livre d

'esthétique,[117] où il appelle la beauté "le plaisir objectifié"; et en vérité, c'est bien ici qu'on pourrait parler de projection au dehors. On dit indifféremment une chaleur agréable, ou une sensation agréable de chaleur. La rareté, le précieux du diamant nous en paraissent des qualités essentielles. Nous parlons d'un orage affreux, d'un homme haïssable, d'une action indigne, et nous croyons parler objectivement, bien que ces termes n'expriment que des rapports à notre sensibilité émotive propre. Nous disons même un chemin pénible, un ciel triste, un coucher de soleil superbe. Toute cette manière animiste de regarder les choses qui paraît avoir été la façon primitive de penser des hommes, peut très bien s'expliquer (et M. Santayana, dans un autre livre tout récent,[118] l'a bien expliquée ainsi) par l'habitude d'attribuer à l'objet _tout_ ce que nous ressentons en sa présence. Le partage du subjectif et de l'objectif est le fait d'une réflexion très avancée, que nous aimons encore ajourner dans beaucoup d'endroits. Quand les besoins pratiques ne nous en tirent pas forcément, il semble que nous aimons à nous bercer dans le vague.

Les qualités secondes elles-mêmes, chaleur, son, lumière, n'ont encore aujourd'hui qu'une attribution vague. Pour le sens commun, pour la vie pratique, elles sont absolument objectives, physiques. Pour le physicien, elles sont subjectives. Pour lui, il n'y a que la forme, la masse, le mouvement, qui aient une réalité extérieure. Pour le philosophe idéaliste, au contraire, forme et mouvement sont tout aussi subjectifs que lumière et chaleur, et il n'y a que la chose-en-soi inconnue, le "noumène," qui jouisse d'une réalité extramentale complète.

Nos sensations intimes conservent encore de cette ambiguïté. Il y a des illusions de mouvement qui prouvent que nos premières sensations de mouvement étaient généralisées. C'est le monde entier, avec nous, qui se mouvait. Maintenant nous distinguons notre propre mouvement de celui des objets qui nous entourent, et parmi les objets nous en distinguons qui demeurent en repos. Mais il est des états de vertige où nous retombons encore aujourd'hui dans l'indifférenciation première.

Vous connaissez tous sans doute cette théorie qui a voulu faire des émotions des sommes de sensations viscérales et musculaires. Elle a donné lieu à bien des controverses, et aucune opinion n'a encore conquis l'unanimité des suffrages. Vous connaissez aussi les controverses sur la nature de l'activité mentale. Les uns soutiennent qu'elle est une force purement spirituelle que nous sommes en état d'apercevoir immédiatement comme telle. Les autres prétendent que ce que nous nommons activité mentale (effort, attention, par exemple) n'est que le reflet senti de certains effets dont notre organisme est le siège, tensions musculaires au crâne et au gosier, arrêt ou passage de la respiration, afflux de sang, etc.

De quelque manière que se résolvent ces controverses, leur existence prouve bien clairement une chose, c'est qu'il est très difficile, ou même absolument impossible de savoir, par la seule inspection intime de certains phénomènes, s'ils sont de nature physique, occupant de l'étendue, etc., ou s'ils sont de nature purement psychique et intérieure. Il nous faut toujours trouver des raisons pour appuyer notre avis; il nous faut chercher la classification la plus probable du phénomène; et en fin de compte il pourrait bien se trouver que toutes nos classifications usuelles eussent eu leurs motifs plutôt dans les besoins de la pratique que dans quelque faculté que nous aurions d'apercevoir deux essences ultimes et diverses qui composeraient ensemble la trame des choses. Le corps de chacun de nous offre un contraste pratique presque violent à tout le reste du milieu ambiant. Tout ce qui arrive au dedans de ce corps nous est plus intime et important que ce qui arrive ailleurs. Il s'identifie avec notre moi, il se classe avec lui. Ame, vie, souffle, qui saurait bien les distinguer exactement? Même nos images et nos souvenirs, qui n'agissent sur le monde physique que par le moyen de notre corps, semblent appartenir à ce dernier. Nous les traitons comme internes, nous les classons avec nos sentiments affectifs. Il faut bien avouer, en somme, que la question du dualisme de la pensée et de la matière est bien loin d'être finalement résolue.

Et voilà terminée la première partie de mon discours. J'ai voulu vous pénétrer, Mesdames et Messieurs, de mes doutes et de la réalité, aussi bien que de l'importance, du problème.

Quant à moi, après de longues années d'hésitation, j'ai fini par prendre mon parti carrément. Je crois que la conscience, telle qu'on se la représente communément, soit comme entité, soit comme activité pure, mais en tout cas comme fluide, inétendue, diaphane, vide de tout contenu propre, mais se connaissant directement elle-même, spirituelle enfin, je crois, dis-je, que cette conscience est une pure chimère, et que la somme de réalités concrètes que le mot conscience devrait couvrir, mérite une toute autre description, description, du reste, qu'une philosophie attentive aux faits et sachant faire un peu d'analyse, serait désormais en état de fournir ou plutôt de commencer à fournir. Et ces mots m'amènent à la seconde partie de mon discours. Elle sera beaucoup plus courte que la première, parce que si je la développais sur la même échelle, elle serait beaucoup trop longue. Il faut, par conséquent, que je me restreigne aux seules indications indispensables.

* * * * *

Admettons que la conscience, la _Bewusstheit_, conçue comme essence, entité, activité, moitié irréductible de chaque expérience, soit supprimée, que le dualisme fondamental et pour ainsi dire ontologique soit aboli et que ce que nous supposions exister soit seulement ce qu'on a appelé jusqu'ici le _contenu_, le _Inhalt_, de la conscience; comment la philosophie va-t-elle se tirer d'affaire avec l'espèce de monisme vague qui en résultera? Je vais tâcher de vous insinuer quelques suggestions positives là-dessus, bien que je craigne que, faute du développement nécessaire, mes idées ne répandront pas une clarté très grande. Pourvu que j'indique un commencement de sentier, ce sera peut-être assez.

Au fond, pourquoi nous accrochons-nous d'une manière si tenace à cette idée d'une conscience surajoutée à l'existence du contenu des choses? Pourquoi la réclamons-nous si fortement, que celui qui la nierait nous semblerait plutôt un mauvais plaisant qu'un penseur? N'est-ce pas pour sauver ce fait indéniable que le contenu de l'expérience n'a pas seulement une existence propre et comme immanente et intrinsèque, mais que chaque partie de ce contenu déteint pour ainsi dire sur ses voisines, rend compte d'elle-même à d'autres, sort en quelque sorte de soi pour être sue et qu'ainsi tout le champ de l'expérience se trouve être transparent de part en part, ou constitué comme un espace qui serait rempli de miroirs?

Cette bilatéralité des parties de l'expérience,--à savoir d'une part, qu'elles _sont_ avec des qualités propres; d'autre part, qu'elles sont rapportées à d'autres parties et _sues_--l'opinion régnante la constate et l'explique par un dualisme fondamental de constitution appartenant à chaque morceau d'expérience en propre. Dans cette feuille de papier il n'y a pas seulement, dit-on, le contenu, blancheur, minceur, etc., mais il y a ce second fait de la conscience de cette blancheur et de cette minceur. Cette fonction d'être "rapporté," de faire partie de la trame entière d'une expérience plus compréhensive, on l'érige en fait ontologique, et on loge ce fait dans l'intérieur même du papier, en l'accouplant à sa blancheur et à sa minceur. Ce n'est pas un rapport extrinsèque qu'on suppose, c'est une moitié du phénomène même.

Je crois qu'en somme on se représente la réalité comme constituée de la façon dont sont faites les "couleurs" qui nous servent à la peinture. Il y a d'abord des matières colorantes qui répondent au contenu, et il y a un véhicule, huile ou colle, qui les tient en suspension et qui répond à la conscience. C'est un dualisme complet, où, en employant certains procédés, on peut séparer chaque élément de l'autre par voie de soustraction. C'est ainsi qu'on nous assure qu'en faisant un grand effort d'abstraction introspective, nous pouvons saisir notre conscience sur le vif, comme une activité spirituelle pure, en négligeant à peu près complètement les matières qu'à un moment donné elle éclaire.

Maintenant je vous demande si on ne pourrait pas tout aussi bien renverser absolument cette manière de voir. Supposons, en effet, que la réalité première soit de nature neutre, et appelons-la par quelque nom encore ambigu, comme _phénomène_, _donné_, _Vorfindung_. Moi-même j'en parle volontiers au pluriel, et je lui donne le nom d'_expériences pures_. Ce sera un monisme, si vous voulez, mais un monisme tout à fait rudimentaire et absolument opposé au soi-disant monisme bilatéral du positivisme scientifique ou spinoziste.

Ces expériences pures existent et se succèdent, entrent dans des rapports infiniment variés les unes avec les autres, rapports qui sont eux-mêmes des parties essentielles de la trame des expériences. Il y a "Conscience" de ces rapports au même titre qu'il y a "Conscience" de leurs termes. Il en résulte que des _groupes_ d'expériences se font remarquer et distinguer, et qu'une seule et même expérience, vu la grande variété de ses rapports, peut jouer un rôle dans plusieurs groupes à la fois. C'est ainsi que dans un certain contexte de voisins, elle serait classée comme un phénomène physique, tandis que dans un autre entourage elle figurerait comme un fait de conscience, à peu près comme une même particule d'encre peut appartenir simultanément à deux lignes, l'une verticale, l'autre horizontale, pourvu qu'elle soit située à leur intersection.

Prenons, pour fixer nos idées, l'expérience que nous avons à ce moment du local où nous sommes, de ces murailles, de cette table, de ces chaises, de cet espace. Dans cette expérience pleine, concrète et indivise, telle qu'elle est là, donnée, le monde physique objectif et le monde intérieur et personnel de chacun de nous se rencontrent et se fusionnent comme des lignes se fusionnent à leur intersection. Comme chose physique, cette salle a des rapports avec tout le reste du bâtiment, bâtiment que nous autres nous ne connaissons et ne connaîtrons pas. Elle doit son existence à toute une histoire de financiers, d'architectes, d'ouvriers. Elle pèse sur le sol; elle durera indéfiniment dans le temps; si le feu y éclatait, les chaises et la table qu'elle contient seraient vite réduites en cendres.

Comme expérience personnelle, au contraire, comme chose "rapportée," connue, consciente, cette salle a de tout autres tenants et aboutissants. Ses antécédents ne sont pas des ouvriers, ce sont nos pensées respectives de tout à l'heure. Bientôt elle ne figurera que comme un fait fugitif dans nos biographies, associé à d'agréables souvenirs. Comme expérience psychique, elle n'a aucun poids, son ameublement n'est pas combustible. Elle n'exerce de force physique que sur nos seuls cerveaux, et beaucoup d'entre nous nient encore cette influence; tandis que la salle physique est en rapport d'influence physique avec tout le reste du monde.

Et pourtant c'est de la même salle absolument qu'il s'agit dans les deux cas. Tant que nous ne faisons pas de physique spéculative, tant que nous nous plaçons dans le sens commun, c'est la salle vue et sentie qui est bien la salle physique. De quoi parlons-nous donc si ce n'est de _cela_, de cette même partie de la nature matérielle que tous nos esprits, à ce même moment, embrassent, qui entre telle quelle dans l'expérience actuelle et intime de chacun de nous, et que notre souvenir regardera toujours comme une partie intégrante de notre histoire. C'est absolument une même étoffe qui figure simultanément, selon le contexte que l'on considère, comme fait matériel et physique, ou comme fait de conscience intime.

Je crois donc qu'on ne saurait traiter conscience et matière comme étant d'essence disparate. On n'obtient ni l'une ni l'autre par soustraction, en négligeant chaque fois l'autre moitié d'une expérience de composition double. Les expériences sont au contraire primitivement de nature plutôt simple. Elles _deviennent_ conscientes dans leur entier, elles _deviennent_ physiques dans leur entier; et c'est _par voie d'addition_ que ce résultat se réalise. Pour autant que des expériences se prolongent dans le temps, entrent dans des rapports d'influence physique, se brisant, se chauffant, s'éclairant, etc., mutuellement, nous en faisons un groupe à part que nous appelons le monde physique. Pour autant, au contraire, qu'elles sont fugitives, inertes physiquement, que leur succession ne suit pas d'ordre déterminé, mais semble plutôt obéir à des caprices émotifs, nous en faisons un autre groupe que nous appelons le monde psychique. C'est en entrant à présent dans un grand nombre de ces groupes psychiques que cette salle devient maintenant chose consciente, chose rapportée, chose sue. En faisant désormais partie de nos biographies respectives, elle ne sera pas suivie de cette sotte et monotone répétition d'elle-même dans le temps qui caractérise son existence physique. Elle sera suivie, au contraire, par d'autres expériences qui seront discontinues avec elle, ou qui auront ce genre tout particulier de continuité que nous appelons souvenir. Demain, elle aura eu sa place dans chacun de nos passés; mais les présents divers auxquels tous ces passés seront liés demain seront bien différents du présent dont cette salle jouira demain comme entité physique.

Les deux genres de groupes sont formés d'expériences, mais les rapports des expériences entre elles diffèrent d'un groupe à l'autre. C'est donc par addition d'autres phénomènes qu'un phénomène donné devient conscient ou connu, ce n'est pas par un dédoublement d'essence intérieure. La connaissance des choses leur _survient_, elle ne leur est pas immanente. Ce n'est le fait ni d'un moi transcendental, ni d'une _Bewusstheit_ ou acte de conscience qui les animerait chacune. _Elles se connaissent l'une l'autre_, ou plutôt il y en a qui connaissent les autres; et le rapport que nous nommons connaissance n'est lui-même, dans beaucoup de cas, qu'une suite d'expériences intermédiaires parfaitement susceptibles d'être décrites en termes concrets. Il n'est nullement le mystère transcendant où se sont complus tant de philosophes.

Mais ceci nous mènerait beaucoup trop loin. Je ne puis entrer ici dans tous les replis de la théorie de la connaissance, ou de ce que, vous autres Italiens, vous appelez la gnoséologie. Je dois me contenter de ces remarques écourtées, ou simples suggestions, qui sont, je le crains, encore bien obscures faute des développements nécessaires.

Permettez donc que je me résume--trop sommairement, et en style dogmatique--dans les six thèses suivantes:

* * * * *

_1^o La Conscience, telle qu'on l'entend ordinairement, n'existe pas, pas plus que la Matière, à laquelle Berkeley a donné le coup de grâce;_

_2^o Ce qui existe et forme la part de vérité que le mot de "Conscience" recouvre, c'est la susceptibilité que possèdent les parties de l'expérience d'être rapportées ou connues;_

_3^o Cette susceptibilité s'explique par le fait que certaines expériences peuvent mener les unes aux autres par des expériences intermédiaires nettement caractérisées, de telle sorte que les unes se trouvent jouer le rôle de choses connues, les autres celui de sujets connaissants;_

_4^o On peut parfaitement définir ces deux rôles sans sortir de la trame de l'expérience même, et sans invoquer rien de transcendant;_

_5^o Les attributions sujet et objet, représenté et représentatif, chose et pensée, signifient donc une distinction pratique qui est de la dernière importance, mais qui est d'ordre_ FONCTIONNEL _seulement, et nullement ontologique comme le dualisme classique se la représente;_

_6^o En fin de compte, les choses et les pensées ne sont point foncièrement hétérogènes, mais elles sont faites d'une même étoffe, étoffe qu'on ne peut définir comme telle, mais seulement éprouver, et que l'on peut nommer, si on veut, l'étoffe de l'expérience en général._

FOOTNOTES:

[116] [A communication made (in French) at the Fifth International Congress of Psychology, in Rome, April 30, 1905. It is reprinted from the _Archives de Psychologie_, vol. V, No. 17, June, 1905.] Cette communication est le résumé, forcément très condensé, de vues que l'auteur a exposées, au cours de ces derniers mois, en une série d'articles publiés dans le _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, 1904 et 1905. [The series of articles referred to is reprinted above. ED.]

[117] _The Sense of Beauty_, pp. 44 ff.

[118] _The Life of Reason_ [vol. I, "Reason in Common Sense," p. 142].

IX

IS RADICAL EMPIRICISM SOLIPSISTIC?[119]

If all the criticisms which the humanistic _Weltanschauung_ is receiving were as _sachgemäss_ as Mr. Bode's,[120] the truth of the matter would more rapidly clear up. Not only is it excellently well written, but it brings its own point of view out clearly, and admits of a perfectly straight reply.

The argument (unless I fail to catch it) can be expressed as follows:

If a series of experiences be supposed, no one of which is endowed immediately with the self-transcendent function of reference to a reality beyond itself, no motive will occur within the series for supposing anything beyond it to exist. It will remain subjective, and contentedly subjective, both as a whole and in its several parts.

Radical empiricism, trying, as it does, to account for objective knowledge by means of such a series, egregiously fails. It can not explain how the notion of a physical order, as distinguished from a subjectively biographical order, of experiences, ever arose.

It pretends to explain the notion of a physical order, but does so by playing fast and loose with the concept of objective reference. On the one hand, it denies that such reference implies self-transcendency on the part of any one experience; on the other hand, it claims that experiences _point_. But, critically considered, there can be no pointing unless self-transcendency be also allowed. The conjunctive function of pointing, as I have assumed it, is, according to my critic, vitiated by the fallacy of attaching a bilateral relation to a term _a quo_, as if it could stick out substantively and maintain itself in existence in advance of the term _ad quem_ which is equally required for it to be a concretely experienced fact. If the relation be made concrete, the term _ad quem_ is involved, which would mean (if I succeed in apprehending Mr. Bode rightly) that this latter term, although not empirically there, is yet _noetically_ there, in advance--in other words it would mean that any experience that 'points' must already have transcended itself, in the ordinary 'epistemological' sense of the word transcend.

Something like this, if I understand Mr. Bode's text, is the upshot of his state of mind. It is a reasonable sounding state of mind, but it is exactly the state of mind which radical empiricism, by its doctrine of the reality of conjunctive relations, seeks to dispel. I very much fear--so difficult does mutual understanding seem in these exalted regions--that my able critic has failed to understand that doctrine as it is meant to be understood. I suspect that he performs on all these conjunctive relations (of which the aforesaid 'pointing' is only one) the usual rationalistic act of substitution--he takes them not as they are given in their first intention, as parts constitutive of experience's living flow, but only as they appear in retrospect, each fixed as a determinate object of conception, static, therefore, and contained within itself.

Against this rationalistic tendency to treat experience as chopped up into discontinuous static objects, radical empiricism protests. It insists on taking conjunctions at their 'face-value,' just as they come. Consider, for example, such conjunctions as 'and,' 'with,' 'near,' '_plus_,' 'towards.' While we live in such conjunctions our state is one of _transition_ in the most literal sense. We are expectant of a 'more' to come, and before the more _has_ come, the transition, nevertheless, is directed _towards_ it. I fail otherwise to see how, if one kind of more comes, there should be satisfaction and feeling of fulfilment; but disappointment if the more comes in another shape. One more will continue, another more will arrest or deflect the direction, in which our experience is moving even now. We can not, it is true, _name_ our different living 'ands' or 'withs' except by naming the different terms towards which they are moving us, but we _live_ their specifications and differences before those terms explicitly arrive. Thus, though the various 'ands' are all bilateral relations, each requiring a term _ad quem_ to define it when viewed in retrospect and articulately conceived, yet in its living moment any one of them may be treated as if it 'stuck out' from its term _a quo_ and pointed in a special direction, much as a compass-needle (to use Mr. Bode's excellent simile) points at the pole, even though it stirs not from its box.

In Professor Höffding's massive little article in _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_,[121] he quotes a saying of Kierkegaard's to the effect that we live forwards, but we understand backwards. Understanding backwards is, it must be confessed, a very frequent weakness of philosophers, both of the rationalistic and of the ordinary empiricist type. Radical empiricism alone insists on understanding forwards also, and refuses to substitute static concepts of the understanding for transitions in our moving life. A logic similar to that which my critic seems to employ here should, it seems to me, forbid him to say that our present is, while present, directed towards our future, or that any physical movement can have direction until its goal is actually reached.

At this point does it not seem as if the quarrel about self-transcendency in knowledge might drop? Is it not a purely verbal dispute? Call it self-transcendency or call it pointing, whichever you like--it makes no difference so long as real transitions towards real goals are admitted as things given _in_ experience, and among experience's most indefeasible parts. Radical empiricism, unable to close its eyes to the transitions caught _in actu_, accounts for the self-transcendency or the pointing (whichever you may call it) as a process that occurs within experience, as an empirically mediated thing of which a perfectly definite description can be given. 'Epistemology,' on the other hand, denies this; and pretends that the self-transcendency is unmediated or, if mediated, then mediated in a super-empirical world. To justify this pretension, epistemology has first to transform all our conjunctions into static objects, and this, I submit, is an absolutely arbitrary act. But in spite of Mr. Bode's mal-treatment of conjunctions, as I understand them--and as I understand him--I believe that at bottom we are fighting for nothing different, but are both defending the same continuities of experience in different forms of words.

There are other criticisms in the article in question, but, as this seems the most vital one, I will for the present, at any rate, leave them untouched.

FOOTNOTES:

[119] [Reprinted from _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, vol. II, No. 9, April 27, 1905.]

[120] [B. H. Bode: "'Pure Experience' and the External World," _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, vol. II, 1905, p. 128.]

[121] Vol. II, [1905], pp. 85-92.

X

MR. PITKIN'S REFUTATION OF 'RADICAL EMPIRICISM'[122]

Although Mr. Pitkin does not name me in his acute article on radical empiricism,[123] [...] I fear that some readers, knowing me to have applied that name to my own doctrine, may possibly consider themselves to have been in at my death.

In point of fact my withers are entirely unwrung. I have, indeed, said[124] that 'to be radical, an empiricism must not admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced.' But in my own radical empiricism this is only a _methodological postulate_, not a conclusion supposed to flow from the intrinsic absurdity of transempirical objects. I have never felt the slightest respect for the idealistic arguments which Mr. Pitkin attacks and of which Ferrier made such striking use; and I am perfectly willing to admit any number of noumenal beings or events into philosophy if only their pragmatic value can be shown.

Radical empiricism and pragmatism have so many misunderstandings to suffer from, that it seems my duty not to let this one go any farther, uncorrected.

* * * * *

Mr. Pitkin's 'reply' to me,[125] [...] perplexes me by the obscurity of style which I find in almost all our younger philosophers. He asks me, however, two direct questions which I understand, so I take the liberty of answering.

First he asks: Do not experience and science show 'that countless things are[126] experienced as that which they are not or are only partially?' I reply: Yes, assuredly, as, for example, 'things' distorted by refractive media, 'molecules,' or whatever else is taken to be more ultimately real than the immediate content of the perceptive moment.

Secondly: "If experience is self-supporting[127] (in _any_ intelligible sense) does this fact preclude the possibility of (a) something not experienced and (b) action of experience upon a noumenon?"

My reply is: Assuredly not the possibility of either--how could it? Yet in my opinion we should be wise not to _consider_ any thing or action of that nature, and to restrict our universe of philosophic discourse to what is experienced or, at least, experienceable.[128]

FOOTNOTES:

[122] [Reprinted from the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, vol. III, No. 26, December 20, 1906; and _ibid._, vol. IV, No. 4, February 14, 1907, where the original is entitled "A Reply to Mr. Pitkin." ED.]

[123] [W. B. Pitkin: "A Problem of Evidence in Radical Empiricism," _ibid._, vol. III, No. 24, November 22, 1906. ED.]

[124] [Above, p. 42. ED.]

[125] ["In Reply to Professor James," _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, vol. IV, No. 2, January 17, 1907. ED.]

[126] Mr. Pitkin inserts the clause: 'by reason of the very nature of experience itself.' Not understanding just what reason is meant, I do not include this clause in my answer.

[127] [See above, p. 193. ED.]

[128] [Elsewhere, in speaking of 'reality' as "conceptual or perceptual experiences," the author says: "This is meant merely to exclude reality of an 'unknowable' sort, of which no account in either perceptual or conceptual terms can be given. It includes, of course, any amount of empirical reality independent of the knower." _Meaning of Truth_, p. 100, note. ED.]

XI

HUMANISM AND TRUTH ONCE MORE.[129]

Mr. Joseph's criticism of my article 'Humanism and Truth'[130] is a useful contribution to the general clearing up. He has seriously tried to comprehend what the pragmatic movement may intelligibly mean; and if he has failed, it is the fault neither of his patience nor of his sincerity, but rather of stubborn tricks of thought which he could not easily get rid of. Minute polemics, in which the parties try to rebut every detail of each of the other's charges, are a useful exercise only to the disputants. They can but breed confusion in a reader. I will therefore ignore as much as possible the text of both our articles (mine was inadequate enough) and treat once more the general objective situation.

As I apprehend the movement towards humanism, it is based on no

## particular discovery or principle that can be driven into one precise

formula which thereupon can be impaled upon a logical skewer. It is much more like one of those secular changes that come upon public opinion over-night, as it were, borne upon tides 'too full for sound or foam,' that survive all the crudities and extravagances of their advocates, that you can pin to no one absolutely essential statement, nor kill by any one decisive stab.

Such have been the changes from aristocracy to democracy, from classic to romantic taste, from theistic to pantheistic feeling, from static to evolutionary ways of understanding life--changes of which we all have been spectators. Scholasticism still opposes to such changes the method of confutation by single decisive reasons, showing that the new view involves self-contradiction, or traverses some fundamental principle. This is like stopping a river by planting a stick in the middle of its bed. Round your obstacle flows the water and 'gets there all the same.' In reading Mr. Joseph, I am not a little reminded of those Catholic writers who refute Darwinism by telling us that higher species can not come from lower because _minus nequit gignere plus_, or that the notion of transformation is absurd, for it implies that species tend to their own destruction, and that would violate the principle that every reality tends to persevere in its own shape. The point of view is too myopic, too tight and close to take in the inductive argument. You can not settle questions of fact by formal logic. I feel as if Mr. Joseph almost pounced on my words singly, without giving the sentences time to get out of my mouth.

The one condition of understanding humanism is to become inductive-minded oneself, to drop rigorous definitions, and follow lines of least resistance 'on the whole.' "In other words," Mr. Joseph may probably say, "resolve your intellect into a kind of slush." "Even so," I make reply,--"if you will consent to use no politer word." For humanism, conceiving the more 'true' as the more 'satisfactory' (Dewey's term) has to renounce sincerely rectilinear arguments and ancient ideals of rigor and finality. It is in just this temper of renunciation, so different from that of pyrrhonistic scepticism, that the spirit of humanism essentially consists. Satisfactoriness has to be measured by a multitude of standards, of which some, for aught we know, may fail in any given case; and what is 'more' satisfactory than any alternative in sight, may to the end be a sum of _pluses_ and _minuses_, concerning which we can only trust that by ulterior corrections and improvements a maximum of the one and a minimum of the other may some day be approached. It means a real change of heart, a break with absolutistic hopes, when one takes up this view of the conditions of belief.

That humanism's critics have never imagined this attitude inwardly, is shown by their invariable tactics. They do not get into it far enough to see objectively and from without what their own opposite notion of truth is. Mr. Joseph is possessed by some such notion; he thinks his readers to be full of it, he obeys it, works from it, but never even essays to tell us what it is. The nearest he comes to doing so is where[131] he says it is the way "we ought to think," whether we be psychologically compelled to or not.

Of course humanism agrees to this: it is only a manner of calling truth an ideal. But humanism explicates the summarizing word 'ought' into a mass of pragmatic motives from the midst of which our critics think that truth itself takes flight. Truth is a name of double meaning. It stands now for an abstract something defined only as that to which our thought ought to conform; and again it stands for the concrete propositions within which we believe that conformity already reigns--they being so many 'truths.' Humanism sees that the only conformity we ever have to deal with concretely is that between our subjects and our predicates, using these words in a very broad sense. It sees moreover that this conformity is 'validated' (to use Mr. Schiller's term) by an indefinite number of pragmatic tests that vary as the predicates and subjects vary. If an S gets superseded by an SP that gives our mind a completer sum of satisfactions, we always say, humanism points out, that we have advanced to a better position in regard to truth.

Now many of our judgments thus attained are retrospective. The S'es, so the judgment runs, were SP's already ere the fact was humanly recorded. Common sense, struck by this state of things, now rearranges the whole field; and traditional philosophy follows her example. The general requirement that predicates must conform to their subject, they translate into an ontological theory. A most previous Subject of all is substituted for the lesser subjects and conceived of as an archetypal Reality; and the conformity required of predicates in detail is reinterpreted as a relation which our whole mind, with all its subjects and predicates together, must get into with respect to this Reality. It, meanwhile, is conceived as eternal, static, and unaffected by our thinking. Conformity to a non-human Archetype like this is probably the notion of truth which my opponent shares with common sense and philosophic rationalism.

When now Humanism, fully admitting both the naturalness and the grandeur of this hypothesis, nevertheless points to its sterility, and declines to chime in with the substitution, keeping to the concrete and still lodging truth between the subjects and the predicates in detail, it provokes the outcry which we hear and which my critic echoes.

One of the commonest parts of the outcry is that humanism is subjectivistic altogether--it is supposed to labor under a necessity of 'denying trans-perceptual reality.'[132] It is not hard to see how this misconception of humanism may have arisen; and humanistic writers,

## partly from not having sufficiently guarded their expressions, and

## partly from not having yet "got round" (in the poverty of their

literature) to a full discussion of the subject, are doubtless in some degree to blame. But I fail to understand how any one with a working grasp of their principles can charge them wholesale with subjectivism. I myself have never thought of humanism as being subjectivistic farther than to this extent, that, inasmuch as it treats the thinker as being himself one portion of reality, it must also allow that _some_ of the realities that he declares for true are created by his being there. Such realities of course are either acts of his, or relations between other things and him, or relations between things, which, but for him, would never have been traced. Humanists are subjectivistic, also in this, that, unlike rationalists (who think they carry a warrant for the absolute truth of what they now believe in in their present pocket), they hold all present beliefs as subject to revision in the light of future experience. The future experience, however, may be of things outside the thinker; and that this is so the humanist may believe as freely as any other kind of empiricist philosopher.

The critics of humanism (though here I follow them but darkly) appear to object to any infusion whatever of subjectivism into truth. All must be archetypal; every truth must pre-exist to its perception. Humanism sees that an enormous quantity of truth must be written down as having pre-existed to its perception by us humans. In countless instances we find it most satisfactory to believe that, though we were always ignorant of the fact, it always _was_ a fact that S was SP. But humanism separates this class of cases from those in which it is more satisfactory to believe the opposite, e.g., that S is ephemeral, or P a passing event, or SP created by the perceiving act. Our critics seem on the other hand, to wish to universalize the retrospective type of instance. Reality must pre-exist to every assertion for which truth is claimed. And, not content with this overuse of one particular type of judgment, our critics claim its monopoly. They appear to wish to cut off Humanism from its rights to any retrospection at all.

Humanism says that satisfactoriness is what distinguishes the true from the false. But satisfactoriness is both a subjective quality, and a present one. _Ergo_ (the critics appear to reason) an object, _quâ_ true, must always for humanism be both present and subjective, and a humanist's belief can never be in anything that lives outside of the belief itself or ante-dates it. Why so preposterous a charge should be so current, I find it hard to say. Nothing is more obvious than the fact that both the objective and the past existence of the object may be the very things about it that most seem satisfactory, and that most invite us to believe them. The past tense can figure in the humanist's world, as well of belief as of representation, quite as harmoniously as in the world of any one else.

Mr. Joseph gives a special turn to this accusation. He charges me[133] with being self-contradictory when I say that the main categories of thought were evolved in the course of experience itself. For I use these very categories to define the course of experience by. Experience, as I talk about it, is a product of their use; and yet I take it as true anteriorly to them. This seems to Mr. Joseph to be an absurdity. I hope it does not seem such to his readers; for if experiences can suggest hypotheses at all (and they notoriously do so) I can see no absurdity whatever in the notion of a retrospective hypothesis having for its object the very train of experiences by which its own being, along with that of other things, has been brought about. If the hypothesis is 'satisfactory' we must, of course, believe it to have been true anteriorly to its formulation by ourselves. Every explanation of a present by a past seems to involve this kind of circle, which is not a vicious circle. The past is _causa existendi_ of the present, which in turn is _causa cognoscendi_ of the past. If the present were treated as _causa existendi_ of the past, the circle might indeed be vicious.

Closely connected with this pseudo-difficulty is another one of wider scope and greater complication--more excusable therefore.[134] Humanism, namely, asking how truth in point of fact is reached, and seeing that it is by ever substituting more satisfactory for less satisfactory opinions, is thereby led into a vague historic sketch of truth's development. The earliest 'opinions,' it thinks, must have been dim, unconnected 'feelings,' and only little by little did more and more orderly views of things replace them. Our own retrospective view of this whole evolution is now, let us say, the latest candidate for 'truth' as yet reached in the process. To be a satisfactory candidate, it must give some definite sort of a picture of what forces keep the process going. On the subjective side we have a fairly definite picture--sensation, association, interest, hypothesis, these account in a general way for the growth into a cosmos of the relative chaos with which the mind began.

But on the side of the object, so to call it roughly, our view is much less satisfactory. Of which of our many objects are we to believe that it truly _was_ there and at work before the human mind began? Time, space, kind, number, serial order, cause, consciousness, are hard things not to objectify--even transcendental idealism leaves them standing as 'empirically real.' Substance, matter, force, fall down more easily before criticism, and secondary qualities make almost no resistance at all. Nevertheless, when we survey the field of speculation, from Scholasticism through Kantism to Spencerism, we find an ever-recurring tendency to convert the pre-human into a merely logical object, an unknowable _ding-an-sich_, that but starts the process, or a vague _materia prima_ that but receives our forms.[135]

The reasons for this are not so much logical as they are material. We can postulate an extra-mental _that_ freely enough (though some idealists have denied us the privilege), but when we have done so, the _what_ of it is hard to determine satisfactorily, because of the oppositions and entanglements of the variously proposed _whats_ with one another and with the history of the human mind. The literature of speculative cosmology bears witness to this difficulty. Humanism suffers from it no more than any other philosophy suffers, but it makes all our cosmogonic theories so unsatisfactory that some thinkers seek relief in the denial of any primal dualism. Absolute Thought or 'pure experience' is postulated, and endowed with attributes calculated to justify the belief that it may 'run itself.' Both these truth-claiming hypotheses are non-dualistic in the old mind-and-matter sense; but the one is monistic and the other pluralistic as to the world process itself. Some humanists are non-dualists of this sort--I myself am one _und zwar_ of the pluralistic brand. But doubtless dualistic humanists also exist, as well as non-dualistic ones of the monistic wing.

Mr. Joseph pins these general philosophic difficulties on humanism alone, or possibly on me alone. My article spoke vaguely of a 'most chaotic pure experience' coming first, and building up the mind.[136] But how can two structureless things interact so as to produce a structure? my critic triumphantly asks. Of course they can't, as purely so-named entities. We must make additional hypotheses. We must beg a minimum of structure for them. The _kind_ of minimum that _might_ have tended to increase towards what we now find actually developed is the philosophical desideratum here. The question is that of the most materially satisfactory hypothesis. Mr. Joseph handles it by formal logic purely, as if he had no acquaintance with the logic of hypothesis at all.

Mr. Joseph again is much bewildered as to what a humanist can mean when he uses the word knowledge. He tries to convict me[137] of vaguely identifying it with any kind of good. Knowledge is a difficult thing to define briefly, and Mr. Joseph shows his own constructive hand here even less than in the rest of his article. I have myself put forth on several occasions a radically pragmatist account of knowledge,[138] the existence of which account my critic probably does not know of--so perhaps I had better not say anything about knowledge until he reads and attacks that. I will say, however, that whatever the relation called knowing may itself prove to consist in, I can think of no conceivable kind of _object_ which may not become an object of knowledge on humanistic principles as well as on the principles of any other philosophy.[139]

I confess that I am pretty steadily hampered by the habit, on the part of humanism's critics, of assuming that they have truer ideas than mine of truth and knowledge, the nature of which I must know of and can not need to have re-defined. I have consequently to reconstruct these ideas in order to carry on the discussion (I have e.g. had to do so in some parts of this article) and I thereby expose myself to charges of caricature. In one part of Mr. Joseph's attack, however, I rejoice that we are free from this embarrassment. It is an important point and covers probably a genuine difficulty, so I take it up last.

When, following Schiller and Dewey, I define the true as that which gives the maximal combination of satisfactions, and say that satisfaction is a many-dimensional term that can be realized in various ways, Mr. Joseph replies, rightly enough, that the chief satisfaction of a rational creature must always be his thought that what he believes is _true_, whether the truth brings him the satisfaction of collateral profits or not. This would seem, however, to make of truth the prior concept, and to relegate satisfaction to a secondary place.

Again, if to be satisfactory is what is meant by being true, _whose_ satisfactions, and _which_ of his satisfactions, are to count? Discriminations notoriously have to be made; and the upshot is that only rational candidates and intellectual satisfactions stand the test. We are then driven to a purely theoretic notion of truth, and get out of the pragmatic atmosphere altogether. And with this Mr. Joseph leaves us--truth is truth, and there is an end of the matter. But he makes a very pretty show of convicting me of self-stultification in according to our purely theoretic satisfactions any place in the humanistic scheme. They crowd the collateral satisfactions out of house and home, he thinks, and pragmatism has to go into bankruptcy if she recognizes them at all.

There is no room for disagreement about the facts here; but the destructive force of the reasoning disappears as soon as we talk concretely instead of abstractly, and ask, in our quality of good pragmatists, just what the famous theoretic needs are known as and in what the intellectual satisfactions consist. Mr. Joseph, faithful to the habits of his party, makes no attempt at characterizing them, but assumes that their nature is self-evident to all.

Are they not all mere matters of _consistency_--and emphatically _not_ of consistency between an Absolute Reality and the mind's copies of it, but of actually felt consistency among judgments, objects, and manners of reacting, in the mind? And are not both our need of such consistency and our pleasure in it conceivable as outcomes of the natural fact that we are beings that develop mental _habits_--habit itself proving adaptively beneficial in an environment where the same objects, or the same kinds of objects, recur and follow 'law'? If this were so, what would have come first would have been the collateral profits of habit, and the theoretic life would have grown up in aid of these. In point of fact this seems to have been the probable case. At life's origin, any present perception may have been 'true'--if such a word could then be applicable. Later, when reactions became organized, the reactions became 'true' whenever expectation was fulfilled by them. Otherwise they were 'false' or 'mistaken' reactions. But the same class of objects needs the same kind of reaction, so the impulse to react consistently must gradually have been established, with a disappointment felt whenever the results frustrated expectation. Here is a perfectly plausible germ for all our higher consistencies. Nowadays, if an object claims from us a reaction of the kind habitually accorded only to the opposite class of objects, our mental machinery refuses to run smoothly. The situation is intellectually unsatisfactory. To gain relief we seek either to preserve the reaction by re-interpreting the object, or, leaving the object as it is, we react in a way contrary to the way claimed of us. Neither solution is easy. Such a situation might be that of Mr. Joseph, with me claiming assent to humanism from him. He can not apperceive it so as to permit him to gratify my claim; but there is enough appeal in the claim to induce him to write a whole article in justification of his refusal. If he should assent to humanism, on the other hand, that would drag after it an unwelcome, yea incredible, alteration of his previous mental beliefs. Whichever alternative he might adopt, however, a new equilibrium of intellectual consistency would in the end be reached. He would feel, whichever way he decided, that he was now thinking truly. But if, with his old habits unaltered, he should simply add to them the new one of advocating humanism quietly or noisily, his mind would be rent into two systems, each of which would accuse the other of falsehood. The resultant situation, being profoundly unsatisfactory, would also be instable.

Theoretic truth is thus no relation between our mind and archetypal reality. It falls _within_ the mind, being the accord of some of its processes and objects with other processes and objects--'accord' consisting here in well-definable relations. So long as the satisfaction of feeling such an accord is denied us, whatever collateral profits may seem to inure from what we believe in are but as dust in the balance--provided always that we are highly organized intellectually, which the majority of us are not. The amount of accord which satisfies most men and women is merely the absence of violent clash between their usual thoughts and statements and the limited sphere of sense-perceptions in which their lives are cast. The theoretic truth that most of us think we 'ought' to attain to is thus the possession of a set of predicates that do not contradict their subjects. We preserve it as often as not by leaving other predicates and subjects out.

In some men theory is a passion, just as music is in others. The form of inner consistency is pursued far beyond the line at which collateral profits stop. Such men systematize and classify and schematize and make synoptical tables and invent ideal objects for the pure love of unifying. Too often the results, glowing with 'truth' for the inventors, seem pathetically personal and artificial to bystanders. Which is as much as to say that the purely theoretic criterion of truth can leave us in the lurch as easily as any other criterion.

I think that if Mr. Joseph will but consider all these things a little more concretely, he may find that the humanistic scheme and the notion of theoretic truth fall into line consistently enough to yield him also intellectual satisfaction.

FOOTNOTES:

[129] [Reprinted without change from _Mind_, N. S., vol. XIV, No. 54, April, 1905, pp. 190-198. Pages 245-247, and pp. 261-265, have also been reprinted in _The Meaning of Truth_, pp. 54-57, and pp. 97-100. The present essay is referred to above, p. 203. ED.]

[130] ['Humanism and Truth' first appeared in _Mind_, N. S., vol. XIII, No. 52, October, 1904. It is reprinted in _The Meaning of Truth_, pp. 51-101. Cf. this article _passim_. Mr. H. W. B. Joseph's criticism, entitled "Professor James on 'Humanism and Truth,'" appeared in _Mind_, N. S., vol. XIV, No. 53, January, 1905. ED.]

[131] _Op. cit._, p. 37.

[132] [Cf. above, pp. 241-243.]

[133] _Op. cit._, p. 32.

[134] [This] Mr. Joseph deals with (though in much too pettifogging and logic-chopping a way) on pp. 33-34 of his article.

[135] Compare some elaborate articles by M. Le Roy and M. Wilbois in the _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_, vols. VIII, IX, and X, [1900, 1901, and 1902.]

[136] [Cf. _The Meaning of Truth_, p. 64.]

[137] [Joseph: _op. cit._, p. 36.]

[138] Most recently in two articles, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?" and "A World of Pure Experience." [See above, pp. 1-91.]

[139] For a recent attempt, effective on the whole, at squaring humanism with knowing, I may refer to Prof. Woodbridge's very able address at the Saint Louis Congress, "The Field of Logic," printed in _Science_, N. Y., November 4, 1904.

XII

ABSOLUTISM AND EMPIRICISM[140]

No seeker of truth can fail to rejoice at the terre-à-terre sort of discussion of the issues between Empiricism and Transcendentalism (or, as the champions of the latter would probably prefer to say, between Irrationalism and Rationalism) that seems to have begun in _Mind_.[141] It would seem as if, over concrete examples like Mr. J. S. Haldane's, both parties ought inevitably to come to a better understanding. As a reader with a strong bias towards Irrationalism, I have studied his article[142] with the liveliest admiration of its temper and its painstaking effort to be clear. But the cases discussed failed to satisfy me, and I was at first tempted to write a Note animadverting upon them in detail. The growth of the limb, the sea's contour, the vicarious functioning of the nerve-centre, the digitalis curing the heart, are unfortunately _not_ cases where we can _see_ any _through-and-through_ conditioning of the parts by the whole. They are all cases of reciprocity where subjects, supposed independently to exist, acquire certain attributes through their relations to other subjects. That they also _exist_ through similar relations is only an ideal supposition, not verified to our understanding in these or any other concrete cases whatsoever.

If, however, one were to urge this solemnly, Mr. Haldane's friends could easily reply that he only gave us such examples on account of the hardness of our hearts. He knew full well their imperfection, but he hoped that to those who would not spontaneously ascend to the Notion of the Totality, these cases might prove a spur and suggest and symbolize something better than themselves. No particular case that can be brought forward is a real concrete. They are all abstractions from the Whole, and of course the "through-and-through" character can not be found in them. Each of them still contains among its elements what we call _things_, grammatical subjects, forming a sort of residual _caput mortuum_ of Existence after all the relations that figure in the examples have been told off. On this "existence," thinks popular philosophy, things may live on, like the winter bears on their own fat, never entering relations at all, or, if entering them, entering an entirely different set of them from those treated of in Mr. Haldane's examples. Thus _if_ the digitalis were to weaken instead of strengthening the heart, and to produce death (as sometimes happens), it would determine itself, through determining the organism, to the function of "kill" instead of that of "cure." The function and relation seem adventitious, depending on what kind of a heart the digitalis gets hold of, the digitalis and the heart being facts external and, so to speak, accidental to each other. But this popular view, Mr. Haldane's friends will continue, is an illusion. What seems to us the "existence" of digitalis and heart outside of the relations of killing or curing, is but a function in a wider system of relations, of which, _pro hac vice_, we take no account. The larger system determines the _existence_ just as absolutely as the system "kill," or the system "cure," determined the _function_ of the digitalis. Ascend to the absolute system, instead of biding with these relative and partial ones, and you shall see that the law of through-and-throughness must and does obtain.

Of course, this argument is entirely reasonable, and debars us completely from chopping logic about the concrete examples Mr. Haldane has chosen. It is not his fault if his categories are so fine an instrument that nothing but the sum total of things can be taken to show us the manner of their use. It is simply our misfortune that he has not the sum total of things to show it by. Let us fall back from all concrete attempts and see what we can do with his notion of through-and-throughness, avowedly taken _in abstracto_. In abstract systems the "through-and-through" Ideal is realized on every hand. In any system, as such, the members are only _members_ in the system. Abolish the system and you abolish its members, for you have conceived them through no other property than the abstract one of membership. Neither rightness nor leftness, except through bi-laterality. Neither mortgager nor mortgagee, except through mortgage. The logic of these cases is this:--_If_ A, then B; but _if_ B, then A: wherefore _if_ either, Both; and if not Both, Nothing.

It costs nothing, not even a mental effort, to admit that the absolute totality of things _may_ be organized exactly after the pattern of one of these "through-and-through" abstractions. In fact, it is the pleasantest and freest of mental movements. Husband makes, and is made by, wife, through marriage; one makes other, by being itself other; everything self-created through its opposite--you go round like a squirrel in a cage. But if you stop and reflect upon what you are about, you lay bare the exact point at issue between common sense and the "through-and-through" school.

What, in fact, is the logic of these abstract systems? It is, as we said above: If any Member, then the Whole System; if not the Whole System, then Nothing. But how can Logic possibly do anything more with these two hypotheses than combine them into the single disjunctive proposition--"Either this Whole System, just as it stands, or Nothing at all." Is not that disjunction the ultimate word of Logic in the matter, and can any disjunction, as such, resolve _itself_? It may be that Mr. Haldane sees how one horn, the concept of the Whole System, carries real existence with it. But if he has been as unsuccessful as I in assimilating the Hegelian re-editings of the Anselmian proof,[143] he will have to say that though Logic may determine _what_ the system must be, _if_ it is, something else than Logic must tell us _that_ it is. Mr. Haldane in this case would probably consciously, or unconsciously, make an appeal to Fact: the disjunction _is_ decided, since nobody can dispute that now, as a matter of fact, _something_, and not nothing, _is_. We must _therefore_, he would probably say, go on to admit the Whole System in the desiderated sense. Is not then the validity of the Anselmian proof the nucleus of the whole question between Logic and Fact? Ought not the efforts of Mr. Haldane and his friends to be principally devoted to its elucidation? Is it not the real door of separation between Empiricism and Rationalism? And if the Rationalists leave that door for a moment off its hinges, can any power keep that abstract, opaque, unmediated, external, irrational, and irresponsible monster, known to the vulgar as bare Fact, from getting in and contaminating the whole sanctuary with his presence? Can anything prevent Faust from changing "Am Anfang war das Wort" into "Am Anfang war die That?"

Nothing in earth or heaven. Only the Anselmian proof can keep Fact out of philosophy. The question, "Shall Fact be recognized as an ultimate principle?" is the whole issue between the Rationalists and the Empiricism of vulgar thought.

Of course, if so recognized, Fact sets a limit to the "through-and-through" character of the world's rationality. That rationality might then mediate between all the members of our conception of the world, but not between the conception itself and reality. Reality would have to be given, not by Reason, but by Fact. Fact holds out blankly, brutally and blindly, against that universal deliquescence of everything into logical relations which the Absolutist Logic demands, and it is the only thing that does hold out. Hence the ire of the Absolutist Logic--hence its non-recognition, its 'cutting' of Fact.

The reasons it gives for the 'cutting' are that Fact is speechless, a mere word for the negation of thought, a vacuous unknowability, a dog-in-the-manger, in truth, which having no rights of its own, can find nothing else to do than to keep its betters out of theirs.

There are two points involved here: first the claim that certain things have rights that are absolute, ubiquitous and all pervasive, and in regard to which nothing else can possibly exist in its _own_ right; and second that anything that denies _this_ assertion is _pure_ negativity with no positive context whatsoever.

Take the latter point first. Is it true that what is negative in one way is thereby convicted of incapacity to be positive in any other way? The word "Fact" is like the word "Accident," like the word "Absolute" itself. They all have their negative connotation. In truth, their whole connotation is negative and relative. All it says is that, whatever the thing may be that is denoted by the words, _other_ things do not control it. Where fact, where accident is, they must be silent, it alone can speak. But that does not prevent its speaking as loudly as you please, in its own tongue. It may have an inward life, self-transparent and

## active in the maximum degree. An indeterminate future volition on my

part, for example, would be a strict accident as far as my present self is concerned. But that could not prevent it, _in the moment in which it occurred_, from being possibly the most intensely living and luminous experience I ever had. Its quality of being a brute fact _ab extra_ says nothing whatever as to its inwardness. It simply says to _outsiders_: 'Hands off!'

And this brings us back to the first point of the Absolutist indictment of Fact. Is that point really anything more than a fantastic dislike to letting _anything_ say 'Hands off'? What else explains the contempt the Absolutist authors exhibit for a freedom defined simply on its "negative" side, as freedom "from," etc.? What else prompts them to deride such freedom? But, dislike for dislike, who shall decide? Why is not their dislike at having me "from" them, entirely on a par with mine at having them "through" me?

I know very well that in talking of dislikes to those who never mention them, I am doing a very coarse thing, and making a sort of intellectual Orson of myself. But, for the life of me, I can not help it, because I feel sure that likes and dislikes _must_ be among the ultimate factors of their philosophy as well as of mine. Would they but admit it! How sweetly we then could hold converse together! There is something finite about us both, as we now stand. We do not know the Absolute Whole _yet_. _Part_ of it is still negative to us. Among the _whats_ of it still stalks a mob of opaque _thats_, without which we cannot think. But just as I admit that this is all possibly provisional, that even the Anselmian proof may come out all right, and creation _may_ be a rational system through-and-through, why might they not also admit that it may all be otherwise, and that the shadow, the opacity, the negativity, the "from"-ness, the plurality that is ultimate, _may_ never be wholly driven from the scene. We should both then be avowedly making hypotheses, playing with Ideals. Ah! Why is the notion of hypothesis so abhorrent to the Hegelian mind?

And once down on our common level of hypothesis, we might then admit scepticism, since the Whole is not yet revealed, to be the soundest _logical_ position. But since we are in the main not sceptics, we might go on and frankly confess to each other the motives for our several faiths. I frankly confess mine--I can not but think that at bottom they are of an æsthetic and not of a logical sort. The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity, with no possibilities; its relations, with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with no reserved rights, or rather as if I had to live in a large seaside boarding-house with no private bed-room in which I might take refuge from the society of the place. I am distinctly aware, moreover, that the old quarrel of sinner and pharisee has something to do with the matter. Certainly, to my personal knowledge, all Hegelians are not prigs, but I somehow feel as if all prigs ought to end, if developed, by becoming Hegelians. There is a story of two clergymen asked by mistake to conduct the same funeral. One came first and had got no farther than "I am the Resurrection and the Life," when the other entered. "_I_ am the Resurrection and the Life," cried the latter. The "through-and-through" philosophy, as it actually exists, reminds many of us of that clergyman. It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides. The "freedom" _we_ want to see there is not the freedom, with a string tied to its leg and warranted not to fly away, of that philosophy. "Let it fly away," we say, "from _us_! What then?"

Again, I know I am exhibiting my mental grossness. But again, _Ich kann nicht anders._ I show my feelings; why _will_ they not show theirs? I know they _have_ a personal feeling about the through-and-through universe, which is entirely different from mine, and which I should very likely be much the better for gaining if they would only show me how. Their persistence in telling me that feeling has nothing to do with the question, that it is a pure matter of absolute reason, keeps me for ever out of the pale. Still seeing a _that_ in things which Logic does not expel, the most I can do is to _aspire_ to the expulsion. At present I do not even aspire. Aspiration is a feeling. What can kindle feeling but the example of feeling? And if the Hegelians _will_ refuse to set an example, what can they expect the rest of us to do? To speak more seriously, the one _fundamental_ quarrel Empiricism has with Absolutism is over this repudiation by Absolutism of the personal and æsthetic factor in the construction of philosophy. That we all of us have feelings, Empiricism feels quite sure. That they may be as prophetic and anticipatory of truth as anything else we have, and some of them more so than others, can not possibly be denied. But what hope is there of squaring and settling opinions unless Absolutism will hold parley on this common ground; and will admit that all philosophies are hypotheses, to which all our faculties, emotional as well as logical, help us, and the truest of which will at the final integration of things be found in possession of the men whose faculties on the whole had the best divining power?

FOOTNOTES:

[140] [Reprinted from _Mind_, vol. IX, No. 34, April, 1884.]

[141] [In 1884.]

[142] ["Life and Mechanism," _Mind_, vol. IX, 1884.]

[143] [_Cf._ P. Janet and G. Séailles: _History of the Problems of Philosophy_, trans. by Monahan, vol. II, pp. 275-278; 305-307. ED.]

INDEX

ABSOLUTE IDEALISM: 46, 60, 99, 102, 134, 195, 256 ff., Essay XII.

## ACTIVITY: x, Essay VI.

AFFECTIONAL FACTS: 34 ff., Essay V, 217 ff.

AGNOSTICISM: 195.

APPRECIATIONS. _See_ AFFECTIONAL FACTS.

BERGSON, H.: 156, 188.

BERKELEY: 10-11, 43, 76, 77, 212, 232.

BODE, B. H.: 234 ff.

BODY: 78, 84 ff., 153, 221.

BRADLEY, F. H.: 60, 98, 99, 100, 107 ff., 157, 162.

CAUSE: 163, 174, 181 ff.

CHANGE: 161.

COGNITIVE RELATION: 52 ff. _See also_ under KNOWLEDGE.

CONCEPTS: 15 ff., 22, 33, 54 ff., 65 ff.

CONJUNCTIVE RELATIONS: x, 44 ff., 59, 70, 94, 104, 107 ff., 117 ff., 163, 240.

CONSCIOUSNESS: xi, Essay I, 75, 80, 127 ff., 139 ff., 154, 184, Essay VIII.

CONTINUITY: 48 ff., 59, 70, 94.

DEMOCRITUS: 11.

DESCARTES: 30.

DEWEY, J.: 53, 156, 191, 204, 247, 260.

DISJUNCTIVE RELATIONS: x, 42 ff., 105, 107 ff.

DUALISM: 10, 207 ff., 225, 257.

EMPIRICISM: iv-v, vii-xiii, 41, 46-47, Essay XII. _See also_ under RADICAL EMPIRICISM.

EPISTEMOLOGY: 239. _See also_ under KNOWLEDGE.

ETHICS: 194.

EXPERIENCE: vii, xii, 8 ff., 53, 62, ff., 71, 80, 87, 92, 216, 224, 233, 242, 243. _See also_ under PURE EXPERIENCE.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS: 110 ff. _See also_ under RELATIONS, and DISJUNCTIVE.

FEELING. _See_ under AFFECTIONAL FACTS.

FREE WILL: 185.

HALDANE, J. S.: 266 ff.

HEGEL: 106, 276, 277.

HERBART: 106.

HOBHOUSE, L. T.: 109.

HODDER, A. L.: 22, 109.

HODGSON, S.: ix, 48.

HÖFFDING, H.: 238.

HUMANISM: 90, 156, Essay VII, Essay XI.

HUME: x, 42, 43, 103, 174.

IDEALISM: 39, 40, 134, 219, 241, 256.

IDEAS: 55 ff., 73, 177, 209.

IDENTITY, Philosophy of: 134, 197, 202.

INDETERMINISM: 90, 274.

INTELLECT: 97 ff.

JOSEPH, H. W. B.: 203, 244 ff.

KANT: 1, 37, 162, 206.

KIERKEGAARD: 238.

KNOWLEDGE: 4, 25, 56 ff., 68 ff., 87-88, 196 ff., 231. _See also_ under COGNITIVE RELATION, OBJECTIVE REFERENCE.

LIFE: 87, 161.

LOCKE: 10.

LOGIC: 269 ff.

LOTZE: 59, 75, 167.

MATERIALISM: 179, 232.

MILL, J. S.: x, 43, 76.

MILL, JAMES: 43.

MILLER, D.: 54.

MINDS, their Conterminousness: 76 ff., Essay IV.

MONISM: vii, 208, 267 ff.

MOORE, G. E.: 6-7.

MÜNSTERBERG, H.: 1, 18-20, 158.

NATORP, P.: 1, 7-8.

NATURALISM: 96.

NEO-KANTISM: 5-6.

OBJECTIVE REFERENCE: 67 ff.

OBJECTIVITY: 23 ff., 79.

PANPSYCHISM: 89, 188.

PARALLELISM: 210.

PERCEPTION: 11 ff., 17, 33, 65, 78, 82 ff., 197, 200, 211 ff.

PERRY, R. B.: 24.

PHYSICAL REALITY: 14, 22, 32, 124 ff., 139 ff., 149 ff., 154, 211 ff., 229, 235.

PITKIN, W. B.: 241 ff.

PLURALISM: 89, 90, 110.

PRAGMATISM: iv, x, xi-xii, 11, 72, 97 ff., 156, 159, 176, 242, 261.

PRIMARY QUALITIES: 147.

PRINCE, M.: 88.

PRINGLE-PATTISON, A. S.: 109.

PSYCHOLOGY: 206, 209 ff.

PURE EXPERIENCE: 4, 23, 26-27, 35, Essay II, 74, 90, 93 ff., 96. 121, 123, 134, 135, 138, 139, 160, 193, 200, 226 ff., 257.

RADICAL EMPIRICISM: iv-v, vii, ix-xiii, 41 ff., 47, 48, 69, 76, 89, 91, 107, 109, 121, 148, 156, 159, 182, 235, 237, 238, 239, 241, 242.

RATIONALISM: 41, 96 ff., 237, 266.

REALISM: 16, 40, 76, 82 ff.

REHMKE, J.: 1.

RELATIONS: x, 16, 25, 42 ff., 71, 81, Essay III, 148, 268. _See also_ under CONJUNCTIVE and DISJUNCTIVE.

RELIGION: xiii, 194.

RENOUVIER: 184-185.

REPRESENTATION: 61, 196 ff., 212 ff. _See also_ under SUBSTITUTION.

ROYCE, J.: 21, 158, 186-187, 195.

SANTAYANA, G.: 143, 218.

SCHILLER, F. C. S.: 109, 191, 204, 249, 260.

SCHUBERT-SOLDERN, R. V.: 2.

SCHUPPE, W.: 1.

SECONDARY QUALITIES: 146, 219.

SELF: 45, 46, 94, 128 ff.

SENSATION: 30, 201.

SIDIS, B.: 144.

SOLIPSISM: Essay IX.

SPACE: 30-31, 84, 94, 110, 114.

SPENCER, H.: 144.

SPINOZA: 208.

SPIR, A.: 106.

STOUT, G. F.: 109, 158.

STRONG, C. A.: 54, 88, 89, 188.

SUBJECTIVITY: 23 ff., 234 ff., 251 ff.

SUBSTITUTION: 62 ff., 104, 201.

TAINE: 20, 62.

TAYLOR, A. E.: 111.

TELEOLOGY: 179.

THINGS: 1, 9 ff., 28 ff., 37, Essay III, 209.

THOUGHT: 1, 22, 28 ff., 37, 213. _See also_ under KNOWLEDGE.

TIME: 27, 94.

TRANSCENDENTALISM: 39, 52, 67, 71, 75, 239.

TRUTH: 24, 98, 192, 202 ff., 247 ff.

WARD, J.: 157, 162.

WILL: 165, 184.

WOODBRIDGE. F. J. E.: 196.

WORTH: 186-187.

WUNDT, W.: 152.

The Riverside Press

PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON & CO. CAMBRIDGE, MASS. U. S. A.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

The following changes were made to the text.

Page 98: Yet when so broken it is less consistent then ever. Changed to Yet when so broken it is less consistent than ever.

Page 180: some comtemptibly small process on which success depends. Changed to some contemptibly small process on which success depends.

Note 93: XXV aud XXVI Changed to XXV and XXVI

Note 101: 'Does Consciousuess Exist?' Changed to 'Does Consciousness Exist?'

Note 109: either as a syuonym for 'radical empiricism' Changed to either as a synonym for 'radical empiricism'

Note 109: For other discussions of 'humauism,' Changed to For other discussions of 'humanism,'

Note 130: 'Humanism and Truth' first appeared iu Changed to 'Humanism and Truth' first appeared in