III.

The question now arises,—and this brings us back to the considerations of the first part of this essay,—Does this rationalised Christianity of to-day really meet the demands of science, and if it does not, is it in the power of the modern scientific world-conception to furnish from its own resources some substitute for the religious views of the past?

My answer to this question will be short and concise; for the existence of _The Monist_, the fundamental idea of its management, and the total character of the efforts which it has hitherto made, speak with sufficient emphasis. And we may, therefore, with the greatest respect for the scientific zeal and the personal ability of many of the representatives of this mediatory theology, say, without further ado: This rationalised Christianity of yours also is myth and symbol; it still adheres to that “dramatic” division of the world which our imaginations produced, and to the metaphysical dualism of God and man; it cannot lift itself to a rigorous conception of the All in One, for which God is in the same sense a simple function of human thought as thought is a function of the human organism. The God on whom all depends in religion, the God whose name is “Father,” the God of love and goodness, the God from whom all great thoughts and all grand resolves spring, the God who sanctifies us and lifts us above the earth—to displace this God from the world in which he has no place, into the inward being of humanity seems at this day so strange, nay, inconceivable, only because we have accustomed ourselves (and down to the times of Mill and Feuerbach, even strict monistic thinkers like Spinoza fell victims to this illusion) to mingle together in the idea of God two wholly distinct ideas—the ideas, namely, of nature and of an ethical ideal. To preserve this latter inviolate, and to secure it from all encroachments of human caprice, one thing alone seemed to the naïve dramatic modes of thought of early times a competent safeguard: the ideal must in some locality be real; the highest to which human thought and aspiration can exalt itself must be sought and must exist in some superhuman reality. And what reality could be better adapted to this than one on which even nature was conceived to be dependent? The entire history of the development of the idea of God in the Græco-Roman and Hebrew worlds, the confluence of these two streams of thought in Christian speculation, exhibit in the clearest possible manner these motives, which here I can only lightly touch upon.

But this combination of the law of nature and the law of ethics in the idea of God, although solving some of the difficulties of humanity, has plunged it into incomparably greater ones. Through all the centuries of Christian thought a succession of desperate attempts may be traced to establish a theodicy, that is to say, attempts to demonstrate the existence in nature and in history of a God which harmonises with the ethical ideal. Even Kant could undertake to demonstrate the “necessary failure of all attempts at a theodicy,” and whoever might still have entertained any doubt as to the correctness of this demonstration, such a one must surely have been convinced of it by the scientific development of the past century. That which was indissolubly welded together in the Christian idea of God is to-day disintegrated into its component elements. The Lord _above_ nature, the Spirit _behind_ nature, have been rendered inconceivable by the modern notions of the conformity to law of all natural occurrences and of the unity of all existence. The spirit immanent in the All no thinker will deny, for this spirit manifests itself in an indisputable manner in the fact that this All is a cosmos, not a chaos, that not only the caprice of chance but also the laws of necessity rule in it, and that the personal self-conscious mind springs from its midst. But from this recognition of mind in the All, there is no bridge that leads to the old idea of God. We cannot worship the All as a moral ideal. We involve ourselves in absurd complications when we attempt to derive the actions of natural events and their conformity to law from ethical categories, and it is no less a desperate undertaking to imagine that we can draw impulses for our moral thought and conduct from nature. The adaptation of means to ends, the teleology, that rules in the All, is veiled for us in the deepest obscurity. All that we can unravel of it has no resemblance to that which, according to our notions, is ethical:

“_Denn unfühlend ist die Natur_,”

she does not know what love or mercy is; she knows only the omnipotent power of universal laws; she knows only the rights of the whole, to which she sacrifices with unconcern the individual; she revels in the double pleasure of unceasing creation and unceasing destruction; she arms unpityingly the strong against the weak; in crises of annihilation she restores the disturbed equilibrium of things; but the palm of peace no one has ever seen in her hand. And we? We stand amazed at her might and greatness, at the plentitude of her powers of creation, at her myriad play of forces, at the inexhaustible wealth of the relations with which she binds being to being, creates and mediates contrarieties, and amidst the most varied change and alternation, ever remains one and the same! But our prototype, our God, she can never be. To him we must look up; but on nature, despite her might, despite her stupendous grandeur, we look down. She did not whisper in our ears that in us which is best and highest. That did not come to us from heaven; _we ourselves_ won it by hard struggles, by terribly severe, self-imposed discipline. It is not _of_ nature; it is _above_ nature. Through _us_ something has come into the world that before us did not exist—something that the most exuberant creative magic, or nature’s grandest mechanical dreams, could never replace. The day on which first a human being pressed his weaker fellow-man to his breast and said, “Brother, not mine, but thy will be done; I will give up my desires that thou also mayst be glad”; the day on which man first lifted up his head and said, “Let us make the world _good_ in the likeness of the picture that has become living in us, just as it should be”; this is the great and sanctified day in the history of our race on earth, the Christmas day on which God was born. But not as the religious fancy has expressed it, the day on which God became man, but the day on which man began to become God, that is the day on which he began to feel spiritual powers in his breast that transcended his animal impulses—powers to which the majority of humanity was still as remote as heaven from earth.

This strict anthropological conception of God as the ideal which is always newly creating itself in the struggles of humanity, which is no Being but a Becoming, solves the innumerable difficulties which the idea of God has hitherto placed in the way of rigorous scientific knowledge and the construction of a unitary conception of the world. This God has nothing to do with the All. We need not seek him in the All or behind the All, and need not fear that any progress of our knowledge will make his existence a matter of doubt with us. Concerning the real validity of this idea we need not bother ourselves with more or less weak and insufficient demonstrations: the whole history of humanity is evidence of it if we but know how to rightly interpret it, and the stumbling block of the old theological idea of God has become the corner-stone upon which the new scientific conception is built.

Nature and human history the work of an omnipotent and all-kind being that is mediately and immediately active in all events, nay, sacrificed himself in his own person that he might realise in this world his purposes! Compare the principle, the active force of this world-drama, pictured by the religious fancy as the highest power, the highest wisdom, and all-merciful love, with the real spectacle of the world! Is there anywhere a more pronounced contradiction, an obscurer riddle, a more inconceivable contrast between purpose and accomplishment? This world of cruelty and woe, in which one creature feeds on the heart-blood of another, in which here and there from seas of mud and dirt a form of light springs up, in which every nobler production must be bought with torrents of blood and tears; this revelation and self-manifestation of God in humanity, which everywhere appears joined to definite historical suppositions, which lacks all the conditions of true universality and of indisputable evidence, so that instead of forming a means of union it has become the source of dreadful contentions; this work of salvation and sanctification which is so restricted in its effects that “the kingdom of God” is still a dreamy vision of humanity, so restricted that we still see the majority of men, despite the most extraordinary supernatural dispositions, still remain far behind the simple ideals of natural ethical commandments, that hate and dissension, cruelty and selfishness, perform their unhallowed work—is this the work of infinite power and infinite wisdom? What claims theodicy makes on human thought! And how different the picture is, the moment we abandon the false theocentric point of view and assume the anthropocentric! Instead of a belief which all facts contradict—an idea which elucidates them all. No one can say how we are to interpret facts as the work of a holy and absolutely perfect being; but it can be shown, step by step, how in this, our human world, more perfect things spring from imperfect things, moral and mental laws from the blind play of natural forces and powers, the conscious energy of will from blind and unreasonable impulse, law and love of man from the selfishness and warring of all against all, and the notion of the unity of the race from infinite disruption and disunion. We must not allow ourselves to be led astray or discouraged here by the changing undulations and tremendous crises of this battle for the good. The ideal springs out of a dark abyss. The roots of our being are deep laid in nature, yet we struggle to exalt ourselves above it. No wonder, therefore, that time and again it draws us back.

The greatest and sublimest spectacle! A tragical one, one filled with struggle and suffering, and yet one infinitely full of hope. For it shows us the inexhaustible grandeur of the human mind; it shows us the good, the ideal, as a tremendous real power, a power eternally becoming, surely forming itself out of an infinitude of individual deeds, a power fully incarnate in no one person, yet active and living in humanity. Not a tangible activity, and yet one of the realest of facts. A supersensuous, nay, if you will, a supernatural realm of thought; not the faded reflection or shadow of a grandeur and power beyond us, but the fruit of the noblest activities and powers of this given, existing world, antagonised in life, but grand and powerful in thought; imperfect even in its boldest flights, but bearing within it the germ of greater things to come.

Here is the true point of union for Christian dogma and science. Here is the God in which science also may, nay, must, believe. Not humanity in its empirical reality, but the ideal world developed within the human realm of things—the spirit of humanity. This is the only true object of worship. Before it we are humiliated, and by it we feel ourselves exalted. From it we receive all the good that life bestows upon us; it gives us light and peace and lucid thought. And what higher, nobler thing can a life produce than the feeling that it has not been unworthy of this great ancestry, that it has helped to keep alive this holy fire, that it has helped, perhaps, to fan by its own life this living flame to greater heights?

Here is the true source of the ideas of accountability and of salvation. We are not responsible to a being outside and above us, but to our own selves and to humanity, from which we have received the best that it had to give, and for which we must return what we ourselves have produced. This consciousness of being thrown utterly on the resources of one’s own self, on one’s own powers, was first created in the human mind by science and the technical arts, (as that most venerable and most sacred of all myths, the legend of Prometheus, so profoundly indicates,) and this consciousness will, by the progress of knowledge and power, be made more and more the dominating one of humanity. This is not a consciousness of omnipotence; it does not exclude the subjection of man to the inexorable laws of the universe; but it demands the enlistment of all the powers of the race: for nature does not give us more than we wrest from her by arduous toil.

And as humanity is accountable only to itself, so do the means of its salvation lie only in itself. Not in any one individual, but in the spirit in it which ever works onward and upward. Yet this spirit is not an unpersonal existence; it must be possessed again and ever again by living men. And no one can serve humanity or augment its spiritual treasures or reincarnate in himself its holiest possessions without first having and feeling within himself the blessing of what he has done. And thus the profoundest significance of human life on earth may be formulated and embraced in that saying of the poet which was throughout conceived in the spirit of our times, and would have been wholly incomprehensible to the mind of those who gave us our faith—in the words:

“_Erlösung dem Erlöser._”

F. JODL.

FOOTNOTES:

[59] _Wesen des Christenthums._ First edition. 1841. Pp. 288-289.

[60] Translation published by Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., London, 1891.

THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE.

Are religion and science indeed as contrary as they are often represented to be, and is the proposition to reconcile them a hopeless and futile undertaking? Professor Jodl, in his article “Religion and Modern Science,” (pp. 329-351 of this number,) says:

“That civilised humanity to-day is separated into two groups which no longer understand each other, which do not speak the same language, and which live in totally different worlds of thought and sentiment.”

There are those who cling to the old religions and those who supplant it by a new idealism. Between both, he adds:

“A third class stands which plays the part of a mediator.”

Professor Jodl does not approve of reconciling the historical forms of religion with science. He rightly says:

“The ‘pure doctrine of Christ,’ the genuine, primitive form of Christianity, is a Utopia of biblical criticism.”

We heartily agree with him in his remarks concerning the part which the miraculous and supernatural play in the Gospels:

“These things are so intimately interwoven with the modes of thought of the synoptic writers that it is impossible to separate them therefrom without doing violence to the internal connection of their doctrines.”

We also concur upon the whole with Professor Jodl in his criticism of the methods of Speculative Theology. No compromising with traditional errors, no covering or extenuating of the results of historical criticism is allowable merely for the love of tradition and for the preservation of errors that have become dear to a large number of people.

We do not condemn the work of any mediator; on the contrary, we rather encourage it. We observe with pleasure in the latest phases of the religious evolution of Speculative Theology the prevalence of a more modern spirit, and we follow with a keen interest also the progress of biblical critique in its truly valuable labors: but we do not expect that either the one or the other will accomplish any regeneration of religion.

Professor Jodl knows very well that the editors of _The Monist_ and _The Open Court_ have not undertaken any work of compromising between the errors of the past and the ideal of the future. Our idea of a reconciliation between religion and science is of a different nature. We are not blind to the errors of the old religions, and we do not mean to gloss them over, or to make old-fashioned views acceptable by presenting them in a new garment. We do not even stop to bury the dead, for we have better things to do than to trouble with problems that have been definitely settled. We keep our hands to the plough to accomplish the work needed to-day.

While we are not blind to the errors of the old religions, we recognise at the same time that they contain in the language of parables some great truths which will remain forever. These truths constitute the backbone of religion, and we regard it as a very important duty of ours to preserve them. These truths must be preserved, not because they were believed in by our fathers, nor from any respect for tradition, nor from any regard for our sentiments, but simply because they are truths, because they can be proved to be true according to the methods of scientific inquiry.

What is religion? Religion consists of all those ideas which regulate our conduct. In the savage these ideas are very crude and superstitious, and often self-contradictory. The higher a man rises, the clearer, the more scientific and consistent do these ideas become, until they develop into a systematic world-conception. Every scientific idea that changes our world-conception will change also our religion and with it our rules of conduct. Thus, for example, the idea of evolution has become to us an eminently religious idea.

In order to indicate that the criterion of truth for religion is the very same thing as the criterion of truth for science, we have proposed to call the religion we advocate, “The Religion of Science.” (For details see the editorial of Vol. VII, No. 1, of _The Open Court_.)

Our procedure appears to many as an annihilation of religion in favor of science. But it is not. And why not?

We have learned many truths first from religion, long before science could ever think of proving them. In several respects science took the lead, and religion remained at a long distance behind, awkwardly, very slowly, and unwillingly limping onward on the road of progress. Instances are, the acceptance of the Copernican system and of the evolution theory. But in other respects religion took the lead, and science was unable to follow its ingenious flight. As instances of this we cite such moral truths as the love of enemies, which were not preached by scientists as scientific truths, but by religious teachers, by Confucius, Buddha, and Christ. There are scientists even to-day who regard what we would call “moral truths” as maxims that are contrary to the established views of science. Professor Huxley, for instance, is very emphatic in his declaration that the facts of nature do not teach morality.[61]

This leads us to a point in which we disagree with Professor Jodl. He speaks of the illusion “of mingling together in the idea of God two wholly distinct ideas—the ideas namely of nature and of an ethical ideal”—an illusion to which “even strict monistic thinkers like Spinoza fell victims.”

Professor Jodl’s position reminds us of John Stuart Mill’s “Essay on Nature,” in which he exposes the old doctrine _naturam sequi_ in all its absurd meanings and carefully avoids a discussion of the only rational conception of the precept. Thus his tirades appear most convincing, and to be sure they are quite correct—so far as they go. Says Mill:

“In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature’s every-day performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives....

“Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed.”

Mill must indeed have felt the need of beginning these sentences with the words “In sober truth”; otherwise he might be suspected of humor.

Similarly comical is Mill’s proposition to regard every voluntary action of man as a direct infringement upon nature. Man’s reason in that case would be the most unnatural phenomenon in the world, and the term “nature” would be confined to the lowest realms of existence exclusively. If the usage of reason were indeed an infringement upon nature, man’s appearance upon earth would mark the beginning of a supernatural realm; and Professor Jodl seems to accept this consequence when he says:

“It is not _of_ nature, it is _above_ nature.”

If man’s rationality and his ethics were not born of nature, if their conditions were not founded in the very existence of nature, if they were not the natural product of evolution, then indeed I see no escape from a dualistic world-conception, in which a supernatural God introduces the spark of divinity which appears in the soul of man from spheres beyond.

We have devoted to these vagaries of John Stuart Mill an elaborate discussion in another place and do not feel the need of repeating our arguments in this connection.[62]

We agree with Professor Jodl that no rationalising of old dogmas will help us in the establishment of “a new idealism, formed in harmony with the spirit of science.” We must build our religion anew (as every generation had to build its religion anew) out of the best materials which are furnished by the maturest and most reliable knowledge of to-day. Says Professor Jodl:

“Through _us_ something has come into the world that before us did not exist—something that the most exuberant creative magic, or nature’s grandest mechanical dreams, could never replace. The day on which first a human being pressed his weaker fellow-man to his breast and said, “Brother, not mine, but thy will be done; I will give up my desires that thou also mayst be glad”; the day upon which man first lifted up his head and said, “Let us make the world _good_ in the likeness of the picture that has become living in us, just as it should be”; this is the great and sanctified day in the history of our race on earth, the Christmas day on which God was born.”

Certainly the origin of man on earth, and again the evolution of the moral man, is something quite new, which before did not exist. But did humanity originate out of nothing, as sometimes the imaginations of a poet are supposed to be created, or is there a prototype in whose image man has been created? Man’s reason, his ethics, and his humanity are something that did not exist before, but there is a feature in existence which makes it possible that rational and moral beings develop. Should there be sentient beings on other planets, and we have little reason to doubt it, we can be sure that they also will develop rational minds, and that they also will learn, perhaps as we did, through many bitter experiences, the same truths which constitute our main maxims of morality,[63] including such precepts as the love of enemies. And why are we sure that on other planets not only reason, but also the fundamental rules of ethics will be the same as with us here on earth? Simply because we know that there is a certain feature in reality which creates rational beings and moral beings as naturally as it creates rocks and seas on the surface of planets. Man’s reason and also man’s morality are not original inventions of his, but the result of many experiences which he had to learn. And the world in which he lives is such that he can acquire reason and morality, and if a being should acquire a wrong kind of reason or a wrong kind of morality, it will by and by be blotted out of existence. Accordingly there is a prototype of reason and of morality, and this prototype of the humanity of man is exactly that which in the language of the old religions has received the name “God.”

We must make a distinction between ideals and dreams. Those creations of our fancy which are woven without any regard to reality are dreams. They have no value beyond whiling away a leisure hour or pleasing our imagination. But those creations of our mind which construct realisable formations such as machines or clocks or higher conditions of human society, are not mere dreams, they are ideals. What, then, is the difference between a dream and an ideal? A dream is a useless ebullition of an idle brain composed of ideas to which there is no correspondent reality; but an ideal is a potent factor in the living presence to shape the future: it is a combination of ideas which are correct descriptions of actual realities. The moral aspirations of mankind are not empty dreams, they are true and veritable ideals. There are certain qualities in nature which make their realisation possible and these qualities constitute the Divinity of nature.

Professor Jodl speaks of the origin of morality as of the birth of God on earth. Truly that is the meaning of Christianity. But this birth of God into the world of human evolution as “the Son of Man” is possible only because of the existence of the God in nature whom Christian mythology so beautifully calls God the Father. The appearance of the Son of Man upon earth, the birth of morality, is a revelation of the divinity of nature.

True enough, as Professor Jodl says, that we ourselves won the best and highest we have by hard struggles, by terribly severe, self-imposed discipline. As Prometheus says:

“_Hast du nicht alles selbst vollendet,_ _Heilig glühend Herz!_”

That, too, is part of the divinity of nature, that every creature has to work out its very being itself, and that man must search for the way of salvation with great anxiety, under bitter tribulations and through extreme afflictions. But he cannot invent a new way of salvation, he has to find it, and there is but one that is the right one. The nature of morality is such as it is, and no other morality could be invented to replace it. And this feature of existence which makes morality quite a determined thing is a real presence in the world, it is an actual quality of the universe.

Some of our liberal friends, foremost among them Professor Haeckel, deny the existence of a personal God and then proceed to declare that the God of science is nothing but matter and energy. We agree with Professor Haeckel in his rejection of anthropotheism; God is no supernatural being nor is he a huge world-ego. But we cannot accept his view of God as being only matter and energy. The idea of God is and always has been a moral idea. Thus we have come to regard all those features of nature as divine which condition the origin and existence of morality and we define God as the authority of moral conduct. This authority is not a person, not a sentient being, let alone a sentimental philanthropist; but it is, nevertheless, a reality, and, indeed, a stern reality.

Such is the God of science. God is that quality of existence through which we originated as feeling, thinking, and aspiring beings. He is the prototype of the human soul, and the condition under which develop man’s reason and morality. Obedience to him is indispensable for a continued existence, for further progress and a higher evolution of the human soul. That these features of reality can by a great number of keen and fearless modern thinkers be supposed to be a non-entity is difficult to understand. This negation of the reality of qualities of existence which are not individual things but intrinsically inherent in all the individual things, it appears to us, is an old heirloom of nominalism. The nominalistic philosophy represented by Roscellinus was suppressed at the council at Soissons 1092, only to rise more powerfully in the fourteenth century in William of Occam, and finally to exterminate realism with all its rubbish of errors together with the truth contained in these errors. Kant marks in many respects the culmination of the victorious movement of nominalism. With all the benefits modern thought derived from the philosophical work of nominalism, a reaction is needed against its purely negative spirit. There is a truth in the old realism which cannot be neglected with impunity.[64]

God (viz., the name of God) is, as Kant said, a noumenon, a thing of thought, an abstraction. God is not a thing, a concrete object, or an individual person. All the views of God which regard him as an individual being of some kind, or as a person only of infinite dimensions, are, closely considered, pagan notions which belittle God. But the name of God as a noumenon, a thought, an abstract idea, has a meaning. Abstract ideas are not nonentities, they represent some real features, some actual qualities, or properties, or relations; otherwise they would not be ideas, but unmeaning sounds.

Some of our abstract ideas are of a very delicate fibre, so that the coarse mental vision of the average Philistine is unable to see them in their reality and potency. But it so happens that exactly they are of a more important, more powerful, and inevitable presence than the simple generalisations of things that visibly and corporeally surround us. This, their peculiar nature, makes such ideas mysterious to those who instinctively feel their reality without being able to point it out and understand it. And the most subtle, imponderous, and sublimated of all ideas is the idea of God.

We have defined God as the ultimate authority of conduct, as the condition of our existence as rational and moral beings, as the all-power that enforces obedience, etc.; but we cannot in any one of our definitions exhaust the significance of the idea. We would by no means exclude from the idea of God anything without which reality would cease to be real. The qualities of matter and energy constitute that element in the God-idea which justify the old religions in speaking of him as omnipotent and everlasting. Thus they ought not to be excluded. But these qualities alone are insufficient to characterise his being. The sum-total of matter and energy as such and as such alone does not constitute any moral authority. Nature in her immeasurable greatness and oppressive vastness affects us with awe; but, after all, we look down upon her massive sublimity. Man is more than the biggest heap of crude matter and unintelligently operating energy. Says Professor Jodl:

“We stand amazed at her might and greatness, at the plentitude of her powers of creation, at her myriad play of forces, at the inexhaustible wealth of the relations with which she binds being to being, creates and mediates contrarieties, and amidst the most varied change and alternation, ever remains one and the same! But our prototype, our God, she can never be.”

This grandeur of nature is part of her divinity, but it alone does not constitute the character of God. Yet, observe that throughout nature there is an imponderable quality present which makes every atom move in a definite way, so that the whirl of gaseous masses, apparently a chaos, will be recognised as a cosmic whole developing in a certain way and describable in what is generally called natural laws. This subtle quality is the condition of the regularities which are found in all the infinite varieties and innumerable particularities, and all these regularities conceived in their systematic unity are called the order of the universe.

Man exists as a thinking being only because the immeasurable universe of which he is a part possesses this quality of order, and his reason is closely considered only a copy of it. Man’s reason was shaped into the image of the cosmic order, and suppose—a supposition which is very difficult to make and regarded by many as impossible or inconceivable—yet suppose that the world-order were radically different from what it actually is, man’s reason would accordingly be different too. Further, suppose that the whole frame and fundamental interrelations of the particles of reality were different from what they are, would not correspondingly the basic rules of conduct be changed too?

The author of this article, in the eyes of the so-called orthodox Christian, is most certainly an atheist. And if theism means the belief in a personal or extramundane God he is an atheist indeed. If there is any opprobrium in the name atheism we are willing to accept it; and certainly, we do not reject the label of atheism in order to escape any odium attached to that name. We do reject atheism simply because we see a great and potent truth in the idea of God which is but too often disregarded.

With Professor Haeckel and Professor Jodl we reject the conception of an anthropomorphic Deity. The anthropomorphic idol is doomed before the tribunal of science. But we see a deeper meaning in the idea of God which has formed through millenniums the very centre of the greatest religions on earth. Science has to recognise the reality of an all-presence in existence which is analogous to that which in a religious language is called God.

Considering the fact that humanity owes many great truths to religion, let us not be hasty in condemning the religions of the past as pure superstition. There are valuable seeds in the chaff. If we discard the wheat together with the tares, we shall have to rediscover them, for it is little probable that humanity can for any length of time be satisfied with beautiful phrases or live in its moral aspirations in a realm of mere dreams.

EDITOR.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] For a discussion of this point see _Fundamental Problems_, pp. 219-226.

[62] See the article in Nos. 239, 241, and 242 of _The Open Court: Nature and Morality_. An Examination of the Ethical Views of John Stuart Mill. I. The Meaning of Basing Ethics Upon Nature. II. The Ethics Taught by Nature. III. Intelligent Action and Moral Action. IV. The Anthropomorphic Standpoint of Mill.

[63] I purposely do not say _all_ maxims of conduct, because we can very well imagine that different conditions may produce some very important variations in the rules of conduct; but the main foundation of morality would be the same.

[64] There are two men at present who boldly fly the flag of the old realism again, both having our full sympathy in their aspirations, although we cannot agree with many of their teachings. The one is Mr. Charles S. Peirce, the other Dr. Francis E. Abbot.

THE SUPERSTITION OF NECESSITY.[65]

Lest my title give such offense as to prejudice unduly my contention, I may say that I use the term in the way indicated by its etymology: as a standing-still on the part of thought; a clinging to old ideas after those ideas have lost their use, and hence, like all superstitions, have become obstructions. For I shall try to show that the doctrine of necessity is a survival; that it holds over from an earlier and undeveloped period of knowledge; that as a means of getting out of and beyond that stage it had a certain value, but, having done its work, loses its significance. Halting judgment may, indeed, at one time have helped itself out of the slough of uncertainty, vagueness, and inadequacy on to ground of more solid and complete fact, by the use of necessity as a crutch; once upon the ground, the crutch makes progress slower and, preventing the full exercise of the natural means of locomotion, tends to paralyse science. The former support has become a burden, almost an intolerable one.

The beginning of wisdom in the matter of necessity is, I conceive, in realising that it is a term which has bearing or relevancy only with reference to the development of judgment, not with reference to objective things or events. I do not mean by this that necessity refers to the compelling force with which we are driven to make a given affirmation: I mean that it refers to the content of that affirmation, expressing the degree of coherence between its constituent factors. When we say something or other _must_ be so and so, the “must” does not indicate anything in the nature of the fact itself, but a trait in our _judgment_ of that fact; it indicates the degree with which we have succeeded in making a whole out of the various elements which have to be taken into account in forming the judgment. More specifically, it indicates a half-way stage. At one extreme we have two separate judgments, which, so far as consciousness is concerned, have nothing to do with each other; and at the other extreme we have one judgment into which the contents of the two former judgments have been so thoroughly organised as to lose all semblance of separateness. Necessity, as the middle term, is the midwife which, from the dying isolation of judgments, delivers the unified judgment just coming into life—it being understood that the separateness of the original judgments is not as yet quite negated, nor the unity of the coming judgment quite attained. The judgment of necessity, in other words, is exactly and solely the transition in our knowledge from unconnected judgments to a more comprehensive synthesis. Its value is just the value of this transition; as negating the old partial and isolated judgments—in its backward look—necessity has meaning; in its forward look—with reference to the resulting completely organised subject-matter—it is itself as false as the isolated judgments which it replaces. Its value is in what it rids judgment of. When it has succeeded, its value is nil. Like any go-between, its service consists in rendering itself uncalled for.

All science can ultimately do is to report or describe, to completely state, the reality. So far as we reach this standpoint regarding any fact or group of facts, we do not say that the fact _must_ be such and such, but simply that it _is_ such and such. There is no necessity attaching to the fact either as whole or as parts. _Qua_ whole, the fact simply is what it is; while the parts, instead of being necessitated either by one another or by the whole, are the analysed factors constituting, in their complete circuit, the whole. In stating the whole, we, as of course, state all that enters into it; if we speak of the various elements as _making_ the whole, it is only in the sense of making it _up_, not of causing it. The fallacy of the necessitarian theory consists in transforming the determinate in the sense of the wholly defined, into the determined in the sense of something externally made to be what it is.

The whole, although first in the order of reality, is last in the order of knowledge. The complete statement of the whole is the goal, not the beginning of wisdom. We begin, therefore, with fragments, which are taken for wholes; and it is only by piecing together these fragments, and by the transformation of them involved in this combination, that we arrive at the real fact. There comes a stage at which the recognition of the unity begins to dawn upon us, and yet, the tradition of the many distinct wholes survives; judgment has to combine these two contradictory conceptions; it does so by the theory that the dawning unity is an effect necessarily produced by the interaction of the former wholes. Only as the consciousness of the unity grows still more is it seen that instead of a group of independent facts, held together by “necessary” ties, there is one reality, of which we have been apprehending various fragments in succession and attributing to them a spurious wholeness and independence. We learn (but only at the end) that instead of discovering and then connecting together a number of separate realities, we have been engaged in the progressive definition of one fact.

There are certain points upon which there is now _practical_ agreement among all schools. What one school has got at by a logical analysis of science, another school has arrived at by the road of a psychological analysis of experience. What one school calls the unity of thought and reality, another school calls the relativity of knowledge. The metaphysical interpretation further given to these respective statements may be quite different, but, so far as they go, they come to the same thing: that objects, _as known_, are not independent of the process of knowing, but are the content of our judgments. One school, indeed, may conceive of judgment as a mere associative or habitual grouping of sensations, the other as the correlative diversification and synthesis of the self; but the practical outcome, that the “object” (anyway as known) is a form of judgment, is the same. This point being held in common, both schools must agree that _the progress of judgment is equivalent to a change in the value of objects_—that objects as they are for us, as known, change with the development of our judgments. If this be so, truth, however it be metaphysically defined, must attach to late rather than to early judgments.

I am fortunate in being able to quote from authors, who may be taken as typical of the two schools. Says Professor Caird in his article upon “Metaphysic,” (lately reprinted, “Essays in Philosophy and Literature,”):

“Our first consciousness of things is not an immovable foundation upon which science may build, but rather a hypothetical and self-contradictory starting-point of investigation, which becomes changed and transformed as we advance.” (“Essays,” Vol. II, p. 398.)

On the other hand, Mr. Venn writes (in the first chapter of his “Empirical Logic”):

“Select what object we please—the most apparently simple in itself, and the most definitely parted off from others that we can discover—yet we shall find ourselves constrained to admit that a considerable mental process has been passed through before that object could be recognised as being an object, that is, as possessing some degree of unity and as requiring to be distinguished from other such unities.”

He goes on to illustrate by such an apparently fixed and given object as the sun, pointing out how its unity as a persistent thing involves a continued synthesis of elements very diverse in time and space, and an analysis, a selection, from other elements in very close physical juxtaposition. He goes on to raise the question whether a dog, for example, may be said to “see” a rainbow at all, because of the complex analysis and synthesis involved in such an object. The “mental whole” (to use Mr. Venn’s words, the “ideal unity” as others might term it) is so extensive and intricate that

“One might almost as reasonably expect the dog to ‘see’ the progress of democracy in the place where he lives, of which course of events the ultimate sensible constituents are accessible to his observation precisely as they are to ours.”

As Mr. Venn is not discussing just the same point which I have raised, he does not refer to the partial and tentative character of our first judgments—our first objects. It is clear enough, however, that there will be all degrees between total failure to analyse and combine (as, say, in the case of the dog and rainbow) and fairly adequate grouping. The difference between the savage whose synthesis is so limited in scope that he sets up a new sun every day and the scientific man whose object is a unity comprehending differences through thousands of years of time and interactions going on through millions of miles of space is a case in point. The distinction between the respective objects is not simply a superimposition of new qualities upon an old object, that old object remaining the same; it is not getting new objects; it is a continual qualitative reconstruction of the object itself. This fact, which is the matter under consideration, is well stated by Mr. Venn, when he goes on to say:

“The act of predication, in its two-fold aspect of affirmation and denial, really is a process by which we are not only enabled to add to our information _about_ objects, _but is also the process by the continued performance of which the objects had been originally acquired, or rather produced_” (italics are mine).

This statement cannot be admitted at all without recognising that the first judgments do not make the object once for all, but that the continued process of judging is a continued process of “producing” the object.

Of course the confused and hypothetical character of our first objects does not force itself upon us when we are still engaged in constructing them. On the contrary, it is only when the original subject-matter has been overloaded with various and opposing predicates that we think of doubting the correctness of our first judgments, of putting our first objects under suspicion. At the start, these objects assert themselves as the baldest and solidest of hard facts. The dogmatic and naïve quality of the original judgment is in exact proportion to its crudeness and inadequacy. The objects which are the content of these judgments thus come to be identified with reality _par excellence_; they are _facts_, however doubtful everything else. They hang on obstinately. New judgments, instead of being regarded as better definitions of the actual fact and hence as displacing the prior object, are tacked on to the old as best they may be. Unless the contradiction is too flagrant, the new predicates are set side by side with the old as simply additional information; they do not react into the former qualities. If the contradiction is too obvious to be overlooked the new predicate is used, if possible, to constitute another object, independent of the former. So the savage, having to deal with the apparently incompatible predicates of light and darkness, makes two objects; two suns, for two successive days. Once the Ptolemaic conception is well rooted, cycles and epicycles, almost without end, are superadded, rather than reconstruct the original object. Here, then, is our starting point: when qualities arise so incompatible with the object already formed that they cannot be referred to that object, it is easier to form a new object on their basis than it is to doubt the correctness of the old, involving as that does the surrender of the _object_ (the fact, seemingly) and the formation of another object.

It is easier, I say, for there is no doubt that the reluctance of the mind to give up an object once made lies deep in its economies. I shall have occasion hereafter to point out the teleological character of the notions of necessity and chance, but I wish here to call attention to the fact that the forming of a number of distinct objects has its origin in practical needs of our nature. The analysis and synthesis which is first made is that of most practical importance; what is abstracted from the complex net-work of reality is some net outcome, some result which is of value for life. As Venn says:

“What the savage mostly wants to do is to produce something or to avert something, not to account for a thing which has already happened. What interests him is to know how to kill somebody, not to know how somebody has been killed.” (P. 62 of “Empirical Logic.”)

And again:

“What not only the savage, but also the practical man mostly wants, is a _general_ result, say the death of his enemy. It does not matter whether the symptoms, i. e., the qualifying circumstances, are those attendant on poison, or a blow from a club, or on incantation, provided the death is brought about. But they do desire _certainty_ in respect of this general result.” (P. 64.)

Now it is this “general result,” the net outcome for practical purposes, which is _the_ fact, _the_ object at first. Anything else is useless subtlety. That the man is dead—that is the fact; anything further is at most external circumstances which happen to accompany the fact. That the death is only a bare fraction of a fact; that the attendant “circumstances” are as much constituent factors of the real fact as the mere “death” itself (probably more so from the scientific point of view)—all this is foreign to conception. We pluck the fruit, and that fruit is the fact. Only when practical experience forces upon us the recognition that we cannot get the fruit without heeding certain other “conditions” do we consent to return upon our assumed object, put it under suspicion and question whether it is really what we took it to be. It is, we may presume, the savage who in order to get his living, has to regulate his conduct for long periods, through changes of seasons, in some continuous mode, who first makes the synthesis of one sun going through a recurring cycle of changes—the year.

As time goes on, the series of independent and isolated objects passes through a gradual change. Just as the recognition of incompatible qualities has led to setting up of separate things, so the growing recognition of similar qualities in these disparate objects begins to pull them together again. Some relation between the two objects is perceived; it is seen that neither object is just what it is in its isolation, but owes some of its meaning to the other objects. While in reality, (as I hope later to point out,) this “relationship” and mutual dependence means membership in a common whole, contribution to one and the same activity, a midway stage intervenes before this one fact, including as parts of itself the hitherto separate objects, comes to consciousness. The tradition of isolation is too strong to give way at the first suggestion of community. This passage-way from isolation to unity, denying the former but not admitting the latter, is necessity or determinism. The wall of partition between the two separate “objects” cannot be broken at one attack; they have to be worn away by the attrition arising from their slow movement into one another. It is the “necessary” influence which one exerts upon the other that finally rubs away the separateness and leaves them revealed as elements of one unified whole. This done, the determining influence has gone too.

The process may be symbolised as follows: _M_ is the object, the original synthesis of the elements seen to be of practical importance; _a_, _b_, _c_, etc., to _h_ are predicates of constantly growing incompatibility. When the quality _i_ is discovered, it is so manifestly incompatible with _a_ that all attempt to refer it to the same subject _M_ is resisted. Two alternatives are now logically open. The subject-matter _M_, as the synthesis of the qualities _a_-_h_, may be taken up; it may be asked whether the object is really _M_ with these qualities; whether it is not rather Σ, having instead of the predicates _a_, _b_, etc., the qualities ρα, ρβ, with which the new quality _i_ is quite compatible. But this process goes against the practical grain of our knowledge; it means not only that we do not know what we thought we knew; it means that we did not _do_ what we thought we did. Such unsettling of action is hardly to be borne. It is easier to erect a new object _N_, to which the more incompatible predicates are referred. Finally, it is discovered that both _M_ and _N_ have the same predicates _r_ and _s_; that in virtue of this community of qualities there is a certain like element even in the qualities previously considered disparate. This mutual attraction continues until it becomes so marked a feature of the case that there is no alternative but to suppose that the _r_ and _s_ of one produces these qualities in the other, and thereby influences all the qualities of the other. This drawing together continues until we have the one reconstructed object Σ, with the traits ρα, ρβρ, etc. It is found that there is one somewhat comprehensive synthesis which includes within itself the several separate objects so far produced; and it is found that this inclusion in the larger whole reacts into the meaning of the several constituting parts—as parts of one whole, they lose traits which they seemed to possess in their isolation, and gain new traits, because of their membership in the same whole.

We have now to consider, more in detail, how the intermediate idea of necessity grows up and how it gives away upon the discovery of the one inclusive whole. Let us continue the illustration of the killing. The “general result,” the death of the hated enemy, is at first the fact; all else is mere accidental circumstance. Indeed, the other circumstances at first are hardly that; they do not attract attention, having no importance. Not only the savage, but also the common-sense man of to-day, I conceive, would say that any attempt to extend the definition of the “fact” beyond the mere occurrence of the death is metaphysical refinement; that the _fact_ is the killing, the death, and that that “fact” remains quite the same, however it is brought about. What has been done, in other words, is to abstract part of the real fact, part of _this_ death, and set up the trait or universal thus abstracted as itself _fact_, and not only as fact, but as _the_ fact, _par excellence_, with reference to which all the factors which constitute the reality, the concrete fact, of _this_ death, are circumstantial and “accidental.”[66]

A fragment of the whole reality, of the actual fact individualised and specified with all kind of minute detail, having been thus hypostatised into an object, the idea of necessity is in fair way to arise. These deaths in general do not occur. Although the mere death of the man, his removal from the face of the earth, is the _fact_, none the less all _actual_ deaths have a certain amount of detail in them. The savage has to hit his enemy with a club or spear, or perform a magic incantation, before he can attain that all-important end of getting rid of him. Moreover, a man with a coat of armor on will not die just the same way as the man who is defenseless. These circumstances have to be taken into account. Now, if the “fact” had not been so rigidly identified with the bare practical outcome, the removal of the hated one, a coherent interpretation of the need for these further incidents would be open. It could be admitted that the original death was a highly complex affair, involving a synthesis of a very large number of different factors; furthermore, the new cases of murder could be employed to reconstruct the original analysis-synthesis; to eliminate supposed factors which were not relevant, and to show the presence of factors at first not suspected. In other words, the real fact would be under constant process of definition, of “production.” But the stiff-necked identification of the fragment, which happened to have practical importance with the real object, effectually prevents any such reaction and reconstruction. What is to be done, however, with these conditions of spear, of stone, of armor, which so obviously have something _to do_ with the real fact, although, as it would seem, they are not the fact? They are considered as circumstances, _accidental_, so far as death in general is concerned; _necessary_, so far as _this_ death is concerned. That is, wanting simply to get the net result of the removal of my enemy, so that he will no longer blight the fair face of nature, it is accidental how I do it; but having, after all, to kill a man of certain characteristics and surroundings in life, having to choose time and place, etc., it becomes necessary, _if_ I am to succeed, that I kill him in a certain way, say, with poison, or a dynamite bomb. Thus we get our concrete, individual fact again.

Consider, then, that tortuous path from reality to reality, _via_ a circuit of unreality, which calls the thought of necessity into existence. We first mutilate the actual fact by selecting some portion that appeals to our needs; we falsify, by erecting this fragment into the whole fact. Having the rest of the fact thus left on our hands for disposal, when we have no need of the concrete fact we consider it accidental, merely circumstantial; but we consider it necessary whenever we have occasion to descend from the outcome which we have abstracted back to the real fact, in all its individuality. Necessity is a device by which we both conceal from ourselves the unreal character of what we have called real, and also get rid of the practical evil consequences of hypostatising a fragment into an independent whole.

If the purely teleological character of necessity is not yet evident, I think the following considerations will serve to bring it out. The practical value, the fruit from the tree, we pick out and set up for the entire fact so far as our past action is concerned. But so far as our _future_ action is concerned, this value is a result _to be_ reached; it is an end to be attained. Other factors, in reality all the time bound up in the one concrete fact or individual whole, have now to be brought in as means to get this end. Although after our desire has been met they have been eliminated as accidental, as irrelevant, yet when the experience is again desired their integral membership in the real fact has to be recognised. This is done under the guise of considering them as means which are necessary to bring about the end. Thus the idea of the circumstances as external to the “fact” is retained, while we get all the practical benefit of their being not external but elements of one and the same whole. Contingent and necessary are thus the correlative aspects of one and the same fact; conditions are accidental so far as we have abstracted a fragment and set it up as the whole; they are necessary the moment it is required to pass from this abstraction back to the concrete fact. Both are teleological in character—contingency referring to the separation of means from end, due to the fact that the end having been already reached the means have lost their value for us; necessity being the reference of means to an end _which has still to be got_. Necessary means _needed_; contingency means no longer required—because already enjoyed.

Note that the necessity of the means has reference to an end still to be attained, and in so far itself hypothetical or contingent, while the contingent circumstances are no longer needed precisely because they have resulted in a definite outcome (which, accordingly, is now a fact, and, in that sense, necessary) and we begin to see how completely necessity and chance are bound up with each other.

Their correlation may thus be stated: _If_ we are to reach an end we _must_ take certain means; while so far as we want an undefined end, an end in general, conditions which accompany it are mere accidents. Whichever way the relationship be stated, the underlying truth is that we are dealing with only partial phases of fact, which, having been unduly separated from each other through their erection into distinct wholes, have now to be brought back into their real unity.

In the first place, then, _if_ I am to reach an end, certain means _must_ be used. Here the end is obviously postulated; save as it is begged (presupposed), the necessity of the means has no sense. If, when starving, I am to live I must steal a dinner, but, having stolen, the logical but unsympathetic judge may question the relevancy (that is, the necessity) of my end, and thus cut the ground out from under the necessity of my means. My end requires _its_ justification, the establishing of its validity, before the necessity of the means is anything more than hypothetical. The proximate end must be referred to a more ultimate and inclusive end to get any solid ground. Here we have our choice: we may deny the existence of any organic whole in life and keep chasing in a never-ending series, the _progressus ad infinitum_, after an end valid in itself. In this case we never get beyond a hypothetical necessity—something is necessary _if_ we are to have something else, the necessity being relative to the implied doubt. Or, being convinced that life is a whole and not a series merely, we may say there is one comprehensive end which gives its own validity to the lesser ends in so far as they constitute it. While, on the other alternative, we reach only a hypothetical necessity, on this we reach none at all. The comprehensive end is no end at all in the sense of something by itself to be reached by means external to it. Any such end would be simply one in the infinite series and would be itself hypothetical. Whenever minor ends cease to be in turn means to further ends it is because they have become parts, constituent elements, of the higher end and thus ceased to be steps towards an end and beyond and outside of themselves. Given a final (i. e., inclusive) end, eating and drinking, study and gossip, play and business, cease to be means _towards_ an end and become its concrete definition, its analytic content. The minor activities state the supreme activity in its specific factors.

Our dilemma is the choice between an end which itself has no existence save upon presupposition of another end, (is contingent,) and an end which as an end in itself simply _is_.

The externality of means to end is merely a symptom of lack of specification or concreteness in the end itself. _If_ I am going to invent some improvement in a type-writer, the necessity of going through certain preliminary steps is exactly proportionate to the indefiniteness of my conception of what the improvement is to be; when the end is realised, the operations which enter into the realisation cease to be means necessary to an end and become the specific _content_ of that end. The improvement is a _fact_, having such and such elements defining it. If I simply want, in general, to get my mail I _must_ take this path (there being but one road); but if my end is not thus general, if it is individualised with concrete filling, the walk to the office may become a part of the end, a part of the actual fact. In so far, of course, it loses all aspect of necessitation. It simply _is_. And in general, so far as my end is vague, or abstract, so far as it is not specified as to its details, so far the filling up of its empty schema to give it particularity (and thus make it fact) appears as a means necessary to reach an end outside itself. The growth in concreteness of the end itself is transformed into ways of effecting an end already presupposed. Or, to state it in yet one other way, determination in the sense of definition in consciousness is hypostatised into determination in the sense of a physical making.

The point may come out more clearly if we consider it with the emphasis on chance instead of upon necessity. The usual statement that chance is relative to ignorance seems to me to convey the truth though not in the sense generally intended—viz., that if we knew more about the occurrence we should see it necessitated by its conditions. Chance is relative to ignorance in the sense rather that it refers to an indefiniteness in our conception of what we are doing. In our consciousness of our end (our acts) we are always making impossible abstractions; we break off certain phases of the act which are of chief interest to us, without any regard to whether the concrete conditions of action—that is, the deed in its whole definition—permits any such division. Then, when in our actual doing the circumstances to which we have not attended thrust themselves into consciousness—when, that is to say, the act appears in more of its own specific nature—we dispose of those events, foreign to our conscious purpose, as accidental; we did not want them or intend them—what more proof of their accidental character is needed? The falling of a stone upon a man’s head as he walks under a window is “chance,” for it has nothing to do with what the man proposed to do, it is no part of his conception of that walk. To an enemy who takes that means of killing him, it is anything but an accident, being involved in _his_ conscious purpose. It is “chance” when we throw a two and a six; for the concreteness of the act falls outside of the content of our intention. We intended _a_ throw, some throw, and in so far the result is not accidental, but this special result, being irrelevant to our conception of what we were to do, in so far is contingent. The vagueness or lack of determinateness in our end, the irrelevancy of actual end to conscious intent, chance, are all names for the same thing. And if I am asked whether a gambler who has a hundred dollars upon the outcome does not _intend_ to throw double sixes, I reply that he has no such intention—unless the dice are loaded. He may _hope_ to make that throw, but he cannot intend it save as he can define that act—tell how to do it, tell, that is, just _what_ the act is. Or, once more, if I intend to get my mail and there are four paths open to me it is chance which I take, just in proportion to the abstractness of my end. If I have not defined it beyond the mere “general result” of getting mail, anything else is extraneous and in so far contingent. If the end is individualised to the extent, say, of getting the mail in the shortest possible time, or with the maximum of pleasant surroundings, or with the maximum of healthy exercise, the indifferency of the “means,” and with it their contingency, disappears. This or that path is no longer a mere means which _may_ be taken to get a result foreign to its own value; the path is an intrinsic part of the end.

In so far as a man presents to himself an end in general, he sets up an abstraction so far lacking in detail as (taken _per se_) to exclude the possibility of realisation. In order to exist as concrete or individual (and of course, nothing can exist except as individual or concrete) it must be defined or particularised. But so far as consciousness is concerned the original vague end is _the_ reality; it is all that the man cares about and hence constitutes his act. The further particularisation of the end, therefore, instead of appearing as what it really is, viz., the discovery of the actual reality, presents itself as something outside that end. This externality to the end previously realised in consciousness is, taken as mere externality, contingency, or accident; taken as none the less so bound up with the desired end that it must be gone through before reaching that end, it is necessary. Chance, in other words, stands for the irrelevancy as the matter at first presents itself to consciousness; necessity is the required, but partial, negation of this irrelevancy. Let it be complete, instead of partial, and we have the one real activity defined throughout. With reference to this reality, conditions are neither accidental nor necessary, but simply constituting elements—they neither may be nor must be, but just are. What is irrelevant is now not simply indifferent; it is excluded, eliminated. What is relevant is no longer something required in order to get a result beyond itself; it is incorporated into the result, it is integral.

It now remains to connect the two parts of our discussion, the logical and the practical consideration of necessity, and show that, as suggested, logical necessity rests upon teleological—that, indeed, it is the teleological read backwards. The logical process of discovering and stating the reality of some event simply reverses the process which the mind goes through in setting up and realising an end. Instead of the killing of an enemy as something to be accomplished, we have the fact of a murder to be accounted for. Just as on the practical side, the end, as it first arises in consciousness, is an end in general and thus contrasts with the concrete end which is individualised; so the fact, as at first realised in consciousness, is a _bare_ fact, and thus contrasts with the actual event with its complete particularisation. The actual fact, the murder as it really took place, is one thing; the fact as it stands in consciousness, the phases of the actual event which are picked out and put together, is another thing. The fact of knowledge, it is safe to say, is no _fact_ at all; that is, if there had been in reality no more particularisation, no more of detail, than there is consciousness, the murder would never have happened. But just as, practically, we take the end in general to be the real thing, (since it is the only thing of any direct interest,) so in knowledge we take the bare fact as abstracted from the actual whole, as _the_ fact. Just as the end of the savage is merely to kill his enemy, so the “fact” is merely the dead body with the weapon sticking in it. The fact, as it stands in consciousness, is indeterminate and partial, but, since it is in consciousness by itself, it is taken as a whole and as the certain thing. But as the abstractness of the “end in general” is confessed in the fact that means are required in order to make it real—to give it existence—so the unreal character of the “fact” is revealed in the statement that the causes which produced it are unknown and have to be discovered. The bare fact thus becomes a result to be accounted for: in this conception the two sides are combined; the “fact” is at once given a certain reality of its own while at the same time the lack of concreteness is recognised in the reference to external causes.

The gradual introduction of further factors, under the guise of causes accounting for the effect, defines the original vague “fact,” until, at last, when it is accounted for, we have before us the one and only concrete reality. This done, we no longer have an effect to be accounted for, and causes which produce it, but one fact whose statement or description is such and such. But intermediate between the isolation and the integration is the stage when necessity appears. We have advanced, we will suppose, from the bare fact of the murder to the discovery of a large amount of “circumstantial” evidence regarding that fact. We hear of a man who had a quarrel with the deceased; he cannot account for himself at the time when the murder _must_ have been committed; he is found to have had a weapon like that with which the murder _must_ have been committed. Finally we conclude he _must_ have been the murderer. What do these “musts” (the “must” of the time, weapon, and murderer) mean? Are they not obviously the gradual filling-in of the previously empty judgment, through bringing things at first unconnected into relation with each other? The existence of the man M. N. is wholly isolated from the “fact” of the murder till it is learned that he had a grudge against the murdered man; this third fact, also distinct _per se_, brought into connection with the others (the “fact” of the murder and of the existence of M. N.) compels them to move together; the result is at first the possibility, later, as the points of connection get more and more marked and numerous, the “necessity,” that M. N. is the murderer. Further, it is clear that this “must” marks not a greater certainty or actuality than a mere “is” would indicate, but rather a doubt, a surmise or guess gradually gaining in certainty. When the fact is really made out to our satisfaction, we drop the “must” and fall back on the simple _is_. Only so long as there is room for doubt, and thus for argument do we state that the time and weapon must have been such and such. So when we finally conclude that the murderer must have been M. N., it means that we have woven a large number of facts, previously discrete, into such a state of inter-relationship that we do not see how to avoid denying their discreteness and incorporating them all into one concrete whole, or individual fact. That we still say “must” shows, however, that we have not quite succeeded in overcoming the partial and indefinite character of the original “fact.” Had we succeeded in getting the whole fact before us the judgment would take this form: The murder _is_ a fact of such and such definite nature, having as its content such and such precise elements. In this comprehensive whole all distinction of effect to be accounted for and causes which produce clean disappears. The idea of necessity, in a word, comes in only while we are still engaged in correcting our original error, but have not surrendered it root and branch; this error being that the fragment of reality which we grasp is concrete enough to warrant the appellation “fact.”

A great deal of attention has been directed to the category of cause and effect. One striking feature of the ordinary consideration is, that it takes for granted the matter most needing investigation and aims the inquiry at the dependent member of the firm. The effect seems to be so clearly _there_, while the cause is so obviously something to be searched for that the category of effect is assumed, and it is supposed that only the idea of causation is in need of examination. And yet this abstraction of certain phases of fact, the erection of the parts thus abstracted into distinct entities, which, though distinct, are still dependent in their mode of existence, is precisely the point needing examination. It is but another instance of the supreme importance of our practical interests. The effect is the end, the practical outcome, which interests us; the search for causes is but the search for the means which would produce the result. We call it “means and end” when we set up a result to be reached in the future and set ourselves upon finding the causes which put the desired end in our hands; we call it “cause and effect” when the “result” is given, and the search for means is a regressive one. In either case the separation of one side from the other, of cause from effect, of means from end, has the same origin: a partial and vague idea of the whole fact, together with the habit of taking this part (because of its superior practical importance) for a whole, for a fact.

I hope now to have made good my original thesis: that the idea of necessity marks a certain stage in the development of judgment; that it refers to a residuum, in our judgments and thus in our objects, of indeterminateness or vagueness, which it replaces without wholly negating; that it is thus relative to “chance” or contingency; that its value consists wholly in the impulse given judgment towards the _is_, or the concrete reality defined throughout. The analysis has been long; the reader may have found it not only tedious, but seemingly superfluous, since, as he may be saying to himself, no one nowadays regards necessity as anything but a name for fixed uniformities in nature, and of this view of the case nothing has been said. I hope, however, that when we come to a consideration of necessity as equivalent to uniformity, it will be found that the course of this discussion has not been irrelevant, but the sure basis for going further.

JOHN DEWEY.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] This article, as the title may indicate, was suggested by Mr. Peirce’s article upon “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined.” As, however, my thought takes finally a different turn, I have deemed it better to let it run its own course from the start, and so have not referred, except indirectly, to Mr. Peirce’s argument. I hope this will not be taken as a desire to slur over my indebtedness to him.

[66] The reason of this abstraction is in practical nature, as already indicated. For all the savage _cares_ about it, the death in general, _is_ the real fact. It is all that interests him. It is hardly worth while to attempt to persuade the savage; indeed, if he were not only a savage, but also a philosopher, he might boldly challenge the objector to present _any_ definition of object which should not refer objectivity to man’s practical activity; although he might, as a shrewd savage, admit that some one activity (or self) to which the object is referred has more content than another. In this case, I, for one, should not care about entering the lists against the savage. But when the common-sense philosopher, who resists all attempts to reconstruct the original object on the ground that a fact is a fact and all beyond that is metaphysics, is also a case-hardened nominalist (as he generally is), it is time to protest. It might be true that the real object is always relative to the value of some action; but to erect this pure universal into the object, and then pride one’s self on enlightenment in rejecting the “scholastic figment” of the reality of universals is a little too much.

THE ISSUES OF “SYNECHISM.”

In a late number of _The Monist_, (Vol. II, No. 4,) there appears a singularly acute and profound article, from the pen of one of the ablest of American logicians and mathematicians, Mr. Charles S. Peirce. Its subject is “The Law of Mind”—the idea of continuity. The writer tells us, (p. 534,) “the tendency to regard continuity, in the sense in which I shall define it, as an idea of prime importance in philosophy, may conveniently be termed _Synechism_.” With this _synechistic_ philosophy, as applied to mind, the paper is occupied, to the exclusion, for the nonce, of Mr. Peirce’s companion doctrine of _Tychism_,[67] which was dealt with, by him, in the January, 1891, and April, 1892, issues of _The Monist_. These conceptions are, both of them, to be viewed as essential to philosophy as a whole, but the latter is; for the present, allowed to drop out of sight, in order to allow of the due elaboration of the former.[68]

THE FORMULA OF SYNECHISM.

The formula of Synechism, with which the article begins, is as follows:

“Logical analysis applied to mental phenomena shows that there is but one law of mind, namely, that ideas tend to spread continuously, and to affect certain others which stand to them in a peculiar relation of affectibility. In this spreading they lose intensity, and especially the power of affecting others, but gain generality, and become welded with other ideas.” (Vol. II, No. 4, p. 534.)

The individuality and continuity of ideas are, then, shown respectively to involve no contradiction; an idea once past—in the sense of an event in an individual consciousness—is not wholly past, it is only going—“infinitesimally past, less past than any assignable past date.” Thus the conclusion is reached that “the present is connected with the past by a series of real, infinitesimal steps.” Again, “We are forced to say that we are immediately conscious through an infinitesimal interval of time. This is all that is requisite.” (_Ibid._, pp. 535-536.)

All that it is necessary to say at the outset is, that this view is supported by an elaborate inquiry into the nature of infinity and continuity in general, into which, for the purpose of the present paper, it is not needful to enter. And this for two reasons: (1) The synechistic philosophy, by itself, does not profess to be monistic. Its expounder does not, even if his Tychism were not in reserve, profess to carry it beyond the realm of mind, with all that is implied in such a reservation. Now, it is the bearing of Mr. Peirce’s Synechism upon a monistic solution of the universe with which the present article is concerned. And (2) Mr. Peirce’s method of treatment, though precise and logical in the direction of its own path, is too purely technical to be summarised for the general reader’s benefit. But withal, Synechism is far too fertile, not so much in respect of what it makes clear, as suggestively, and, if the expression may be allowed, _obliquely_, to be passed over without comment. Its excogitator is eminently frank; he does not conceal the difficulties which, ever and anon, occur in his statement. Sometimes his theory seems a trifle too wide for the facts encountered, sometimes rather too scanty to contain them. Such phrases as the following: “No, I think we can only hold”—p. 552; “we are driven to perceive”—p. 555; “this obliges me to say”—p. 557; “the principle with which I set out requires me to maintain”—p. 558; “the only answer that I can, at present, make is”—p. 559, etc., etc., do every credit to the writer’s candor, but they would scarcely occur in an exposition, which, in the mind of its author, made the rough places altogether plain. Synechism, even with Tychism in the background, probably does not, in Mr. Peirce’s own mind, completely solve the world-riddle, at least, as yet. Still these very pauses themselves, on the part of a thinker of such ability, are eminently suggestive. To use his own words: “the present paper is intended to show what Synechism is, and what it leads to.” Let us emphasise this latter clause, as likely to be more fruitful than the former.

MR. PEIRCE’S POSITIVISM.

Mr. Peirce, in spite of his theory of chance, is, in his Synechism, almost severely a positivist;[69] but his positivism, like most of that current nowadays, does not go deep enough. He is positivist, _after_ he has got externality—fertile in excitations—comfortably disposed around his subject; and vibrations, undulations, attractions, etc., ready to play upon the thousand-stringed harp, _but not before_. For, “we must not tax introspection,” he tells us, p. 548, “to make a phenomenon manifest, which essentially involves externality,” when the real problem at issue is: Is there externality, in the vulgar sense, at all, or is it only that _rationalised externality_ which _circumspection_, within the limits of egoity, reveals? Now, upon this a good deal hinges. At all events the difference in question, or, rather, that there _is_ a difference, has been mooted, to say the least. And, this being the case, it is a little tedious, when the really vital point of the spatial extension of feelings is being debated, to have this illustration brought in, (p. 548,): “Moreover, our own feelings are focused in attention to such a degree, that we are not aware that ideas are not brought to an absolute unity. Just as nobody, not instructed by special experiment, has any idea how very, very little of the field of vision is distinct.” Why, that is reasoning in a circle, if some systems are true; and it is a begging of the question, if they are the reverse.

If the system of so-called objective reality were, at sight, wholly veracious, if everything existed just as it seems, this positivism of Mr. Peirce’s might be workable. Then no one would seek to go beneath the process of the apparent, the actually visible, for a _rationale_. But modern science teaches, in its very primer, that many things are, and act, quite otherwise than as they seem to be, and do. Appearances _rationalised_ are alone to be accepted. The sun does not “rise” and “set,” as it seems to do. The earth is not, as it appears to be, an immovable plane, and so on. And, this once allowed, where is the principle to end? If the superficial judgment may be thus corrected, or reversed, it is liable to revision or reversal _ad infinitum_, unless reason be shown to the contrary. It may thus be disputed whether our author is quite in order in writing, as he does, and using the statement to support his theory—“Precisely how primary sensations, as colors and tones, are excited, we cannot tell, in the present state of psychology.... As far as sight and hearing are in question, we know that they are only excited by vibrations of inconceivable complexity; and the chemical senses are probably not more simple.” (P. 557.)

To argue, we cannot tell precisely _how_ they are excited, but we know that they _are_ excited, is somewhat feminine; seeing that the said “excitement” is not patent on the surface of ordinary perception. And, this being the case, the excitement, or its mode rather, not being given immediately, but only mentally annexed, Mr. Peirce is not consistently positivist. It is equally open to an opponent to “annex” something else of his own to the “given” thing, or altogether to deny the necessity of anything whatever being thus annexed. In any case that (if anything) which is sought to be annexed must stand the test of positivism; we must know _if_ such a thing is, and _what_ it is precisely. And this is just what Mr. Peirce cannot do for us. He cannot tell us exactly what the “excitant” of feelings _is_; he can only guess what it is “_something like_,” viz.: the feelings themselves. Hence the following:

“The principle with which I set out [that of continuity] requires me to maintain that these feelings are communicated to the nerves by continuity, _so that there must be something like them in the excitants themselves_. If this seems extravagant, it is to be remembered that it is the sole possible way of reaching any explanation of sensation, which otherwise must be pronounced a general fact absolutely inexplicable and ultimate. Now absolute inexplicability is a hypothesis which sound logic refuses, under any circumstances, to justify.” (P. 558.—The italics are not in the original.)

There must be something like the feelings in the excitants of the feelings. Now, this point is worthy of the closest attention. Note that “the excitant” _alone_ is mentioned. _Vibrations_ excite sight and hearing. Yet, from what follows, it is plain that Synechism is not inconsistent with belief in a fixed objective. “Even the least psychical of peripheral sensations, that of pressure, has, in its excitation, conditions which, though apparently simple, are seen to be complicated enough when we consider _the molecules and their attractions_,” pp. 557-558. Can there, then, be any doubt that we have here three distinct things: (1) a subjective, (2) an “excitant,” and (3) an objective; the middle term being a vehicle of communication between the first and third? It does not affect this presentation of Mr. Peirce’s position that, at an earlier stage of his argument, he speaks of matter—synonymous, presumably, with the objective—as being “not completely dead, but merely mind, hide-bound with habits,” as “partially deadened” or “effete,” mind; or that the editor of _The Monist_ says that, with Mr. Peirce, “mind is the beginning of all.” (_The Monist_, Vol. III, No. 1, p. 95.) The question, at present, is not regarding origins, but regarding co-existences. So that there is a distinct _hiatus_ here, arising from the confusion of the stimulant, or excitant, of sensation with the objective itself.[70] Now, the stimulant of sensation is never the object perceived. Hence, once an objective is admitted, a trinity of entities is unavoidable, since still less can the “stimulant” be the subject. This special difficulty, in the present writer’s opinion, is inseparable from dualism in every form. How it besets Mr. Peirce’s theory is evident from his hazarded suggestion: “There must be _something like_ the feelings in the excitants.” He thus uses only two of his cosmical terms, and gives the third the go-by! All dualism halts, but surely there is here a palpable stumble.

In a recent article in _The Open Court_[71] I have pointed out the vanity of introducing a vehicle of communication between object and subject, especially emphasising the fact that, once this intermediate term is brought in, the veritable objective disappears. “Once you bring in vibrations,” I remarked, “you practically provide a _second_ object, which is really a part of the subject, and, in order to do this, you have taken from the original objective all that composed it.”[72] (_The Open Court_, p. 3361.)

Is it any wonder, then, that Mr. Peirce should suppose the excitants to be “something like” the excited feelings? Since he, practically, surrenders the objective, what could more closely resemble the subjective than the subjective itself? If he had adopted the position of Hume, and made impressions and ideas all-in-all, his principle of continuity might hold. But this he does not do, since (1) he implicitly admits the objective element, and (2) even if he did not do this, there must be something other than the idea or feeling in his system, since, otherwise, there could be no ground for the charge of seeming “extravagance,” which, he admits, may be leveled against, at least one of, his conclusions.

FEELINGS SPATIALLY EXTENDED.

This leads us to Mr. Peirce’s conclusions regarding subjective spatial extension—the spatial extension of feelings—as the result of observation of irritated protoplasm. Our attention is directed to an excited mass of protoplasm,—an amœba, or a slime-mould,—which “does not differ in any radical way from the contents of a nerve-cell, though its functions may be less specialised.” (P. 547.) The irritation is induced when, say, the amœba is “quiescent and rigid,” and we note its behaviour under it. That feeling passes from one part of this amorphous continuum of protoplasm to another, we are led to believe. And this conclusion follows: “Whatever there is in the whole phenomenon to make us think there is feeling in such a mass of protoplasm,—_feeling_, but plainly no _personality_,—goes logically to show that that feeling has a subjective, or substantial, spatial extension, as the excited state has.” This is a chain of reasoning. Let us examine its links. We have:

(1) The behaviour of the amœba under immediate, mechanical irritation—the spread, or spatial extension, of the state of irritation.

(2) We are asked to identify this spread-out irritation, this field of excitation, with “feeling” on the part of the amœba, because there is “no doubt that it feels when it is excited.”

(3) From the spatial extension of the irritation, thus identified with feeling, we are asked to conclude that the feeling, in the amœba, has a subjective, spatial extension as the excited state has, and, finally, passing from the feeling of the amœba to our own feelings, by inference, we are asked to admit:

(4) Not that we have necessarily a feeling of bigness, but that “the feeling [inferentially arrived at from the spread-out irritation on the part of the amœba] as a subject of inhesion is big.” (P. 548.)

After this, we are disposed to agree with Mr. Peirce when he says: “This is, no doubt, a difficult idea to seize”; not, as he goes on to say, “for the reason that it is a subjective, not an objective, extension,” but on the ground that the reasoning involves, plainly, not only the subjective and objective, but what Clifford calls the “ejective,” as well, and this assumption, _inter alia_, that the last-named lies on the same plane as the former. Never, surely, was the conclusion that feelings have spatial extension more easily reached. It is only when we find that in (1) we are dealing with the objective pure and simple, observed phenomena; that in (2) the connection between irritation or excitation, and feeling is assumed, in the object, because feeling, subjectively, is found to accompany irritation; that (3) as the irritation, in the amœba, is spread out, so is the feeling to be viewed; and (4) that, as the feeling of the amœba, so is our feeling to be considered, viz.: that the feeling, “as a subject of inhesion, is big,” we are led to say after all this, that, by such a process, anything, or everything, could be demonstrated,—the _field_ of spatial extension, for example, having no more claim to be assumed than the _point_ at which the irritation admittedly begins. Why should the _middle_ stage of the irritation be selected in preference to the _initial_ and _final_ ones? The irritation originates in a point, spreads, and then dies out. Thus our feeling, (we purposely use Mr. Peirce’s nomenclature,) or idea, of an elephant, is unquestionably, as a subject of inhesion, “big.” _But only for a time, and not at first._ Really, our idea, or feeling—in Synechism—of an elephant, must logically commence as a minute speck, and return to this vanishing-point again. There is no other way out of it. For must not the analogy of the irritated amœba be followed throughout, and if not, why not?

DUALISM AND THE WAY OUT.

The _crux_ of philosophy, from the time of Hume to the present day, has been, what may be summarised as, the consciousness of succession _as_ succession. The hours pass over the mental dial, but, though one succeeds the other, something is needed besides the succession of the terms of the series to give consciousness of the series _as a series_, to give the synthesis of the day made up of hours. Hume virtually gave up the problem in eviscerating the subjective. Prof. T. H. Green only missed the point at issue when he placed his eternal consciousness, which was to “have and to hold” the terms of the cosmical series, as it were in solution, for the human organism, _out of time altogether_. Mr. Peirce puts the matter boldly when he says: “An idea once past is gone forever, [in the sense of an event in an individual consciousness,] and any supposed recurrence of it is another idea.” (P. 534.) In order, then, that an idea past may be present really, and not vicariously, the notion that consciousness necessarily occupies an interval of (finite) time must be given up; since, to put it briefly, a second past is as much past as a year. According to Mr. Peirce then, and his contention is supported by an elaborate inquiry into the nature of infinity and continuity generally, “we are immediately conscious through an infinitesimal interval of time.” For the complete _rationale_, reference must necessarily be made to the article itself.

Even the above outline, however, is sufficient to show that, here as elsewhere, Mr. Peirce’s dualism is his snare. Nothing but this could lead to a disintegration so complete as the following:

“In this infinitesimal interval, not only is consciousness continuous in a subjective sense, that is, considered as a subject, or substance, having the attribute of duration; but also, because it is immediate consciousness, its object is _ipso facto_ continuous.” (P. 536.)

This is to admit, practically, that there is something in consciousness other than the consciousness itself. And this is evident, because at one and the same time, (whether an interval of finite time, or an infinitesimal interval,—whether an “instant” or a “moment,”—does not matter,) these two entities are different. For:

“This mediate perception is objectively, or as to the object represented, spread over the four instants; but subjectively, or as itself the subject of duration, it is completely embraced in the second moment.” (_Ibid._)

But this “mediate” and “immediate” cannot simultaneously exist, unless there is something else _to which_ they do so exist. It is only paltering with us in a double sense to speak of “instant” and “moment” in this connection. The one may pass into the other, but there is “a time when” (it matters not whether the interval be finite or infinitesimal) they do not coexist. Hence, they are not the same, but different.

According to Mr. Peirce’s notation, for all ordinary purposes we may write, if _a_ is a finite quantity, and _i_ an infinitesimal, _a_ + _i_ = _a_. “That is to say, this is so for all purposes of measurement.” Be it so; the infinitesimal may be neglected for purposes of calculation. But such a formula can only be experimental. The theory which embodies it cannot avail for a world-scheme; to admit it would be to grant that a thing is, and is not, at one and the same time. Surely the most superficial reader will see that, to put it popularly, a world-scheme admits of no alternative subject to accept, or to reject, a neglectable quantity.

And this is not the only instance of dualism in Mr. Peirce’s world-scheme as a totality. For have we not Synechism and Tychism as well? With the latter Mr. Peirce does not deal in the paper now under consideration. He must, however, be credited, or debited, with it, as held in reserve. For our present purpose it is not necessary to examine Tychism in detail. Its alleged existence is sufficient. For, and here let the significance of what follows be noted, in Mr. Peirce’s view, as opposed to determinism, Tychism exists as a principle. It _is_, otherwise it could not be expounded as operative. But it also exists as an idea, first, it may be, in our author’s mind, and subsequently in the minds of his disciples. Thus it falls into the synechistic province: “As an idea it can only be affected by an idea, by anything but an idea it cannot be affected at all.” (“The Law of Mind,” p. 557.) Yet to affirm Tychism thus impotent, because unaffectible, outside the synechistic sphere, is to contradict Mr. Peirce’s conclusions, for if Tychism is nothing outside the ideal realm, it is altogether inside it. Hence Synechism is everything practically, and Tychism nothing. But that Mr. Peirce will not have. He has a two-fold Tychism, that is the fact; actual and operative on the one hand, ideal on the other. And this is dualism confessed.

Mr. Peirce’s method is quite fertile in duplication of the subjective entity. His latest paper, “Man’s Glassy Essence,” (_The Monist_, Vol. III, No. 1,) contains some typical instances.

“Viewing a thing from the outside, considering its relations of action and reaction with other things, it appears as matter. Viewing it from the inside, looking at its immediate character as feeling, it appears as consciousness.” (P. 20.)

This is the strictly empirical view. And it may be possibly defended with the contention that all problems, to be duly examined, must, in the first place, be viewed from that standpoint. But it must be plainly manifest to any unprejudiced thinker that, even granted a total cosmical problem made up of separate problems of an individual nature, the same method of solving the sum cannot be employed which is used in solving its constituents. In the above instance, considering matter in its totality, and consciousness in its totality, what is left to view them indifferently from “outside,” or “inside”? Plainly nothing. Still more transparent an example is the following:

“The consciousness of a habit involves a general idea. In each action of that habit certain atoms get thrown out of their orbit, and replaced by others. Upon all the different occasions it is different atoms that are thrown off, but they are analogous from a physical point of view, and there is an inward sense of their being analogous. Every time one of the associated feelings recurs, there is a more or less vague sense that there are others, that it has a general character, and of about what this general character is.” (P. 20.)

This is part of the answer to the query: How do general ideas appear in the molecular theory of protoplasm? Now, without discussing the value of this _rationale_, as affecting Mr. Peirce’s own theories, it is not difficult to see what its acceptance would “lead to.” Certain atoms of a molecule get thrown out and are replaced by _others_. This happens repeatedly. On different occasions _different atoms_ come and go. Yet they are “analogous,” and there is “an inward sense” of this. Upon whose shoulders is the burden of proving the analogy placed, or of experiencing it even? With whom or what is there “an inward sense”? Perhaps it is better not to answer otherwise than to say that if this faculty be not present in the ever changing molecule to begin with, it cannot be logically reached by any process of multiplying it.

THE MONISTIC SOLUTION.

Monism, as a unitary system of the universe, does not necessarily commend itself to acceptance simply _as_ monism. To say, this is dualism, _therefore_ it cannot be a correct _rationale_ of the universe, since the only true one must be monistic, is to start with an unphilosophical prepossession. The true solution may be two-fold, or it may be manifold. But it is not too much to say, perhaps, on the other hand, that, even as causes may not be multiplied without necessity, even so phenomena must not logically be divided into independent groupings without sufficient reason given. Preference should be accorded to a monistic, rather than to a dualistic, system, not on the ground alone of the simplicity of the former, but on the ground that a theory which has one explanation for one set of phenomena and another explanation for a second set, must first demonstrate that a unitary conception of the universe is, at least, improbable, otherwise it will always be hinted that the dualism in question has not gone deep enough to find a synthetic bond wherewith to unite the apparently diverse. Mr. Peirce, throughout his article on Synechism, constantly touches, despite his latent dualism, the margin of a truth so great as to merit the title of transcendent. As often he misses it. And his concluding words are, in this connection, almost wistful: “The facts that stand before our face and eyes and stare us in the face, are far from being, in all cases, the ones most easily discerned. That has been remarked from time immemorial.” (P. 559.) But though thus “remarked,” the maxim has, as immemorially, been neglected in practice. To none can this remark be more fitly applied than to the excogitator of Synechism, himself seeing that, having arrived at the point of asserting that “there must be _something like_ the feelings in the excitants themselves,” he does not see that the excitant and the feeling are one and the same; and that there is no second or third term in the cosmical equation.

Does this seem “extravagant”? If so, the reply must be _not_ that it is the only escape from an otherwise inexplicable difficulty, but that there is really no difficulty at all. What Mr. Peirce’s own Synechism “_leads to_” is that the past, the present, and the to-come, alike of matter and idea, are not reconciled by “time and its flow,” or even by the logic of infinitesimals, subtle though that may be, but that the contents of each and all, with all their apparently infinite variety, resolve into a consistent unity.

THE “MISSING LINK.”

Pushed to a logical conclusion, the excitants and the feelings owe their apparent variety to their assigned position in a series, the correspondence or relation between them being _only another link in the self-same chain_. Vulgar realism never fathoms this explanation. It always harps upon the one string that idealism, and more especially idealistic monism, fails to account for variety or difference; forgetting, or rather never seeing, that difference or variety which is its essence, is only one more added perception on the same plane with ordinary perceptions; so that given _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_,—sundry perceptions,—their essential variety may be stated as _e_. Or this may be stated numerically; variety, as a whole, being nothing more than the sum of differences, which is always something other than the terms differentiated, but always on the same level with them—the difference between any continuous number, above unity, and another number being a third number, which is different from either. Variety in numbers cannot be expressed otherwise than numerically. So, in the last recess, the variety of colors is only colorable, of tones audible, and so on. The “vibrations of inconceivable complexity” which, according to Mr. Peirce, “excite sight and hearing,” can be approximately stated numerically, so that the difference between red and, say, yellow, is a number corresponding to another color, which may be orange or not; it being part of the present scientific theory of light that any specific number of ethereal undulations happening between the colors of the ocular spectrum, corresponds to a possible color, although the retinal expanse may be insensible to these particular rates of tremor. To Mr. Peirce it may appear “extravagant,” but the difference between any two colors and tones is another color, another tone; just as the difference between any two numbers is a third number. This is the logical outcome of his own Synechism; _this_, in part, is what it “leads to.”

TIME AND ITS “FLOW” RATIONALISED.

Excitants and feelings being unified, and the element of variety, hitherto supposed to be the exclusive copyright of vulgar realism, shown to be nothing but another term added to the series, or, numerically, a concurrent series—so that should _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_ ... be a series, the variety of the series may be expressed as _e_, or the individual differences as _f_, _g_, _h_ ...—it only needs an examination of what Mr. Peirce terms “time and its flow,” to render his system a completely monistic one, and this although true monism is much more than the negation of determinism, synechistically expressed.

In Mr. Peirce’s article under examination, “The Law of Mind,” the notation of infinitesimals, which forms the keystone of Synechism, is only introduced after a lament over the incapacity, or unworkableness rather, of finite time, when the duration of consciousness is involved. If _finite_ time is to come in as a factor—“an idea once past [in the sense of an event in an individual consciousness] is gone forever, and any supposed recurrence of it is another idea” (p. 534). And the problem which Mr. Peirce sets himself to solve is how in effect to bring _back_ this past idea—not vicariously—but in all its pristine freshness, into the now-time. This is sought to be accomplished by the explanation that the past idea is “not wholly past, it is only going, less past than any assignable past date”—and so on through the intricacies of Mr. Peirce’s infinitesimal theory, into which we need not enter at present. But the statement of the, supposed, difficulty which finite time presents in this connection,—the past idea really past and gone, and the recurrence of it another idea,—if put in a slightly different form, hints a solution, in continuity with the foregoing pages, without the aid of the infinitesimal at all. _That an idea is once past and gone_, any occurrence, or recurrence, of this idea, _is another idea_.[73]

But, in the meantime, let us see what Mr. Peirce has to say regarding “time and its flow”:

“One of the most marked features about the law of mind is, that it makes time to have a definite direction of flow from past to future. The relation of past to future is, in reference to the law of mind, different from the relation of future to past. This makes one of the great contrasts between the law of mind and the law of physical force, where there is no more distinction between the two opposite directions in time than between moving northward, and moving southward” (p. 546).

This for once is not very clear. It is difficult to see how “the law of physical force” can be spoken of as “in time,” to the exclusion of mind; not easy, also, to understand the distinction further insisted upon. But the intention is evident, viz., to perpetuate, if not to originate, a cosmical duality. Time, it would seem, marches indifferently in at least two directions, though it is not very clear how this is accomplished. And then the old fiction follows, that “Time, as the universal form of change, cannot exist unless there is something to undergo change, etc.” (p. 547.)

The same notation suits in this case as in the foregoing. Time is only another term in the series. If _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_ be a series, _e_ is the variety, _f_ the whole time involved, and _g_ the individual intervals. Of course all this is not a simple series, it is an infinitely complicated one; the above arrangement is only intended to show that difference, variety, time, etc., are no mysterious entities pervading events, acting as their “form” or carrying them in their “flow,” but simply percepts, or concepts, on a level with others.

This is not patent on the surface, it may be. Time has the appearance of a current in which events float. But this is an illusion dispelled by examination. Events cannot be submerged in time. Time cannot be the vehicle of events. It is impossible to conceive time as existing simultaneously with an event. It always follows it. What to Mr. Peirce appears as a “flow,” arises from the foregoing. Take events, percepts, or concepts, as a hypothetical series, _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_ ... and their times as _a´_, _b´_, _c´_, _d´_ ... the first series contains the event _per se_, or as happening; the “time when” is contained in the second series, practically inseparable from the first, but the time when necessarily follows—consequently if the first be _a_, the second must be, at least _a_. But no concept or percept is abstract, except the concept time itself, which, being unconnected, _seems_ anywhere, and, like its fellow-abstract space, is spread out, to us, tri-dimensionally, as past, present, and to come. And, as in space the position is simply spectral,[74] a question of perspective or adjustment, so, in time, the timal series is adjusted to the substantive idea. But this two-fold spectral succession breeds by comparative intensity (which is another complex series) the sense of a flow, where there is none, but only the idea of a flowing, which is another matter. Thus, the so-called “veil of the future” is no more a veil than it is a brickbat. It is simply the indeterminateness of an unconnected adjective—as if one should say, white—and the query arises, _What_ is it that is white? When the noun is supplied you have something definite. Just so, when the future lapses into the present.

Thus there is never anything without, at least, these three additions: first, variety or difference; second, time; third, relation, spatial or otherwise. These are all terms in a series, or set of concurrent series. Nothing can be, practically, isolated, for everything runs in a series. But this is a much broader theory of continuity than that which Synechism affords.[75] All apparent perplexities vanish. The difficulty no longer exists that to perceive a series we must hold it, as it were, in solution. Since other than series nothing is. Hence the cosmos is an illimitable series or complex of series. But inasmuch as the timal element (as also the spatial) occurs through the series having time-term and space-term resident within it, all difficulty in apprehending it as a series vanishes. The impracticability, if any, would be in viewing any term as isolated.

THE RESULT _RE_ TYCHISM.

What a flood of light does such a system shed indirectly upon Tychism, since the controversy between the latter and determinism mainly hinges upon the “must be,” the imperative, as it were, of the series! It has been very ably pointed out by Dr. Carus in his article _re_ Mr. Peirce’s “Onslaught on the Doctrine of Necessity” (_The Monist_, Vol. II, No. 4, pp. 573-4.) that the formula adopted by Mr. Peirce in his Tychism, “chance is first, law is second, the tendency of habits is third,” involves its author in the admission of a law in a system professing to be, in its inception at all events, chanceful and _lawless_. Mr. Peirce’s “Synechism” professes to be the law of mind. Parenthetically, however, it may be remarked, that the distinction as to law, and lawlessness or “chance,” narrows itself to the plane of one term more or less in a series, or _even to less than that subordinate place_. For, although, for convenience sake, and for facility of contrast, we have followed Mr. Peirce’s figure of a series, to show more clearly also to what his theory leads, it is nevertheless plain, that time and its accompanying relations being placed on their proper level, that of integral percepts and concepts, the figure of a series is simply a matter of convenience of arrangement. Certainly as the “time when” is necessarily annexed to every percept and concept the timal element may be said to follow, not to precede, its fellow-term. Really, however, they may be said to be simultaneous, since the timal refinements of finite, infinite, past, present, and future are each of them contained in a percept of its own.

EXTERNALITY A SERIAL TERM.

But if the timal element be independent as a separate percept, the spatial as another, and so on, it follows that, although the terms of the series may, as it were, _run_, though we cannot conceive them separated, or as, in practice, otherwise than as continuous in their flow, still, theoretically, a series or complex of series it _is_, and a series may be interrupted at any term. Thus externality itself being a spatial relation, is but _one term more_, non-essential in theory, to the term preceding. So that when the Neo-Kantians speak of the “constitution of the objective” it ought to be added that it is not only the content of the objective which is thus constituted by consciousness, but that externality, all that goes to make up what is termed “out-sidedness,” is constituted by consciousness also.

THE NOW-TIME.

“_The present is half past, and half to come_,” (p. 546) like the color of a curved boundary line on a particolored surface; i. e. “betwixt and between” the two. It is here that the theory of Synechism shows its chief defect. Up to this stage we have been dealing with ideas, feelings, _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_ ... successively passing through a point of consciousness _e_. And the infinitesimal notation suits the required process fairly well. It is complicated enough, but it is ingenious, and at least plausible. Nothing up to this stage would lead us to suppose that any additional element was to be imported into the _rationale_ which Mr. Peirce presents. As we have seen, finite time would not serve his purpose. By however minute a _finite_ interval have _a_, _b_, _c_ or _d_ passed the point _e_, all chance of their recovery is hopeless. Well, we have recourse to infinitesimals, and find (to put it popularly, and not in Mr. Peirce’s technical terms) that _a_ past the point of consciousness by an infinitesimal interval heralds _b_. So that _e_ is simultaneously confronted with the disappearing form of the first and the appearing form of the second, and the same with _b_, and _c_, in turn, and so on. Thus the present, in the sense of ideas successively passing through consciousness, is half _a_ and half _b_, then half _b_ and half _c_, this infinitesimal gradation ultimately ensuring the presence of the whole series in the last “moment.”

But this will not avail with the concept time itself as distinguished from timed succession. That these two are separate with Mr. Peirce it is impossible to doubt. He says, e. g., “Time with its continuity logically involves some other kind of continuity than its own,” (p. 547) and speaks of “time and its flow,” and of “time as the universal form of change.” And it is confusing, to say the least, when we are shifted without warning from what is practically the perceptual to the conceptual region. Granted the ideas, the feelings, or what not, “gliding almost imperceptibly” (as did the late Mr. Bardell to another sphere) past the central point of consciousness, yet not wholly past, only going, less past than any assignable past date, granted this, the assertion is not consequently warranted that time itself, the _present_, as time, not as involving the succession of ideas, is “half past and half to come.” The ideas, the feelings, of which Mr. Peirce writes, successively pass through the stage of being thus half past and half to come, but that is by no means the same thing as saying that the present is half past, half to come, as Synechism avers. With our theory, as presented in the foregoing pages there is indeed no such difficulty, but Mr. Peirce, on the other hand, has elected to stand by infinitesimally measuring time, as applied to ideas etc., as separate from conceptual time, and must take the consequences of his decision. He says _the present, not the present idea_.

Now, in the concept time as a whole, in its entire range, a definite point may be selected—to the exclusion of other points—a point having position but not extension, as _the present_. Is it, then,—the present,—half past, half to come, as a timed idea is? Certainly not. There is nothing of the flow of a series in it. Further, this selection of the “now,” as a point, does not interfere with its permanence. “Nowness” may persist. And the moment it partook, even infinitesimally, of the character of the past or of the future, it would cease to be the present. In the case of a series of ideas in time the difficulty is to get them all in present solution, as it were, without detriment to their evident continuity, but the definition of the present as a point in time presents no such difficulty. The conditions are quite distinct. Yet regarding this time point—the present—Mr. Peirce assures us that it is “half past, half to come,” which is just that of which it is the precise negation, if words are to have any meaning.

Again, Mr. Peirce’s _rationale_ shows, upon the face of it, that there is (1) finitely divisible time and, (2) time divided infinitesimally, for what finite time could not do, in that it had limitations, the infinitesimal notation readily accomplishes. In its ulterior consequences, this is somewhat unfortunate for Synechism, inasmuch as the consciousness of ideas in continuity being confined to the infinitesimal theory, where, it may be asked, is the place, in consciousness, for the succession of finite intervals? Consciousness must be practically doubled, so to speak, if it is to hold both of these together. This is what comes of making one’s world-scheme hang upon a mathematical subtlety—the subtlety in question partaking as a rule, more or less of the nature of an escape from the difficulties of the vulgar notation, the vulgar notation remains to be reckoned with, and both have to be credited to consciousness. As an instance of this take the following from Mr. Peirce’s late article,[76] “Man’s Glassy Essence”—p. 15:

“In order that a sub-molecule of food may be thoroughly and firmly assimilated into a broken molecule of protoplasm, it is necessary not only that it should have precisely the right chemical composition, but also that it should be at precisely the right spot _at the right time_ and should be moving in precisely the right direction with precisely the right velocity. If all these conditions are not fulfilled, ... it will be in special danger of being thrown out again” (The italics are not in the original).

Now here is a “time when” which can be exactly specified in accordance with the conditions. Certain results follow unless it is kept to. This is what Mr. Peirce would doubtless consider as a timed physical event, part and parcel of the regularity of matter, and yet an event which, in its own time and way, goes to account for both feeling and habit-taking—capable, therefore, of being stated in terms of finite time, as happening at a given instant, and neither before nor after it. But when this same molecule is, by virtue of keeping its appointment punctually, safely installed in feeling protoplasm, the succession of ideas, or feelings, of which, as subject, it is capable, obeys another rule—a given _instant_ obtains no longer; it is the _moment_ which is everything[77]—a moment half its predecessor, half its successor. Even granted the function of the infinitesimal, this looks very much like a reduction to absurdity. For, if the above mentioned timed coalescence of the sub-molecule with the broken molecule were _also_ a matter of subjective feeling, passed as process through a consciousness, the conclusion follows that the juncture of the molecules happens at two different times! There is no escape from this. Given the _instant_ in the one case, the _moment_ in the other, these two cannot possibly be the same point in time. The moment partakes, however insensibly, of the preceding and succeeding stages, the instant does not. Hence they are not the same but different times.

OTHERNESS.

The foregoing has a distinct bearing upon the question of “other selves” of which Mr. Peirce writes as follows:

“The recognition by one person of another’s personality takes place by means to some extent identical with the means by which he is conscious of his own personality. The idea of the second personality, which is as much as to say that second personality itself, enters within the field of direct consciousness of the first person, and is as immediately perceived as his ego, though less strongly. At the same time, the opposition between the two persons is perceived, so that the externality of the second is recognised.” (“The Law of Mind,” p. 558.)

This is the scheme of “otherness” which, in the case of the Neo-Kantians, particularly the French section, represented by M. Pillon, M. Renouvier, and others, has proved such a snare. To these thinkers, (as indeed to the late Prof. T. H. Green, of Oxford, though in a less degree,) the so-called external world lies in “other” thinking subjects—in “foreign centres of representations.” The free-trade doctrine has verily penetrated to the philosophic region—the wholesale admission of foreign wares to the detriment of home products. Why should I place the content of that so-called external world, which, external or internal, is my very own inalienably, in a centre of representation other than my own, thus making my cognition of it rest entirely upon the “ejective” plane? It is only when I discover, as I must sooner or later, that there is nothing in the report of an “outsider” (or in any number of them) beyond what I credit him or her with in my own consciousness; and that the outsider is on the same plane as other objects, it is only then that the mystification is cleared up. I do _not_ cognise, or recognise, the external at second-hand. The “note” of otherness is simply another term more or less in the cosmical series.

It is, however, not only with the familiar “other selves” of ordinary life that we are confronted in Synechism. In the creed of animism

“Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,”

and Mr. Peirce speaks of “spiritual influences” (p. 559) as having at least no hindrance presented to them by his doctrine. But he has some other shadowy personalities at command, which, it must be confessed, are well calculated to give us pause. “There should be something like[78] personal consciousness in bodies of men who are in intimate and intensely sympathetic communion.... None of us can fully realise which the minds of corporations are.... But the law of mind clearly points to the existence of such personalities.” It is probably true that the “minds of corporations,” must ever present an insoluble riddle of perversity to the suburban dweller, vexed with the mockery of paving and lighting. But we need not linger over this speculation, for there are other shades behind.

“If such a fact is capable of being made out anywhere it should be in the Church.... Surely a personality ought to have developed in that Church, in that ‘bride of Christ,’ as they call it.” (“Man’s Glassy Essence,” pp. 21-22.)

A PERSONAL CREATOR.

Bearing our ecclesiastical divisions in mind, it is difficult to conceive the unity of a “corporate personality” of this kind, but, to let that pass, it may be remarked that, when any one begins to imagine that there are others in the universe besides himself, he is not, as a rule, content with two or three companions of his solitude. They come in battalions. Thus, behind the other selves, corporate personalities and spiritual influences of Synechism, there looms a transcendent personality. “A genuine evolutionary philosophy,” we are told, “... is so far from being antagonistic to the idea of a personal Creator, that it is really inseparable from that idea.” And a philosophy of pseudo-evolutionism is “hostile to all hopes of personal relations to God.” (“The Law of Mind,” p. 557.)

Mr. Peirce thus assigns to his first cause a place in the _continuum_ of ideas, and says that if there is a personal God we must have a direct perception of that person and “indeed be in personal communication with him.” The difficulty, he admits, is that if this be so, how is it possible that the existence of this being should ever have been doubted by anybody. And the only answer he can at present make is, that “facts that stand before our face and eyes, and stare us in the face, are far from being in all cases the ones most easily discerned. That,” he adds, “has been remarked from time immemorial.” (“The Law of Mind,” pp. 558-559.)

One of the ablest of living philosophical writers, Professor Veitch, of Glasgow University, puts it somewhat similarly, though with his own realistic coloring, when he says:

“God, if at all, must rise above the line of finite regress; He cannot be a cause in that; He cannot be a cause dependent on another cause; He must be somewhere, or at some point, in the line of an otherwise endless scientific regress, there, above it, yet related to it, and in it; otherwise He is nothing for us.” (“Knowing and Being,” p. 320.)

The parallelism is worth noting. Those views embody what has been the contention of the present writer throughout this paper, _with this most notable difference_: that no term of a series may thus transcend the series, or be other than on a level with the other terms, being itself only a term, a link, in the series itself. And with this falls forever the idea of a cause uncaused.

Yet am _I_ not _in_ the series? For all that is in the series is mine every percept, every concept; so that, “extravagant” as it may appear, it is _I who am the series_. In other words, the ego is the universe-synthesis, and the universe-synthesis the ego.

Is Mr. Peirce prepared to take the consequences of that which his Synechism leads to?

G. M. MCCRIE.

FOOTNOTES:

[67] From τύχη, chance.

[68] _Tychism_ again comes to the front in the succeeding number of _The Monist_, (Vol. III, No. 1,) in an article by Mr. Peirce, entitled “Man’s Glassy Essence.”

[69] Dr. Carus, in his review of Mr. Peirce’s doctrines, (_The Monist_, Vol. II, No. 4, p. 575,) notes this positivistic-constructionism.

[70] Cf. T. H. Green, _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Ch. II, p. 63.

[71] Nos. 258, 59, 61, August, 1892. _Miss Naden’s World-Scheme._

[72] In a note to this passage was appended a quotation from a pamphlet by Dr. E. Cobham Brewer as a practical instance of the objective being, on the antiquated subject-object plane, actually superseded. Suppose a very remote star to become extinct, the “vibrations” would continue to “travel” towards a spectator situated on our planet for years, it may be for centuries. So that the spectator, ultimately, “sees” that which does not even exist. Dr. Brewer’s comment, which cannot be considered any contribution to a satisfactory _rationale_, is: “the objects, however, must have existed, or no messenger could have been sent from their courts.” Evidently, in this case, that which is sent is, at least, as good as the sender—is, in fact, the self-same thing. Only, in that case, what of the extinct object?

[73] Or to put it in another form, any one idea, and the timing of this idea are really two ideas, although, as we shall see later, they may be inseparable in practice.

[74] Cf., in this connection, the results of experiments by Cheselden, as far back as 1727 on congenitally blind persons, couched for double cataract.

[75] Much more inclusive, also, than the Relational Theory of the Neo-Kantians.

[76] _The Monist_, Vol. III, No. 1.

[77] Mr. Peirce uses the word “instant” to mean a point of time, and “moment” to mean an infinitesimal duration.

[78] The phrase, “something like,” is significant, when we remember, (see _ante_,) that with Mr. Peirce the excitants were “something like” the excited feelings.

THE FOURTH DIMENSION.

MATHEMATICAL AND SPIRITUALISTIC.

INTRODUCTORY.

The tendency to generalise long ago led mathematicians to extend the notion of three-dimensional space, which is the space of sensible representation, and to define aggregates of points, or spaces, of more than three dimensions, with the view of employing these definitions as useful means of investigation. They had no idea of requiring people to imagine four-dimensional things and worlds, and they were even still less remote from requiring of them to believe in the real existence of a four-dimensioned space. In the hands of mathematicians this extension of the notion of space was a mere means devised for the discovery and expression, by shorter and more convenient ways, of truths applicable to common geometry and to algebra operating with more than three unknown quantities. At this stage, however, the spiritualists came in, and coolly took possession of this private property of the mathematicians. They were in great perplexity as to where they should put the spirits of the dead. To give them a place in the world accessible to our senses was not exactly practicable. They were compelled, therefore, to look around after some _terra incognita_, which should oppose to the spirit of research inborn in humanity an insuperable barrier. The residence of the spirits had to be a place inaccessible to our senses and full of mystery to the mind. This property the four-dimensioned space of the mathematicians possessed. With an intellectual perversity which science has no idea of, these spiritualists boldly asserted, first, that the whole world was so situated in a four-dimensioned space as a plane might be situated in the space familiar to us, secondly, that the spirits of the dead lived in such a four-dimensioned space, thirdly, that these spirits could accordingly act upon the world and, consequently, upon the human beings resident in it, exactly as we three-dimensioned creatures can produce effects upon things that are two-dimensional; for example, such effects as that produced when we shatter a lamina of ice, and so influence some possibly existing two-dimensioned _ice_-world.

Since spiritualism, under the leadership of the Leipsic Professor Zöllner, thus proclaimed the existence of a four-dimensioned space, this notion, which the mathematicians are thoroughly master of,—for in all their operations with it, though they have forsaken the path of actual representability, they have never left that of the truth,—this notion has also passed into the heads of lay persons who have used it as a catchword, ordinarily without having any clear idea of what they or any one else mean by it. To clear up such ideas and to correct the wrong impressions of cultured people who have not a technical mathematical training, is the purpose of the following pages. A similar elucidation was aimed at in the tracts which Schlegel (Riemann, Berlin, 1888) and Cranz (Virchow-Holtzendorff’s Sammlung, Nos. 112 and 113) have published on the so-called fourth dimension. Both treatises possess indubitable merits, but their methods of presentation are in many respects too concise to give a lay mind any profound comprehension of the subject. The author, accordingly, has been able to add to the reflections which these excellent treatises offer, a great deal that appears to him necessary for a thorough explanation in the minds of non-mathematicians of the notion of the fourth dimension.