his insistence upon the possibility of a rigorous scientific philosophy offsets in part the anti-philosophical attitude of both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. The Existentialists are one with the Phenomenologists in their critique of science and in their effort to establish fundamental meanings on the immediacy of internal experience. Among the philosophies of the present, none receives more popular attention, is more commonly on the lips of the average man, or is more difficult to understand or

more often misunderstood than is Existentialism. Its technical foundations were formulated mainly in Germany and France between the two wars, but since the second it has been popularized on a wide front on the European continent, receiving its major expression in fiction, poetry, and drama, and exerting a radical influence upon Jewish and Christian religion and

theology. In Britain and America it still struggles for academic acceptance and is

tion, when hopes are high and despair is it adequately without relating it to the social and political context in which it has taken life. But its roots are deeper than the social order; they are imbedded in the life of the person as an individual. And its life story is more than the tale of recent

world catastrophe; it begins early in the history of articulate religion and philosophy and is marked by much genius. Any effort to comment on its adequacy or validity must look closely at its real character, the logic of its structure, the practical problems out of which it has grown. For Existentialism is first and last a philosophy of man; not of man as a collection or as a social whole, to be viewed by the instruments of the social scientist; nor of man as a species, an organic something to be

analyzed by biologist and anthropologist; nor of man as an ideal entity to be described and celebrated by metaphysician

and theologian. Existentialism is a philosophy of man as a living individual, the individual

that breathes

has the awful that longs for the individual dies. It claims

and thinks, that

freedom of moral choice, salvation and faces despair, that lives in anxiety, and to be the philosophy of that

which genuinely exists. As a philosophical type, Existentialism is radically different from the usual forms of contemporary thought. In contrast with Positivism,

for instance,

its interests

are

psychological rather than logical, personal and individual rather than objective and public, moral rather than scientific. It refuses to take seriously the “trivial linguistic agitations” of American and British Ana-

444

PHENOMENOLOGY

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

lysts who concern themselves more than

own

anything else with the problem of what is meant. It disparages the typical concern

self and the nature of personality, and

evil and consciously examined him-

present scientifically oriented era, and the large emphases on society that characterize the thought of most “liberal” philosophy.

Pascal, who admitted reasons of the heart as well as of the mind, The context of Ex- | istentialism is clearly determined in part by the rise of the biological and psycho- logical sciences, and by nineteenth-century

Finally, it objects to what it regards as

Romanticism and life philosophy; these in

fundamental distortions perpetrated by the classical philosophical tradition in its onesided descriptions of man as a rational and

conjunction with a sense of failure in the

for the objective world that occupies the

social animal, descriptions which it accuses of neglecting the volitional, emotional, af-

fective, and genuinely personal and individual qualities of the human being. Yet there are points of contact between Existentialism and occasional facets of other contemporary schools. It has much in common, for instance, with the moralistic and highly individualistic pragmatism of William James. It shares the anti-intellectualism of James and Bergson, and _ its major problems are not at all foreign to the personalistic Idealists. Scholastic Realism currently insists that it incorporates within its own system the valid insights of Existentialism, and the general impact of recent psychology has brought a wide interest in the kinds of problems that lie at its center. In academic philosophy in general, notwithstanding the current emphasis on logic and method, there is a new and generous interest ‘in the individual that contrasts quite clearly with the dominant trend of a generation ago. Among the distant forebears of Existentialism are Socrates, who aspired to a knowledge of himself, the Hebrew psalmists, in their longing for the presence of God, Job, who struggled for faith in the face of abandonment, and Saint Paul, who taught the Christian world that salvation is a gift from God. Its less remote ancestry includes the Saint Augustine of the Confessions, who struggled inwardly with his

liberal social movement and of a fundamental inadequacy in liberal rationalistic philosophy. Having itself something of the characteristic of religion, being an eminently practical rather than theoretical philosophy, it has close relations with religion, even when expressed in secularistic form, and has both borrowed from and contrib-

uted to the new forms of orthodoxy. And when broadly defined in terms of its spirit and interests rather than by its technical formulations, Existentialism embraces Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, Proust, Mann, Unamuno, and Berdiaev as well as the theologians Brunner, Barth, and Tillich, The immediate foundations of Existentialism

gaard

are

the

work

(1813-1855),

of S¢gren

Friedrich

Kierke-

Nietzsche

(1844-1900), and Edmund Husserl (18591938), and its major formulators are Karl

Jaspers (1889(1905-

(1883—),_ Martin Heidegger ), and Jean-Paul = Sartre _—s+).«*Tt’ was in his concept of

“existence” (Existenz) and in his ideal of

“existential thinking” that Kierkegaard laid the groundwork of twentieth-century existentialist philosophy and_ theology. These were the product of his own intense moral and religious experiences and of his analysis of the psychological bases of re-

ligion, A radical individualist, Kierkegaard polemized against the soul-destroying qualities of industrialized society, the specu-

lative rationalism and absolutism of Hegelian Idealism, and the institutionalism of established religion. The special depravity

445

INTRODUCTION

basic problems that have agitated the entire movement.

of modern man, he insisted, is that he has “forgotten what it means to exist.” “Existence” must be distinguished from life. Plants and animals live, but only man

at the forefront of Existentialism. With a

“exists,” for only he is required to make

background

resolute decisions of moral choice. Existence comes into being with that choice. It

thology and psychiatry, and with a wide acquaintance with the history of philosophy, Jaspers is the most systematic of the Existentialists. His analysis of the present situation as involving a lack of stability and

is a choice that leads to despair, for the finite self realizes that it belongs to an

infinity which it cannot attain by itself. The only salvation is the acceptance of Christ, who is the infinite become finite, the eternal become temporal, through whom the individual may transcend himself in achieving unity with God. Existential thinking was, for Kierkegaard, an accompaniment of the achievement of existence. It eschews the categories

of logic common to science and speculative philosophy and is involved in paradox and theoretical uncertainty. But it penetrates into the character of deepest reality,

for it reveals the concrete individual as the genuine existent. Nietzsche’s affinity with Kierkegaard stemmed from the basic similarity of their consciousness of the negative impact of the social order upon the individual and their insistence

that abstract

thought, whether

philosophic or scientific, fails to grasp the true nature of reality. Like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche was a brilliant critic of human history and society and made profound analyses of the affective aspects of human life. Like Kierkegaard also, his philosophy was oriented in life and its problems, and centered on the need for a new concept of existence in terms of the demands of creative moral freedom. Unlike Kierkegaard’s, Nietzsche’s philosophy was fundamentally atheistic and offered no promise of a transcendental salvation. His views

have influenced especially the secular atheistic branch of contemporary

Existential-

ism, but with Kierkegaard he posed the

Following the first war, Karl Jaspers was in experimental

science, pa-

security, the depersonalization of the individual, and the absence of a spiritual belief and a genuine sense of purpose indicates for him the need for a philosophy of

existence. This he has undertaken to satisfy on foundations laid by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, to whose views he has given a somewhat Kantian interpretation. Jaspers’ position follows neither the Christian or-

thodoxy of Kierkegaard nor the atheism of Nietzsche, but is at least favorable to theism. In his three-volume work Philosophie

(1932), Jaspers has presented his methodology, developed under Kantian influence, which describes three basic and different methods which, taken together, constitute the whole method of philosophy as seen in its historic totality. (1) The method of philosophical world orientation, the at-

tempt to construct a comprehensive knowledge of the world by the special sciences, is regarded as partial, incomplete, and at

best capable of only relative conclusions. It is the function of philosophy to indicate the limits of scientific knowledge. (2) The elucidation of existence is existential thinking that directs the individual to realize his existence in the free conduct of his life, unconditioned action in the presence of life’s crises. (3) The way of metaphysics is the method of achieving the “one being,” the absolute, demanded by the individual over and above his knowledge of the world and of himself, a demand for transcendence

446

PHENOMENOLOGY

that issues from his knowledge of his own finiteness and limitation.

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

artistic forms, in poetry, fiction, and drama,

in psychological studies and in philosophi-

For Heidegger the central problem of

cal and theological treatises. In France it

philosophy is ontological. Under the influence of the classical metaphysicians both ancient and medieval, he attempts to answer the question “What is the nature

has taken two forms: a Christian Existentialism developed especially by the Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel, and an es-

of being?” For him this is the question

largely with the popular dramatist, novel-

“What is man?” and he interprets it in

ist, and philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre’s philosophy, in large measure re-

a manner radically different from that of his predecessors, in terms of the temporal character of human existence. Man’s existence, declares Heidegger, is known by

him to be finite and transient. This knowledge occasions in him a profound sense of tragedy, of anguish and despair, for he lives always in the presence of the knowledge that he inevitably faces death. Indeed, man may be defined as the animal that knows he is going to die. Anguish and despair bring him to a sense of nothingness, a nothingness which is. not simply death as non-existence, but a nothingness which is ultimately being itself, for from it everything comes and to it everything returns. There is no reason for existence; it is without purpose or meaning. Man exists, but he has no essence. Here is the basic technical doctrine of Existentialism,

sentially secular Existentialism

identified

sponsible for the popularizing of Existentialism, is derived primarily from Heideg-

ger’s concept of nothingness and Husserl’s phenomenological method. Fundamental is the doctrine of the primacy of existence over essence. For Sartre this means that man is responsible for what he is. He freely creates himself. Man is defined in terms of his freedom, a freedom which he cannot escape and which is therefore his condemnation, for he thereby has full responsibility for his choices. In the Age of Reason, Sartre holds that a genuine achievement of maturity necessitates a recognition that the individual bears this total responsibility. Man has no essence: he is only what he does. Authentic existence is known only by those who thus face their freedom squarely, and face it in the presence of an ultimate despair which recognizes that there is no God and that life has no meaning. To the familiar objection that such

that existence precedes essence, in contrast to the classical philosophies, which derive existence from essence. Yet man in his finitude and limitation transcends himself, not toward God, for God is dead, but toward the world, toward others, the future, from nothingness into Being, and from particularity into Being. Even before the second war German Existentialism had been introduced to

the reply of Sartre is that to raise ultimate questions and problems is to face issues that are genuinely difficult and that the liberal philosophy which brands this as pessimism is one which refuses to acknowledge that genuine human existence is pos-

France. But during the war it flourished as

sible only on the most difficult terms.

an expression of French reaction to Ger-

Martin Buber (1878—) combines a profound mysticism with an intense pas-

man invasion and occupation, and thereafter it became a prominent feature of French culture, expressing itself in various

a philosophy is frustrating and pessimistic,

sion for Jewish religion in his existentially grounded religious philosophy. Critical of

447

INTRODUCTION the orthodoxy that disparages man in the

presence of God, Buber holds that the relation of the J to the eternal Thou, which is the only absolute, is a mutual relation. In his relation with God, man is creature,

but also creator. “You know always in your heart that you need God more than every-

thing; but do you not know too that God needs you—in the fullness of his eternity needs you?”

Metaphysics

What Is M etaphysics? MARTIN

HEIDEGGEL

6c] X ]

:

HAT is metaphysics?” The question leads one to expect a discussion about metaphysics. Such is not our intention. Instead, we shall discuss a definite metaphysical question, thus, as it will appear,

on the essential situation of existence, which puts the question. We question here and now, on our own

account. Our exist-

ence—a community of scientists, teachers and students—is ruled by science. What essential things are happening to us in the

landing ourselves straight into metaphysics. Only in this way can we make it really possible for metaphysics to speak for it-

foundations

of our

existence,

now

that

science has become our passion? The fields of the sciences lie farapart.

self.

Our project begins with the presentation / Their methodologies are fundamentally _ of a metaphysical question, then goes on to different. This disrupted multiplicity of its development and ends with its answer. disciplines is to-day only held together by the technical organisation of the Universities and their faculties, and maintained as THE PRESENTATION OF A a_unit of meaning by the practical aims _ METAPHYSICAL QUESTION of those faculties. As against this, however, the root of the sciences in their essential Seen from the point of view of sound ground has atrophied. common sense, Philosophy, according to Hegel, is the “world stood on its head.” And yet—insofar as we follow their most Hence the peculiar nature of our task calls specific intentions—in all the sciences we for some preliminary definition. This arises are related to what-is. Precisely from the out of the dual nature of metaphysical point of view of the sciences no field takes questioning. precedence over another, neither Nature Firstly, every metaphysical question al- over History nor vice versa. No one methodology is superior to another. Mathematiways covers the whole range of. metaphysical problems. In every case it is itself cal knowledge is no stricter than philologithe whole. Secondly, every metaphysical cal or historical knowledge. It has merely question can only be put in such a way the characteristic of “exactness” which is that the questioner as such is by his very not to be identified with strictness. To dequestioning involved in the question. mand exactitude of history would be to From this we derive the following offend against the idea of the kind of strictpointer: metaphysical questioning has to be ness that pertains to the humanistic sci-

_put as a whole and has always to be based

ences. The world-relationship which runs

448

METAPHYSICS

449

through all the sciences _as such constrains

tific existence. If we now explicitly take

them_to-seek_what-is in itself, with a view

possession of scientific Da-sein as clarified by us, we must necessarily say: That to which the world-relationship refers is what-is—and nothing else.

to rendering it, according to its quiddity (Wasgehalt) and its modality (Seinsart), an object of investigation and basic defini-

tion. What the sciences-accomplish, ideally’

That by which every attitude is moulded is what-is—and

sential nature of all things. This distinct world-relationship — to what-is in itself is sustained and guided by a freely chosen attitude on the part of our human existence. It-is true that the pre-scientific and e€xtra-scientific activities of man also relate to what-is. But the distinction of science lies in the fact that, in an altogether specific manner,’ it and it alone explicitly allows the object itself the first and last word>-In-this objectivity of questioning, definition and proof there is a certain limited submission to what-is, so that this may reveal itself. This submissive-

attitude taken up by scientific theory_becomes the basis of a possibility: the possibility of science-acquiringa—leadership of its own, albeit limited; in the whole field

of human existence. The world-relationship of science and the attitude of man responsible for it can, of course, only be

nothing more.

That with which scientific exposition effects its “irruption” is what-is—and beyond

that, nothing. But is it not remarkable that precisely at

that point where scientific man makes sure of his surest possession he should speak of

‘something else? What is to be investigated is what-is—and nothing else; only what-is —and nothing more; simply and solely

what-is—and beyond that, nothing. But what

about this “nothing”?

Is it

enly an accident that we speak like that quite naturally? Is it only a manner of speaking—and nothing more? But why worry about this Nothing? “Nothing” is absolutely rejected by science and abandoned as null and void (das Nichtige). But if we abandon Nothing in this way are we not, by that act, really ad-

mitting it? Can we, though, speak of an admission when we admit Nothing? But perhaps this sort of cross-talk is already degenerating into an empty wrangling about words, Science,*on_ the-other-hand, has to as-

fully understood when we see and understand what is going on in the worldrelationship so maintained. Man—one entity (Seiendes) among others—“pursues” sert its soberness and seriousness afresh and science. In this “pursuit” what is happendeclare that it is concerned solely with ing is nothing less than the irruption of a particular entity called “Man” into the _what-is, Nothing—how can it be for whole of what-is, in such a way that in science anything other than a horror and a phantasm? If science is right then one and through this irruption what-is manithing stands firm: science wishes to know fests itself as and how it is. The manner in which the revelatory irruption occurs is nothing of Nothing. Such is after all the strictly scientific approach to Nothing. the chief thing that helps what-is to beWe know it by wishing to know nothing come what it is. of Nothing. This triple process of world-relationship, Science wishes to know nothing of Nothattitude, and irruption—a radical unity— ing. Even so the fact remains that at the introduces something of the inspiring simvery point where science tries to put its plicity and intensity of Da-sern into scien-

450

PHENOMENOLOGY

own essence in words it invokes the aid

of Nothing. It has recourse to the very thing it rejects. What sott of schizophrenia is this? A consideration of our momentary existence as one ruled by science has landed us in the thick of an argument. In the

course of this argument a question has already presented itself. The question only requires putting specifically: What about Nothing?

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

thinking, which is essentially always think-

ing about something, would, in thinking of Nothing, be forced to act against its

own nature. Because we continually meet with failure as soon as we try to turn Nothing into a subject, our enquiry into Nothing is already at an end—always assuming, of course, that in this enquiry “logic” is the highest court of appeal, that reason is the means and thinking the way to an original

comprehension of Nothing and its possible THE DEVELOPMENT QUESTION

OF THE

The development of our enquiry into

Nothing is bound to lead us to a position where either the answer will prove possible or the impossibility of an answer will become evident. “Nothing” is admitted. Science, by adopting an attitude of superior indifference, abandons it as that which “is

not.” All the same we shall endeavour to enquire into Nothing. What is Nothing? Even the initial approach to this question

shows us something out of the ordinary. So questioning, we postulate Nothing as something that somehow or other “is”—

as an entity (Sezendes). But it is nothing of the sort. The question as to the what and wherefore of Nothing turns the thing questioned into its opposite. The question deprives itself of its own object. Accordingly, every answer to this question is impossible from the start. For it necessarily moves in the form that Nothing “‘is” this, that or the other. Question and answer are

equally nonsensical in themselves where Nothing is concerned. Hence even the rejection by science is

superfluous. The commonly cited rule of all thinking—the proposition contradiction must be avoided—and mon “logic” rule out the question.

basic that comFor

revelation. : But, it may be asked, can the law of “logic” be assailed? Is not reason indeed the master in this enquiry into Nothing? It is in fact only with reason’s help that

we can define Nothing in the first place and postulate it as a problem—though a problem that consumes only itself. For Nothing is the negation (Verneinung) of the totality of what-is: that which is absolutely not. But at this point we bring

Nothing into the higher category of the Negative (Nichthaftes) and therefore of what is negated. But according to the overriding and unassailable teachings of “logic” negation is a specific act of reason. How, then, in our enquiry into Nothing and into the very possibility of holding such an enquiry can we dismiss reason? Yet is it

so sure just what we are postulating? Does the Not (das Nicht), the state of being negated (die Verneintheit) and hence negation itself (Verneinung), in fact represent that higher category under which Nothing takes its place as a special kind of thing negated? Does Nothing “exist” only because the Not, ie., negation exists? Or it is the other way about? Does negation and the Not exist only because. Nothing exists? This has not been decided—indeed, it has not even been ex-

plicitly asked. We assert: “Nothing” is more original than the Not and negation.

METAPHYSICS If this thesis is correct then the very possibility of negation as an act of reason,

and consequently reason itself, are somehow dependent on Nothing. How, then, can reason attempt to decide this issue? May not the apparent nonsensicality of the question and answer where Nothing is concerned only rest, perhaps, on the blind obstinacy of the roving intellect? If, however, we refuse to be led astray by the formal impossibility of an enquiry into Nothing and still continue to enquire in the face of it, we must at least satisfy what remains the fundamental prerequisite for the full pursuit of any enquiry. If Nothing as such is still to be enquired into, it follows that it must be “given” in advance. We must be able to encounter it. Where shall we seek Nothing? Where shall we find Nothing? In order to find something must we not know beforehand that it is there? Indeed we must! First and foremost we can only look if we have presupposed the presence of a thing to be looked for. But here the thing we are

looking for is Nothing. Is there after all a seeking without pre-supposition, a seeking complemented by a pure finding? However that may be, we do know “Nothing” if only as a term we bandy about every day. This ordinary hackneyed Nothing, so completely taken for granted and rolling off our tongue so casually— we can even give an off-hand “definition” of it: Nothing is the complete negation of the totality of what-is. Does not this characteristic of Nothing point, after all, in the direction from which alone it may meet us? The totality of what-is must be’ given beforehand so as to succumb as such to the negation from which Nothing is then bound to emerge.

451 But, even apart from the questionableness of this relationship between negation and Nothing, how are we, as finite beings, to render the whole of what-is in its

totality accessible im itse/f—let alone to ourselves? We can, at a pinch, think of the whole of what-is as an “idea” and then negate what we have thus imagined in our

thoughts and “think” it negated. In this way we arrive at the formal concept of an imaginary Nothing, but never Nothing itself. But Nothing is nothing, and between the imaginary and the “authentic” (eigentlich) Nothing no difference can obtain, if Nothing represents complete lack of differentiation. But the “authentic” Nothing —is this not once again that latent and nonsensical idea of a Nothing that “is”? Once again and for the last time rational objections have tried to hold up our search,

whose legitimacy can only be attested by a searching experience of Nothing. As certainly as we shall never comprehend absolutely the totality of what-is, it is equally certain that we find ourselves placed in the midst of what-is and that this is somehow revealed in totality. Ultimately there is an essential difference between comprehending the totality of what-is and finding ourselves in the midst of what-is-intotality. The former is absolutely impossible. The latter is going on in existence all the time. Naturally enough it looks as if, in our everyday activities, we were always holding on to this or that actuality (Seendes), as if we were lost in this or that region of what-is. However fragmentary the daily round may appear it still maintains what-is, in however shadowy a fashion, within the unity of a “whole.” Even when, or rather, precisely when we are not absorbed in things or in our own selves, this “wholeness” comes over us—for example, in real

boredom. Real boredom is still far off when

452

PHENOMENOLOGY

this book or that play, this activity or that

EXISTENTIALISM

AND

This may and actually does occur, albeit

stretch of idleness merely bores us. Real

rather seldom and for moments

boredom comes when “one is bored.” This profound boredom, drifting hither and thither in the abysses of existence like a mute fog, draws all things, all men and oneself along with them, together in a queer kind of indifference. This boredom

the

ily. Dread

reveals what-is in totality.

(Furcht). We are always afraid of this or

There is another possibility of such revelation, and this is in the joy we feel in

this or that definite way. “Fear of” is gener-

the presence of the being—not merely the person—of someone we love. Because

of these

moods

in which,

as

we say, we “are” this or that (i.e., bored,

happy, etc.) we find ourselves (definden uns) in the midst of what-is-in-totality, wholly pervaded by it. The affective state in which we find ourselves not only discloses, according to the mood we are in,

what-is in totality, but this disclosure is at the same time far from being a mere chance occurrence and is the groundphenomenon of our Da-sein. Our “feelings,” as we call them, are not just the fleeting concomitant of our mental or volitional behaviour, nor are they simply the cause and occasion of such behaviour, nor yet a state that is merely

“there” and in which we come to some kind of understanding with ourselves. Yet, at the very moment when our moods thus bring us face to face with

what-is-in-totality they hide the Nothing we are seeking. We are now less than ever of the opinion that mere negation of whatis-in-totality as revealed by these moods of ours can in fact lead us to Nothing. This could only happen in the first place in a mood so peculiarly revelatory in its import as to reveal Nothing itself. Does there eyer occur in human existence a mood of this kind, through which

we are brought face to face with Nothing itself?

key-mood

of dread

only, in

(Angst).

By

“dread” we do not mean “anxiety” (Aengstlichkeit), which is common enough and is akin to nervousness (Furchtsamkeit)— a mood that comes over us only too eas-

differs absolutely from

fear

that definite thing, which threatens us in ally “fear about” something. Since fear has this characteristic limitatton—“of’ and “about”—the man who is afraid, the nerv-

ous man, is always bound by the thing he is afraid of or by the state in which he finds himself. In his efforts to save himself from this “something” he becomes uncertain in relation to other things; in fact, he “loses his bearings” generally. In dread no such confusion can occur.

It would be truer to say that dread is pervaded by a peculiar kind of peace. And although dread is always “dread of,” it is not dread of this or that. “Dread of” is always a dreadful feeling “about”—but not

about this or that. The indefiniteness of what we dread is not just lack of definition: it represents the essential impossibility of defining the “what.” The indefiniteness is brought out in an illustration familiar to everybody. In dread, as we say, “one feels something

uncanny.” * What is this “something” (es) and this “one”? We are unable to say what gives “one” that uncanny feeling. “One” just feels it generally (im Ganzen). All things, and we with them, sink into a sort of indifference. But not in the sense that everything simply disappears; rather, in the

very act of drawing away from us everything’ turns towards us. This withdrawal

of what-is-in-totality, which then crowds 11st es einem canny to one.”

unheimlich.

Literally, “it is un-

METAPHYSICS

453

round us in dread, this is what oppresses

if we take care to ensure that we really do

us. There is nothing to hold on to, The

keep to the problem of Nothing, This necessitates changing man into his Dasein—a change always occasioned in us by dread—so that we may apprehend

only thing that remains and oyerwhelms

us whilst what-is slips away, is this “nothing.” Dread reveals Nothing. In dread we are “in suspense” (wir schweben). Or, to put it more precisely, dread holds us in suspense because it makes what-is-in-totality slip away from us. Hence we too, as existents in the midst of whatis, slip away from ourselves along with it. For this reason it is not “you” or “I” that has the uncanny feeling, but “one.” In the trepidation of this suspense where there is nothing to hold on to, pure Da-sein is all that remains.

Dread strikes us dumb, Because what-isin-totality slips away and thus forces Nothing to the fore, all affirmation (lit. “Is”saying: “Ist’-Sagen) fails in the face of it. The fact that when we are caught in the uncanniness of dread we often try to break the empty silence by words spoken at random, only proves the presence of Nothing. We ourselves confirm that dread reveals Nothing—when we have got over our dread. In the lucid vision which super-

venes while yet the experience is fresh in our memory we must needs say that what we were afraid of was “actually” (eigentlich: also “authentic”) Nothing. And indeed Nothing itself, Nothing as such, was there. With this key-mood of dread, therefore,

we have reached that event in our Da-sein which reveals Nothing, and which must

therefore be the starting-point of our enquiry. What

about Nothing?

THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION The answer which alone is important for our purpose has already been found

Nothing as and how it reveals itself in dread. At the same time we have finally to dismiss those characteristics of Nothing which have not emerged as a result of our

enquiry. “Nothing” is revealed in dread, but not as something that “is.” Neither can it be taken as an object. Dread is not an apprehension of Nothing. All the same, Nothing is revealed in and through dread, yet not, again, in the sense that Nothing appears as if detached and apart from what-is-in-totality when we have that “un-

canny” feeling. We would say rather: in dread Nothing functions as if at one with what-is-in-totality. What do we mean

by

“at one with”? In dread what-is-in-totality becomes untenable (Ainfallig). How? What-is is not annihilated (vernichtet) by dread, so as to leave Nothing over. How could it, see-

ing that dread finds itself completely powerless in face of what-is-in-totality! What rather happens is that Nothing shows itself as essentially belonging to what-is while this is slipping away in totality. In dread there is no annihilation of the whole of what-is in itself; but equally we cannot negate what-is-in-totality in order to reach Nothing. Apart from the fact that the explicitness of a negative statement is foreign to the nature of dread as such, we would always come too late with any such negation intended to demonstrate Nothing. For Nothing is anterior to it. As we said, Nothing is “at one with” what-is as this slips away in totality. In dread there is a retreat from some-

thing, though it is not so much a flight as a spell-bound (gebannt) peace. This

“re-

454

PHENOMENOLOGY

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

treat from” has its source in Nothing. The

it alone brings Da-sein face to face with

latter does not attract:

what-is as such.

its nature

is to

repel. This “repelling from itself” is es-

Only on the basis of the original mani-

sentially an “expelling into”: a conscious gradual relegation to the vanishing whatis-in-totality (das entgleitenlassende Verweisen auf das versinkende Seiende im

festness of Nothing can our human Dasein advance towards and enter into what-is. But insofar as Da-sein naturally relates to what-is, as that which it is not and which itself is, Da-sein qua Da-sein always proceeds from Nothing as manifest.® Da-sein means being projected into Nothing (Hineingehaltenheit in das

Ganzen). And this total relegation to the vanishing

what-is-in-totality—such

being

the form in which Nothing crowds round us in dread—is the essence of Nothing:

nihilation.? Nihilation is neither an annihilation (Vernichtung) of what-is, nor does it spring from negation (Verneinung). Nihilation cannot be reckoned in terms of annihilation or negation at all.

Nothing “nihilates” (nzchtet) of itself. Nihilation is not a fortuitous event; but,

understood as the relegation to the van-

ishing what-is-in-totality, it reveals the latter in all its till now undisclosed strangeness as the pure “Other”—contrasted with Nothing. Only in the clear night of dread’s Nothingness is what-is as such revealed in all its original overtness (Offenheit): that it “js” and is not Nothing. This verbal appendix “and not Nothing” is, however, not an @ posterior: explanation but an a priort which alone makes possible any revelation of what-is. The essence of Noth-

ing as original nihilation liés inthis: that 2 Nichtung. The word “nihilation” has been coined in the hope of conveying Heidegger’s meaning. His thought, which is also expressed in the verb michten at the end of this paragraph and elsewhere, is very difficult to reproduce in the negative terms of its German _ formulation. Nichtung is a causative process, and nichten a causative and intransitive verb. Ordinarily we would express the process in positive terms and would speak, for instance, of the “becoming” of Nothing or the “de-becoming” of something, as would be clear in a term like Nichtswerdung or the Entwerdung of Meister Eckhart. A concept as important to philosophy as was the acceptance by psychology of an independent dynamic deathinstinct (Todestrieb).

Nichts).

:

Projecting into Nothing, Da-sein is already beyond what-is-in-totality. This “being beyond” (Hinaussein) what-is we call Transcendence. Were Da-sein not, in its essential basis, transcendent, that is to say, Were it not projected from the start into Nothing, it could never relate to what-is, hence could have no self-relationship. Without the original manifest character of Nothing there is no self-hood and no freedom. Here we have the answer to our question about-Nothing. Nothing is neither an object nor anything that “is” at all. Nothing occurs neither by itself nor “apart from” what-is, as a sort of adjunct. Nothing is that which makes the revelation of what-is as such possible for our human existence. Nothing not merely provides the conceptual opposite of what-is but is also an original part of essence (Wesen).

It is in the Being (Sein) of what-is that the nihilation of Nothing (das Nichten des Nichts) occurs. But now we

must

voice a suspicion

which has been withheld far too long al: ready. If it is only through “projecting into Nothing” that our Da-sein relates to 8 Cf. “Tao Te Ching” XL: for though all creatures under heaven are the products of Being, Being itself is the product of Not-being. Trans.

METAPHYSICS

455

what-is, in other words, has any existence,

and if Nothing is only made manifest originally in dread, should we not have to be in a continual suspense of dread in order to exist at all? Have we not, however, ourselves admitted that this original dread is a rare thing? But above all, we all exist and are related to actualities which we ourselves are not and which we ourselves are—without this dread. Is not

of itself, seeing that it can only negate when something is there to be negated? But how can a thing that is or ought to be negated be seen as something negative (nichthaft) unless all thinking as such is

on the look-out for the Not? But the Not can only manifest itself when its source—

the nihilation of Nothing and hence Nothing itself—is drawn out of concealment.

The Not does not come into being through

this dread, therefore, an arbitrary inven-

negation, but negation is based on the Not,

tion and the Nothing attributed to it an

which derives from the nihilation of Nothing. Nor is negation only a mode of nihilat-

exaggeration? Yet what do we mean when we say that this original dread only occurs in rare moments? Nothing but this: that as far as we are concerned and, indeed, generally speaking, Nothing is always distorted out of its original state. By what? By the fact that in one way or another we completely lose ourselves in what-is. The more we turn to what-is in our dealings the less we allow it to slip away, and the more we turn aside from Nothing. But all the more certainly do we thrust ourselves into the open superficies of existence. And yet this perpetual if ambiguous aversion from Nothing accords, within certain limits, with the essential meaning of Nothing. It—Nothing in the sense of nihilation—relegates us to what-is. Nothing “nihilates” unceasingly, without our really knowing what is happening—at least, not with our everyday knowledge. What could provide more telling evidence of the perpetual, far-reaching and

yet ever-dissimulated overtness of Nothing in our existence, than’ negation?

This is

supposed to belong to the very nature of human thought. But negation cannot by any stretch of imagination produce the Not out of itself as a means of distinguishing and contrasting given things, thrusting this Not between them, as it were. How indeed could negation produce the Not out

ing behaviour, i., behaviour based a priori on the nihilation of Nothing. Herewith we have proved the above thesis in all essentials: Nothing is the source of negation, not the other way about. If this breaks the sovereignty of reason in the field of enquiry into Nothing and Being, then the fate of the rule of “logic” in philosophy is also decided. The very idea of “logic” disintegrates in the vortex of a more original questioning. However often and however variously negation—whether explicit or not—permeates all thinking, it cannot of itself be a completely valid witness to the manifestation of Nothing as an essential part of Da-sein. For negation cannot be cited either as the sole or even the chief mode of nihilation, with which, because of the nihilation of Nothing, Da-sein is saturated. More abysmal than the mere propriety of

rational negation is the harshness of opposition and the violence of loathing. More responsible the pain of refusal and the mercilessness of an interdict. More oppressive the bitterness of renunciation. These possible modes of nihilating behaviour, through which our Da-sein endures, even if it does not master, the fact

of our being thrown upon the world * are 4 Geworfenheit. Literally “‘thrownness.” M. Corbin, in his French

version

of this essay,

renders

PHENOMENOLOGY

456

not modes of negation merely. That does hot prevent them from expressing them-

selves in and through negation. Indeed, it is only then that the empty expanse of negation is really revealed. The permeation

of Da-sein by nihilating modes of behaviour points to the perpetual, everdissimulated

manifestness

of

Nothing,

which only dread reveals in all its originality. Heré, of course, we have the reason why original dread is generally repressed in Da-sein. Dread is there, but sleeping. All Da-sein quivers with its breathing: the pulsation is slightest in beings that are

timorous, “Yea;

and

is imperceptible

yea!” and

“Nay,

nay!”

in the of busy

people; it is readiest in the reserved, and surest of all in the courageous. But this last pulsation only occurs for the sake of that for which it expends itself, so as to safeguard the supreme greatness of Dasein. The dread felt by the courageous cannot be contrasted with the joy or even the comfortable enjoyment of a peaceable life. It stands—on the hither side of all such contrasts—in secret union with the serenity and gentleness of creative longing.

Original dread can be awakened in Dasein at any time. It need not be awakened by any unusual occurrence. Its action corresponds in depth to the shallowness of its possible cause. It is always on the brink,

yet only seldom does it take the leap and drag us

with

it into the state of sus-

pense. Because our Da-sein projects into Nothing on this basis of hidden dread, man becomes the “stand-in” (Platzhalter) for Nothing. So finite are we that we cannot, of our own resolution and will, bring ourthe term by déreliction. The underlying thought would appear to be that in Da-sein we are “thrown there” and left derelict, like a thing cast up by the waves on the seashore.

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

selves originally face to face with Noth-

ing. So bottomlessly does finalisation (Verendlichung) dig into existence that our freedom’s peculiar and profoundest finality fails. This projection into Nothing on the basis of hidden dread is the overcoming of what-is-in-totality: Transcendence.

Our enquiry into Nothing will, we said, lead us straight to metaphysics. The name “metaphysics” derives from the Greek Ta peta Ta hvorkd. This quaint title was later interpreted as characterising the sort of enquiry which goes peréd—trans, beyond —what-is as such. Metaphysics is an enquiry over and above what-is, with a view to winning it back again as such and in totality for our understanding. In our quest for Nothing there is similar “going beyond” what-is, conceived as what-is-in-totality. It therefore turns out to be a “metaphysical” question. We said in the beginning that such questioning had a double characteristic: every metaphysical

question at once embraces the whole of metaphysics, and in every question the being (Da-sein) that questions is himself caught up in the question.

To what extent does the question about Nothing span and pervade the whole of metaphysics? Since ancient times metaphysics has expressed itself on the subject of Nothing in the highly ambiguous ptoposition: ex

nihilo nihil fit—nothing comes from nothing. Even though the proposition as argued never made Nothing itself the real prob-

lem, it nevertheless brought out very explicitly, from the prevailing notions about Nothing, the over-riding fundamental concept of what-is. Classical metaphysics conceives Nothing as signifying Not-being (Nichtseiendes),

that is to say, unformed matter which is

METAPHYSICS

457

powerless to form itself into “being” ® and cannot therefore present an appearance

(efdos). What has “being” is the selfcreating product (Gebdilde) which presents itself as such in an image

(Bild), i.e.,

something seen (Anblick). The origin, law and limits of this ontological concept are discussed as little as Nothing itself. Christian dogma, on the other hand, denies the truth of the proposition ex nihilo nihil fit and gives a twist to the meaning of Nothing, so that it now comes to mean the absolute absence of all “being” ® outside God: ex nthilo fit—ens creatum: the

created being is made out of nothing. “Nothing” is now the conceptual opposite of what truly and authentically (eigentlich) “is”; it becomes the sammum ens, God as ens increatum.

Here, too, the in-

terpretation of Nothing points to the fundamental concept of what-is. Meta-

Nothing ceases to be the vague opposite of what-is: it now reveals itself as integral to the Being of what-is.

“Pure Being and pure Nothing are thus one and the same.” This proposition of

Hegel’s (“The Science of Logic,” I, WW III, p. 74) is correct. Being and Nothing hang together, but not because the two

things—from

the point of view of the

Hegelian concept of thought—are one in their indefiniteness and immediateness, but because Being itself is finite in essence

and is only revealed in the Transcendence of Da-sein as projected into Nothing, If indeed the question of Being as such is the all-embracing question of metaphysics, then the question of Nothing proves to be such as to span the whole metaphysical field. But at the same time the question of Nothing pervades the whole of metaphysics only because it

physical discussion of what-is, however,

forces us to face the problem of the origin

moves on the same plane as the enquiry into Nothing. In both cases the questions concerning Being (Sezm) and Nothing as such remain unasked. Hence we need not

of negation, that is to say, forces a decision about the legitimacy of the rule of

be worried by the difficulty that if God creates “out of nothing” he above all must be able to relate himself to Nothing. But if God is God he cannot know Nothing, assuming that the “Absolute” excludes from itself all nullity (Nichtigkeit). This crude historical reminder shows Nothing as the conceptual opposite of

what truly and authentically “is,” i.e. as the negation of it. But once Nothing is somehow made a problem this contrast not

only undergoes clearer definition but also arouses the true and authentic metaphysical question regarding the Being of what-is. 5 Here Seiendes has been translated by “being,” with the proviso that it be understood as “being” in simple contrast to ‘“‘not-being.” Heidegger’s Sein is always rendered as “Being” with a capital B. 8 See note 5.

“logic” in metaphysics. The old proposition ex nihilo nihil fit will then acquire a different meaning, and one appropriate to the problem of Being itself, so as to run: ex nihilo omne ens qua ens fit: every being, so far as it is a being, is made out of nothing. Only in the Nothingness of Da-sein can what-is-in-totality— and this in accordance with its peculiar possibilities, i.e., in a finite manner—come to itself. To what extent, then, has the en-

quiry into Nothing, if indeed it be a metaphysical one, included our own questing Da-sein? Our Da-sein as experienced here and now is, we said, ruled by science. If our Da-sein, so ruled, is put into this question concerning Nothing, then it follows that it must itself have been put in question by this question. The simplicity and intensity of scientific

458

PHENOMENOLOGY

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

Da-sein consist in this: that it relates in a

nature of man. It is neither a department

special manner to what-is and to this alone. Science would like to ubandon Nothing

of scholastic philosophy nor a field of chance ideas. Metaphysics is the ground-

with a superior gesture. But now, in this

phenomenon of Da-sein. It is Da-sein itself. Because the truth of metaphysics is so unfathomable there is always the lurking danger of profoundest error. Hence no

question of Nothing, it becomes evident that scientific Da-sein is only possible when projected into Nothing at the outset. Science can only come to terms with itself when it does not abandon Nothing. The alleged soberness and superiority of science

becomes ridiculous if it fails to take Nothing seriously. Only because Nothing is obvious can science turn what-is into an object of investigation. Only when science proceeds from metaphysics can it conquer its essential task ever afresh, which consists not in the accumulation and classification

of knowledge but in the perpetual discovery of the whole realm of truth, whether of Nature or of History. Only because Nothing is revealed in the very basis of our Da-sein is it possible for the uttter strangeness of what-is to dawn on us. Only when the strangeness of what-is forces itself upon us does it awaken and invite our wonder. Only because of wonder, that is to say, the revelation of Nothing, does the “Why?” spring to our lips. Only because this “Why?” is possible as such can we seek for reasons and proofs in a definite way. Only because we can ask and prove are we fated to become enquirers in this life. The enquiry into Nothing puts us, the enquirers, ourselves in question. It is a metaphysical one. Man’s Da-sein can only relate to.what-is by projecting into Nothing. Going beyond what-is is of the essence of Da-sein. But this “going beyond” is metaphysics itself. That is why metaphysics belongs to the

scientific discipline can hope to equal the seriousness of metaphysics. Philosophy can never be measured with the yard-stick of

the idea of science. Once the question we have developed as to the nature of Nothing is really asked by and among our own selves, then we are not bringing in metaphysics from the outside. Nor are we simply “transporting” ourselves into it. It is completely out of our power to transport ourselves into metaphysics because, in so far as we exist, we are already there. dice ydp, © dire, éveoti Tis piAocodia TH Tov avdpos Savoia

(Plato: Phaedrus 279a). While man exists there will be philosophising of some sort. Philosophy, as we call it, is the setting in motion of metaphysics: and in metaphysics philosophy comes to itself and sets about its explicit tasks. Philosophy is only set in motion by leaping with all its being, as

only it can, into the ground-possibilities of being as a whole. For this leap the following things

are

of crucial

importance:

firstly, leaving room for what-is-in-totality; secondly, letting oneself go into Nothing, that is to say, freeing oneself from the idols we all have and to which we are wont to go cringing; lastly, letting this “suspense” range where it will, so that it may continually swing back again to the

ground-question of metaphysics, which is wrested from Nothing itself: Why is there any Being at all—why not far rather Nothing? ee

Logic, Semantics, and Scientific Method DODO

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The Natural Standpomt and Its Suspension EDMUND HUSSERL 27. LHE WORLD OF THE NATURAL STANDPOINT: I AND MY WORLD ABOUT ME Our first outlook upon life is that of natural human beings, imaging, judging, feeling, willing, “from the natural standpoint.” Let us make clear to ourselves what this means in the form of simple meditations which we can best carry on in the

first person. I am aware of a world, spread out in space endlessly, and in time becoming and become, without end. I am aware of it, that means, first of all, I discover it immediately, intuitively, I experience it. Through sight, touch, hearing, etc., in the different ways of sensory perception, corporeal things somehow spatially distributed are for me simply there, in verbal or figurative sense “present,” whether or not I pay them special attention by busying myself with them, considering, thinking, feeling, willing. Animal beings also, perhaps men, are immediately there for me; I look up, I see them, I hear them coming towards me, I grasp them by the hand; speaking with them, I understand immediately what they are sensing and thinking, the feelings that stir them, what they wish or will. They too are present as realities in my field of intuition, even when I pay them no attention. But it is not necessary 450

that they and other objects likewise should be present precisely in my field of perception. For me real objects are there, definite, more or less familiar, agreeing with what is actually perceived without being themselves perceived or even intuitively present. I can let my attention wander from the writing-table I have just seen and observed, through the unseen portions of the room behind my back to the verandah, into the garden, to the children in the summerhouse, and so forth, to all the objects concerning which I precisely “know” that they are there and yonder in my immediate co-perceived surroundings—a knowledge which has nothing of conceptual thinking

in it, and first changes into clear intuiting with the bestowing of attention, and even then only partially and for the most part very imperfectly. But not even with the added reach of this intuitively clear or dark, distinct or indistinct co-present margin, which forms a continuous ring around the actual field of perception, does that world exhaust itself which in every waking moment is in some conscious measure “present” before

me. It reaches rather in a fixed order of being into the limitless beyond. What is actually perceived, and what is more or less clearly co-present and determinate (to some extent at least), is partly pervaded, partly girt about with a dimly apprehended

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depth or fringe of indeterminate reality.

I can pierce it with rays from the illuminating focus of attention with varying success. Determining representations, dim at first, then livelier, fetch me something out, a chain of such recollections takes shape, the circle of determinacy extends ever farther, and eventually so far that the

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EXISTENTIALISM

ever being able to change this, set in relation to a world which, through its constant changes, remains one and ever

the same. It is continually “present” for me, and I myself am a member of it. Therefore this world is not there for me as a mere

world of facts and affairs, but,

with the same immediacy, as a world of

connexion with the actual field of percep-

values, a world of goods, a practical world.

tion as the immediate environment is established. But in general the issue is a dif ferent one: an empty mist of dim indeterminacy gets studded over with intuitive

Without further effort on my part I find

possibilities or presumptions, and only the

beautiful or ugly, agreeable or disagreeable, pleasant or unpleasant, and so forth.

“form” of the world as “world” is foretokened. Moreover, the zone of indeterminacy is infinite. The misty horizon that can never be completely outlined remains necessarily there. As it is with the world in its ordered being as a spatial present—the aspect I have so far been considering—so likewise

is it with the world in respect to its ordered being in the succession of time. This world now present to me, and in every waking “now” obviously so, has its temporal horizon, infinite in both directions, its known and unknown, its intimately alive and its unalive past and future. Moving freely within the moment of experience which brings what is present into my intuitional grasp, I can follow up these connexions

of the reality which immediately surrounds me. I can shift my standpoint in space and time, look this way and that, turn temporally forwards and backwards; I can provide for myself constantly new and more or less clear and meaningful perceptions and representations, and images also more or less clear, in which

I make

intuitable

to myself whatever can possibly exist really or supposedly in the steadfast order of space and time. In this way, when consciously awake, I

find myself at all times, and without my

the things before me furnished not only

with the qualities that befit their positive nature, but with value-characters

such as

Things in their immediacy stand there as objects to be used, the “table” with its “books,” the “glass to drink from,” the “vase,” the “piano,” and so forth. These values and practicalities, they too belong to the constitution of the “actually present” objects as such, irrespective of my turning or not turning to consider them or indeed any other objects. The same considerations

apply of course just as well to the men and beasts in my surroundings as to “mere things.” They are my “friends” or my “foes,” my “servants” or “superiors,”

“strangers” or “relatives,” and so forth. 28. THE “COGITO.” MY NATURAL WORLD-ABOUT-ME AND THE IDEAL WORLDSABOUT-ME It is then to this world, the world in which I find myself and which is also my world-about-me, that the complex forms of

my manifold consciousness the interests meaning into

and shifting spontancities stand related: observing of research the bringing conceptual form through

of in of de-

scription; comparing and distinguishing, collecting and counting, presupposing and inferring, the theorizing activity of con-

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

sciousness, in short, in its different forms and stages. Related to it likewise are the diverse acts and states of sentiment and will: approval and disapproval, joy and sorrow, desire and aversion, hope and fear, decision and action. All these, together with the sheer acts of the Ego, in which I become acquainted with the world as immediately given me, through spontaneous tendencies to turn towards it and to grasp it, are included under the one Cartesian expression: Cogito. In the natural

urge of life I live continually in this fundamental form of all “wakeful’ living, whether in addition I do or do not assert the cogito, and whether I am or am not “re-

flectively” concerned with the Ego and the cogitare. If I am so concerned, a néw cogito has become livingly active, which for its part is not reflected upon, and so not objective for me. I am present to myself continually as someone who perceives, represents, thinks, feels, desires, and

so forth; and for the

most part herein I find myself related in present experience to the fact-world which is constantly about me. But I am not always so related, not every cogito in which I live has for its cogitatum things, men, objects or contents of one kind-or another. Perhaps I am busied with pure numbers and the laws they symbolize: nothing of this sort is present in the world about me, this world of “real fact.” And yet the world

of numbers

also is there for mé,

as the field of objects with which I am arithmetically busied; while I am thus occupied some numbers or constructions of a numerical kind will be at the focus of vision, girt by an arithmetical horizon partly defined, partly not; but obviously this being-there-for-me, like the being there at all, is something very different from this. The arithmetical world is there for me only when and so long as I occupy the

METHOD

461

arithmetical standpoint. But the natural world, the world in the ordinary sense of the word, is constantly there for me, so long as I live naturally and look in its direction. I am then at the “natural standpoint,” which is just another way of stating the same thing. And there is no need to modify these conclusions when I proceed to appropriate to myself the arithmetical world, and other similar “worlds,” by adopting the corresponding standpoint. The natural world still remains “present,” I am at the natural standpoint after as

well as before, and in this respect undisturbed by the adoption of new standpoints. If my cogito is active only in the worlds proper to the new. standpoints, the natural world remains unconsidered; it is now the background for my consciousness as act, but it is not the encircling sphere within which an arithmetical world finds its true and proper place. The two worlds are present together but disconnected, apart, that is, from their relation to the Ego, in virtue of which I can freely direct my

glance or my acts to the one or to the other.

29. THE “OTHER” EGO-SUBJECT AND THE INTERSUBJECTIVE NATURAL WORLDABOUT-ME Whatever holds good for me personally, also holds good, as I know, for all other men whom I find present in my worldabout-me. Experiencing them as. men, I understand and take them as Ego-subjects, units like myself, and related to their natural surroundings. But this in such wise that I apprehend the world-about-them and the world-about-me objectively as one and the

same

world,

which

differs

in each

case only through affecting consciousness differently. Each has his place whence he

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sees the things that are present, and each enjoys accordingly different appearances of

the things. For each, again, the fields of perception and memory actually present are different, quite apart from the fact that even that which is here intersubjectively known in common is known in different ways, is differently apprehended, shows different grades of clearness, and so forth. Despite all this, we come to understandings with our neighbours, and set up in common an objective spatio-temporal factworld as the world about us that is there for us all, and to which we ourselves none the less belong. 30. THE

GENERAL THESIS THE NATURAL STANDPOINT

OF

That which we have submitted towards the characterization of what is given to us from the natural standpoint, and thereby of the natural standpoint itself, was a piece of pure description prior to all “theory.” In these studies we stand bodily aloof from all theories, and by “theories” we here mean anticipatory ideas of every kind. Only as facts of our environment, not as agencies for uniting facts validly together,

do theories concern us at all. But we do not set ourselves the task of continuing the pure description and raising it to a systematically inclusive and exhaustive characterization of the data, in their full length and breadth, discoverable from the natural standpoint (or from any standpoint, we might add, that can be knit up with the same in a common consent). A task such as this can and must—as scientific—be undertaken, and it is one of extraordinary importance, although so far scarcely noticed. Here it is not ours to attempt. For us who are striving towards the entrancegate of phenomenology all the necessary

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EXISTENTIALISM

work in this direction has already been carried out; the few features pertaining to the natural standpoint which we need are of a quite general character, and have al-| ready figured in our descriptions, and been sufficiently and fully clarified. We even made a special point of securing this full measure of clearness. We emphasize a most important point once again in the sentences that follow: I find continually present and standing over against me the one spatio-temporal factworld to which I myself belong, as do all

other men found in it and related in the same way to it. This “fact-world,” as the word already tells us, I find to be out there, and also take it just as it gives itself to me as something that exists out there. All doubting and rejecting of the data of the natural world leaves standing the general thesis of the natural standpoint. “The” world is as fact-world always there; at the

most it is at odd points “other” than I supposed, this or that under such names as “illusion,” “hallucination,” and the like,

must be struck out of it, so to speak; but the “it” remains ever, in the sense of the general thesis, a world that has its being out there. To know it more comprehensively, more trustworthily, more perfectly than the naive lore of experience is able to do, and to solve all the problems of scientific knowledge which offer themselves upon its ground, that is the goal of the sciences of the natural standpoint. 31. RADICAL ALTERATION OF THE NATURAL THESIS “DISCONNEXION,” “BRACKETING” Instead now of remaining at this standpoint, we propose to alter it radically. Our aim must be to convince ourselves of the

LOGIC,

SEMANTICS,

AND

SCIENTIFIC

possibility of this alteration on grounds of principle. The General Thesis according to which the real world about me is at all times known not merely in a general way as something apprehended, but as a factworld that has its being out there, does not consist of course im an act proper, in an articulated judgment about existence. It is and remains something all the time the standpoint is adopted, that is, it endures persistently during the whole course of our life of natural endeavour. What has been at any time perceived clearly, or obscurely made present, in short everything out of the world of nature known through experience and prior to any think-

ing, bears in its totality and in all its articu-

METHOD

463

secluded in its essence, must be brought clearly to light. The attempt to doubt everything has its place in the realm of our perfect freedom. We can attempt to doubt anything and everything, however convinced we may be concerning what we doubt, even though the evidence which seals our assurance is completely adequate. Let us consider what is essentially involved in an act of this kind. He who attempts to doubt is attempting to doubt “being” of some form or other, or it may be Being expanded into such predicative forms as “It is,” “It is this or thus,’ and the like. The attempt does not affect the form of Being itself. He who doubts, for instance, whether an object, whose Being

lated sections the character “‘present,” “out

he does not doubt, is constituted in such

there,” a character which can function es-

and such a way, doubts the way it 1s constituted. We can obviously transfer this way of speaking from the doubting to the attempt at doubting. It is clear that we cannot doubt the Being of anything, and in the same act of consciousness (under

sentially as the ground of support for an explicit (predicative) existential judgment which is in agreement with the character it is grounded upon. If we express that same judgment, we know quite well that in so doing we have simply put into the form of a statement and grasped as a predication what already lay somehow in the original experience, or lay there as the character of something “present to one’s hand.”

We can treat the potential and unexpressed thesis exactly as we do the thesis of the explicit judgment. A procedure of this sort, possible at any time, is, for instance, the attempt to doubt everything which Descartes, with an entirely different

end in view, with the purpose of setting up an absolutely indubitable sphere of Being, undertook to carry through. We link on here, but add directly and emphatically that this attempt to doubt everything should serve us only as a device of method, helping us to stress certain points which by its means, as though

the unifying form of simultaneity) bring what is substantive to this Being under the terms of the Natural Thesis, and so confer upon it the character of “being actually there” (vorhanden). Or to put the same in another way: we cannot at once doubt and hold for certain one and the same quality of Being. It is likewise clear that the attempt to doubt any object of awareness in respect of its being actually there necessarily conditions a certain suspension (Aufhebung) of the thesis; and it is precisely this that interests us. It is not a transformation of the thesis into its antithesis, of positive into negative;

not

a transformation

it is also

into presumption,

suggestion, indecision, doubt (in one or another sense of the word); such shifting indeed is not at our free pleasure. Rather is it something quite unique. We do not

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PHENOMENOLOGY

abandon the thesis we have adopted, we make no change in our conviction, which remains in itself what \t is so long as we do not introduce new motives of judgment, which we precisely refrain from doing. And yet the thesis undergoes a modification—whilst remaining in itself what it is, we set it as it were “out of action,” we “disconnect it,’ “bracket it.” It still re-

mains

there like the bracketed

in the

bracket, like the disconnected outside the connexional system. We can also say: The

thesis is experience as lived (Evlebnis), but we make “no use’ of it, and by that, of course, we do not indicate privation

(as when we say of the ignorant that he makes no use of a certain thesis); in this case rather, as with all parallel expressions, we are dealing with indicators that point to a definite but unique form of consciousness, which clamps on to the original simple thesis (whether it actually or even predicatively posits existence or not), and transvalues it in a quite peculiar way. This transvaluing is a concern of our full freedom, and 1s opposed to all cognitive attitudes that would set themselves up as co-ordinate with the thesis, and yet within the unity of “simultaneity” remain incompatible with it, as indeed it is in general with all attitudes whatsoever in the

strict sense of the word. In the attempt to doubt applied to a thesis which, as we presuppose, is certain and tenaciously held, the “disconnexion” takes place in and with a modification of the antithesis, namely, with the “supposition” (Ansetzung) of Non-Being, which is thus the partial basis of the attempt to

doubt. With Descartes this is so markedly the case that one can say that his uni-

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EXISTENTIALISM

doubt, nor therefore in its exact and completely sufficing analysis. We extract only the phenomenon of “bracketing” or “disconnecting,” which is obviously not limited :

to that of the attempt to doubt, although it can be detached from it with special ease, but can appear in other contexts also,

and with no less ease independently. In relation to every thesis and wholly uncoerced we can use this peculiar éroxn, a certain refraining from judgment which is compatible with the unshaken and unshakable because self-evidencing conviction of Truth. The thesis is “put out of action,”

bracketed, it passes off into the modified status of a “bracketed thesis,” and the judgment simpliciter into “bracketed judgment.” Naturally one should not simply identify this consciousness with that of “mere supposal,” that nymphs, for instance, are dancing in a ring; for thereby no disconnecting of a living conviction that goes on living takes place, although from another side the close relation of the two forms of consciousness lies clear. Again, we are not concerned here with supposal in the sense of “assuming” or taking for granted, which in the equivocal speech of current usage may also be expressed in the words:

“T suppose (I make the assumption) that it is so and so.” Let us add further that nothing hinders us from speaking of bracketing correlatively also, in respect of an objectivity to be posited, whatever be the region or cate-

gory to which it belongs. What is meant in this case is that every thesis related to this objectivity must be disconnected and changed into its bracketed counterpart. On closer view, moreover, the “bracketing”

versal attempt at doubt is just an attempt at universal denial. We disregard this pos-

image is from the outset better suited to

sibility here, we are not interested in every analytic component of .the attempt~ to

sion “to put out of action” better suits the sphere of the Act or of Consciousness.

the sphere of the object, just as the expres-

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METHOD

465

We can now. let the universal éxoyn in

from any thought of objecting to them in the least degree, J disconnect them all, I make absolutely no use of their standards, I do not appropriate a single one of the

the sharply defined and novel sense we have given to it step into the place of the

even though their evidential value is per-

32. THE

PHENOMENOLOGICAL €70X >

,

propositions that enter into their systems,

Cartesian attempt at universal doubt. But on good grounds we /imit the universality of this érox7. For were it as inclusive as it is in general capable of being, then since every thesis and every judgment can be modified freely to any extent, and every

truth concerning the realities of this world. I may accept it only after I have placed it

objectivity that we can judge or criticize

in the bracket. That means:

can be bracketed, no field would be left over for unmodified judgments, to say nothing of a science. But our design is just. to discover a new scientific domain, such as might be won precisely through the method of bracketing, though only

modified consciousness of the judgment as it appears in disconnexion, and not as it figures within the science as its proposition, a proposition which claims to be valid and whose validity I recognize and make use of.

fect, I take none of them, no one of them

serves me for a foundation—so \ong, that is, as it is understood, in the way these sciences

themselves

understand

it, as

a

only in the

through a definitely limited form of it.

The éroxy here in question will not be

The limiting consideration can be indicated in a word. We put out of action the general thesis which belongs to the essence of the natural standpoint, we place in brackets whatever it includes respecting the nature of Being: this entire natural world therefore which is continually “there for us,” “present to our hand,” and will ever remain there, is a “fact-world” of which we continue to be conscious, even though it pleases us to put it in brackets. If I do this, as I am fully free to do, I do not then deny this “world,” as though I were a sophist, 1 do not doubt that it 1s there as though I were a sceptic; but I use the “phenomenological” ézoxy7, which completely bars me from using any judgment that concerns spatio-temporal existence (Dasein). Thus all sciences which relate to this natural world, though they stand never so firm to me, though they fill me with wondering admiration, though I am far

confused with that which positivism demands, and against which, as we were compelled to admit, it is itself an offender. We are not concerned at present with removing the preconceptions which trouble the pure positivity (Sachlichkeit) of research, with the constituting of a science “free from theory” and “free from metaphysics” by bringing all the grounding back to the immediate data, nor with the means of reach-

ing such ends, concerning whose value there is indeed no question. What we demand lies along another line. The whole world as placed within the nature-setting and presented in experience as real, taken completely “free from all theory,” just as it is in reality experienced, and made clearly manifest in and through the linkings of our experiences, has now no validity for us, it must

be set in brackets, untested

indeed

but also uncontested. Similarly all theories and sciences, positivistic or otherwise, which relate to this world, however good they may be, succumb to the same fate.

Ethics and Theory of Value OO

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Values As Essences

NICOLAI HARTMANN (6) GOODS AND THEIR VALUES ee

are not only independent of the

things that are valuable (goods), but are actually their prerequisite. They are that whereby things—and in the wider sense real entities and relations of every kind— possess the character of “goods”; that is, they are that through which things are valuable. To use Kant’s phrase: Values, in so far as they are connected with actual situations, are “conditions of the possibility” of goods. On the other hand, it is an indisputable fact that we cannot otherwise discern the values of things than in “goods”; and it is easy to prove this fact empirically. Is it not evident that the values of things are

abstracted from the things of value, in other words, that our knowledge of these

values is derived from the experience which we have of the goods? But what is experience of goods? It is that we are acquainted with one thing as agreeable, another as useful, serviceable, advantageous. In this experience a knowl-

edge of the value of the agreeable, of the useful, the serviceable, is presupposed. Here one “experiences” only that the object before one proves itself to be a means to something else, the value of which was

already fixed; and this fixity is something

felt, not reasoned

about, it is such that

there is no doubt about it either before or after the “experience.” It is something a promis In fact, how could things be accepted by anyone as goods, unless independently of their actuality there were an appreciation of them which told him that they possess a value? Surely value does not inhere indiscriminately in all things; there are bad things as well as good. Now, as there is the same kind of Being in things good and bad, the same reality, wherein could anyone discriminate between them, if his sense of value did not inform him? He

must possess beforehand the standard; for example, the standard of the pleasant and the unpleasant, and from the start things must fall for him under this standard, they must divide themselves according to it into things pleasant and unpleasant. He must have an elemental feeling which connects all things and relations that come within his range of vision with the value of life, and he thereby separates them into goods and evils. Otherwise, as soon as one asked:

Why is this good? There would be an eternal circle of back-reference. If one answers “because it is good for that other thing,” the question immediately arises: “And what is that good for?” So on to in-

finity; and so long as it continues to move only in the sphere of goods, it evidently 466

ETHICS

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VALUE

turns in a circle. It does not come to a rest until one no longer answers with a good but with a value—that is, with what first converts things in general into goods. The question “What am I working for?” is not answered by such replies as “for money” or “for a livelihood.” It is only to be answered by the value of life itself, for the sake of which

it is worth

while to acquire an income. Or, if it is not the value of life (for the ready retort may be made “Ts bare life itself then worth working for?”), it is surely some specific form of life, an ideal, in short a valuable life, with which one can answer the question. But therein is conceded the apriorical reference of work to a value striven for; in this case the reference is to a value higher than that of life itself, a value which alone makes life “valuable” and gives meaning to work. Only here does it become quite evident that appraisement of value precedes experience. For that which is striven for is still unreal, at least

not yet “experienced.” If anyone objects that a man may have the experience of value from others who have acquired it by working, the answer must be: he cannot in this way have experienced the worth of that kind of life which is striven for; rather is the reverse true: he must have already had the valuational standard

for it, in order to know

that that kind of life which others have attained is of value. This feeling must first tell him that it is a valuable thing. For the mere fact that it confronts him as an experienced phenomenon does not in-

467

Even the extremest example of another’s striving could not convince him that there a value lay, unless there were in the example itself an aprioristic presupposition which had been introduced into it without being noticed—namely, the presupposition that the other person’s striving also aims at a value proper and is determined by a primary feeling for it. This presupposition

continues active even when one’s own sense of value is lacking, when one does not know what another is striving for or why he is working, or to what he is devoting his energies. And that peculiar attraction exercised by another’s example, its power of suggestion, rests upon this presupposition, which is not a reasoned judgment, but an involuntary and emotional judgment, and which exhibits the anticipatory character of everything genuinely aprioristic. In a word, none of the various empirical elements which enter here diminish the apriority of the values which dominate the sphere of goods. It is interesting to note how Plato, in the Lysis, clearly grasped this fundamental relationship. He sets it forth in reference to the conception of the ¢iAov, the narrower meaning of which, the value of love, approaches convincingly near to the larger

meaning of the valuable in general. If we look for the essence of a ¢iAov in something else for the sake of which it is pidoy, it becomes evident that this something else must itself already be a idov. If this backward tracing goes on in infinitum, if it nowhere comes up against a first, an

volve the further fact that it is worth

absolute, then the whole

striving for. Countless kinds of life are encountered by him in experience; but he does not select every one of them as the goal of his own striving. If he is to select, he must already have the point of view

it is inconceivable why all those dependent

from which to select.

thing else. This, then, is the proper, the

members

series collapses;

are diAov. There must be, then,

a mpatov didov, for the sake of which all the dependent members are ¢idov; but the first itself is not @iAoyr for the sake of any-

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PHENOMENOLOGY

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EXISTENTIALISM

true, diAov of which all those are only “re-

to values. This is still to be dealt with. The

flections” (édwAa). It is the 76 dvre pidov,

meaning of absoluteness, so far determined, reaches only to the dependence of goods upon value as an essence, only to:

the dpy7—that is, the beginning and principle—of the whole chain of dependencies.* The decisive concept in this reasoning is

that of the “principle” (dpy7): a thing can be worthy of love only in relation to an absolute, to a principle. Or, expressed

universally, a thing can be valuable only through its relation to a value itself. This

must be fixed beforehand. It is the condition of the possibility of there being anything of value and of its being recognized as valuable, as a good—so to speak. Nothing is ever loved, striven for, yearned after, except for the sake of some value immediately discerned (and felt). But, conversely, never is loving, striving, yearning presupposed in the case of a thing that is of value, or in the case of the value itself which is inherent in the thing. That this relationship is irreversible lies in the very constitution of acting, loving, desiring, striving. It is essentially a one-sided dependence. But what is evident in it is the fact that values possess the character of genuine essences, the character of absoluteness, of

principles, and that the knowledge which we have of them can be no other than

aprioristic knowledge. (c) VALUATIONAL APRIORITY AND ABSOLUTENESS The absoluteness of values and the apriority of the knowledge of them are two entirely different propositions and require separate proofs. In the foregoing argument the apriority of the values of goods may be accepted as proved. But their absoluteness contains an element which was not established, indeed, not even touched upon: the kind of Being peculiar 1 Plato, Lysis, 219¢-220b.

their relativity to it. In comparison with the goods the value-aspect under which they fall—indeed, under which they are not otherwise

goods at all—is an inde-

pendent one. But whether it is not on its side again dependent upon something else is far from being evident. We must therefore keep the idea of absoluteness distinct from that of apriority. This distinction brings the meaning of

valuational apriority for the first time into the right light. That is to say, the proposition that values are accepted a priori holds good, even if all appraisements of value should be purely subjective and arbitrary. In that case values are “prejudgments,” or, more correctly—for there is no question as to “judgments”—they are assumptions, biases of the subject. Then, of course, they would have no empirical content, not even any correlate of experience which would be able to check them. For realities as such contain no standards of values; rather are

they always something measurable which offers itself to possible standards. If one leaves this point of view, one immediately falls back again into the Platonic embarrassment of an endless regression. But such a regression is stopped even by a subjective and arbitrary standard, if only it be of another origin than the actual, of which it is to be the standard of measure-

ment. It is necessary never to forget that in itself everything aprioristic, even the a priori

of theoretical

knowledge,

is under

the

suspicion of being subjective and arbitrary, and that it is always wise to meet this suspicion by a special proof of its “objective validity.” This fact is well known from the Kantian doctrine of the cate-

ETHICS gories,

AND

which

THEORY

needed

OF

VALUE

a thoroughgoing

469

volved. The, theoretical a priori has only

“transcendental deduction” in order to se-

the significance of being an element of

cure objectivity for the categories. A priori judgments may always be prejudices; aprioristic presentations or modes of presentation may be assumptions, fictions. In that case they are indeed presentations, but not cognitions. The Kantian proof consists therefore of the exposition of the relation of the categories to objects of another order, to a posterioristic objects. This is possible in the domain of theory, because categories are laws which ~ inexorably hold good for all real instances of experience. In the domain of ethics the same thing is not possible. For values, although they are most genuinely objective, are never laws of existence, they are not fulfilled in all actualities. The proof of their “objective validity” therefore is not to be found in any: agreement with the real. For discrepancy between them and the actual is by no means evidence against them. The danger of subjectivity and. of

knowledge; and this significance falls away

mere fictitiousness is therefore far greater in the case of values than in that of categories. With the essence of values the determinant factor is this, that, as regards this danger, their apriority is itself beyond question. Even if they be fictitious, they still remain the condition for the appraisement of value, the prius of goods, in relation to which things farst become goods. Likewise they remain the presupposition of all striving and craving, they are that through which anything is worth striving for. Thus they continue to be also the final point in the Platonic regression. In short, the whole meaning of apriority as such remains intact. They only lack objectivity, universality and necessity. Here there is accordingly a difference between theoretical and practical insight, as regards the nature of the apriority in-

if objective validity is lacking to the a priori. It is then merely a mode of presentation without agreement with an object, therefore without cognitive value. A practical a priori, on the other hand, has not the significance of being an element of knowledge; it is a determinant factor in life, in the assessment of values, in taking sides, in longing ror and rejecting. All these acts, and many more, remain related in exactly the same way to the a priori of values, even if these are only a prejudice of the person concerned, Indeed, we experience this sort of subjective apriority

whenever as human beings we encounter human prejudices. As a fact it plays the role of the valuational a priori, and all those acts are determined by it. That it has no right to play this part makes no difference here; the notion is due to a misunderstanding of objective values. But wherein objective values can be recognized, how they differ from subjective prejudices, is not given herewith. This is no longer a question of apriority as such, but a question of the kind of Being of values, of their modality, as well as a question as to their cognizability. But apriority itself —that is, independence of experience—is the same here as there. The apriority of values is even more unconditional, more absolute, than that of the theoretical categories. And it is: so for this reason: that here a fixed relation to the actual is lacking, that non-agreement with the empirically given is no criterion which could be cited against the validity of valuations. The apriority of values floats, as

it were,

in the

air. The

whole

re-

sponsibility for the legitimacy and objectivity of the standard of values falls upon the distinctively aprioristic vision of values

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—that is, in the last resort, upon the sense of value. To make the discernment of value secure as a thing primary and objective, to establish its claim to genuine evidence, is the task with which we are now confronted. It is not solved by a proof of mere apriority. And, inasmuch as there cannot be for values a “transcendental deduction” in the Kantian sense, the question arises: What can take the place of such a deduction?

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

value, must be held by it and convinced

of it. But this means that the value is already presupposed, and is a conditioning

factor. Indeed, it must be an a priori con- : dition. For an end in itself can never be

“experienced.” It is not an actuality. And as soon as it is actualized it ceases to be

an end. Mutatis

mutandis,

this holds

also for

cases of volition which apparently are heteronomous; to take an example, the blind obedience of a child or of a subordi-

nate. The obedient person need not know

(d) WILL, END AND THE MORAL JUDGMENT OF VALUES The proposition propounded above? requires some words of explanation. There

it concerned only the relation of values to goods and indirectly to all acts aiming at goods. But not all acts of a practical nature aim at goods. The higher, the distinctively moral, phenomena consist of acts of another kind; they are related to values of another sort, to moral values proper. Values are not only conditions of the possibility of goods, but are also conditions of

all ethical phenomena in general. What holds good of craving must equally hold good of the higher kind of striving, of volitions proper with goals which are not to be found in goods. The object of volition, for the willing consciousness, has the form of a purpose, an end.

It is inherent in the nature of an end that its content is of value, or at least is so regarded. It is impossible to adopt anything as an end, without seeking in it a thing that is valuable. The valuational material, of course, need not be clearly

known as such. But the volitional and purposive consciousness must nevertheless somehow have a sense of its quality as a 2 Subsection

(c).

the ends of the one who commands;

he

has not a sense of the values which determine the aims—for only in this case is there any pure or blind obedience. For him the content of the thing commanded is an end in itself, the will of the one who gives the order is the ultimate value. Herein as regards the value of the command there may be a valuational displacement. But, nevertheless, the obedience depends indirectly upon this value. For the obedient person believes in it, even without

being able to see it. And in this belief again inheres the moral value of the obedience. In general the degree of autonomy and of personal lucidity as to the value plays no part. The authoritative command which is taken up uncritically, and the independently discerned value which determines the end, are both equally a priori—as regards

the actualization which for the will has not yet come to hand.

The same holds good for the moral quality of the disposition, as well as for

the consciousness of this quality, for the consciousness of good and evil, which is manifested in approval and disapproval. It

makes no difference whether we think of the outward conduct—the mere way of acting, the visible behaviour of a person— or directly of the inner attitude, the distinctive moral conduct of the person which

ETHICS

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VALUE

lies behind the deed. In both cases the moral judgment of value consists of an

application of standards to the actual conduct, and in both cases ethical value con-

stitutes the standard. The sensing of these values is itself therefore always presupposed; it can be only an a priori perception. And again, the apriority has evidently this significance, that the factor which decides whether a thing is good or evil can by no means be derived from the same sphere of actual ethical conduct as the modes of behaviour upon which judgment is passed. If this factor is not self-dependent, the same circle immediately reappears as in the case of goods, a regression, which, because it remains in the same sphere, necessarily arrives finally at its own starting point. But in this way a moral judgment would be illusory.

(ec) EXAMPLE AND IMITATION

his own resolutions or the approval or disapproval of others. How does this fact tally with the apriority of values? Are not the valuations of the follower of an exemplar borrowed manifestly from actuality, from experience? Are they not therefore a posteriori in their nature? To this it must be answered that precedent to any imitation there must be a

recognition of the pattern itself. If this be purely an ideal without any actuality,

it stands from the first upon a level with the values themselves; like them it is aprioristic and differs from them only in

its lifelike concreteness. But if an actual particular man be the pattern—we will disregard the idealization which is always taking place—the question must be asked:

Why do I choose exactly this one and not some other as my model? It cannot be an accident that I choose precisely this one; that the Stoic chooses

Zeno

or Socrates,

the Christian the figure of Jesus. The choice has a very definite ground; it is impossible for us to take any chance figure as our exemplar. We can only accept a model which has definite moral qualities, meets specific requirements—in short, which satisfies us by its content, its “ma-

Here one may object: Not every moral rejection or acceptance rests upon an independent sense of value. There is also in fact an orientation of the moral judgment which is based upon the living example of another. In practical life this plays so important a part that one might rather ask whether without it anyone could succeed at all in judging of values. It is well known that in education nothing is so directly effective and decisive as example. But the adult also reaches out towards concrete patterns. The Christian from the beginning has seen his moral exemplar in the figure of Jesus as the Evangelists draw it. He conceives of his own morality as an “imitation” of Christ. He lives his personal life, with the concrete ideal of man before his eyes; to

And what does this satisfaction mean? How do I know what qualities the exemplar must have, what demands it must meet? By what do I know that it is worthy of being a model? This question permits of only one single answer. The satisfaction which the model gives (its very quality of being a pattern) consists in its agreement with standards which I consciously or unconsciously apply. The setting up of a person as a pattern is already a moral judgment upon the

him Jesus is the standard of good and

person as a value. The choice takes place

evil—whether the question be concerning

from valuational points of view.

terial.”

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It is no objection to’these points of view that they do not become clear to me until I see them realized (or only intended) in some man. There are many values which cannot be brought to consciousness except in such concrete form (realized or really intended). Nevertheless, the values themselves are not abstracted from the model,

but, conversely, they are presupposed in my consciousness of what a model ought to be. The moral valuation therefore does not rest upon the actuality of the model, but the choice of the model rests upon the moral judgment as to values. The intuitive, emotionally toned knowledge of what a model ought to be is as such a function of

the primary sense of values. Here also the values are the prius, the conditioning factor. The consciousness of what is worthy of imitation is nothing except a form of the aprioristic consciousness of value.

As a test that such is the situation as regards models, the fact may be cited that there are also negative examples. It is a difficult question to decide, which is the stronger stimulus for the awakening of the moral consciousness: a good or an evil

{a deterrent) example. In any case it is a fact that generally a bad example can work for good. That it can also tempt one to evil does not prejudice the fact. It depends on whether anyone has sympathy with that value which in the negative example is violated. If he has not, if on that account a lower value, which is perhaps

fulfilled in the example, rules him the more powerfully, then the conduct of the other will “impress” him, will satisfy him, and the negative example will become for him a positive one.

But if his sense of value shows him what the other’s conduct sins against, this obscurely felt value will be lifted up into consciousness through the violation of it. The act of indignation, the up-rushing

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

sentiment against the reprehensible, exposes the concrete

value to view, forces

it into the light of knowledge, and with it at the same time its specific quality. Noth-

ing so strongly rouses the sense of justice as the occurrence of some injustice; nothing excites the love of humanity, like a brutal egoism. But in every case the sense of value is itself the. presupposition. It can never be

engendered by a bad example, but it can always be awakened, if it was already there. An attitude of aversion is actually a

choice made from the standpoint of value. This therefore is the aprioristic condition which makes it possible for a bad example to have a good effect. (f) ETHICAL IDEALIZATION AND VALUATIONAL . CONSCIOUSNESS

And, finally, the fact.is not to be forgotten—thus far we have not considered it —that a positive example is never something taken wholly from actual experience. We project the pattern upon a real person, or we idealize the person, and thus he becomes our exemplar. Naturally in this case there is no consciousness of the boundary between the actual and the ideal. One adorns the actual person with qualities which he does not

possess, one averts one’s gaze from his deficiencies and sees him in a fictitious glory of perfection. The actual may be so overgrown with ideals projected upon it that a critical eye can scarcely recognize it underneath them. But discrepancies between reality and the ideal are of no im: portance. So far as imitation is concerned, all that counts is the ideal picture. How far the real person, in whom one sees the ideal, corresponds to it, is a matter of

indifference.

ETHICS

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But exactly this indifferenceto the actual as regards the content and power of the ideal, is the strongest proof of the apriority of the evaluating sense, in the phenomenon of “exemplars.” Values here show themselves to be not only something which selects but also something which is essentially a creative prius. The values mould, determine, produce the pattern; they are that factor in its ideality which lives and moves, just as they are also the secret of the pattern’s power to guide man, The dependence which is here disclosed might be described as the universal law

concerning the essence of the exemplar and concerning ethical idealization in general. It asserts that the dependence of the ideal upon the value which is primarily discerned

and felt is irreversible,

and: in-

deed is independent of the more or less empirical character of the occasion which incites to idealization. This irreversibility is quite in accord with the fact that one becomes conscious of values in the opposite direction. To the naive mind the objectivity of the pattern precedes the distinct consciousness of the value, just as the objectivity of goods precedes the distinct consciousness of the values adhering to the things. The order of knowing is the reverse of the order of being. But the order of being, as such, never reverses. This fundamental law is of the greatest importance in the domain of ethical phenomena. The living values of all moral systems find their most effective, most satisfactory embodiment in concrete ideals, whether these be only free creations of the phantasy or be borrowed from living examples. Every kind of reverence for heroes is concrete living morality. It is the historic

form of the current consciousness of value, And indeed it is not, as it were, a falsified consciousness, but is on the contrary the purest and most genuine which man pos-

473

sesses, Much rather do the conceptual understandings, which historically are always secondary, contain the falsification and accretions. Into them reflection has entered as a distorting factor. From this fact the investigation of values must draw the natural inferences.

(g) ACCOUNTABILITY, RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT The deeper one forces one’s way into the heart of ethical phenomena, so much the more evident become the apriority and the all-dominating character of values as essences. Determination of will, purpose and the setting up of ends, moral approval and disapproval, do not constitute the innermost circle. The moral consciousness does not confine itself to the weighing of actions and dispositions; it also imputes the discerned moral qualities to the person. It not only judges, it also condemns. It metes out guilt and_ responsibility to the doer, and this without discrimination as to whether it be oneself or another person, It. holds that the doer himself is to be judged by the deed, the bearer of a disposition to be marked by its value or anti-value. The moral consciousness turns, incorruptible and relentless, against one’s own ego; it permits the ego in its sense of guilt to renounce itself, to consume itself in remorse and despair. Or it leads the ego to conversion, to a change of heart, and a moral renewal of its own nature. In these phenomena the relation of value and reality is deepened. The consciousness of one’s own worthlessness encounters the consciousness of one’s own reality. The sense of value here proves its autonomy in

one’s own selfhood. In the most sensitive point of personal self-consciousness it

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PHENOMENOLOGY

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EXISTENTIALISM

proves to a certain degree its own legiti-

function of them—although certainly not

macy as a power, against which the natural interest of the ego, self-preservation, selfassertion, self-affrmation, cannot advance. The real individual person with his own

of them alone. Hence it is a radical mis-

ness. That conception leads to the regres-

acts, not only real but capable of being

sion which moves eternally in a circle.

experienced as real—the empirical person —sees himself set over against an Idea of personality, which has the power to con-

demn him. The ego finds itself split into an empirical and a moral, an aprioristic, ego. And the empirical bows down before the aprioristic, acknowledges its right to

rule and bears the guilt which the other imputes, as an oppressive consciousness. The empirical ego takes upon itself the responsibility which the other lays upon it, and whatever im itself does not agree with the other it charges against itself as a failure. If the apriority of values is anywhere perceptible, it is so here. For. the idea of the moral self is built up out of purely valuational materials and consists of these. The moral man sees this his morally superempirical essence, his inner determination,

his Idea, to be his own proper Self. In accordance with its intentions he tries to live, that is, to form his empirical being. Upon it rests the moral consciousness of himself, of his own value, justified and felt to be justified, his self-respect as a man. And with the consciousness of the failure

of his ideal essence, his self-respect forsakes him. The inner standard of that sense of value, which accompanies all his steps in life, indeed all his most secret impulses,

constitutes his essence as a moral personality. Moral personality therefore does not exist, if there be no pure a priori of values. Here we encounter the same irreversible relation of dependence: the person does not make the values, but the values make the person. For example, the autonomy of the

person presupposes

the values; he is a

understanding when one conceives of values as a function of the moral conscious-

(h) CONSCIENCE AND THE ETHICAL A PRIORI Anyone who has not yet made himself

familiar with the thought of valuational apriorism inevitably raises against this kind of argument the objection that a previous consciousness of value is needed, in order

to feel responsibility and have the sense of

guilt. Does not everyone carry within himself a factor which points out the way, that is, “conscience”? Conscience is the inner “voice,” which declares what is good and bad in one’s own conduct, which warns, challenges or guides. Conscience in fact

plays the part assigned to values; in it is to be found the moral essence. In addition to it there is no need of a valuational a priori. This objection impressively reveals the character of the phenomenon of conscience. But it is no objection. Self-accusation, responsibility, and the consciousness of guilt constitute the broad phenomenon of con-

science. We may, therefore, say that the whole of the above reasoning starts with the phenomenon of conscience and is wholly based upon its actual existence. But from this it does not follow that the a priori of values is superfluous. Admittedly, there is no aprioristic consciousness of them alongside of conscience, at least not in relation to one’s own self. But, so much the more there is such a thing in conscience itself; that which we call conscience is at bottom just this primal consciousness

of value, which is found in the feeling of every person.

ETHICS

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What else, in fact, can we mean by “conscience”? Everyone understands by it an inner court of disapproval

(and ap-

proval), a kind of intimation as to good and evil, a “voice” which speaks out of the depths of one’s own being, uninvited, unexpected, mysterious—and it speaks authoritatively and convincingly— although in opposition to one’s own nat-

ural self-assertion. Herein lies the admission that this is an a priori “voice.” One may, of course, say that one “experiences”

inwardly the judicial decree of conscience; and just because one does not utter it spontaneously but receives it uttered, the word experience is not merely metaphorical. Nevertheless, this experience has nothing to do with empiricism. On the contrary, all aprioristic contents, even to the theoretical, are “experienced” in the same way—namely, they are found to be present, are discovered, are beheld; and it is not repugnant to sense to speak in this connection of “aprioristic experience.” But where the a priori is an emotional one, where it is accessible to knowledge only indirectly, yet is given primarily to feeling, there this

inner experience possesses the character of an invasion, of a surprisal—just as feelings in general overtake a man from within. The well-known way in which “conscience” expresses itself fits most exactly the emotional apriority of the valuational consciousness,

the obscure,

half-conscious

475

sense of value, which speaks unsummoned

and does not reveal its inner content. The so-called “voice of conscience” is a basic form of the primal consciousness of value; it is perhaps the most elemental way in which the sense of value gains currency among men. And the mysteriousness which attaches to this “voice,” which pious minds in all ages have interpreted as the working of a higher power, as the Voice of God in man, fits only too closely the concept of the emotional a priori. For it does not speak when one calls to it or inquiringly searches for it. It speaks only when not summoned, according to a law of its own nature, when one is not expecting it. Evidently it is a self-dependent and selfactive power in man which is set apart from man’s will. It really is the influence of a “higher” power, a voice from an-

other world—from the ideal world of values. However obscured the relation may be between this world of values and the real world of man’s emotional life, it is indisputable that here we touch the point of contact between them. Conscience is the revelation of moral values in actual consciousness, their entrenchment

within the

reality of human life. It is a primitive form of the sense of value.

But this is possible, only provided that values themselves are an existent prius. They are, then, simply the “condition of the possibility” of conscience.

Philosophy of Religion SOBODOODOPO™’LO™’wO™WMPD_OOSOOQDO HOH LO OO LOL SC Corry

God and the Spirit of Man MARTIN ale book discusses the relations between religion and philosophy in the history of the spirit and deals with the part that philosophy has played in its late period in making God and all absoluteness appear unreal. If philosophy is here set in contrast to religion, what is meant by religion is not the massive

fullness

of statements,

con-

cepts, and activities that one. customarily describes by this name and that men sometimes long for more than for God. Religion is essentially the act of holding fast to God. And that does not mean _holding fast to an image that one has made of God, nor even holding fast to the faith in God that one has conceived. It means holding fast to the existing God. The earth would not hold fast to its conception of the sun (if it had one) nor to its connection with it, but to the sun itself. - In contrast to religion so understood, philosophy is here regarded as the process, reaching from the early becoming inde-

pendent of reflection to its more contemporary crisis, the last stage of which is the intellectual letting go of God. This process begins with man’s no longer contenting himself, as did the pre-philosophical man, with picturing the living

BUBER thing, a thing among things, a being among beings, an It. The beginningof philosophizing means that this Something changes from an object of imagination, wishes, and feelings to one that is conceptually comprehensible, to an object of thought. It does not matter whether this object of thought is called “Speech” (Logos), because in all and each one hears it speak, answer, and directly address one, or “the Unlimited” (Apeiron), because it has already leapt over every limit that one may try to set for it, or simply “Being,” or whatever. If the living quality of the conception of God refuses to enter into this conceptual image, it is tolerated alongside of it, usually in an unprecise form, as in the end identical with it or at least essentially dependent on it. Or it is depreciated as an unsatisfactory surrogate for the help of men incapable of thought. In the progress of its philosophizing the human spirit is ever more inclined to fuse characteristically this conception, of the Absolute as object of an adequate thought, with itself, the human spirit. In the course of this process, the idea which was at first

noetically contemplated finally becomes the potentiality of the spirit itself that thinks it, and it attains on the way of the spirit its actuality. The subject, which appeared

God, to whom one formerly only called— with a call of despair or rapture which occasionally became His first name—as a Some-

to be attached to being in order to per-

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form for it the service of contemplation,

asserts that it itself produced

and pro-

477 The other pseudo-religious counterpart

duces being. Until, finally, all that is over against us, everything that accosts us and takes possession of us, all partnership of existence, is dissolved in free-floating subjectivity.

of the relation of faith, not so elementally active as conjuration but acting with the mature power of the intellect, is unveiling. Here one takes the position of raising the veil of the manifest, which divides the revealed from the hidden, and leading

The next step already takes us to the

forth the divine mysteries. “I am,” says

stage familiar to us, the stage that understands itself as the final one and plays with its finality: the human spirit, which adjudges to itself mastery over its work, annihilates conceptually the absoluteness of the absolute. It may yet imagine that it, the spirit, still remains there as bearer of all things and coiner of all values; in truth, it has also destroyed its own absoluteness along with absoluteness in general. The spirit can now no longer exist as an independent essence. There now exists only a product of human individuals called spirit, a product which they contain and secrete like mucus and urine. In this stage there first takes place the conceptual letting go of God because only now philosophy cuts off its own hands, the hands with which it was able to grasp and hold Him. But an analogous process takes place on the other side, in the development of religion itself (in the usual broad sense of the word). From the earliest times the reality of the relation of faith, man’s standing before the face of God, world-happening as dialogue, has been threatened by the impulse to control the power yonder. Instead of understanding events as calls which make

man, “acquainted with the unknown, and

demands

on

one,

one

wishes

oneself

to

demand without having to hearken. “I have,” says man, “power over the powers I conjure.” And that continues, with sundry modifications, wherever one celebrates rites without being turned to the Thou

and without really meaning its Presence.

I make it known.” The supposedly divine It that the magician manipulates as the technician his dynamo, the Gnostic lays bare, the whole divine apparatus. His heirs are not “theosophies” and their neighbours alone; in many theologies also, unveiling gestures are to be discovered behind the interpreting ones. We find this replacement of I-Thou by an I-It:in manifold forms in that new philosophy of religion which seeks to “save” religion. In it the “I” of this relation steps ever more into the foreground as “subject” of “religious feeling,” as profiter from a pragmatist decision to believe, and

the like. Much more important than all this, however, is an event penetrating to the innermost depth of the religious life, an event which may be described as the subjectivizing of the act of faith itself. Its essence can be grasped. most clearly through the example of prayer. We call prayer in the pregnant sense of the term that speech of man to God which, whatever else is asked, ultimately asks for the manifestation of the divine Presence, for this Presence’s becoming dialogically perceivable. The single presupposition of a genuine state of prayer is thus the readiness of the whole man for this Presence,

simple

turned-towardness,

unreserved

spontaneity. This spontaneity, ascending from the roots, succeeds time and again in overcoming all that disturbs and diverts. But in this our stage of subjec-

PHENOMENOLOGY

478

tivized reflection

not only the concen-

tration of the one who prays, but also his spontaneity is assaifed. The assailant is consciousness, the over-consciousness of this man here that he is praying, that he is praying, that he is praying. And the assailant appears to be invincible. The subjective knowledge of the one turning-

towards about his turning-towards, this holding back of an I which does not enter into the action with the rest of the person, an I to which the action is an ob-

ject—all this depossesses the moment, takes away its spontaneity. The specifically modern man who has not yet let go of God knows what that means: he who is not present perceives no Presence. One must understand this correctly: this is not a question of a special case of the known sickness of modern man, who must attend his own actions as spectator. It is the confession of the Absolute into which he brings his unfaithfulness to the Absolute, and it is the relation between the Absolute and him upon which this unfaithfulness works, in the middle of the state-

ment of trust. And now he too who is seemingly holding fast to God becomes aware of the eclipsed Transcendence. What is it that we mean when we speak of an eclipse of God which is even now taking place? Through this metaphor we make the tremendous assumption that we can glance up to God with our “mind’s eye,” or rather being’s eye, as with our

bodily eye to the sun, and that something can step between our existence and His

as between the earth and the sun. That this glance

of the being exists, wholly

un-

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EXISTENTIALISM

one also experiences, today. I have spoken of it since I have recognized it, and as exactly as my perception allowed me. The double nature of man, as the being

that is both brought forth from “below” and sent from “above,” results in the duality of his basic characteristics. These cannot be understood through the categories of the individual man existing-forhimself, but only through the categories of his existing as man-with-man. As a being who is sent, man exists over against the

existing being before which he is placed. As a being who is brought forth, he finds himself beside all existing beings in the world, beside which he is set. The first of these categories has its living reality in the relation ]-Thou, the second has its reality in the relation I-It. The second always

brings us only to the aspects of an existing being, not to that being itself. Even the most intimate contact with another remains covered over by an aspect if the other has not become Thou for me. Only the first relation, that which establishes essential immediacy between me and an existing being, brings me just thereby not to an aspect of it but to that being itself. To be sure, it brings me only to the existential meeting with it; it does not somehow put me in a position to view it objectively in its being. As soon as an objective viewing is established, we are given only an aspect and ever again only an aspect. But it is also only the relation I-Thou in which we can meet God at all, because of Him, in absolute contrast to all other existing beings, no objective aspect can be attained. Even a vision yields

illusory, yielding no images yet first mak-

no objective viewing, and he who strains

ing possible all images, no other court in

to hold fast an afterimage after the cessa-

the world attests than that of faith. It is

tion of the full I-Thou relation has already lost the vision.

not to be proved; it is only to be experienced; man has experienced it. And

that other, that which steps in between,

It is not

the case,

however,

that the

I in both relations, I-Thou and [-It, is the

PHILOSOPHY

OF

RELIGION

479

same. Rather where and when the beings around one are seen and treated as objects of observation, reflection, use, perhaps also of solicitude or help, there and then

non-human origin. It steps in between and shuts off from us the light of heaven. Such is the nature of this hour. But what of the next? It is a modern superstition that the character of an age acts as

another I is spoken, another I manifested,

another I exists than where and when one stands with the whole of one’s being over against another being and steps into an essential relation with him. Everyone who

knows both in himself—and that is the life of man, that one comes to know both in himself and ever again both—

knows

fate for the next. One lets it prescribe what is possible to do and hence what is permitted. One surely cannot swim against the stream, one says. But perhaps one can swim with a new stream whose source is still hidden? In another image, the I-Thou relation has gone into the catacombs—who

whereof I speak. Both together

can say with how much greater power it

build up human existence; it is only a question of which of the two is at any par-

will step forth! Who can say when the I-It

ticular time the architect and which is

sisting place and activity! The most important events in the history

his assistant. Rather, it is a question of whether the I-Thou relation remains the architect, for it is self-evident that it cannot be employed as assistant. If it does not command, then it is already disappearing. In our age the [It relation, gigantically swollen, has usurped, practically uncontested, the mastery and the rule. The I of this relation, an I that possesses all, makes all, succeeds with all, this I that is unable to say Thou, unable to meet a being essentially, is the lord of the hour. This selfhood that has become omnipotent, with

all the It around it, can naturally acknowledge neither God nor any genuine absolute which manifests itself to men as of

relation will be directed anew to its as-

of that embodied possibility called man are the occasionally occurring beginnings of new epochs, determined by forces previously invisible or unregarded. Each age is, of course, a continuation of the preceding one, but a continuation can be confirmation and it can be refutation. Something is taking place in the depths that as yet needs no name. To-morrow

even it may happen that it will be beckoned to from the heights, across the heads of the earthly archons. The eclipse of the light of God is no extinction; even tomorrow that which has stepped in between may give way.

Philosophy of History, Culture, and Society DOBOOHDOLOODOD

QOH

OOlOoQolQ ol oe Oorlvr oe Ce

Freedom and History KARL JASPERS Contemplative Forecast. As compared with the thousands of millions of years since the beginning of the world, the six thousand years of human tradition seem no more than the first second of a new period in the transformation of our planet. As contrasted with the hundreds of thousands of years during which (as disinterred skulls and other bones show) man has lived upon the earth, written and traditional history are but the earliest beginnings of what man can become as soon as he sets himself in movement to escape from slothfully recurrent conditions. No doubt from the outlook

of a species for which thirty years are a generation, six thousand years is a long time. Man’s memory makes him aware of the age of his race, so that now, just as two

thousand years ago, he feels himself to be living in a terminal period, and he is apt to fancy that his best days lie in the past. But perspectives of terrestrial history have made him aware of the brevity of his under-

takings and of the situation which has prevailed since he became man. He knows, now, that all lies in front of him. The speed of technical advances from decade to decade seems an infallible proof of this. Still he cannot but ask himself whether the whole of human history may not be a tran-

sient episode in the history of the world. Perhaps man is destined to perish from off the face of the planet, whose history may continue in his absence for interminable

ages. We think of the imminent exhaustion of the coal-measures, for these stores cannot last more than a few thousand years; of the restricted supply of all the other sources of energy available to us; of the ultimate cooling-down of the earth, which will involve the extinction of life. But scientific facts are of such a nature that inferences concerning a presumably inevitable future, though they may have a high degree of probability, can never attain certainty. Unpredictable technical expedients may enable us to escape from the menacing difficulties of our technical situation. We can conceive of a utopia wherein, by means of a vast organisation, man will become enabled to handle the levers of the terrestrial machine, so that like a conqueror invading new territory, he may take possession of the world. Perhaps, as the planet cools, he will learn to live within it instead of upon its surface; or, maybe, he will find his way to other regions of an infinite universe. Possibly in due course man might usurp the privileges of the Creator. ... But here we touch

480

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

the borders of possibility, and it is prob-

481

able that, on the borderline of technique,

substance be slowly used up, so that we shall all infallibly perish when the supply

an end will come through catastrophes.

is exhausted? May not the decay of art,

Taking shorter views, man asks himself about the end of civilisation. The increase of population may lead to further and ever more disastrous wars, and improved technical means of offence may totally destroy

poesy, and philosophy be symptoms of the approaching exhaustion of this substance?

Is it not possible that the way in which

the technical foundations of our existence and therewith destroy our civilisation. In actual

fact,

civilisations

have

been

de-

chaos of their amusements—whether

stroyed, so that the survivors of great civilised nations, few in number, have been reduced to barbarism and have had to rebuild civilisation anew. The question arises

whether such a breakdown in universal human civilisation be not now imminent. The uniqueness of our situation is such that, even though civilisation were utterly destroyed in one or more continents, in other regions the accumulated knowledge handed down from the past might enable our brethren to save the future of the race;

but there is an evident danger that no such reserves of civilisation would persist after a disastrously world-wide war, if civilisation, itself become world-wide, were

to fall in ruins. We ask ourselves whether thespecific

quality of our life-order be not our greatest danger; whether there may not be such an increase of population as to leave no more standing-room in the world, so that, in the end, mankind in the mass would be mentally stifled; or whether dysgenic selection and progressive racial deterioration may not be possible, until, finally, the only members of our species remaining would

be quasi-human labourers in the technical apparatus. It is certainly possible that man will be destroyed by the instruments he has fashioned to minister to his own needs. Questions arise concerning the obscure

laws of an inexorable course of human destiny. May not some absolutely essential

contemporary human beings become merged in the enterprise, their present modes of intercourse, the fashion in which they allow themselves to be driven like slaves, the futility of their political life, the

:

all

these things be not indications that the supply of the aforesaid hypothetical substance is running very low? We, perhaps, have still enough of it to enable us to note what we are losing; but in the near future our descendants, when its exhaustion has gone a stage further, will, one may suppose, no longer understand what is happening. Such’ questions and their possible answers do not, however, help us to a knowledge of the course of the whole. Even proofs of the impossibility of this or of

that, however cogent they may seem, are tainted by the possibility of error through lack of certain elements of knowledge which may come to us to-morrow or the day after. We can comprehend and we can foresee matters of detail, but we cannot limn an absolutely infallible picture of the whole. None of these forecasts have a philosophical character. They are but tech-

nical and biological fancies endowed only to some extent with realist foundations. Man as potential existence cannot rest content with any such considerations. As far as realist views are concerned, all

we are entitled to say is: “For the moment, I can see no other possibilities.” As far as the knowledge we now possess goes,

and in accordance with the standard which has extant validity, our reason is always,

at last; faced by a blank wall.

482

PHENOMENOLOGY

What Will Happen? Thus our forecasts remain no more than a knowledge of possibilities, and reality, when it arrives, may prove entirely different from any of these possibilities. More important than remote possibilities lying outside the sphere of the things dependent on ourselves is it

that at each moment I should know what I myself really want. As regards the future,

this means that I want to know what will become of man in the future. Here is the essential question: What sort of human beings will be alive in days to come? We can only be interested in them if their life will have value and dignity of a kind which has continuity with the human existence we have known for millenniums in

the past. Our descendants must be such as can recognise us as their forefathers, not necessarily in the physical or in the historical sense. But there is no scope for purposive will in respect of what human beings actually are. For human beings are what they are, not simply through birth, breeding, and education, but through the freedom of each individual upon the foundation of his self-existence. What remains, then, is that I hear the voice of the past which makes me aware of my humanhood, and that, through my own life, I speak that voice into the future. But the contemplation of history as a whole diverts us from that whereby alone history is made obscure and unremarkable. The forecasts derivable from history amount to no more than a horizon within which I have to act. The upshot is that a contemplative forecast of the whole, a forecast in which the will plays no part, is nothing more than a flight away from that true activity which begins with the individual’s inward activyity. If I am content with a contemplative forecast, I allow myself to be dazzled in

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

the “theatre of universal history”; I let myself be anaesthetised by prophecies of a necessary

progress,

whether

on Marxian

lines as an advance towards a classless © society, or culturo-morphologically as a process in accordance with a law of sup-posed ripening, or dogmatico-philosophically as the expansion and realisation of some definitively attainable absolute truth of human existence. When I inquire about the future of man, I must, if my questions are seriously meant, disregard all mere as-

pects, be they splendid or be they dispiriting, and thus dig down to the sources of the possible where man, equipped with the fullest attainable knowledge, strives to make his own future, and not merely to contemplate it. It follows, then, in the first place, that no forecast of man’s future can be of a fixed and definitive character. It can be nothing more than an open possibility. If I endeavour to forecast it, it is precisely in order that I may modify the course of events. The nearer I am to the future I forecast, the more relevant is it, because it

gives me more scope for interference; on the other

hand,

the more

remote

I am

from the future I forecast, the more indifferent is it to me, because it is more out of touch with my possibilities of action. A forecast, in this sense, is the speculation of a man who wants to do something. He

does not keep his eyes fixed on what will inevitably happen, but on what may happen; and he tries to make the future what

he wants it to be. The future has become something that can be foreseen because it

is modifiable by his own will. Secondly, such a forecast is fraught with meaning in relation to the extant situation. It does not float in the void, related to a timeless observer. He will achieve the

most decisive forecast who in the present has derived the profoundest knowledge

BIsSFORYS

CULTURE,

AND

from the experiences of his own life. A man gains awareness of what he is through his selfhood in a world in which he plays an active part..He is one who has learned that he completely loses insight into the general course of affairs if he tries to stand outside them as a mere spectator aspiring towards a knowledge of the whole. He feels this, first and foremost, in the expansion of his awareness of his situation to the limits of the world that is accessible to him. He is inspired, not by a desire to make a collection of the infinitely numerous facts of the present, but by an eagerness to reach the place where true decisions are made. He wants to be “in the know” where the motive forces of history are at work. Thirdly, such a forecast is something

more than mere knowledge of actual happenings, for, as such knowledge, it is simultaneously a factor of what happens. There is no vision of the real which is not tinged with will, or which cannot at least either stimulate or paralyse the will. What I expect is to be tested in this way,

SOCIETY

483

tested but what it is vain to strive against. Yet this belief is a fallacy, for it implies that we have more knowledge than is possible. The only certain thing is the un-

certainty of the possible; and this, making man aware of impending danger, arouses

his whole energy because he knows himself able to play a part in the decision. The mental awareness of the situation remains simultaneously knowledge and will. Since the course of the world is obscure, since up till now the best has often been ship-

wrecked and may be shipwrecked in the future, since therefore the course of the world will always remain a possibility and can never become a certainty, all planning and all activity that relates to a remote future is unavailing, whereas it behoves us here and now to create and inspire our

lives. I must myself will what is going to happen, even though the end of all things

be at hand. Activity to avert an undesired

tent, to help—by aid or by resistance—the realisation of my expectation. Either of

event will only derive energy from the will to the present realisation of one’s own life. In face of the obscurity of the future, of its menace and its abysses, we find it all the harder to obey the call while there is still time. Forecasting thought reacts upon the present without quitting the re-

two things is possible. It may be that I

gion of planning in the realm of the pos-

make common cause with my forecast, and therewith modify the course of events, or

sible. To act genuinely here and now is the only scope for action I certainly possess.

that, inasmuch as I utter my expectation, I also endeavour, to however small an ex-

it may be that, after all, something will

But this will also be the foundation of

happen which no one has foreseen, which no one has either wanted or feared. Even though knowledge treats the future as inevitable, and my only choice lies between swimming with the stream or against it,

activity for the men of the future, since, even though they be determined by the

still such a forecast is of the utmost im-

apparatus wherein they awaken to consciousness,

those

among

them

who

are

really human beings will develop amid

were to do nothing; it paralyses the will

the recognition of their own human existence. Consequently there is, at any and every time, a point where the will to the future human existence concentrates itself; and, paradoxically enough, what we make out of the world is decided by each

when it regards as inevitable what is de-

individual through the way in which he

portance if it is made by persons inspired

by faith: for it strengthens tenacity and facilitates action if the conviction persists that it would come all the same, even if I

484

PHENOMENOLOGY

comes to a decision about himself in the continuity of his action. Active Forecast. A contemplative forecast is the expression of a desire to know without any active participation on the part of the thinker. An active forecast, on the other hand, expresses what is possible because the will to make this possibility actual is a determining factor; it presses on beyond contemplation to voluntary decision. Since we cannot form a complete picture of what will happen to the world, our construction of the possibilities merely discloses to us the battle-field on which the future will be fought for. It is out of that battle-field that reality will emerge. One who remains no more than a spectator of the battle cannot learn why it is really being fought.

The battle-field is obscure. The actual struggles often assume the aspect of mere chance-medleys. Fighting occurs on fixed fronts solely because the combatants are kept in trenches by the inertia of the willto-endure. Forecasting consideration, in view of the actually extant, seeks for genuine fighting fronts where essential decisions are taking place. To discern them would stimulate me to betake myself thither, since I feel that to be my true place, where I can exert my will. An active forecast would enable me to answer the question: “On behalf of what present do you want to live?” Insofar as the forecast discloses destruction as possible, the answer may be that I would rather perish with that which constitutes man’s selfhood. The picturing of possible developmental trends supplies answers to the question:

“What sort of a world can it be which is now beginning?” The interlinking of every aspect of human life into stable organisations is rapidly increasing. The trans-

AND

EXISTENTIALISM

formation of human beings into functions of a titanic apparatus compels a g2neral levelling-down; the apparatus has no use for human beings of high grade or for —

exceptional individuals, but requires only average specimens endowed with particular gifts. Nothing but the relative endures. The coercion of the life-order enforces an entry into the various associations, and in-

terferes with freedom of individual activity in every possible way. The almost passionate urge towards the establishment of an authority which shall safeguard the lifeorder tends to promote an inward vacancy. The movement is towards the bringing to pass of a stable and definitive condition. But this ideal of a worldly order is intolerable to those who know their being

to be established upon a claim to freedom. It seems as if this freedom were likely to be suppressed by the quietly growing burden of transformed conditions. The general opinion grows despotic through the fixation of views which all the parties come to. regard as self-evident. Thus the basic problem of our time is whether an independent human being in his self-comprehended destiny is still possible. Indeed, it has become a general problem whether man can be free—and this is a problem which, as clearly formulated and understood,

tends to annul

it-

self; for only he who is capable of being free can sincerely and comprehendingly moot the problem of freedom. In objectifying thought, on the other hand, whereby the liberty of man is treated as an extant form of life and wherein the only question that arises is under what con: ditions liberty can be realised, it becomes

conceivable that the whole history of mankind is a vain endeavour to be free. Perhaps freedom has only existed for a real

but passing moment

between

two

im-

measurably long periods of sleep, of which

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

485

the first period was that of the life of na-

inward

ture, and the second period was that of the life of technique. If so, human existence must die out, must come to an end in a more radical sense than ever before. Freedom would be nothing more than a transition, a brief period of awareness that Transcendence is the true human existence, but having its upshot in the development

think that he must die, must become as if

of the technical apparatus which could only arrive in this way. As against this, however, thought ob-

jectifies an alternative possibility, an inalienable possibility, namely, that the decision whether man can be, and can will to be, free in days to come rests with man

himself. It is true that most of us dread

unfathomable

dignity of man

to

he had never been, so likewise does he find it impossible to accept for more than a moment the conviction that his freedom,

his faith, his selfhood will cease to be, and

that he will be degraded to become a mere cog-wheel in a technical apparatus. Man is something more than he can vision in such perspectives. But when we return from these remoter estimates to the political possibilities, we see that there are others besides the only one in which man could remain true to himself. Apart from the religion embodied in ecclesiastical conditions, there is in the

world no philosophical selfhood, no genuine religion, which does not regard any other possibility than that of true selfhood as an adversary and a spur. All cannot be

the freedom of selfhood. Still, it is possible that in the interconnexions of the titanic apparatus there are so many lacunae that, for those who dare, it may remain possible, in some unexpected way, for them to realise their historicity out of their own sources. Amid the levelling-down of objective life which seems unavoidable, the originality of the selfhood might in the end become all the more decisive. Pulling himself together on the border-line of destruction, the independent human being may arise, one who will take matters into his own hands and will enjoy true being. The contemplation of a world of complete unfaith, a world in which men have been degraded to the level of machines and have lost their own selves and their Godhead, a world in which human nobility will have been scattered and dispersed and in the end utterly ruined, is possible to us only in the formal sense, and for a fleet-

contemporary forecast, these adversaries whose tension as authority and freedom is the life of that spirit which is never completed, must solidarise themselves against the possibility of Nothingness. If the tension between authority and freedom in which man as temporal life must remain were to become re-established in new forms, substantiality would grow in the machinery of life. No definite or convincing answer can be given to the question: “What is going to happen?” Man, living man, will answer this question through his own being, in the course of his own activities. A forecast of the future (the “active forecast” now in the making, the forecast which will become one of the determinants of the future) can aim only at rendering man-

ing moment.

kind aware of itself.

Just as it conflicts with the

found in man as an

individual. In the

VI. VITALISM, THOMISM, AND MARXISM THE

are summarized

present section is, of course, a mis-

cellany. The inclusion of brief representations from both Marxism and Thomism is enough to show that the schools of thought here included have perhaps nothing in common beyond their not fitting readily into any of the previously designated groups. Those who are greatly devoted to academic neatness will be annoyed by the very notion of such a grab bag of leftovers, but there seems little point in mak-

ing strenuous efforts to accommodate everyone to our small list of philosophical types. Some there are who would list Bergson

as a Pragmatist, mainly because of his “anti-intellectualism,” and though it is certain that there were strong bonds of affection and respect between this influential Frenchman and William James, yet the mystical, intuitionistic, somewhat antipractical character of Bergson’s philosophy suggests that he should be listed apart from Pragmatism. The word “Vitalism” has at least the advantage of indicating

for him

in the phrase

Elan Vital. Life is not reducible to matter,

nor even to a spiritual substance; it zs flow. Here is the ultimate reality beside which everything else must be reckoned as derivative. The Vital Force is forever being mistaken as something in time and space, to be known, as the objects of science are known, by the employment of the senses and the use of the reason. It cannot be arrested for quantification and classification, but is knowable only to mystical intuition. Bergson’s influence for several decades was probably not surpassed by that of any contemporary philosopher. Not alone to

philosophers did he speak but to poets, painters, critics, men of religion; and the

list of famous men who have confessed their debt to his earnest, subtle, and suave

attack upon materialism and determinism, is impressive indeed. Among them was a young man, destined to become the chief spokesman of Catholic philosophy to the intellectual

world,

but who

in the early

Bergson’s affiliations with those who have

years of the twentieth century was strug-

strongly opposed “mechanistic” biology and of suggesting that he finds the key to the great secrets in the essence of life itself: God, creativity, the very surge of time

gling with the conflicting claims of philosophies and religious systems. This was

1 However,

both

Marxism

and

Thomism

fall

within epistemological and ontological Realism. But such is the overwhelming importance of the economic interests of the one and the religious involvements of the other, it could only worsen the confusion to squeeze them alongside the Critical Realist, Neo-Realist, and so on.

Jacques Maritain. Following his conversion

he felt the call to interpret the philosophy of St. Thomas to a world divided and torn with the ultimate hope of restoring to this

world something of the peace and wholeness of the thirteenth century. Thomism, like Marxism, derives of course very largely from another age than

486

INTRODUCTION

487

our own. It is this fact rather than any intention to minimize the extent and in-

beneficent and omnipotent; and of created substances, complete with their properties

fluence of either which accounts for the

and accidents. Each substance, which is a

very small representations these philosophies are here given. Still, they are live philosophical schools of our time and both

fusion of matter and form, is an existent individual and in so far as it is a concrete reality is known by the senses. But each substance manifests universals too which are known by the intellect and which enable the philosophic mind to discover the natural order of species. Man, like all substances, is a compound of matter and form, better known in his case as body and soul. Each man has certain potentialities, in the full development and realization of which lies natural happiness, particularly of his capacities for love and knowledge. Man is endowed with reason sufficient for an adequate understanding of the world, of man’s nature, of the existence and to an extent of the nature of God. But there are limits of natural knowledge; beatific vision and intuition of the godhead go beyond but do not contradict philosophy. The canonization of Thomas Aquinas in 1323 symbolizes the ascendency his system had by then gained over all rivals. At the sixteenth century Council of Trent, his Summa Theologica was placed on the altar along with the Holy Scriptures. Then came a decline in popularity during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a gradual return to favor in the last hundred years. In an encyclical dated 4 August 1879, Aquinas was proclaimed by Pope Leo XIII as the great model and master of Catholic philosophy; thus was accomplished an almost dramatic unification of theology and philosophy in a church somewhat threatened by “modernism” and other deviations. Though it is not accurate to say that Aquinas is today thought infallible by the Neo-Thomists or the Neo-Scholastics—he is recognized to have made various errors of fact and many of omission—yet he is

have vigorous and articulate spokesmen; consequently, it is thought fitting that a Thomistic and a Marxist article should be

included. We turn for a brief look at these two traditions.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was born into an age of intense and fervent theological and philosophical controversy. It

was a time of great crisis in the Christian Church, a time which required some convincing answers to certain key questions. Thomas’ was the voice which proved authoritative, his the learning which managed to encompass the heavy accumulation of medieval theology, the fascinating newly rediscovered books of Aristotle toward which there was much ambivalence in the thirteenth century, and Holy Scripture; his too was the tremendous vision and patience to work out, syllogism by syllogism, argument by argument, volume by volume, a system in which scarcely any question remained unanswered, hardly any extant theory went unconsidered. Basically this was an Aristotelian philosophy—in Dante’s inferno Aristotle is in as favorable a location as is possible for anyone who could not have participated in Christ’s atonement —but elaborated, sometimes corrected, and systematized. “Never before or since has science been wrought into so complete an expression of an age; never has there been effected such a harmony of knowledge and aspiration.” ” The universe, according to this synthesis, is comprised of God, who is pure actuality, absolute perfection, creator of all things, 2John Herman Randall, the Modern Mind, p. 102.

Jr., The

Making

of

VITALISM,

488

THOMISM,

AND

MARXISM

widely considered so nearly sound’ and

new state on Marxist principles, is too well

adequate as usually to invite only interpretation and not supplementation.

known. to need telling here, but it is perhaps not so widely realized that most of the important figures in the political his-

Neo-Scholasticism . . . claims that philosophy does not vary with each passing phase of history; that the truth of seven hundred

tory of Communism have been philosophic writers in the Marxist tradition; the most

years ago is still true today, and that if the

notable examples, of course, besides Lenin,

great medieval thinkers—Aquinas, Bona-

are Trotsky and Stalin. A characteristic of this tradition stemming directly from

venture, and Duns Scotus—succeeded in constructing a sound philosophical system

on the data supplied by the Greeks, especially by Aristotle, it must be possible, in our own day, to gather from the speculations of the Middle Ages the soul of truth which it contains.*

In our own day Neo-Thomism has had considerable influence and made not a few converts in intellectual and artistic circles. In Catholic schools and universities, the study of the teachings of St. Thomas is of central importance.

the master

is the virulently

polemical

quality of the writing and speaking. Though bred in the seemingly austere and

detached tradition of Hegel, Marx grew to maturity in the agitations among various interpreters of the great dialectician

and continued on in the full heat of furi-

After a somewhat stormy and abortive career as a radical and revolutionary journalist in Germany, France, and Belgium, he fled to London, where he lived a great part of his life, studying economics in the

ous and bitter controversy among socialists and revolutionaries. Marx considered _philosophy (like all theory) not just a highly distanced description or explanation but a tool for action, a weapon for waging the battle to change the world we live in. From. Hegel, Marx and Engels learned that there is a universal pattern of movement, process, change: the dialectic. It is easiest understood perhaps, as a theory of history or as a logic of argument, but it is truly ubiquitous. Its schema is: ThesisAntithesis-Synthesis. Whatever your starting place, there is engendered an opposition and the battle is waged until it is lifted: to a new and more comprehensive plane. But, Marx insisted, however astute Hegel was logically, he was entirely wrong in his Idealism—that is, in supposing that

British

mani-

history is a dialectic of ideas. No, the ele-

festoes, diatribes, and books, some in close

ments of dialectic struggle are economic classes, i.e, groups identified and defined

Karl Marx

(1818-1883)

was

born

in

Rhenish Prussia. His father was a Jewish lawyer who had become converted. to Protestantism. From the first a serious student, Karl Marx won his Ph.D. (with a dissertation on Epicurus) from the University of Berlin after having concentrated his scholarly powers not only on philoso-

phy but on history and the law as well.

Museum,

writing

articles,

collaboration with Friedrich Engels. The story of the rise of Marxian Communism in Russia, the establishment by

Lenin of the Bolshevik group and later the

by certain relations to the principal economic materials and facilities. The clash of economic classes is the motor of history.

Communist party, and the founding of a

In ‘spite of an elaborate attempt to be

3M. de Wulf, article ‘“Neo-Scholasticism,” Cath-

“scientific” rather than “utopian” and to be “objective” rather than “moralistic” or

olic Encyclopedia.

INTRODUCTION

489

even “evaluative,” Marx provided not only

still evil no doubt, but infinitely preferable

a prediction of the ultimate success of the proletarian class but a highly systematic justification of this inevitable victory. The instability of bourgeois ascendency lies in a kind of unnaturalness of the profit sys-

to a capitalist state and still necessary. And

tem and only as society becomes at last classless will there be a right and just distribution of the world’s goods. Aliena-

tion and exploitation will then be at an end and man will at last acquire, and relish in, freedom and fullness of life. Marx was an anarchist in political theory: the state

is by nature evil and in the final run not even a necessary evil. But it is the more evil, the more it is the tool of a selfish and narrowly based economic class. In a capitalist economy the state is—whatever gesture it make toward social melioration— a servant of the owning class. As this class is overthrown, the state will become temporarily the servant of the proletarian class—

then when men are ready, even this class will disappear and along with it all its

tools. Though no doubt chiefly an economic-

social philosophy, Marxism makes claim to being a complete system, that is, with an epistemology, an ethics, an esthetics, a logic, and an ontology. Ontologically, it is

materialistic; logically, dialectical. Its esthetics is to a considerable extent a branch of its social ethics, which is humanistic. In epistemology, Marxism is realistic and

at least to a considerable extent empirical, but there seems to remain a strong ration-

alistic flavor to its dialectic. Perhaps Lenin’s principal contributions to Marxism lay in his emphasis upon the role of a Communist party in guiding pro-

letarian revolution and in his opposition to any form of gradualism.

Theory of Knowledge SODDDBDDDDBQOQQOQHQD QO OQ OQOOOQOL_O OQ Ooo

Philosophical Intuition

HENRI BERGSON different words, provided these words have

The relation of a philosophy to earlier and contemporary philosophies is not . . . what a certain conception of the history of systems would lead us to assume. The philosopher does not take pre-existing ideas in order to recast them into a superior

the same connection between them. Such is the process of speech. And such also is the operation by which a philosophy

is constituted. The philosopher does not start with pre-existing ideas; at most one can say that he arrives at them. And when he gets there the idea thus caught up into the movement of his mind, being animated with a new life like the word which receives its meaning from the sentence, is no longer what it was outside the vortex. One would find the same kind of relationship between a philosophical system and the whole body of scientific knowledge of the epoch in which the philosopher

synthesis or combine them with a new idea. One might as well believe that in order to speak we go hunting for words that we string together afterwards by means of a thought. The truth is that above the word and above the sentence there is something much more simple than a sentence or even a word: the meaning, which is less a thing thought than a movement of thought, less a movement than a direction. And just as the impulsion given to the embryonic life determines the division of an original cell into cells which in turn divide until the complete organism is formed, so the characteristic movement of each act of thought leads this thought, by an increasing sub-division of itself, to spread out more and more over the successive planes of the mind until it reaches that of speech. Once there it expresses itself by means of a sentence, that is, by a group of pre-existing elements; but it can almost arbitrarily choose the first elements of the group provided that the others are complementary to them; the same thought is translated just as well into diverse sentences composed of entirely

lived. There is a certain conception of philosophy which requires that all the effort of the philosopher should be to embrace in one large synthesis the results of the particular sciences. Indeed, the philosopher,

for a long time, was

he who

possessed universal knowledge; and today even, when the multiplicity of particular sciences, the diversity and complexity of methods, the enormous mass of facts col-

lected make the accumulation of all human knowledge in a single mind impossible, the philosopher remains the man of universal. knowledge, in this sense, that if he can no longer know everything, there is

490

nothing that he should not have put himself in a position to learn. But does it

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

necessarily follow, that his task is to take possession of existing science to bring it to increasing degrees of generality, and to proceed,

from condensation

to condensa-

tion, to what has been called the unification of knowledge? May I be pardoned if I consider it strange that this conception of philosophy is proposed to us in the name of science, out of respect for science: I know of no conception more offensive to science or more injurious to the scientist. Here, if you like, is a man who, over a long period of time, has followed a certain scientific method and laboriously gained his results, who

says to us: “Experience,

with the help of reasoning, leads to this point; scientific knowledge begins here, it ends there; such are my conclusions”; and the philosopher would have the right to answer: “Very well, leave it to me, and I'll show you what I can do with it! The knowledge you bring me unfinished, I shall complete. What you put before me in bits I shall put together. With the same materials, since it is understood that I shall keep to the facts which you have observed, with the same kind of work, since I must restrict myself as you did to induction and deduction, I shall do more and better than you have done.” Truly a very strange pretention! How could the profession of a philosopher confer upon him who exercises it the power of advancing further than science in the same direction as science? That certain scientists are more inclined than others to forge ahead and to generalize their results, more in-

clined also to turn back and to criticize their methods, that in this particular meaning of the word they should be dubbed philosophers, moreover that each science can and should have its own philosophy thus understood, I am the first to admit. But that particular philosophy is still science, and he who practises it is still a

491 scientist. It is no longer a question, as it was a moment ago, of setting up philosophy as a synthesis of the positive sciences and of claiming, in virtue of the philosopher’s mind alone, to raise oneself above science in the generalization of the same facts. Such a conception of the role of the philosopher would be unfair to science. But how much more unfair to philosophy! Is it not evident that if the scientist stops at a certain point along the road of generalization and synthesis it is because beyond that point objective experience and sure reasoning do not permit us to advance? And hence in claiming to go further in the same direction, should we not be placing ourselves systematically in the arbitrary or at least the hypothetical? To make of philosophy an ensemble of generalities which goes beyond scientific generalization, is to insist that the philosopher be content with the plausible and that probability be sufficient for him. I am perfectly well aware that for most of those who follow our discussions from a distance, our domain is in fact that of the simple possible, at most that of the probable; they would be very much inclined to say that philosophy begins where certitude leaves off. But who among us would like philosophy to be in such a situation? Doubtless everything is not equally verified or verifiable in what a philosophy brings us, and it is the essence of the philosophical method to demand that at many moments, on many points, the mind should take risks. But the philosopher runs these risks only because he has insured himself and because there are things of

which he feels himself unshakeably certain. He will make us certain in our turn

to the extent that he is able to communicate to us the intuition from whence he draws his strength.

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AND

MARXISM

The truth is that philosophy is not a synthesis of particular sciences, and that if it often places itself on the terrain of

inner essence of what is and what is done, we are of that essence. Let us then go down into our own inner selves: the deeper the

science,

point we touch, the stronger will be the’ thrust which sends us back to the sur-

if it sometimes

embraces

in a

simpler vision the objects of science, it is not by intensifying science, it is not by carrying the results of science to a higher

degree of generality. There would not be place for two ways of knowing, philosophy

face. Philosophical

intuition

is this con-

tact, philosophy is this impetus. Brought back to the surface by an impulsion from

depth. In thus probing its own depth does

the depth, we shall regain contact with science as our thought opens out and disperses. Philosophy then must be able to model itself upon science, and an idea of so-called intuitive origin which could not manage, by dividing itself and subdividing its divisions, to cover the facts observed outwardly and the laws by which science joins them to each other, which would not be capable even of correcting certain generalizations and of rectifying certain observations, would be pure fantasy; it would have nothing in common with intuition. But on the other hand the idea which succeeds in fitting perfectly this dispersion of itself upon the facts and laws, was not obtained by a unification of external experience; for the philosopher did not arrive at unity, he started from it. I am speaking, naturally, of a unity which

it penetrate more deeply into the interior

is at once restricted and relative, like the

of matter, of life, or reality in general? One could dispute this if consciousness had been superadded to matter as an accident; but I believe I have shown that

unity which marks off a living being from

such a hypothesis, according to the way

tion in the course of which a philosophy appears to re-assemble in itself the fragments of earlier philosophies, is not a

and science, if experience did not present itself to us under two different aspects; on the one hand in the form of facts side by side with other facts, which repeat themselves more or less, which can to a certain extent be measured, and which in fact open out in the direction of distinct multiplicity and spatiality; on the other hand in the form of a reciprocal penetration which is pure duration, refractory to law and measurement. In both cases, experience signifies consciousness; but in the first case, consciousness unfolds outward and externalizes itself in relation to itself in the exact measure to which it perceives things as external to one another; in the second, it turns back within itself,

it takes possession of itself and develops in

in which it is generally taken, is absurd or false, self-contradictory or contradicted by the facts. One might still dispute it, if human consciousness, although related to a higher and vaster consciousness, had been put aside, as if man had to stand in a corner of nature like a child being

the rest of the universe. The process by which philosophy seems to assimilate the

results of positive science, like the opera-

synthesis but an analysis. Science is the auxiliary of action. And action aims at a result. The scientific intelligence asks itself therefore what will have

to be done in order that a certain desired

punished. But no! the matter and life which fill the world are equally within us; the

conditions should obtain in order that a

forces which work in all things we feel within ourselves; whatever may be the

certain phenomenon take place. It goes from an arrangement of things to a rear-

result. be attained, or more generally, what

THEORY

OF

KNOWLEDGE

rangement, from a simultaneity to a simultaneity. Of necessity it neglects what happens in the interval; or if it does concern itself with

it, it is in order

to consider

other arrangements in it, still more simul-

taneities. With methods meant to seize the ready-made, it cannot in general enter into what is being done, it cannot follow the moving reality, adopt the becoming which is the life of things. This last task belongs

to philosophy. While the scientist, obliged to take immobile views of movement and to gather repetitions along a path where nothing is repeated, intent also upon dividing reality conveniently on successive planes where it is deployed in order to submit it to the action of man, is obliged to use craft with nature, to adopt toward it the wary attitude of an adversary, the philosopher treats nature as a comrade. The rule of science is the one posited by Bacon: obey in order to command. The philosopher neither obeys nor commands; he seeks to be at one with nature. From this point of view, moreover, the essence of philosophy is the spirit of simplicity. Whether we contemplate the philosophical spirit in itself or in its works, whether we compare philosophy to science or one philosophy with other philosophies, we always find

that any complication is superficial, that the construction is a mere accessory, synthesis a semblance: the act of philosophising is a simple one. The more we become imbued with this truth, the more we shall be inclined to take philosophy out of the school and bring it into closer contact with life. No doubt the attitude

of common

sense,

as

it results

from the structure of the senses, of intelligence and of language, is nearer to the attitude of science than to that of philoso-

phy. By that I do not mean only that the general categories of our thought are the

493 very categories of science, that the highways traced by our senses across the continuity of the real are those along which science will travel, that perception is a science in the process of being born, science an adult perception, and that ordinary knowledge and scientific knowledge, both destined to prepare our action upon things, are necessarily two visions of a kind, al-

though of unequal precision and range; what I wish particularly to say, is that

ordinary knowledge is forced, like scientific knowledge and for the same reasons,

to take things in a time broken up into an

infinity of particles, pulverised so to speak, where an instant which does not endure follows another equally without duration. Movement is for it a series of positions, change a series of qualities, and becoming, generally, a series of states. It starts from immobility (as though immobility could be anything but an appearance, compara-

ble to the special effect that one moving body produces upon another when both move at the same rate in the same direction), and by an ingenious arrangement of immobilities it recomposes an imitation of movement which it substitutes for movement itself: an operation which is convenient from a practical standpoint but is theoretically absurd, pregnant with all the contradictions, all the pseudo-problems that Metaphysics and Criticism find before them. But precisely because it is right there that common sense turns its back upon philosophy, all we shall have to do is to have it make a volte-face on that point in order to head, it again in the direction of philosophical thought. Intuition doubtless admits of many degrees of intensity, and philosophy many degrees of depth; but the mind once brought back to real duration will already be alive with intuitive life and its knowledge of things will already be

494

VITALISM,

THOMISM,

AND

MARXISM

philosophy. Instead of a discontinuity of moments replacing one another in an infinitely divided time, it will perceive the

If this knowledge is generalized, speculation will not be the only thing to profit

continuous fluidity of real time which flows

illuminated by it. For the world into which ' our senses and consciousness habitually

along, indivisible. Instead of surface states covering successively some neutral stuff and maintaining with it a mysterious relationship of phenomenon to substance, it will seize upon one identical change which keeps ever lengthening as in a melody where everything is becoming but where the becoming, being itself substantial, has

no need of support. No more inert states, no more dead things; nothing but the mo-

bility of which the stability of life is made. A vision of this kind, where reality appears as continuous and indivisible, is on the road which leads to philosophical intuition. For, in order to reach intuition it is not

necessary to transport ourselves outside the domain of the senses and of consciousness. Kant’s error was to believe that it was. After having proved by decisive arguments that no dialectical effort will ever introduce us into the beyond and that an effective metaphysics would necessarily be an intuitive metaphysics, he added that we lack this intuition and that this metaphysics is impossible. It would be so, in fact, if there were no other time or change than those which Kant perceived and

which, moreover,

we

too must

reckon

with; for our usual perception cannot get out of time nor grasp anything else then change. But the time in which we are natu-

rally placed, the change we habitually have before us, are a time and change that our senses and our consciousness have reduced

to dust in order to facilitate our action upon things. Undo what they have done,

by it. Everyday life can be nourished and

introduce us is no more than the shadow of itself: and it is as cold as death. Everything in it is arranged for our maximum convenience, but in it, everything is in a present which seems constantly to be starting afresh; and we ourselves, fashioned artificially in the image of a no less artificial universe, see ourselves in the instantaneous, speak of the past as of something done away with, and see in memory a fact strange or in any case foreign to us, an aid given to mind by matter. Let us on the contrary grasp ourselves afresh as we are, in a present which is thick, and furthermore, elastic, which we can stretch indefinitely backward by pushing the screen which masks us from ourselves farther and farther away; let us grasp afresh the external world as it really is, not superficially, in the present, but in depth, with the immediate past crowding upon it and imprinting upon it its impetus; let us in a word become accustomed to see all things sub specie durationis: immediately in our

galvanized perception what is taut becomes relaxed, what is dormant awakens, what is dead comes to life again. Satisfactions which art will never give save to those favoured by nature and fortune, and only then upon rare occasions, philosophy thus understood will offer to all of us, at all times, by breathing life once again into the phantoms which surround us and by revivifying us. In so doing philosophy will become complementary to science in practice as well as in speculation. With its

bring our perception back to its origins,

applications which aim only at the conven-

and we shall have a new kind of knowledge without having been obliged to have

ience of existence, science gives us the promise of well-being, or at most, of pleasure.

recourse to new faculties.

But philosophy could already give us joy.

Philosophy of History, Culture, and Society SSS

The State eT

LN

I HAVE already said that you will scarcely

ing classes—the landlords and the capi-

relics of it on every hand, even the view of the state held by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who reject with disgust the suggestion that they are under the sway of religious prejudices and are convinced that they can regard the state with sober eyes. This question has been so confused and complicated because it affects the interests of the ruling classes more than any other (yielding in this respect only to the foundations of economic science). The doctrine of the state serves as a justification of social privilege, a justification of the existence of exploitation, a justification of the existence of capitalism —and that is why it would be the greatest mistake to expect impartiality on this question, to approach this question in the belief that people who claim to be scientific can give you a purely scientific view on the subject. When you have become familiar with this question and have gone into it sufficiently deeply, you will always discern in the question of the state, in the doctrine of the state, in the theory of the state, the mutual struggle of different classes, a struggle which is reflected or expressed in the

talists—so

so

conflict of views on the state, in the esti-

deeply permeated all the customs, views

mate of the role and significance of the

and science of the gentlemen who represent

state.

find another question which has been so confused, deliberately or not, by the representatives of bourgeois science, philosophy, jurisprudence, political economy and journalism, as the question of the state. To this day this question is very often confused with religious questions; not only representatives of religious doctrines (it is quite natural to expect it of them), but even people who consider themselves free from religious prejudice, very often confuse the special question of the state with questions of religion and endeavour to build up a doctrine—often a complex one, with an ideological, philosophical approach and foundation—which claims that the state is something divine, something supernatural, that it is a certain force, by virtue of which mankind

has lived, and which confers on

people, or which can confer on people, which brings with it, something that is not of man, but is given him from without— that it is a force of divine origin. And it must be said that this doctrine is so closely bound up with the interests of the exploitserves

their

interests,

has

the bourgeoisie, that you will meet with

To approach this question as scientif-

495,

496

VITALISM,

ically as possible we must cast at least a fleeting glance back on the history of the rise and development of the state. The most reliable thing in a question of social science and one that is most necessary in order really to acquire the habit of approaching this question correctly and not allowing oneself to get lost in the mass of detail or in the immense variety of conflicting opinions—the most important thing in order to approach this question scientifically is not to forget the underlying historical connection, to examine every question from the standpoint of how the

given phenomenon arose in history and what principal stages this phenomenon passed through in its development, and, from the standpoint of its development, to examine what the given thing has become today.

In order to approach this question correctly, as every other question, for example, the question of the origin of capitalism, the exploitation of man by man, Socialism, how Socialism arose, what conditions gave rise to it—every such question can be ap-

proached soundly and confidently only if we cast a glance back on the history of its development as a whole. In connection

with this question it should first of all be noted that the state has not always existed. There was a time when there was no state. It appears wherever and whenever a division of society into classes appears, whenever exploiters and exploited appear. Before the first form of exploitation of man by man arose, the first form of division into classes—slaveowners and slaves— there existed the patriarchal family, or, as it is sometimes called, the clan family. Fairly definite traces of these primitive

THOMISM,

AND

MARXISM

work whatsoever on primitive culture, you will always come across more or less defi-

nite descriptions, indications and recollections of the fact that there was a time,’ more or less similar to primitive Communism, when the division of society into slaveowners and slaves did not exist. And in those times there was no state, no special apparatus for the systematic application of

force and the subjugation of people by force. Such an apparatus is called the state. In primitive society, when people still

lived in small tribes and were still at the lowest stages of their development, in a condition approximating to savagery—an

epoch from which modern, civilised human society is separated by several thousands of years—there were yet no signs of the existence of a state. We find the predominance of custom, authority, respect, the power enjoyed by the elders of the tribe; we find this power sometimes position of accorded to women—the women then was not like the unfranchised

and oppressed condition of women today —but nowhere do we find a special category of people who are set apart to rule others and who, in the interests and with the purpose of rule, systematically and

permanently command a certain apparatus of coercion, an apparatus of violence, such as is represented at the present time, as you all realise, by the armed detachments of troops, the prisons and the other means of subjugating the will of others by force —all that which constitutes the essence of the state. If we abstract ourselves from the socalled religious teachings, subtleties, philosophical arguments and the various opih-

ions advanced by bourgeois scholars, and try to get at the real essence of the matter,

times have survived in the life of many

we shall find that the state really does amount to such an apparatus of rule sepa-

primitive

rated out from human society. When there

peoples; and if you

take any

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

appears such a special group of men who are occupied with ruling and nothing else, and who in order to rule need a special apparatus of coercion and of subjugating the will of others by force—prisons, special detachments of men, armies,

SOCIETY

497

discipline and the ordering of work were maintained by force of custom and tradition, or by the authority or the respect enjoyed by the elders of the tribe or by women—who in those times not only frequently enjoyed equal status with men, but not infrequently enjoyed even a higher status—and when there was no special category of persons, specialists in ruling. History shows that the state as a special apparatus for coercing people arose only wherever and whenever there appeared a division of society into classes, that is, a division into groups of people some of whom are permanently in a position to appropriate the labour of others, when some people exploit others. And this division of society into classes must always be clearly borne in mind as a fundamental fact of history. The development of all human societies for thousands of years, in all countries without exception, reveals a general conformity to law, regularity and consistency in this development; so that at first we had a society without classes—the first patriarchal, primitive society, in which there were no aristocrats; then we had a society based on slavery— a slaveowning society. The whole of modern civilised Europe has passed through this stage—slavery ruled supreme two thousand years ago. The vast majority of the peoples of other parts of the world also passed through this stage. Among the less developed peoples traces of slavery survive

slavery in Africa, for example, at the present time. Slaveowners and slaves were the first important class divisions. The former group not only owned all the means of production—the land and tools, however primitive they may have been in those times—but also owned people. This group was known as slaveowners, while those who laboured and supplied labour for others were known as slaves. This form was followed in history by another—feudalism. In the great majority of countries slavery evolved into feudalism. The fundamental divisions of society were now the feudal landlords and the peasant serfs. The form of relations between people changed. The slaveowners had regarded the slaves as their property; the law had confirmed this view and regarded the slave as a chattel completely owned by the slaveowner. As far as the peasant serf was concerned, class oppression and dependence remained, but it was not considered that the feudal landlord owned the peasants as chattels, but that he was only entutled to their labour and to compel them to perform certain services. In practice, as you know, feudalism, especially in Russia, where it survived longest of all and assumed the grossest forms, in no way differed from slavery. Further, with the development of trade, the appearance of the world market and the development of money circulation, a new class arose within feudal society—the capitalist class. From the commodity, the exchange of commodities and the rise of the power of money, there arose the power of capital. During the eighteenth century— or rather, from the end of the eighteenth century and during the nineteenth century —revolutions took place all over the world. Feudalism was eliminated in all the countries of Western Europe. This took place

to this day; you will find the institution of

latest of all in Russia. In 1861 a radical

etc.—there appears the state. But there was a time when there was no state, when

general ties, society itself,

498

VITALISM,

THOMISM,

AND

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change took place in Russia as well, as a

doctrines of bourgeois scholars and politi-

consequence of which one form of society was replaced by another—feudalism was

cians—only if we firmly hold to the guiding thread, this division of society into classes and this change in the forms of ' class rule, and from this standpoint examine all social questions—economic, po-litical, spiritual, religious, etc. If you examine the state from the standpoint of this fundamental division, you will find that before the division of society into classes, as I have already said, no state existed. But as the social division into classes arose and took firm root, as class society arose, the state also arose and took firm root. The history of mankind knows scores and hundreds of countries that have passed through and are still passing through slavery, feudalism and capitalism. In each of these countries, despite the immense historical changes that have taken place, despite all the political vicissitudes and all the revolutions associated with this development of mankind, in the transition from slavery through feudalism to capitalism and to the present world-wide struggle against capitalism, you will always discern the rise of the state. It has always been a certain apparatus which separated out from society and consisted of a group of people engaged solely, or almost solely, or mainly, in ruling. People are divided into ruled and into specialists in ruling, those who rise above society and are called rulers, representatives of the state. This apparatus, this group of people who rule others, always takes command of a certain apparatus of coercion, of physical force, irrespective of whether this coercion of people is expressed in the primitive club, or—in the epoch of slavery—in more perfected types of weapons, or in the firearms which appeared in the Middle Ages, or, finally, in modern weapons, which in the twentieth century are marvels of technique and are entirely based on the latest achievements of mod-

replaced by capitalism, under which division into classes remained as well as various traces and relics of feudalism, but in which the division into classes fundamentally assumed a new form. The owners of capital, the owners of the land, the owners of the mills and factories in all capitalist countries constituted and still constitute an insignificant minority of the population who have complete command of the labour of the whole people, and who therefore command, oppress and exploit the whole mass of labourers, the majority of whom are proletarians, wageworkers, that procure their livelihood in the process of production only by the sale of their labour power. With the transition to capitalism, the peasants, who were already impoverished and downtrodden in feudal times, were converted partly (the

majority) into proletarians, and partly (the minority) into wealthy peasants who themselves hired workers and who constituted a rural bourgeoisie. This fundamental fact—the transition of society from primitive forms of slavery to feudalism and finally to capitalism—you must always bear in mind, for only by remembering this fundamental fact, only by inserting all political doctrines into this fundamental framework will you be able properly to appraise these doctrines and to understand what they refer to; for each of these great periods in the history of man-

kind—slaveowning , feudal and capitalist —embraces scores and hundreds of centuries and presents such a mass of political forms, such a variety of political doctrines, opinions and revolutions, that we can understand this extreme diversity and immense variety—especially in connection

with the political, philosophical and other

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

ern technology. The methods of coercion changed, but whenever there was a state there existed in every society a group of persons who ruled, who commanded, who dominated and who in order to maintain their power possessed an apparatus of physical coercion, an apparatus of violence, with those weapons which corresponded to the

technical level of the given epoch. And by examining these general phenomena, by asking ourselves why no state existed when

there were

no classes, when

there

were no exploiters and exploited, and why it arose when classes arose—only in this

way shall we find a definite answer to the question of the essence of the state and its significance. The state is a machine for maintaining the rule of one class over another. When there were no classes in society, when, before the epoch of slavery, people laboured in primitive conditions of greater equality, in conditions when productivity of labour was still at its lowest, and when primitive man could barely procure the wherewithal for the crudest and most primitive existence, a special group of people especially separated off to rule and dominate over the rest of society had not yet arisen, and could not have arisen. Only when the first form of the division of society into classes appeared, only when slavery ap-

peared, when a certain class of people, by concentrating on the crudest forms of agricultural labour, could produce a certain surplus, when this surplus was not absolutely essential for the most wretched existence of the slave and passed into the hands of the slaveowner, when in this way the existence of this class of slave-

owners took firm root—then in order that it might take firm root it was essential that a state should appear. And this state did appear—the slaveowning state, an apparatus which gave the

SOCIETY

499

slaveowners power and enabled them to rule over the slaves. Both society and the state were then much smaller than they are now, they possessed an incomparably weaker apparatus of communication—the modern means of communication did not then exist. Mountains, rivers and seas were immeasurably greater obstacles than they are now, and the formation of the state was confined within far narrower geographical boundaries. A technically weak state apparatus served a state confined

within relatively narrow boundaries and a narrow circle of action. Nevertheless, there did exist an apparatus which compelled the slaves to remain in slavery, which kept one part of society subjugated to and oppressed: by another. It is impossible to compel the

greater part of society to work systematically for the other part of society without a permanent apparatus of coercion. So long as there were no classes, there was no apparatus like this. When classes appeared, everywhere and always as this division grew and took firmer hold, there also appeared a special institution—the state. The forms of state were extremely varied. During the period of slavery we already find diverse forms of the state in the most advanced, cultured and most civilised countries according to the standards of the time, for example, in ancient Greece and Rome, which rested entirely on slavery. At that time the difference was already arising between the monarchy and the republic, between the aristocracy and the democracy. A monarchy is the power of a single person, a republic is the absence of any non-elected power; an aristocracy is the power of a relatively small minority, a democracy is the power of the people (democracy in Greek literally means the power of the people). All these differences arose in the epoch of slavery. Despite these differences, the state in slave

VITALISM,

500 times

was

a slave state, irrespective

of

whether it was a monarchy or a republic, aristocratic or democratic. In every course on the history of ancient times, when hearing a lecture on this subject you will hear about the struggle which was waged between the monarchical and republican states. But the fundamental fact is that the slaves were not regarded as human beings—they were not only not regarded as citizens, but not even as human beings. Roman law regarded them as chattels. The law on murder, not to mention the other laws for the protection of the person, did not extend to slaves. It defended only the slaveowners, who were alone recognised as citizens with full rights. But whether a monarchy was instituted or a republic, it was a monarchy of the slaveowners or a republic of the slaveowners. All rights under them were enjoyed by the slaveowners, while the slave

was a chattel in the eyes of the law; and not only could any sort of violence be perpetrated against a slave, but even the murder of a slave was not considered a crime. Slaveowning republics differed in their internal organisation: there were aristocratic republics and democratic republics. In an aristocratic republic a small number of privileged persons took part in the elections; in a democratic republic everybody took part in the elections—but again only the slaveowners, everybody except the slaves. This fundamental fact must be borne in mind, because it throws more light than any other on the question of the state and clearly demonstrates the nature of the state. The state is a machine for the oppression of one class by another, a machine for keeping in subjugation to one class other, subordinated classes. There are various forms of this machine. In the slaveowning state we had a monarchy, an aristocratic

THOMISM,

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republic or even a democratic republic. In fact the forms of government tremely, but their essence was same: the slaves enjoyed no constituted an oppressed class;

varied exalways the rights and they were

not regarded as human beings. We find the same state of affairs in the feudal state.

The change in the form of exploitation transformed the slave state into the feudal state. This was of immense importance. In

slave society the slave enjoys no rights whatever and is not regarded as a human being; in feudal society the peasant is tied to the soil. The chief feature of feudalism was that the peasants (and at that time the peasants constituted the majority; there was a very poorly developed urban population) were considered attached, or in fee, to the land—hence the term feudalism. The peasant might work a definite number of days for himself on the plot assigned to him by the landlord; on the

other days the peasant serf worked for this lord. The essence of class society remained: society was based on class exploitation. Only the landlords could enjoy full rights; the peasants had no rights at all. In practice their condition differed very little from the condition of slaves in the slave state. Never-

theless a wider road was opened for their emancipation, for the emancipation of the peasants, since the peasant serf was not regarded as the direct property of the landlord. He could work part of his time on his own plot, could, so to speak, belong to himself to a certain extent; and with the wider opportunities for the develop-

ment of exchange and trade relations the feudal system steadily disintegrated and’ the scope of emancipation of the peasantry

steadily. widened. Feudal society was always more complex than slave society. There was a greater element of the development of trade and industry, which

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

even in those days led to capitalism. In the Middle Ages feudalism predominated. And here too the forms of state differed,

here too we find both monarchies and republics, although much more weakly expressed. But always the feudal landlord was regarded as the only ruler. The peas-

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501

uprisings of the peasants against the feudal

landlords in Russia. In order to maintain their rule and to preserve their power, the landlords had to have an apparatus by which they could subjugate a vast number of people and subordinate them to certain laws and regu-

ant serfs were absolutely excluded from

lations; and all these laws fundamentally

all political rights. Both under slavery and under the feudal system the small minority of people could not dominate over the vast majority without coercion. History is full of the constant attempts of the oppressed classes to rid themselves of oppression. The history of slavery contains records of wars of emancipation from slavery which lasted for decades. Incidentally, the name “Spartacist” now adopted by the German Communists—the only German party which is really fighting the yoke of capitalism—was adopted by them because Spartacus was one of the most prominent heroes of one

amounted to one thing—the maintenance

of the greatest revolts of slaves which took place about two thousand years ago. For

many

years the apparently

omnipotent

Roman Empire, which rested entirely on slavery, experienced the shocks and blows of a vast uprising of slaves who armed and united to form a vast army under the leadership of Spartacus. In the end they were defeated, captured and tortured by the slaveowners. Such civil wars mark the whole history of the existence of class society. I have just mentioned an example of the greatest of these civil wars in the epoch of slavery. The whole epoch of feudalism is likewise marked by constant uprisings of the peasants. For example, in Germany in the Middle Ages the struggle between the two classes—the landlords and the serfs—assumed wide dimensions and was transformed into a civil war of the peasants against the landlords. You are all

familiar with similar examples of repeated

of the power of the landlords over the peasant serfs. And this was the feudal state, which in Russia, for example, or in extremely backward Asiatic countries, where feudalism prevails to this day—it differed in form—was either republican or monarchical. When the state was a monarchy,

the rule of one person was recognised; when it was a republic, the participation in one degree or another of the elected representatives of landlord society was recognised—this was in feudal society. Feudal society represented a division of classes under which the vast majority—the peasant serfs—were completely subjected to an insignificant minority—the landlords, who owned the land. The development of trade, the development of commodity exchange, led to the crystallisation of a new class—the capitalists. Capital arose at the close of the Middle Ages, when, after the discovery of America, world trade developed enor-

mously, when the quantity of precious metals increased, when silver and gold became the means of exchange, when money circulation made it possible for individuals to hold tremendous wealth. Silver and gold were recognised as wealth all over the world. The economic power of the landlord class declined and the power of the new class—the representatives of capital —developed. The reconstruction in society was such that all citizens supposedly be-

came equal, the old division into slaveowners

and slaves disappeared, all were

VITALISM,

502

THOMISM,

AND

MARXISM

their labour power—they were all equal before the law. The law protects everybody equally; it protects the property of

talist state and served their purpose, inasmuch as feudalism was breaking down and the peasants had acquired the opportunity of owning as their full property the land which they had purchased for compensation or in part by quit rent—this. did not concern the state: it protected prop-

those who have it from attack by the masses who, possessing no property, pos-

erty no matter how it arose, since it rested on private property. The peasants

sessing nothing but their labour power, grow steadily impoverished and ruined and become converted into proletarians. Such is capitalist society.

became private owners in all the modern civilised states. Even when the landlord surrendered part of his land to the peasant, the state protected private property, rewarding the landlord by compensation,

regarded as equal before the law irrespec-

tive of what capital they owned; whether they owned land as private property, or

were starvelings who owned nothing but

I cannot dwell on it in detail. You will you come

sale for rnoney. The state as it were de-

to discuss the programme of the Party—

clared that it would fully preserve private

you will then hear a description of capitalist society. This society advanced against serfdom, against the old feudal system, under the slogan of liberty. But it was liberty for those who owned property. And

property, and it accorded it every support and protection. The state recognised the property rights of every merchant, industrialist and manufacturer. And this society, based on private property, on the power of capital, on the complete subjection of the propertyless workers and labouring masses of the peasantry, proclaimed that its rule

return

to this question when

when feudalism was shattered, which oc-

curred at the end of the eighteenth century

and the beginning of the nineteenth century—it occurred in Russia later than in other countries, in 1861—the feudal state was superseded by the capitalist state,

which

proclaims liberty for the whole

people as its slogan, which declares that it expresses the will of the whole poeple and denies that it is a class state. And here there developed a struggle between the Socialists, who are fighting for the liberty of the whole people, and the capitalist state—a struggle which has now led to the creation

was based on liberty. Combating feudalism, it proclaimed freedom of property and

was particularly proud of the fact that the state had supposedly ceased to be a class state. Yet the state continued to be a machine

which helped the capitalists to hold the poor peasants and the working class in subjection. But externally it was free. It

proclaimed universal suffrage, and declared through its champions, preachers, scholars

of the Soviet Socialist Republic and which

and philosophers that it was not a class

embraces the whole world.

state. Even now, when the Soviet Socialist

To understand the struggle that has been started against world capital, to understand the essence of the capitalist state, we must remember that when the capitalist state advanced against the feudal state it entered the fight under the slogan of lib-

erty. The abolition of feudalism meant liberty for the representatives of the capi-

Republics have begun to fight it, they ac-

cuse us of violating liberty, of building a state based on coercion, on the suppression

of certain people by others, whereas they represent a popular, democratic state. And now, when the world Socialist revolution has begun, and just when therevolution has succeeded in certain countries, when

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

the fight against world capital has grown particularly acute, this question of the state has acquired the greatest importance and

has become, one might say, the most burning one, the focus of all political questions and of all political disputes of the present day. Whatever party we take in Russia or in any of the more civilised countries, we find that nearly all political disputes, disagreements and opinions now centre around the conception of the state. Is’ the state in a capitalist country, in a democratic republic—especially one like Switzerland or America—in the freest democratic republics, an expression of the popular will, the sum total of the general decision of the people, the expression of the national will, and so forth; or is the state a machine that

enables the capitalists of the given country to maintain their power over the working class and the peasantry? That is the fundamental question around which all political disputes all over the world now centre. What do they say about Bolshevism? The bourgeois press abuses the Bolsheviks. You will not find a single newspaper which does net repeat the current accusation that the Bolsheviks violate popular rule. If our Mensheviks

and

Socialist-Revolutionaries

in their simplicity of heart (perhaps it is not simplicity, or perhaps it is the simplicity which they say is worse than robbery) think that they discovered and in-

vented the accusation that the Bolsheviks have violated liberty and popular rule, they are ludicrously mistaken. Today not a single one of the rich newspapers in the wealthy countries, which spend tens of millions on their distribution and disseminate bourgeois lies and the imperialist policy in tens of millions of copies—there is not one of these newspapers which does not repeat these fundamental arguments and accusations against Bolshevism, namely,

SOCIETY

593

that America, England and Switzerland are advanced states based on popular rule, whereas the Bolshevik Republic is a state of bandits in which liberty is unknown,

and that the Bolsheviks have violated the idea of popular rule and have even gone so far as to disperse the Constituent Assem-

bly. These terrible accusations against the Bolsheviks are repeated all over the world. These accusations bring us fully up against the question—what is the state? In order to understand these accusations, in order to

examine them and have a fully intelligent attitude towards them, and not to examine

them on hearsay but with a firm opinion of our own, we must have a clear idea of what the state is. Here we have capitalist states of every kind and the theories in defence of them which were created before the war. In order to proceed to answer the question properly we must critically examine all these doctrines and views. I have already advised you to turn for help to Engels’ book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. This book says that every state in which private property in land and in the means of production exists, in which capital prevails, however democratic it may be, is a capitalist state, a machine used by the capitalists to keep the working class and the poor peasants in subjection; while universal suffrage, a Constituent Assembly, parliament are merely a form, a sort of promissory note, which does not alter matters in any essential way. The forms of domination of the state may vary: capital manifests its power in one

way

where

one

form

exists, and

in

another way where another form exists—

but essentially the power is in the hands of capital, whether there are voting qualifications or not, or whether the republic is a democratic one or not—in fact the more democratic it is the cruder and more

504

VITALISM,

cynical is the rule of capitalism. One of

the most democratic republics in the world is the United States of America, yet no-

where (and those who were there after 1905 probably know it) is the power of capital, the power of a handful of billionaires over and so openly capital exists, society, and

the whole of society, so crude corrupt as in America. Once it dominates the whole of no democratic republic, no

THOMISM,

AND

MARXISM

have acquired such great importance in the eyes of the broad masses of people. That is why a radical change seems to be so difficult. It is not only the conscious hypocrites,

scientists and priests that uphold and defend the bourgeois lie that the state is free and that it is its duty to defend the interests of all, but also a large number of

form of franchise can alter the essence of

people who sincerely adhere to the old prejudices and who cannot understand the

the matter.

transition from the old capitalist society to

The democratic republic and universal suffrage were a great progressive advance on feudalism: they have enabled the proletariat to achieve its present unity and

Socialism. It is not only people who are directly dependent on the bourgeoisie, not only those who are oppressed by the yoke of capital or who have been bribed by capi-

solidarity, to form those firm and disci-

tal (there are a large number of all sorts

plined ranks which are waging a systematic struggle against capital. There was nothing even approximately resembling this among the peasant serfs, not to speak

of scientists, artists, priests, etc., in the service of capital), but even people who are simply under the sway of the prejudice of bourgeois liberty that have taken up arms against Bolshevism all over the world be-

of the slaves. The slaves as we know

re-

volted, rioted, started civil wars, but they could never create a class-conscious majority and parties to lead the struggle, they could not clearly realise what they were aiming for, and even in the most revolutionary moments of history they were always pawns in the hands of the ruling classes. The bourgeois republic, parliament, universal suffrage all represent great progress from the standpoint of the world development of society. Mankind moved towards capitalism, and it was capitalism alone

which,

thanks

to

urban

culture,

enabled the oppressed class of proletarians to learn to know itself and to create the world working class movement, the mil-

lions of workers who are organised all over the world in parties—the Socialist parties which are consciously leading the struggle of the masses. Without parliamentarism, without elections, this development of the working class would have been

impossible. That is why all these things

cause of the fact that when it was founded the Soviet Republic rejected these bourgeois lies and openly declared: you say that your state is free, whereas in reality,

as long as there is private property, your state, even if it is a democratic republic, is nothing but a machine used by the capitalists to suppress the workers, and the freer the state, the more clearly is this expressed. Examples of this are Switzerland in Europe and the United States in the Americas. Nowhere does capital rule so cynically and ruthlessly, and nowhere is this so apparent, as in these countries, although they are democratic republics, no matter how finely they are painted and notwithstanding all the talk about labour democracy and the equality of all citizens.

The fact is that in Switzerland and America capital dominates, and every attempt of the workers to achieve the slightest real |

improvement in their condition is immediately met by civil war. There are fewer

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

505

soldiers, a smaller standing army in these

suppression

countries—Switzerland has a militia and every Swiss has a gun at home, while in America there was no standing army until quite recently—and so when there is a strike the bourgeoisie arms, hires soldiery and suppresses the strike; and nowhere is this suppression of the working class movement accompanied by such ruthless severity as in Switzerland and in America, and nowhere does the influence of capital in parliament manifest itself as powerfully as in these countries. The power of capital is everything, the stock exchange is everything, while parliament and elections are marionettes, puppets. . . . But the eyes of the workers are being opened more and more, and the idea of Soviet government is spreading wider and wider, especially after the bloody carnage through which we have just passed. The necessity for a merciless war on the capitalists is becoming clearer and clearer to the working class. Whatever forms a republic may assume, even the most democratic republic, if it is a bourgeois republic, if it retains private

And we shall place this machine in the

property in land, mills and factories, and if private capital keeps the whole of society in wage slavery, that is, if it does not carry out what is proclaimed in the programme of our Party and in the Soviet Constitution, then this state is a machine for the

of certain people by others.

hands of the class that is to overthrow the power of capital. We shall reject all the old prejudices about the state meaning uni-

versal equality. That is a fraud: as long as there is exploitation there cannot be equality. The landlord cannot be the equal of the worker, the hungry man the equal of

the full man. The proletariat casts aside the machine which was called the state and before which people bowed in superstitious awe, believing the old tales that it means popular rule—the proletariat casts aside this machine and declares that it is a bourgeois lie. We have deprived the capitalists of this machine and have taken it over. With this machine, or bludgeon, we shall destroy all exploitation. And when the possibility of exploitation no longer exists anywhere in the world, when there are no longer owners of land and owners of factories, and when there is no longer a situation in which some gorge while others starve—only when the possibility of this no longer exists shall we consign this machine to the scrap heap. Then there will be no state and no exploitation. Such is the view of our Communist Party. I hope that we shall return to this subject in subsequent lectures, and return to it again and again.

The Conquest of F reedom JACQUES

MARITAIN

victims of this accident each of us knows very well shat he possesses freedom of choice, that is to say, that if we betray a friend, risk our property to aid some unfortunate, decide to become a_ banker, monk, or soldier, these kinds of acts are what they are only because we have involved therein our personality and have arranged that they be so rather than not.

who philosophize without knowing it, frequently to becloud the question. Philosophers professing absolute intellectualism cannot understand the existence of free will because in their eyes intelligence not only precedes will, but precedes it in the manner of a divinity apart, which touches the will without being touched by it and without receiving from it any qualifying action. Hence the domain of formal or specifying determination (what is called the ordo specificationis) can never itself depend intrinsically upon the domain of efficiency or existential effectuation (ordo exerciti1), and the will is reduced to a function by which the intelligence realizes ideas which in virtue of the mere object they represent appear best to the subject. Such was. the position of the great metaphysicians of the classic age. Pure empiricists likewise cannot understand the existence of free will, because, recognizing only sensory sequences, the idea of causality exercised upon a spirit by itself has no meaning for them. Hence when they voice an opinion on a question, which, like that of free will, lies essentially in the ontological order, they, as metaphysicians in spite of themselves (and bad ones at that), can only interpret the empirical results of observational science in the framework of classic mechanism in:

But each of us knows very poorly wherein

herited from Spinoza, and give themselves

freedom of choice lies. This obscurity of spontaneous consciousness, unable to bring forth what is implicit in the matter, enables philosophers, and especially savants

over, -without knowing what they are doing, to the most naive extrapolations. To

I. FREEDOM OF INDEPENDENCE AND FREEDOM OF CHOICE

if this essay I shall not treat of free will or freedom of choice. The existence and value of this kind of freedom are, however, taken for granted by all I shall say. That is why I shall first give a few brief indications in their regard. The freedom I shall treat of subsequently is the freedom of independence and of exultation, which can be called also—in a Paulinian but not Kantian sense—freedom of autonomy, or also, freedom of expansion of the human person. It takes for granted the existence of freedom of choice in us, but it is substan-

tially distinct from it. A badly constructed philosophical theory that falsifies the reflective operation by which the mind of man knows itself explicitly can counteract and paralyze the primary and natural operation of spontane-

ous consciousness. As long as we are not

the extent that science reveals dynamic elements

506

working in our psychical activity,

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

they see in the mere existence of these elements the proof that the same operate in a necessarily determining fashion— which is precisely what remains to be

proved. In our times Freudism offers the pseudometaphysical empiricist the greatest possibilities for illusion. I have shown elsewhere that it is very important to distinguish most clearly between the psychoanalytic method, which opens to investigation in the unconscious new roads of the greatest interest, and the philosophy (unconscious of itself) that Freud has sought in crass empiricism, thereby leaving the field of his competence and giving full reign to his dreams. The fact, revealed by psychoanalysis, that there are unconscious motivations

SOCIETY

597

urges of nature. It follows from this that freedom, as well as responsibility, is capa-

ble of a multiplicity of degrees of which the author of being alone is judge. It does not follow from this that freedom does not exist—on the contrary! If it admits of degrees, then it exists. The efforts of eminent scientists, like

Professor Compton, to link indeterminist theories of modern physics to our natural

belief in free will may be highly significant and stimulating to the mind and efficacious in eliminating many prejudices, but I do

not think that a strict proof providing this belief with an unshakable intellectual basis can be found in that direction. The direction to follow is metaphysical. It brings us to formulas like those of M. Bergson:

“Our motivations are what we make which the subject obeys without knowing them”; “Our reasons are determined for them furnishes in no manner, as some us only at the moment that they become would imagine, an argument against free determining; that is, at the moment when will, for free will begins with intellectual the act is virtually accomplished.” But it judgment and consciousness. To the extent is not by an irrational philosophy of pure that unconscious motivation makes us act becoming, it is by a philosophy of being automatically, there is no question of free and intelligence like that of St. Thomas will; and to the extent that it gives rise to a conscious judgment, the question is | Aquinas that such formulas receive their full significance and demonstrative value. whether or not at this moment it fashions Spirit as such implies a sort of infinity; this judgment, or by means of free choice its faculty of desire of itself seeks a good is rendered decisively motivating by this judgment. In other words, the question is which satisfies absolutely, therefore a good without limit, and we cannot have any dewhether unconscious motivations are necessire which is not comprehended in this sarily determining or simply contributing, general desire for happiness. But as soon and it is clear that the mere fact of their as reflection occurs, our intelligence, conexistence is not sufficient to decide the fronted with goods that are not the Good, question. and judging them so, brings into actuality In general, human free will does not exthe radical indetermination that our appeclude but presupposes the vast and comtite for happiness possesses in regard to plex dynamism of instincts, tendencies, everything which is not happiness itself. psycho-physical dispositions, acquired habEfficacious motivation of an intelligent its, and hereditary traits, and it is at the being can be only a practical judgment: tcp point where this dynamism emerges in the world of spirit that freedom of and this judgment owes to the will the whole of its efficaciousness; it is will, imchoice is exercised, to give or withhold pelled by its own unpredictable initiative decisive efficacy to the inclinations and

VITALISM,

508

THOMISM,

AND

MARXISM

towards the good presented to it by such and such a judgment, that gives this judg-

dom of the human person we must be willing to sacrifice our most precious pos-

ment

and will involve and envelope each other vitally, is thus like an instantaneous flash in which the active and dominating indetermination of the will operates in regard to the judgment itself which determines it; the will can do nothing without an in-

sessions and our lives. What values, then, deserving of such sacrifice, are enveloped in the personality of man? What do we mean precisely when we speak of the human person? When we say that a man is a person, we do not mean merely that he is an individual, in the sense that an atom, a blade of grass, a fly, or an elephant is an individual. Man is an individ-

tellectual judgment; and it is will that makes itself determined by judgment and

ual who holds himself in hand by his intelligence and his will; he exists not merely

by this judgment rather than by another

in a physical fashion.

one.

superexistence

the power of specifying the will

efficaciously.

The free act, in which the intelligence

Far from being a simple function of the

intelligence, by which the latter realizes ideas which in virtue of their mere object appear best, the will is an original spiritual energy of infinite capacity which has control over the intelligence and its judgments in the order of practical choice and makes

what the will wants appear best to the

through

He

has spiritual

knowledge

and

love, so that he is, in a way, a universe in himself, a microcosmos, in which the great

universe in its entirety can be encompassed through knowledge. By love he can give himself completely to beings who are to him, as it were, other selves. For this rela-

tion no equivalent can be found in the physical world. The human person possesses these characteristics because in the

subject here and now. What constitutes the real mystery of free will is that while eslast analysis man, this flesh and these persentially needing intellectual specification, ishable bones which are animated and the exercise of the will has primacy over _ activated by a divine fire, exists “from the the latter and holds it under its active womb to the grave” by virtue of the existand dominating indetermination because ence itself of his soul, which dominates ~ the will alone can give it existential eftime and death. Spirit is the root of perficacy. sonality. The notion of personality thus After this preliminary explanation of involves that of totality and independence; freedom of choice, I shall now discuss no matter how poor and crushed a perthe freedom of independence. son may be, he is a whole, and as a person, subsistent in an independent manner, To say that a man is a person is to say II, FREEDOM OF INDEPENDthat in the depth of his being he is more ENCE AND THE ASPIRAa whole than a part and more independent TIONS OF THE PERSON

than servile. It is to say that he is a

Human personality is a great metaphysical mystery. We know that an essential characteristic of a civilization worthy of the name is meaning and respect for the dignity of the human person. We know that to defend the rights and free-

minute fragment of matter that is at the same time a universe, a beggar who participates in the absolute being, mortal — flesh whose value is eternal, and a bit of straw into which heaven enters. It is

this metaphysical mystery that religious

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

509

thought designates when it says that the

at the summit of being God is person in

person is the image of God. The value of the person, his dignity and rights, belong to the order of things naturally sacred which bear the imprint of the Father of Being, and which have in him the end of their movement. Freedom of spontaneity, on the other

pure act and freedom of independence in pure act. He is so personal that his existence is his very act of knowing and loving, and He is so independent that while causing all things, He Himself is absolutely without cause, his essence being his very act of existence. In each of us personality and freedom of independence increase together. For man is a being in movement. If he does not augment, he has nothing, and he loses what he had; he must fight for his being. The entire history of his fortunes and misfortunes is the history of his effort to win together with his own personality, freedom of independence. He is called to the conquest of freedom. Two basic truths must be noted here. The first is that the human being, though a person and therefore independent be-

hand, is not, as free will, a power of choice

that transcends all necessity, even interior necessity and all determinism. It does not imply the absence of necessity but merely the absence of constraint. It is the power of acting by virtue of its own internal inclination and without undergoing the coaction imposed by an exterior agent. This kind of freedom admits of all sorts of degrees, from the spontaneity of the electron turning “freely” around a nucleus, that is, without deviating from its path by the interference of a foreign particle, to the spontaneity of the grass in the fields which grows “freely” and of the bird that flies “freely,” that is, obeying only the internal necessities of their nature. When freedom of spontaneity passes the threshold of the spirit and is the spontaneity of a spiritual nature, it becomes properly freedom of independence. To this extent it does not consist merely in following the inclination of nature but in being or making oneself actively the sufficient principle of one’s own operation; in other words, in perfecting oneself as an indivisible whole in the act one brings about. This is why freedom of independence exists only in beings which also have free will, and presupposes the exercise of free will in order to arrive at its end. If the proper sign of personality consists, as I have just said, in the fact of being independent, of being a whole, it is clear

that personality and freedom of independence are related and inseparable. In the scale of being they increase together;

cause he is a spirit, is, however, by nature

at the lowest degree of perfection and independence because he is a spirit united substantially with matter and implacably subject to a bodily condition. Secondly, no matter how miserable, how poor, how enslaved and humiliated he may be, the aspirations of personality in him remain unconquerable; and they tend as such, in the life of each of us as in the life of the human race, toward the conquest of freedom. The aspirations of personality are of two types. On the one hand, they come from the human person as human or as constituted in such a species; let us call them “connatural” to man and specifically human. On the other hand, they come from the human person in so far as he is a person or participating in that transcendental perfection that is personality and which is realized in God infinitely better than in us. Let us call them then “transnatural” and metaphysical aspirations.

VITALISM,

510

THOMISM,

AND

MARXISM

relative freedom compatible with condi-

of freedom is based upon a philosophy called in technical language “univocalist”

tions here below, and* the burden of material nature inflicts upon them from

and “immanentist.” In such a philosophy the notion of independence and freedom

the very beginning a serious defeat be-

admits

cause no less free freedom to make

degrees; and on the other hand God, if he exists, is conceived as a physical agent

The

connatural

aspirations

tend to a

animal is born more naked and than man. The struggle to win in the order of social life aims up for this defeat.

The transnatural aspirations of the person in us seek superhuman freedom, pure and simple freedom. And to whom belongs such freedom if not to Him alone who is freedom of independence itself, subsistent by itself? Man has no right to

the freedom proper to God. When

he

aspires by a transnatural desire to this freedom, he seeks it in an “ineffcacious” manner and without even knowing what it is. Thus divine transcendence imposes immediately the admission of a profound defeat on the part of these metaphysical aspirations of the person in us. However, such a defeat is not irreparable, at least if the victor descends to the aid of

the vanquished. The movement to win freedom in the order of spiritual life aims precisely to make up for this defeat. But we must not hide from ourselves the fact

that the point at which our reflection has now arrived is a crucial one for the human being. The least error costs dearly. In this knot capital errors, mortal for human society and the human soul, are mixed with capital truths to which are bound the

life of the soul and that of society. We must work as hard as possible to distinguish truths from errors. There is a

false conquest of freedom which is illusory and homicidal. There is a true conquest of freedom which provides truth and life for mankind. In order to try to dissociate briefly one

of neither

internal

variety nor

magnified ad infinitum; hence either he is considered transcendent and his existence is denied because he would be, as Proud-

hon believed, a sort of heavenly Tyrant imposing constraint and violence on all that is not his own; hand,

his existence

or, on

is afarmed

the other and

his

transcendence is denied—all things are considered in the manner of Spinoza or Hegel as medes or phases of his realization. In this way of thinking there is neither freedom nor autonomy except in so far as no objective rule or measure is received from a being other than oneself. And the human person claims for itself then divine freedom, so that man takes, in atheistic forms of thought and culture, the place of the God he denies, or man through pantheistic forms tries to realize in act an identity of nature with

the God he imagines. On the contrary, the true manner of understanding the attainment of freedom is based upon a philosophy of the analogy of being and divine transcendence. For this philosophy independence and freedom are realized, on the various levels of being, in several forms which are typically diverse: in God in an absolute manner, and because (being supereminently all

things)

he

is supreme

interiority,

of

which all existing things are a participation; in us in a relative manner, and’ thanks to the privileges of spirit which,

however profound may be the state of

from the other, let me say that the ‘false

dependence in which it is placed by the very nature of things, makes itself in-

manner

dependent by its own operation when it

of understanding the attainment

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

SOCIETY

poses interiorly to itself by knowledge and

instinct which dom.

love the law it obeys. In such a philosophy divine transcendence imposes no violence nor constraint upon creatures, but rather infuses them with goodness and spontaneity and is more internal to them than they are to themselves. It is not true that the autonomy of an intelligent creature consists in not receiving any rule or objective measure from a being other than itself. It consists in conforming to such

rules and measures

simple—that is to say, to a divine freedom.

voluntarily because

ing union with the Uncreated Nature. God is free from all eternity; more exactly, He is subsistent freedom. Man is not born free unless in the basic potencies of his being: he becomes free, by warring upon himself and thanks to many sorrows; by the struggle of the spirit and virtue; by exercising his freedom he wins his freedom. So that at long last a freedom better than he expected is given him. From the beginning to the end it is truth that liberates him. .

°

.

°

co

.

Ty. THE TRUE AND FALSE DEIFICATION OF MAN There is a true and false emancipation in the political and social order. In the spiritual order there is a true and false deification of man. This is another problem of vital importance, fundamental and

absolutely primary, posited by the natural

to win free-

by the word personality, we have within us transnatural aspirations the satisfaction of which is not due us in justice but which nevertheless torment us and tend to a superhuman freedom, freedom pure and

than is desired, and thanks to a transform-

.

impels man

As I have said at the beginning of this essay, by the fact that we participate in the transcendental perfection designated

they are known to be just and true, and because of a love for truth and justice. Such is human freedom, properly speaking, to which the person tends as towards a connatural perfection; and if the person aspires also to superhuman freedom, this thirst for transnatural perfection, whose satisfaction is not due us, will be fully quenched only by the reception of more

.

511

Evidence of these aspirations for the superhuman, these desires to reach the borders of divinity, has been presented by

the sages of all times. The

great

spiritual

errors

also

bear

witness to these aspirations. They seek the deification of man, but by man’s own forces and the development of the powers of his nature only. More often they take a pantheistic form, as can be seen in the gnostic currents of former times, in the great monistic metaphysics, and in the mysticism of quietism. It was left, however, to modern times to look for the deification of man by doing away with wisdom and breaking with God. Historically, in my opinion, the two main sources

of this false deification

are:

(1) The

immanentist conception of conscience which since the Lutheran revolution has gradually gained the ascendancy, and which demands that man within himself

—‘“my interior freedom”—construct morality by himself alone without owing anything to law. (2) The idealist conception of science which since the Cartesian revolution has gradually gained the ascendancy and which demands that man within himself—“my self or my spirit”— construct truth by himself alone without owing anything to things. Hyperspiritualist as it first seems, these two conceptions make science independent of being and conscience independent of law, and claim

VITALISM,

512

for that which is within man the kind of independence

proper

to God.

In reality

these two erroneous conceptions materialize the human soul and plunge it into external action, where by seeking its proper and only mode of realization it becomes the slave of time, matter, and

the world. Science finally will be subjugated by a kind of demiurgic imperialism applied to enslave material nature to the lusts of human beings. Conscience too will be subjugated by a kind of demonic imperialism applied to “oppose oneself” in order to “pose oneself,” following the phrase of Fichte, and to realize oneself by dominating others. Man, become the god of this world, will believe that he will find divine freedom for himself by being independent of God, and consequently by the radical negation of God. The false deification of man will take the atheistic form which appears in our days in an amazingly barbarous light.

It had its first experiences in the disguised atheism of orthodox Kantianism and bourgeois liberalism. After the bankruptcy of this atheism which found religion “good for the people,” and after

the failure of the false individualistic conquest of freedom and personality, it was

inevitable

that the false deification

of

man be affirmed by the open atheism of Marxist Hegelianism which sees in religion “the opium of the people,” or the open paganism of racism which reduces

religion to the idolatry of the “soul of the people.” Plebeian totalitarianism, - either under the Soviet Communist or German Nazi form, then undertakes to lead collective man by war, forced labor, and the standardization of souls to the achievement of freedom. Inevitably, from the moment that absolute freedom, emancipation pure and simple, divine independ-

THOMISM,

AND

MARXISM

ence, were sought in the human itself, or in other words, from the moment that the transnatural aspirations of the person were lowered into the sphere of connatural

aspirations—and by that very fact perverted and made infinite—the social had to become deified, the things of Caesar had to absorb monstrously the things of God, and the pagan empire had to make itself adored. On the contrary, the transnatural aspirations of the human person tend normally towards God, the transcendental cause of being, and they incite the soul to seek liberation in him. Despite all its imperfections and blemishes such was the

élan of the great Hellenic wisdom.

In

Hindu spirituality, however, at least if its too great proliferation, at times poisonous, is reduced to what is most pure in it, are found the most significant examples of states where these ¢ransnatural aspirations lead man by his own action

and the ascetic use of his natural powers to turn his own

nature against its own

current. I think that what in Christian language we call the “natural”

mystical

experience and the highest “natural” contemplation then reaches by the way of an entirely intellectual self-annihilation the substance of Self, and through and in it the divine Omnipresencet This is a liberation and deliverance at one and the same time ultimate in the order of what nature is capable of, and not ultimate, absolutely speaking, in regard to our real destiny and its hidden primordial truth

that nature

has been made

for grace.

Hence this attainment of spiritual freedom is ambivalent: true and authentic on its plane if the soul does not stop there and

it opens itself to the highest gifts; false and deceptive if the soul stops there or if 1See my Quatre essais sur l’esprit dans sa condition charnelle (Paris, 1939), Chap. 3.

HISTORY,

CULTURE,

AND

it looks upon it as a necessary means, or

if it takes it for deification. There is, however, a true deification of man. Ego dixi: dit estis. This is called eternal life—which begins obscurely here on earth. It is as fatal to renounce perfect liberation as it is to try to reach it by the wrong ways, that is to say, by oneself alone. The transnatural aspirations are

supernaturally

fulfilled, and

by a gift

SOCIETY

533

divine plenitude into the intelligent creature. What I am saying is that this is all the work of love. Law protects freedom and teaches us to practice it. When love follows the path of law it leads through law to emancipation from all servitude,

even the servitude of the law. I have often quoted, and I wish to quote again, the

text from

the

Summa

where St. Thomas

contra

Gentiles

comments on St. Paul,

which surpasses anything we can conceive. What is grace, the theologians ask, if not a formal participation in the Divine Nature, in other terms, a deifying life

which I regard as one of the great texts absolutely fundamental for the spiritual constitution of humanity:

received from God.

We must observe [St. Thomas says] that the sons of God are led by the divine Spirit, not as though they were slaves, but as being free. For, since to be free is to be cause of one’s own actions, we are said to do freely what we do of ourselves. Now this is what we do willingly: and what we do

The mystery of this is that the supreme freedom and independence of man are won by the supreme spiritual realization of his dependence, his dependence on a Being who

being life itself vivifies, and

being freedom itself liberates, all who participate in His essence. This kind of dependence is not one of external constraint, as is the case of one physical agent in regard to another physical agent. The more he realizes it the more does man participate in the nature of the Absolute. Men who have become something of God participate in the freedom of Him who cannot be contained by anything. By losing themselves they have won a mysterious and disappropriated personality which makes them act by virtue of that which they are eternally in the Uncreated Essence. Born of spirit they are like spirit free. To tell the truth, they have won nothing, and they have received all. While they worked and suffered to attain freedom, it gave itself to them. The true conquest of supreme and absolute freedom is to be made free by Subsistent Freedom and to consent freely to it. The true deification of man consists in opening

himself to the gift which the Absolute gives of itself, and the descent of the

unwillingly, we do, not freely but under compulsion. This compulsion may be absolute, when the cause is wholly extraneous, and the patient contributes nothing to the action, for instance, when

a man

is com-

pelled to move by force; or it may be partly voluntary, as when a man is willing to do or suffer that which is less opposed to his will, in order to avoid that which is more opposed thereto. Now, the sanctifying Spirit inclines us to act, in such a way as to make us act willingly, inasmuch as He causes us to be lovers of God. Hence the sons of God are led by the Holy Ghost to act freely and for love, not slavishly and for fear: wherefore the Apostle says (Rom. 8:15): You have not received the Spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons.

Now the will is by its essense directed to that which is truly good: so that when, either through passion or through an evil habit or disposition, a man turns away from what is truly good, he acts slavishly, in so far as he is led by something extraneous, 7f we consider the natural direction of the will; but if we consider the act of the

514

VITALISM,

will, as inclined here and now towards an

apparent good, he acts freely when he follows the passion or evilshabit, but he acts slavishly if, while his will remains the same, he refrains from what he desires through fear of the law which forbids the

fulfillment of his desire. Accordingly, when the divine Spirit by love inclines the will to the true good to which it is naturally directed, He removes both the servitude [the heteronomy, as we would say today]

whereby a man, the slave of passion and sin, acts against the order of the will, and the servitude whereby a man acts against the inclination of his will, and in obedience to the law, as the slave and not the friend of the law. Wherefore the Apostle says (II Cor. 3:17): Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there 1s liberty, and (Gal. 5:18): If you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law. Great is the distance between the imperfect liberation whereby the highest techniques of natural spirituality oblige

nature to satisfy in some way the transnatural aspirations of the human person,

and the perfect freedom supernatural

whereby

gift the Divine

the

Personality

gives of itself to the created personality more than fulfills these aspirations. While leaving intact the distinction of natures, love, which at the end of spiritual growth creates this perfect freedom, also makes man become a god by participation. At the same time, far from enclosing itself in an altogether intellectual contemplation which does away with action, the freedom

we mean lives by a contemplation which, since

it proceeds

from

love,

supera-

2 St. Thomas, Stmma contra Gentiles, lV, 22.

THOMISM,

AND

MARXISM

bounds in action and penetrates to which is most intimate in the world. heroism it implies does not retreat the sacred; it spills over into the profane

that The into and

sanctifies it. Detached from perfection in perfection itself, because it wants more to love than to be without fault, it awakens, more and more, good will and

brotherly love. To return to the distinction between the social-temporal and the spiritual, the things which belong to Caesar and those which belong to God, I should point out, finally, that the false deification of man results, as we have seen, in the confusion of the temporal and the spiritual, a perverse adoration of the social, and temporal relativities erected into an absolute; conversely, the true deification of man, because it is accomplished by the grace of the incarnation and draws to itself all

that is human, demands of divine things that they descend into the most profound depths of the human, and insists that the political and social order, while re-

maining

essentially

spiritual,

be pervaded

distinct

from

the

and _ intrinsically

superelevated by the current which flows into souls from the Absolute. In the degree, small as it might be in fact, that things are this way, in that degree the historical march of civilization in the attainment of relative freedom, which responds to the connatural aspirations of

human

personality, is in accord and in

mutual concourse with the suprahistorical movement of the soul in the conquest of absolute freedom, which responds, in transcending divinely, to the sransnatural aspirations of the person as a person.

Epilo gue SOO

ODPDOWOWDNOOwD

The Final Philosophy BENEDETTO I, there a final philosophy? In spite of the claims of some systematic doctrines to this monstrous title, and their shameless assumption of it, there is in fact no such thing. There cannot be, because there is no philosophy which is not a step in the historical development of philosophy, and no poem which is not a step in the historical development of poetry—we can-

It is impossible to pick out these categories and to establish them above, and in abstraction from, the particular philosophical context with which they are not so much combined as fused. The evidence

for this impossibility is to be found in precisely

those

treatises

which

might

be

thought to achieve it, those which claim to be “pure” philosophy, not a step in a historical development. Every such attempt to demonstrate and define final concepts reveals, on due analysis, the historical context which has contributed to its result and which makes it a determinate philosophical theory hic et nunc, sufficient for the day (which is a day in history), but not sufficient for the morrow, when it must be refreshed or reformed. There is no thought except in a historical context; not even thought can rival the famous feat of Baron Munchausen in pulling himself out of the water by his own top-knot.

not conceive a “final poem” which would be a substitute for all the others which have appeared and will appear in the

world. No doubt there is something “final” or “perennial” in all philosophies, but it is

not strictly their philosophy, rather it is _the unchanging subject-matter of all a This is self-consciousness,

which

CROCE

is only active in the perpetual

\posing and solution of particular problems, an activity it could not perform if it were not essentially one and unchanging in its fundamental and eternal categories.

ph)

BLO:G RAP ELGG AL Ni eleees SAMUEL

ALEXANDER

(1859-1938)

was born in Sydney, New South Wales, and was educated at Melbourne and Oxford. In 1916-18 he was Gifford Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. In 1924 he retired from his professorship at the Victoria University of Manchester where he had been since 1893. In 1927 he served as Herbert Spencer Lecturer at Oxford. His works include: Moral Order and Progress, 1889; Locke, 1908; Space, Time, and Deity (Gifford Lectures), 1920; 2nd ed., 1927; Spinoza and Time, 1921; Beauty and Other Forms of Value, 1933.

A.J. AYER (1910-

_) was a student at

Oxford, where he stayed on as lecturer. He presently holds the Grote Professorship of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic in the University of London. During the second world war, he served as a captain in the Welch Guards. His principal writings are: Language, Truth and Logic, 1936; rev. ed., 1946; The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, 1940. HENRI BERGSON (1859-1941) was born in Paris and educated at the French lycées, in which institutions and at the Collége de France he distinguished himself as a lecturer. During the German occupation he refused to be excepted from the anti-Semitic regulations and ever chose not to join the Catholic Church, whither-his inclinations increasingly led him in his later life, lest his act be construed by some as a desertion of the oppressed Jews. He was a member of the French Academy and in

1927 was awarded the Nobel Prize for 1English titles are used only when the work is available in English, but dates are in all cases those of the original appearance of the work.

Literature. His principal works are: Time and Free Will (Essai sur les Données immédiates de la Conscience), 1889; Matter and Memory, 1896; Laughter, 1900; Introduction to Metaphysics, 1903; Creative Evolution, 1907; Two Sources of Morality and Religion, 1932; The Creative Mind (a collection of essays written from 1903 on), 1946. BRAND BLANSHARD (1892_+)was born in Ohio and educated at Michigan, Columbia, Oxford, and Harvard, receiving his doctorate at Harvard in 1921. He has taught at Michigan, Columbia, Swarthmore, and Harvard, and has been Professor of Philosophy at Yale since 1945. In 195253 he delivered the Gifford Lectures in Scotland. His major published work is: The Nature of Thought, 2 vols., 1939. C. D. BROAD (1887) was born in London and educated at Dulwich, and Trinity College, Cambridge. His teaching career includes St..Andrews, Dundee, Bristol, Dublin, and especially Cambridge, where he became professor of Moral Philosophy in 1933. In 1953 and 1954 he was at the University of Michigan and the

University of California at Los Angeles. His works include: Perception, Physics, and Reality, 1914; Scientific Thought, 1923; Mind and Its Place in Nature, 1925; 2nd ed., 1929; Five Types of Ethical Theory, 1930; Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy,

Vol.

I, 1933;

Vol. II, 1938;:

Ethics and the History of Philosophy, 1952.

MARTIN BUBER (1878-

_) was born

in Vienna and educated in Austria and Germany. He served as Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Frank-

516

iPp fp

BIOGRAPHICAL

NOTES

furt and presently holds the chair of Social Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Much of his life energy has been spent in behalf of Zionism and in the interests of Hasidism, the mystical Jewish sect. Among his published works are: J and Thou, 1937; Between Man and Man, 1947; The Prophetic Faith, 1949; Israel and Palestine, 1952; The Eclipse of God, 1952.

RUDOLF

CARNAP

(1891- |. ) was

born in Wuppertal, Germany, and educated at the Universities of Jena and Freiburg, receiving his doctorate at Jena in 1921. He taught at the University of Vienna from 1926 until 1931, when he became Professor of Natural Philosophy at the German University of Prague. Since 1936 he has been Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He has been visiting professor at Harvard University and in 1952-54 was at the Institute for Advanced Study. He was co-editor of Erkenntnis and the Journal of Unified Science, and is now associate editor of the Jn-

ternational Encyclopedia of Unified Science. His works include: Der Logische Aufbau der Welt, 1928; The Unity of Science, 1932; The Logical Syntax of Language, 1934; Philosophy and Logical Syntax, 1935; “Testability and Meaning,” Philosophy of Science, 1936, 1937; Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, 1939; Introduction to Semantics, 1942; Formalization of Logic, 1943; Meaning and Necessity, 1947; Logical Foundations of Probability, 1950. ERNST CASSIRER (1874-1945) was born in Breslau and studied jurisprudence, literature, and philosophy at Berlin, Leipsig, and Heidelberg, and finally under the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen at Marburg,

where he took his doctorate. After a teaching career at the University of Berlin he accepted, following the first war, a chair of philosophy at the new university at Hamburg. He was elected rector of the university in 1930, but resigned when the Nazis came into power, going first to Oxford, then in 1935 to the University of Goete-

517 borg, Sweden. Although he became a Swedish citizen, in 1941 he joined the faculty of Yale University and died while a visiting professor at Columbia University. His works include: Substance and Function, 1910; Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neuren Zeit, 3 vols., 1906, 1907, 1920; Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 3 vols., 1923, 1924, 1929 (Vol. I trans. under title Language); Language and Myth, 1925; Philosophy of the Renaissance, 1927; Essay on

Man,

1944;

Rousseau,

Kant,

Goethe,

1945; The Myth of the State, 1946; The Problem of Knowledge (Vol. 4 of Das Erkenntnisproblem . . .), 1950. R. G, COLLINGWOOD (1889-1943), at the time of his death held the post of Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the Uriversity of Oxford, from which institution he received his own education. In the scholarly world he was at least as well known as a historian and more particularly an authority on the Roman occupation of Britain, as he was as a philosopher. His best known books are: Roman Britain, 1932; An Essay on Philosophical Method, 1933; The Principles of Art, 1938; The Idea of Nature, 1945; The Idea of History, 1946; An Essay on Metaphysics, 1948. BENEDETTO CROCE (1866-1952) was born in the North Italy town of Pescasseroli, studied in Rome, and spent most of

his life as an independent scholar, editor, and writer. In 1910, at an unprecedentedly youthful age, Croce was elected Senator, a position held for life, but in 1929, after having lost favor with the Mussolini regime, he was shouted down in the Senate chambers and was deprived of various honors and appointments for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the Fascists. Such, however, was his reputation in Italy that he was never personally molested until the German occupation, when he was imprisoned. In a dramatic dash across the Medi-

terranean a British raiding party rescued him, and with the withdrawal of Italy

BIOGRAPHICAL

518 from the war he became a leading statesman in the establishment of a new government. Of his numerous writings, the following especially deserve mention: Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General » Linguistic, 1902; rev. ed., 1922; Logic, 1905; The Philosophy of the Practical, 1909; What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Philosophy of Hegel, 1909; History, Its Theory and Practice, 1919; Politics and Morals, 1931; History as the Story of Liberty, 1941; “Aesthetics,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed. JOHN DEWEY (1859-1952) was born in Burlington, Vermont, and educated at the University of Vermont and Johns Hopkins University, receiving his doctorate from the latter institution in 1884. He

taught philosophy at Michigan from 1884 to 1886 and from 1890 to 1894, and at Minnesota from 1889 to 1890. From 1894 to 1904 he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, and from 1905 until his retirement in 1931, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. He lectured at California, Harvard,

Cincinnati,

Yale, and Utah State Agricultural College. Throughout his long career Dewey was involved in the practical problems of education and the improvement of society. He lectured at the Imperial University in Tokyo in rgrg and later in China. In Turkey in 1924, Mexico in 1926, and Russia in 1928 he studied social conditions and contributed to educational reforms. Later he served as member of the Trotsky Inquiry Commission. His scholarly activity continued until his death at the age of ninetythree. Among his many works are: Democracy and Education, 1916; Essays in Experimental Logic, 1916; Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920; Human Nature and Conduct, 1922; Experience and Nature, 1925; The Public and Its Problems, 1927; The Quest for Certainty, 1929; Philosophy and Civilization, 1931; Art As Experience, 1934; A Common Faith, 1934; Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, 1938; Theory of Valua-

NOTES

tion, 1939; Knowing and the Known (with Arthur F. Bentley), 1949.

CURT

J. DUCASSE.

(1881-_)_-wasy

born in Angouleme, France, and educated at the University of Washington and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1912). He taught at Washington from 1909 until 1926, and since 1926 has been Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. He has lectured at California, Michigan, Chicago, Cornell,

and Columbia. His works include: The Philosophy of Art, 1929; Philosophy As a Science,

1941; Art, the Critics, and You,

1944; Nature, Mind, and Death, 1951; A Philosophical Scrutiny of Religion, 1953.

HERBERT FEIGL (1902-

_)was born

in Reichenberg, Austria, and educated in Munich and Vienna, receiving his Ph.D. at Vienna in 1927. He lectured in Vienna from 1927 to 1930, when he went to the University of Iowa. Since 1941 he has been Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. He is co-editor, with Wilfrid Sellars, of Philosophical Studies. Among his publications are: “Logical Positivism: A New Movement in European Philosophy” (with A. E. Blumberg), Journal of

Philosophy, Vol. 28, 1931; “Logical Analysis of the Psycho-Physical Problem,” PAzlosophy of Science, Vol. 1, 1934; “The Logical Character of the Principle of In-—

duction,” Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1,

January, 1934; “Sense and Nonsense in Scientific Realism,” Actes du Congres International de Philosophie Scientifique, 1936; “Logical Empiricism,” in Twentieth Century Philosophy, D. D. Runes, ed., 1943; “The Mind-Body Problem in the De- velopment of Logical Empiricism,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Vol. 11 3 1950.

RALPH TYLER FLEWELLING (1871-

) was born in Michigan and educated at the University of Michigan, Boston University (Ph.D. 1909) and at the Sorbonne. He has taught at Yenching University, China, and in France, and from 1917 until _

BIOGRAPHICAL

NOTES

519

his retirement in 1945 at the University of Southern California, where he was Professor of Philosophy. He is founder and editor of The Personalist. His works include: Bergson and Personal Realism, 1919; Creative Personality, 1926; The Survival of Western Culture, 1943; Conflict and Conciliation of Cultures, 1951; The Person, 1952. NICOLAI HARTMANN (1882-1950) was born in Riga and taught at Marburg from 1909 to 1925, then at Cologne, serving later as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Berlin. His works include: Grundziige einer Metaphystk der Erkenntnis, 1925; Ethics, 3 vols., 1925; Das Problem des geistigen Seins, 1933; Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, 1935; New Ways of Ontology, 1949.

MARTIN was

born

HEIDEGGER in Messkirch,

(1889- _ ) Germany.

He

studied philosophy and theology and became in 1915 a lecturer in philosophy at Freiburg, where he was associated with and influenced by Husserl. In 1923 he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at Marburg. He succeeded Husserl at Freiburg in 1929. Under the National-Socialist government he was elected Rector in 1933 but resigned the following year. Since then he has lived in comparative isolation. His works include: Die Kategorien und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus, 1916; Sein und Zeit, erste Halfte, 1927; Kant und das

Problem der Metaphysik, 1929; Vom Wesen des Grundes, 1929; 3rd edition, 1949; Was ist Metaphysitk, 1929; 5th edition, 1949; Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitat, 1933; Existence and Being (English translation of several German essays, including “What Is Metaphysics?”’),

1949. CARL G. HEMPEL (1905- ~~ —+)-swas born in Oranienburg, Germany. He received his doctorate at Berlin in 1934. He was associated with the Vienna Circle and

with the Berlin Group of scientific philoso-

phers. After the Nazis came to power, he migrated to the United States where he was associated with the University of Chicago, City College, New York, Queens College, New York, and became Professor of Philosophy at Yale University in 1948. He was visiting lecturer at Princeton in 1953 and at Harvard University for the year 195354. His works include: Der Typusbegriff im Lichte der neven Logtk (with P. Oppenheim), 1936; “Geometry and Empirical

Science,’

American

Mathematical

Monthly, Vol. 52, 1945; “Studies in the Logic of Explanation” (with P. Oppen-

heim), Philosophy of Science, Vol. 15, 1948; “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, No. 11, 1950; “The Concept of Cognitive Significance: A Reconsideration,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 80, No. 1, 1951; Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science, Vol. I, No. 7, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, 1952. EDMUND

HUSSERL

(1859-1938)

was

born in Prossnitz, in Austrian Moravia. He

studied physics, philosophy, and mathematics at the Universities of Leipsig, Berlin, and Vienna, gaining a doctorate from the latter institution in 1883. He continued his work in philosophy and psychology under Franz Brentano and then taught at Gottingen and Freiburg until his retirement in 1930. Among his best known books are: Philosophie der Arithmetik, 1894; Logische Untersuchungen, 1900-01, rev. ed., 1921; Ideas, 1913; Formale und Transzendentale Logik, 1929; Meditations Cartesiennes, 1931; “Phenomenology,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed.

KARL

JASPERS

(1883-

—_—+)-~was born

at Oldenburg. He was a student of Law at Heidelberg and Munich and _ later studied medicine at Berlin, Gottingen, and Heidelberg. He taught at Heidelberg from 1916 and assumed a chair of philosophy at that university in 1921. In 1937 he was dis-

BIOGRAPHICAL

520 missed by the National Socialist government for political causes, but was reinstated in 1945. He hasbeen Professor of Philosophy at Basel since 1948. His works include: Allgemeine Psychopathologie, 1913; 5th ed., 1946; Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, 1919; Man in the Modern Age, 1931; Philosophie, 3 vols., 1932; Vernunft und Existenz, 1935; Existenzphilosophie, 1938; The European Spirit, 1947; The Perennial Scope of Philosophy, 1948; Philosophie und Wissenschaft, 1949; The Way to Wisdom (Einfiihrung in die Phi-

losophie), 1950. V. I. LENIN (1870-1924) was born at Simbirsk, Russia. Sometimes listed as Nikolai Lenin, his real name was V. I. Ulyanov. He studied law at the Universities of Kazan and St. Petersburg and after 1887 became involved in Russian revolutionary movements. Banished because of his political activities, he became a student of Marxism and an active revolutionary propagandist. As leader of the Bolshevik party he secretly returned on occasions to Russia. In 1917 he succeeded in establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat. He was chairman of the Communist party and of the Council of People’s Commissars until his death, when he became a national legend and his mausoleum a national shrine. His writings are available in English translation in: Collected Works, 1927; Selected Works, 1943. C. I. LEWIS

(1883-

undergraduate

years

_), following his at Harvard,

taught

high school in Quincy, Massachusetts and then for two years served as an instructor of English at the University of Colorado. In 1910 he was awarded a Ph.D. degree by Harvard and went to California to teach. During World War [he served as a second lieutenant. The bulk of his teaching career was spent at Harvard, in which institution

he is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy. His principal works are: Survey of Symbolic Logic, 1918; Mind and the World Order,

1929; Symbolic Logic (with C. H. Lang-

NOTES

ford), 1932; An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 1946 (Carus Lectures).

A. O. LOVEJOY

(1873-

+) ~was born

in Berlin and educated at Harvard, California, and Paris. Afte: teaching at a number of universities, including Stanford and Columbia, he was called in 1910 to Johns Hopkins, where he remained until his retirement in 1938. In 1927 he was Carus Lecturer. He was a founder of the Journal of the History of Ideas and for several years its editor. Among his most important writings are: The Revolt Against Dualism, 1929; Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (with George Boas), 1935; The. Great Chain of Being, 1936; Essays in the History of Ideas, 1948. JACQUES MARITAIN

(1882-

) was

born in Paris and educated at the Sorbonne,

where he studied with Bergson. After conversion to Catholicism in 1906, he studied biology at Heidelberg with Driesch and, turning to philosophy, became a champion of Thomism. In 1914 he became Professor at the Institut Catholique, and in 1933 at the Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto. More recently he has taught at several American universities, Chicago, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton. Since retirement he

has lived in Princeton. His works include: La Philosophie Bergsoniennes, 1914; Art and Scholasticism, 1920; An Introduction to Philosophy, 1921; Religion and Culture, 1930; Angelic Doctor: The Life and Thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1930; The Degrees of Knowledge, 1932; Freedom in the Modern World, 1933; A Preface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being, 1934; Science and Wisdom, 1935; True Humanism, 1938; Man and the State, 1951; Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, 1953.

GEORGE

HERBERT

MEAD

(1863-

1931) studied at Oberlin, Harvard, Leipsig, and Berlin and then taught at the University of Michigan before going to the University of Chicago, his academic location for the bulk of his career. During his

BIOGRAPHICAL

NOTES

521

life he published almost nothing, but several compilations of his lectures and writings were made posthumously: Philosophy of the Present, 1932; Mind, Self and Society, 1934; Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 1936; Philosophy of the Act, 1938.

WILLIAM

PEPPERELL

MONTAGUE

(1873-1953) was born in Massachusetts and educated at Harvard University (Ph.D. 1898). He was instructor in philosophy at the University of California from 1899 to 1903 and Professor of Philosophy in Barnard College, Columbia, from 1903 until his retirement in 1947. He lectured at Johns Hopkins, Mills, Yale, Harvard, Chicago, and the University of California at Los Angeles;

and

in Japan,

Czechoslovakia,

and Italy. His works include: The New Realism (with Holt, Perry, and others), 1912; The Ways of Knowing, 1925; Belief Unbound, 1930; The Ways of Things, 1940; Great Visions of Philosophy, 1950. G., E. MOORE (1873__) is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University, where he received his own higher education, studying with such men as Henry Sidgwick, James Ward, G. F. Stout,

and J. M. E. McTaggart. In 1940 and 1941 he lectured at a number of American institutions, including Smith College, Mills

College, Princeton, and Columbia. The following is a list of his principal works: Principia Ethica, 1903; Ethics, 1912; Philosophical Studies, 1922; “Proof of an External World,” Proceedings, British Academy, Vol. 25, 1939.

CHARLES

W.

MORRIS

(1go1-

+)

was born in Denver, Colorado, and educated at Wisconsin, Northwestern, and Chicago. He taught at the Rice Institute from 1925 until 1931, when he went to the University of Chicago. Since 1950 he has devoted part time to the study of social relations at Harvard. His works include: Six Theories of Mind, 1932; Logical Positivism,

Pragmatism,

and Scti-

entific Empiricism, 1937; Paths of Life, 1942; Foundations of the Theory of Signs, 1938;

Signs,

Language,

and

Behavior,

1946. ERNEST NAGEL (1901) was born in Czechoslovakia and educated at City College, New York, and Columbia, receiving his doctorate at the latter institution in 1931. He was instructor in philosophy at City College from 1930 to 1931 and has been at Columbia since 1931. He has edited the fJournal of Philosophy and the Journal of Symbolic Logic. His works include: On the Logic of Measurement, 1930; An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (with Morris Cohen), 1934; Principles of the Theory of Probability, 1939; “The Meaning of Reduction in the Natural Sciences,” Science and Civilization, R. C. Stauffer, ed., 1949; “Problems of Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences” in Science, Language, and Human Rights, 1952. DEWITT H. PARKER (1885-1949) was born in New York City and educated at Harvard University, receiving from that institution the A.B. degree in 1906 and the Ph.D. in 1908. Though he taught for short times at the University of California and at Columbia University, he was mainly identified with the University of Michigan, where he was Professor of Philosophy at the time of his death in 1949. His published works include: Principles of Aesthetics, 1920; 2nd ed., 1946; The Analysis of Art, 1926; Human Values, 1931; Experience and Substance,

1941. STEPHEN PEPPER (1891) was born in Newark, New Jersey, and educated at Harvard,

where

he took

his A.B.

in

1913 and his Ph.D, in 1916. He served as a private in the United States Army in World War I. He has lectured in many universities, including Harvard and Indiana, but has been chiefly associated

522

BIOGRAPHICAL

NOTES

REICHENBACH

(1891-1953)

with the University of California where,

HANS

besides holding a professorship in philosophy, he has for a number of years served

was born in Hamburg, Germany, and educated at Stuttgart, Berlin, Munchen, Goettingen, and Erlangen, receiving his doctorate at Erlangen in 1915. From 1920 to 1926 he taught at Stuttgart and from _ 1926 to 1933 was Professor at the Univer-

as chairman of the Department of Art. His principal books are: Aesthetic Quality, 1938; World Hypotheses, 1942; The Basis of Criticism in the Arts, 1945; A Digest of Purposive Values, 1947; Principles of Art Appreciation, 1949.

sity of Berlin. With the rise of Nazism he

left Germany and was at the University of Istanbul, Turkey, from 1933 to 1938, RALPH BARTON PERRY (1876__) when he became Professor of Philosophy was born in Poultney, Vermont, and was at the University of California at Los educated at Princeton and Harvard, reAngeles, where he taught until his death. ceiving his doctorate at Harvard in 1899. He had been visiting professor at the He was instructor at Williams College Sorbonne, Columbia, and City College, and Smith College before going to Harvard in 1902, where he was Professor of New York. His works include: Philasophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre, 1928; Atom Philosophy until his retirement in 1946. and Cosmos, 1933; WahrscheinlichkeitsIn 1946-48 he was Gifford Lecturer at lehre, 1935; Experience and Prediction, Glasgow and has lectured in various 1938; Philosophic Foundations of OuanEuropean and American universities. He tum Mechanics, 1944; Elements of Symreceived the Pulitzer Prize in 1936 for bolic Logic, 1947; Theory of Probability, his biographical work on his teacher and 1949; The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, colleague, William James. His works in1951. clude: The Approach to Philosophy, 1905; Present Philosophical Tendencies, 1912; W. D. ROSS (1877——-+)swas =born in General Theory of Value, 1926; 2nd ed., Thurso, Caithness, and educated at Edin1950; Philosophy of the Recent Past, 1926; burgh and Oxford. He lectured at Oxford The Thought and Character of William from rg00 until 1929, being Deputy James, 2 vols., 1935; Puritanism and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy Democracy, 1944; Realms of Value, 1954. from 1923 to 1928. He has also served as KARL R. POPPER (1902_)was born in Vienna and holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Vienna, as well as degrees from the Universities of New Zealand (where he at one time lectured) and London. He is presently Professor of Logic and Scientific Method at the University of London. He is chiefly known for his monumental work: The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945; rev. ed., 1952.

DAVID

PRALL

(1886-1940)

received

his doctorate from Harvard and taught at his alma mater as well as at the University of California, Amherst, and the Univer-

sity of Texas, His most important writings are: A Study in the Theory of Value, 1921; Aesthetic Judgment, 1929; Aesthetic Analysis, 1936.

Provost of Oriel College, visiting Professor

at Columbia University, and Gifford Lecturer. Sir David’s works include: The Works of Aristotle translated into English, 1908-1931; The Right and the Good,

1930; Foundations of Ethics, 1939 (Gifford Lectures); Plato’s Theory of Ideas,

IQ5I. BERTRAND RUSSELL (18723 the second son of Viscount Amberley and grandson of Lord John Russell, famous liberal Prime Minister of England, was. educated at Trinity College, Cambridge.

After leaving Cambridge he was attached for a short while to the British Embassy in Paris and from there went to Germany to study politics and political theory. He later traveled in Russia, China, and Japan,

ee a e é

se

O e e i

-=

BIOGRAPHICAL

NOTES

about each of which he wrote essays. During the first world war he was imprisoned for six months, having previously been fined, for his anti-war writings. With his second wife he established and conducted a progressive nursery school and wrote extensively on theory of education. He has taught at Cambridge and has lectured very widely in the United States

and in many other parts of the world. He has written a very large number of books and essays and recently brought out a collection of short stories. Among his more important works are: A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, 1900; The Principles of Mathematics, 1903; The Problems of Philosophy, 1912; Principia Mathematica (with A. N. Whitehead), Vol. I, rg10; Vol. II, 1912; Vol. III, 1913; Our Knowledge of the External World, 1914; Mysticism and Logic, 1918; Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 1918 (written in prison); Analysis of Mind, 1921; Analysis of Matter, 1927; Sceptical Essays, 1928; The Scientific Outlook, 1931; An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, 1940; A History of Western Philosophy, 1944; Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits, 1948.

GILBERT

RYLE

(1g00-

_—+),_-~Wayn-

flete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford, has been associated with Oxford since enrolling there as an undergraduate. During the second world war he served with the Welch Guards. In 1948 he succeeded G. E. Moore as editor of Mind. Among his publications are: The Concept of Mind, 1949; “Systematically Misleading Expressions,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1931-32.

GEORGE

SANTAYANA

(1863-1952)

was born in Spain but emigrated to Boston when he was only nine years

_ old, in which city he remained until after his graduation from Harvard. After studying with Paulsen and others in Berlin, he returned to Harvard to teach along-

523 side his old masters, Royce and James. In 1912 he left Harvard and the academic profession and America to take up residence in England and later in Italy, where he spent the last thirty years and more of his life writing. During World

War II he took up residence in a Catholic hospital in Rome and remained there until his death. Besides a sonnet sequence and other poetry and one novel, The Last Puritan, the following are among his most important works: The Sense of Beauty, 1896; The Life of Reason, 5 vols., 1905-06; Three Philosophical Poets, 1910; Scepticism and Animal Faith, 1923; Dialogues in Limbo, 1925; The Realms of Being, 4 vols., 1927-1942; Dominations and Powers, 1951. MORITZ SCHLICK (1882-1936) received his doctorate in physics at Berlin under Max Planck. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna from 1922 until his death in 1936 at the hands of an assassin. In 1929 he was visiting professor at Stanford University and he was visiting lecturer at the University of California from 1931 to 1932. He was the leader of the Vienna Circle, which evolved under his direction in the twenties and continued until 1936. Among his works are: Space and Time in Contemporary Physics, 1917; Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, 2nd ed., 1925; Philosophy of Nature, 1925; Problems of Ethics, 1930; “The Future of Philosophy,” College of the Pacific Publications in Philosophy, Vol. I, 1932; “Meaning and Verification,” Philosophical Review, Vol. 45, 1936; Gesammelte Aufsitze, 1938.

ROY

WOOD

SELLARS

(1880- _ )

was born in Ontario, Canada, and educated

at the University of Michigan, whence his A.B. in 1903 and his Ph.D. in 1908. He is presently Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Michigan where

he spent his long teaching career.

In-

cluded in his bibliography are the follow-

ing titles: Critical Realism,

1916; The

524

BIOGRAPHICAL

Essentials of Logic, 1917; The Next Step in Religion, 1918; Evolutionary Naturalism, 1921; The Philosophy of Physical Realism, 1932.

W. T. STACE

(1886-

—_+)_:—~was_born

in London, England, and educated in Edinburgh and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained a doctorate in 1929. He served in the Ceylon Civil Service from 1910 to 1932, where he studied Hinduism and Buddhism. Since 1932 he has been at Princeton University, as Professor of Philosophy since 1935. His works include: A Critical History of Greek Philosophy, 1920; The Theory of Knowledge and Existence, 1932; The Concept of Morals, 1937; The Nature of the World, 1940; The Destiny of Western Man, 1942; Religion and the Modern Mind, 1952.

ALFRED

NORTH

WHITEHEAD

(1861-1947) was born on the Isle of Thanet and received his higher education at Trinity College, Cambridge, where, during his undergraduate years, all of the lectures he heard were on mathematics. He remained on at Cambridge as Fellow and Lecturer until 1910, when he went to London,

where

he served

in various

academic posts until 1924. He then joined the philosophical faculty at Harvard University, from which institution he retired in 1937. A selected bibliography follows: A Treatise on Universal Algebra, 18098; Principia Mathematica (with Bertrand Russell), Vol. 1, 1910; Vol, 2, 1912; Vol.

NOTES

3, 1913; The Aims of Education, 1916; An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, 1919; The Concept of Nature, 1920; Science and the Modern World, 1925; Religion in the Making, 1926; Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect, 1927; Process and Reality, 1929; Adventures of Ideas, 1933; Modes of Thought, 1938.

JOHN

WISDOM

(1904-

__+) is Witt-

genstein’s successor as Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University, where he also received his higher education. He_ has published numerous articles, many of which have been collected in the two following books: Other Minds, 1952; Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, 1952. —

LUDWIG

WITTGENSTEIN

(1889-_

1951) was born in Vienna but went to England before World War I to study engineering. Before long his growing in-_ terest in mathematics and logic took him

to Cambridge

to study with

Bertrand

Russell and G. E. Moore. During the war he was in the Austrian Army, was captured and imprisoned, but kept hold of

the manuscript to the important book: which was brought out in 1921. After the

war he associated with members of the Vienna Circle and then returned to Cam- | bridge in 1929. Ten years later he succeeded G. E. Moore in his professorship. — He left only two books, the second published posthumously: Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, 1921; Philosophical Investi-

gations s1953.

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