Collected essays and reviews

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BY WILLIAM JAMES

The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Henry
Holt & Co. London: Macmillan & Co. 1890.

Psychology: Briefer Course. i2mo. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
London: Macmillan & Co. 1892.

The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy.

i2mo. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1897.

Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doc
trine. i6mo. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. London: J. M.
Dent & Co. 1898.

Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of
Life's Ideals. i2mo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. London:
Longmans . Green & Co. 1899.

The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York and London:
Longmans, Green & Co. 1902.

Pragmatism. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1907.

The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to Pragmatism. New York
and London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1909.

A Pluralistic Universe. New York and London: Longmans, Green &
Co. 1909.

Memories and Studies. New York and London: Longmans, Green &
Co. 1911.

Some Problems in Philosophy. New York and London: Longmans,
Green & Co. 1911.

Essays in Radical Empiricism. New York and London : Longmans,
Green & Co. 1912.

Collected Essays and Reviews. 8vo. New York and London:
Longmans, Green & Co. 1920.

Annotated Bibliography of the Writings of William James.

8vo. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1920.

Letters of William James. Edited, with Biographical Introduction
and Notes, by his son, Henry James. Illustrated. 2 vols. Boston:
the Atlantic Monthly Press, Inc. ; London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1920.

The Literary Remains of Henry James. Edited, with an introduc
tion, by William James. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. $2.00. Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885.

Selections

Habit. (A chapter from the "Psychology.") i6mo. New York: Henry
Holt & Co.

On Some of Life's Ideals. (Containing "On a Certain Blindness in
Human Beings" and "What Makes a Life Significant.") i6mo.
New York: Henry Holt & Co.

On Vital Reserves. (Containing "The Energies of Men" and "The
Gospel of Relaxation.") i6mo. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

n'v\

os.

COLLECTED
ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

BY

WILLIAM JAMES

t • '

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO

FOURTH AVENUE & 30-TH STREET, NEW YORK

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRESS OF GEO. H. ELLIS CO., BOSTON

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE

I. SARGENT'S Planchette [1869] .
II. LEWES'S Problems of Life and Mind
[1875]

III. GERMAN PESSIMISM [1875] . . •

IV. CHAUNCEY WRIGHT [1875] ... 20
V. BAIN AND RENOUVIER [1876] ... 26

VI. KENAN'S Dialogues [1876] . . 36

VII. LEWES'S Physical Basis of Mind

[1877] 40

VIII. REMARKS ON SPENCER'S DEFINITION

OF MIND AS CORRESPONDENCE [1878] 43
IX. QUELQUES CONSIDERATIONS SUR LA

MF/JDHODE SUBJECTIVE [1878] . . 69
X. THE SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

[1879] 83

XI. CLIFFORD'S Lectures and Essays

[1879] 137

XII. SPENCER'S Data of Ethics [1879] 147

XIII. THE FEELING OF EFFORT [1880] . 151

XIV. THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS IN DEAF-

MUTES [1882] 220

XV. WHAT is AN EMOTION? [1884] . . 244
XVI. THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSO
PHY [1885] 276

XVII. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF LOST LIMBS

[1887] 285

XVIII. RtiPONSE AUX REMARQUES DE M.
RENOUVIER SUR SA TH&ORIE DE LA

VOLONTF, [1888] 303

XIX. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF EX
TENSION [1889] 310

iii

CONTENTS

PAGE

XX. A PLEA FOR PSYCHOLOGY AS A "NAT
URAL SCIENCE" [1892] .... 316
XXI. THE ORIGINAL DATUM OF SPACE-
CONSCIOUSNESS [1893] .... 328
XXII. MR. BRADLEY ON IMMEDIATE RE
SEMBLANCE [1893] . . .' 333

XXIII. IMMEDIATE RESEMBLANCE [1893] . 339

XXIV. LADD'S Psychology: Descriptive and

Explanatory [1894] '342

XXV. THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

[1894] 346

XXVI. THE KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

[1895] 371

XXVII. DEGENERATION AND GENIUS [1895] . 401
XXVIII. PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS AND

PRACTICAL RESULTS [1898] . . 406
XXIX. HODGSON'S Observations of Trance

[1898] 438

XXX. Personal Idealism [1903] .... 442

XXXI. THE CHICAGO SCHOOL [1904] ... 445

XXXII. HUMANISM [1904] 448

XXXIII. LAURA BRIDGMAN [1904] .... 453

XXXIV. G. PAPINI AND THE PRAGMATIST

MOVEMENT IN ITALY [1906] . . > 459
XXXV. THE MAD ABSOLUTE [1906] ... 467
XXXVI. CONTROVERSY ABOUT TRUTH [1907] 470
XXXVII. REPORT ON MRS. PIPER'S HODGSON-
CONTROL [1909] 484

XXXVIII. BRADLEY OR BERGSON? [1910] . . 491
XXXIX. A SUGGESTION ABOUT MYSTICISM

[1910] . 500

INDEX 515

iv

PKEFACE

THIS volume brings together for the convenience
of students thirty-nine scattered articles and re
views by William James. None of these has here
tofore appeared in book form, and many have
been lost sight of and forgotten. The present vol
ume when added to those already published will
render easily accessible nearly all of the author's
significant writings. The few exceptions will be
noted presently.

In presenting this book to the public the editor
is fully aware that he will meet with criticism from
two opposite angles, on the one hand from those who
disbelieve in posthumous publications altogether,
and on the other hand from those who would reprint
every work of the author's pen whose authenticity
can be established.

The justification of publishing such a book at all
lies in the interest and convenience of the wide circle
of James's students and of the still wider circle of
those who delight in reading him. The forthcoming
Annotated Bibliography of the Writings of William
James (1920) contains approximately three hun
dred titles, exclusive of translations and posthu
mous publications. Of these only nine are the titles
of books, and of these nine books, only three
(Human Immortality, Varieties of Religious Ex
perience, and Psychology: Briefer Course) had not

PREFACE

been in whole or part previously published in peri
odicals. For over forty years from 1868 up to
within a few months of his death in 1910, James
wrote essays, articles, reviews, and letters almost
continuously. Nor were these hastily written and
subsequently revised. It was the author's habit
to write well and finally when he did write; and
then when he had something more to say, to write
again. In other words there is a finished quality,
both of style and of thought, in most of his periodi
cal writings. While many of these writings have
already been collected, some by James himself,
others since his death, these represent only a frac
tion of the whole. Among the periodical writings
omitted from previous volumes are many which are
of great value for the light which they throw upon
James's own development and his relations with his
contemporaries, as well as for their philosophical
and psychological content. Scattered through vari
ous periodicals they can only with difficulty be con
sulted by the student, and are entirely inaccessible
to the average reader. In addition to these the pres
ent volume contains a number of reviews which were
originally published unsigned, and whose author
ship has not heretofore been announced.

There are undoubtedly many devotees of James
who will regret that James's scattered writings
have not all been reprinted. As a matter of fact,
many of the reviews contain little else than exposi
tory matter, many of the articles have been in sub
stance restated elsewhere, and many of the letters

vi

PREFACE

and shorter writings are of such a nature as to be
more suitable to a biography. Some of this last
group are quoted or cited in the forthcoming
Letters of William James. The editor is further
reconciled to the omission of these three groups of
writings by the fact that the Annotated Bibliog
raphy will serve to make them known and will
enable a sufficiently eager reader to find them.

There is one group of articles that has presented
a peculiar problem, which has not been solved with
out misgivings. The three articles, "Are We Auto
mata?" Mind, 1879, "The Spacial Quale," Journal
of Speculative Philosophy, 1879, and "On Some
Omissions of Introspective Psychology," Mind,
1884, are all psychological classics. Each deals
with one of James's most original and important
contributions to the subject. None of these was re
printed as a whole in the Principles of Psychology,
and they have great historical interest as they
stand. Nevertheless there is no important differ
ence between the content of these articles and that
of those chapters of the Principles which deal with
the same topics. Furthermore the preparation of
the Annotated Bibliography has afforded the editor
an opportunity of calling attention to them and of
relating them to James's other writings. Hence,
in view of their great length, it has been deemed
best to omit them from the present volume. But at
the same time several other articles of the same type
have been included: "Spencer's Definition of Mind
as Correspondence" because of its unique historical

vii

PKEFACE

importance, as perhaps the key to all of James's
later thought; "The Sentiment of nationality" be
cause of the light which it throws on James's phil
osophical sources ; "The Feeling of Effort" because
of its extreme inaccessibility in its present form;
"What is an Emotion?" because, being written before
the publication of Lange's work on the same subject,
it throws important light on the question of priority
respecting the famous "James-Lange theory."

It would in some respects have been more satis
factory if the papers contained in the present vol
ume had been arranged in accordance with their
subject-matter, or grouped under the headings
"Philosophy," "Psychology," and "Psychical Re
search." But such a classification would have
been entirely artificial and would have obscured the
unity of the author's thought. Such papers as
"Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence" or
"The Sentiment of Rationality" are equally philo
sophical and psychological; at any rate, to group
them as the one or the other would have been to
put a certain construction on them instead of let
ting them speak for themselves. The chronological
arrangement which has been adopted is convenient
and colorless, and has the additional advantage of
indicating the sequence of the author's intellectual
development.

In the preparation of this volume I have con
sulted many of James's friends, and while I am
alone responsible for the ultimate selection, I have
been guided so far as possible by the judgment of

viii

PREFACE

those who were best qualified both by their interest
in Jaines and by their familiarity with the subject-
matter of his writings. It gives me pleasure to
acknowledge the help of Dr. E. B. Holt, Dr. R. M.
Yerkes, Dr. F. C. S. Schiller, Judge T. M. Shackle-
ford, Professor E. B. Titchener, Professor D. S.
Miller, Dr. James R. Angell, Dr. H. M. Kallen, and
Dr. Benjamin Rand. My colleagues, Professor H. S.
Langfeld and Professor W. B. Cannon, have been
especially generous of their time, and on certain
technical matters beyond my competence their as
sistance has been invaluable. Finally, the under
taking would have been entirely impossible without
the continuous encouragement and co-operation of
Mr. Henry James.

The recent reading and re-reading of all of James's
known writings have impressed two things very
deeply on my mind. Eirsj:f there was one and only
one James from the beginning to the end. With all
of his versatility and openmindedness he remained
unconsciously loyal to certain fundamental con
victions. It is even permissible to say that there
is one germinal idea from which his whole thought
grew, provided we do not overlook the even more
important fact that his thought did grow. This
germinal idea is the idea of the essentially active
and interested character of the human mind. Sec
ond, I have been impressed as never before by
James's extraordinary intellectual chivalry and
hospitality, the reflection of his peculiar social
genius. He was a man quick to reach to the heart

ix

PREFACE

of another man, quick to praise, quick to esteem
the gifts of others, even when, as sometimes hap
pened, no one else esteemed them at all. This grati
tude which James felt so genuinely and manifested
with so much kindliness was not infrequently the
foundation in others of their sustaining self-re
spect. Beginning with the older generation of
his father and teachers, and ending with the
younger generation of his children and students, his
life was a continuous succession of marvellous hu
man discoveries. As it was with his personal inter
course, so it was in his relations with those whom
he knew more remotely or only through their writ
ings. Most of these discoveries he has published
to the world, in his prefaces and citations, or in
those remarkable memorial addresses which have
been reprinted in the Memories and Studies and
which few men have known so well how to write.

When, as in this volume, we view James's thought
throughout its entire length, we find him moving
steadily abreast of his time and welcoming new
ideas with eagerness and relish down to the day of
his death. But despite this fact he was somehow
never swept off his feet. He was never fickle or
vacillating, nor did his thought ever lose its highly
personal and characteristic flavor. There are few
intellectual histories in which quick enthusiasm and
love of novelty are so perfectly balanced by steadi
ness and discipline.

RALPH BARTON PERRY.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
May 24, 1920.

X

I

SABGENT'S "PLANCHETTE" 1

[1869]

A READER of scientific habits of thought would
have been more interested by a very few cases de
scribed by the author over his own signature, and
with every possible detail given, in which pedanti
cally minute precautions had been taken against
illusion of the senses or deceit. Of course it is quite
natural that people who are comfortably in pos
session of a season-ticket over the Stygian ferry,
and daily enjoying the privileges it confers of
correspondence with the "summer-land," should
grow out of all sympathy with the critical vigilance
and suspicion about details which characterize
the intellectual condition of the "Sadducees," as our
author loves to call the earth-bound portion of the
community. From his snug home in an atmosphere
in which pianos float, "soft warm hands" bud forth
from vacant space, and lead pencils write alone, the
spiritualist has a right to feel a personal disdain

1 Selected paragraphs comprising about one-half of an un
signed review of E. Sargent's Planchette: or the Despair of
Science; which review was originally printed in Boston Daily
Advertiser, March 10, 1869. The book offered a history and de
fense of modern spiritualism. In connection with the date of
the review it is to be noted that the Society for Psychical Re
search was not founded until 1882.

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

for the "scientific man" who stands inertly aloof in
his pretentious enlightenment. Scientific men seem
to demand that spiritualists should come and
demonstrate to them the truth of their doctrine,
by something little short of a surgical operation
upon their intellects. But the spiritualist, from his
point of view, is quite justified in leaving them for
ever on their "laws of nature," unconverted, since
he in no way needs their countenance.

But an author writing avowedly for purposes of
propagandism should have recognized more fully
the attitude of this class, and recollected that one
narrative personally vouched for and minutely con
trolled, would be more apt to fix their attention,
than a hundred of the striking but comparatively
vaguely reported second-hand descriptions which
fill many of the pages of this book. The present
attitude of society on this whole question is as
extraordinary and anomalous as it is discreditable
to the pretensions of an age which prides itself on
enlightenment and the diffusion of knowledge. We
see tens of thousands of respectable people on the
one hand admitting as facts of every day certainty,
what tens of thousands of others equally respect
able claim to be abject and contemptible delusion;
while other tens of thousands are content to stand
passively in the dark between these two hosts and
in doubt, the matter meanwhile being — rightfully
considered — one of really transcendent interest. In
this state of things recrimination is merely lost
time. Those people who have the interests of truth

[1869] SARGENT'S "PLANCHETTE"

at heart should remember that personal dignity is
of very little comparative consequence. If our
author, in concert with some good mediums, had
instituted some experiments in which everything
should be protected from the possibility of deceit,
remembering that the morality of no one in such a
case is to be taken for granted, and that such per
sonal precautions cannot be offensively construed,
he would probably have made a better contribution
to clearing up the subject than he has now done.

3

II

LEWES'S "PBOBLEMS OF LIFE AND
MIND" x

[1875]

MORE problems! Why should we read them if
they are not our problems, but only Mr. Lewes's?
Of all forms of earthly worry, the metaphysical
worry seems the most gratuitous. If it lands us in
permanently skeptical conclusions, it is worse than
superfluous; and if (as is almost always the case
with non-skeptical systems) it simply ends by "in
dorsing" common-sense, and reinstating us in the
possession of our old feelings, motives, and duties,
we may fairly ask if it was worth while to go so far
round in order simply to return to our starting-
point and be put back into the old harness. Is not
the primal state of philosophic innocence, since
the practical difference is nil, as good as the state of
reflective enlightenment? And need we, provided
we can stay at home and take the world for granted,
undergo the fatigues of a campaign with such un
comfortable spirits as the present author, merely
for the sake of coming to our own again, with noth
ing gained but the pride of having accompanied his

[J Review of Problems of Life and Mind, by George Henry
Lewes, first series, 1875. Reprinted from Atlantic Monthly,
1875, 86, 361-363. ED.]

[1875] LEWES'S PROBLEMS

expedition? So we may ask. But is the pride
nothing? Consciousness is the only measure of
utility, and even if no philosophy could ever alter
a man's motives in life, — which is untrue, — that it
should add to their conscious completeness is
enough to make thousands take upon themselves its
burden of perplexities. We like the sense of com
panionship with better and more eager intelligences
than our own, and that increment of self-respect
which we all experience in passing from an instinc
tive to a reflective state, and adopting a belief which
hitherto we simply underwent.

Mr. Lewes has drunk deep of the waters of skepti
cism that have of late years been poured out so
freely in England, but he has worked his way
through them into a constructive activity; and his
work is only one of many harbingers of a reflux
in the philosophic tide. All philosophic reflection
is essentially skeptical at the start. To common-
sense, and in fact to all living thought, matters ac
tually thought of are held to be absolutely and
objectively as we think them. Every representation
per sc, and while it persists, is of something abso
lutely so. It becomes relative, flickering, insecure,
only when reduced, only in the light of further con
sideration which we may bring forward to confront
it with. This may be called its reductive. Now the
reductive of most of our confident beliefs about
Being is the reflection that they are our beliefs;
that we are turbid media ; and that a form of being
may exist uncontaminated by the touch of the fal-

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

lacious knowing subject. In the light of this con
ception, the Being we know droops its head; but
until this conception has been formed it knows no
fear. The motive of most philosophies has been to
find a position from which one could exorcise the
reductive, and remain securely in possession of a
secure belief. Ontologies do this by their concep
tion of "necessary" truth, i. e., a truth with no
alternative; with a prwterea nihil, and not a plus
ultra possibile; a truth, in other words, whose only
reductive would be the impossible, nonentity, or
zero.

In such conclusions as these philosophy re-joins
hands with common-sense. For above all things
common-sense craves for a stable conception of
things. We desire to know what to expect. Once
having settled down into an attitude towards life
both as to its details and as a whole, an incalculable
disturbance which might arise, disconcert all our
judgments, and render our efforts vain, would be in
the last degree undesirable. Now as a matter of
fact we do live in a world from which as a rule we
know what to expect. Whatever items we found to
gether in the past are likely to coexist in the future.
Our confidence in this state of things deprives us of
all sense of insecurity; if we lay our plans rightly
the world will fulfill its part of the contract. Com
mon-sense, or popular philosophy, explains this by
what is called the judgment of Substance, that is,
by the postulation of a persistent Nature, immut
able by time, behind each phenomenal group, which

6

[1875] LEWES'S PROBLEMS

binds that group together and makes it what it is
essentially and eternally. Even in regard to that
mass of accidents which must be expected to occur
in some shape but cannot be accurately prophesied
in detail, we set our minds at rest, by saying that
the world with all its events has a substantial
cause; and when we call this cause God, Love, or
Perfection, we feel secure that whatever the future
may harbor, it cannot at bottom be inconsistent
with the character of this term. So our attitude
towards even the unexpected is in a general sense
defined.

Now this substantial judgment has been adopted
by most dogmatic philosophies. They have ex
plained the collocations of phenomena by an im
mutable underlying nature or natures, beside or
beyond which they have posited either the sphere
of the Impossible, if they professed rationalism
throughout, or merely a de facto Nonentity if they
admitted the element of Faith as legitimate. But
the skeptical philosophers who have of late pre
dominated in England have denied that the sub
stantial judgment is legitimate at all, and in so
doing have seemed among other things to deny the
legitimacy of the confidence and repose which it
engenders. The habitual concurrence of the same
phenomena is not a case of dynamic connection at
all, they say. It may happen again — but we have
no rational warrant for asserting that it must.
The syntheses of data we think necessary are only
so to us, from habit. The universe may turn inside

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

out to-morrow, for aught we know; our knowledge
grasps neither the essential nor the immutable. In
stead of a nonentity beyond, there is a darkness,
peopled it may be with every nightmare shape.
Their total divergence from popular philosophy has
many other aspects, but this last thought is their
reductive of its tendency to theosophize and of its
dogmatic confidence in general.

The originality of Mr. Lewes is that while vigor
ously hissing the "Substances" of common-sense and
metaphysics off the stage, he also scouts the reduc
tive which the school of Mill has used, and main
tains the absoluteness and essentiality of our knowl
edge. The world according to him as according to
them is truly enough only the world as known, but
for us there is no other world. For grant a moment
the existence of such a one: we could never be af
fected by it; as soon as we were affected, however,
we should be knowers of it, in the only sense in
which there is any knowledge at all, the sense of
subjective determination, — and it would have be
come our world. Now, as such it is a universe and
not a heap of sand, or, as has been said, a nulliverse
like Mill's. Its truths are wternce veritates, essen
tial, exhaustive, immutable. We can settle down
upon them and they will keep their promise. The
sum of all the properties is the substance ; the pred
icates are the subject; each property is the other
viewed in a "different aspect." The same colloca
tions must therefore occur in the future. So far
from the notion of cause being illusory, the cause

8

[1875] LEWES'S PROBLEMS

is the effect "in another relation," and the effect the
procession of the cause. The identification by con
tinuity of what the senses discriminate, and so, ac
cording to the reigning empiricism, disunite, is
carried so far by Mr. Lewes that in his final chapter
he affirms the psychic event which accompanies a
tremor in the brain to be that tremor "in a different
aspect."

His arguments we have not space to expose. One
thing is obvious, however: that his results will
meet with even greater disfavor from the empirics
than from the ontologists in philosophy, and that
the pupils of Mill and Bain in particular will find
this bold identification of the sensibly diverse too
mystical to pass muster. It is in fact the revival
of the old Greek puzzle of the One and the Many —
how each becomes the other — which they, if we ap
prehend them aright, have escaped by the simple
expedient of suppressing the One. They will join
hands too with the ontologists in conjuring up be
yond the universe recognized by Mr. Lewes the
spectre of an hypothetical possible Something, not
a Zero — only the ontologists will not join them
again in letting this fill the blank form of a logical
reductive pure and simple, but will dub it the uni
verse in se, or the universe as related to God, if Mr.
Lewes still insists on their defining everything as in
relation. That Mr. Lewes should say candidly of
this thought that he is willing to ignore it, cannot
restrain them. We may conclude, therefore, that
ever-sprouting reflection, or skepticism, just as it

9

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

preys on all other systems, may also in strict theo
retic legitimacy prey upon the ultimate data of Mr.
Lewes's Positivism taken as a whole; even though
all. men should end by admitting that within the
bounds of that empirical whole, his views of the
necessary continuity between the parts were true.
To this reduction by a plus ultra, Mr. Lewes can
only retort by saying, "Foolishness ! So much on-
tologic thirst is a morbid appetite." But in doing
this he simply falls back on the act of faith of all
positivisms. Weary of the infinitely receding chase
after a theoretically warranted Absolute, they re
turn to their starting-point and break off there, like
practical men, saying, "Physics, we espouse thee;
for better or worse be thou our Absolute !"

Skepticism, or unrest, in short, can always have
the last word. After every definition of an object,
reflection may arise, infect it with the cogito, and
so discriminate it from the object in se. This is
possible ad infinitum. That we do not all do it is
because at a certain point most of us get tired of
the play, resolve to stop, and assuming something
for true, pass on to a life of action based on that.

We wish that Mr. Lewes had emphasized this
volitional moment in his Positivism. Although the
consistent pyrrhonist is the only theoretically un
assailable man, it does not follow that he is the
right man. Between us and the universe, there are
no "rules of the game." The important thing is that
our judgments should be right, not that they should
observe a logical etiquette. There is a brute, blind

10

[1875] LEWES'S PROBLEMS

element in every thought which still has the vital
heat within it and has not yet been reflected on.
Our present thought always has it, we cannot es
cape it, and we for our part think philosophers had
best acknowledge it, and avowedly posit their uni
verse, staking their persons, so to speak, on the
truth of their position. In practical life we despise
a man who will risk nothing, even more than one
who will heed nothing. May it not be that in the
theoretic life the man whose scruples about flawless
accuracy of demonstration keep him forever shiver
ing on the brink of Belief is as great an imbecile as
the man at the opposite pole, who simply consults
his prophetic soul for the answer to everything?
What is this but saying that our opinions about the
nature of things belong to our moral life?

Mr. Lewes's personal fame will now stand or fall
by the credo he has published. We do not think the
fame should suffer, even though we reserve our as
sent to important parts of the creed. The book is
full of vigor of thought and felicity of style, in spite
of its diffuseness and repetition. It will refute
many of the objections made by critics to the first
volume ; and will, we doubt not, be a most important
ferment in the philosophic thought of the immediate
future.

11

Ill

GEEMAJST PESSIMISM1

[1875]

THE German intellect is a far more complex
affair than the English intellect, and a fortiori than
the French or Italian. From sensualism to mysti
cism, from fatalistic quietism to the most ruthless
practicality, there is hardly a mental quality or
tendency which one will not find better represented
in Germany than elsewhere ; save only one, and that
is the quality of naivete or spontaneity. Every sub
ject of King William is, ex-officio, reflective and self-
conscious, unable to surrender himself to any
sentiment, however simple, till he has reflected on
it and woven it into a systematic theory, or in other
words transmuted it from an impulse into a princi
ple. Whatever the German feels or does, he does
with malice prepense ; he justifies himself, by show
ing that the act or thought must rightfully flow
from one in his position. Whether the position be
that of a citizen properly filled with Nationalbe-
wusstsein, of a competitor in the egoistic struggle
for existence, of a subject of the Categorical Im
perative, or of a Moment in the Weltprozess, is all

[*A review of Der Modern Pessimismus, by Dr. Edmund
Pfleiderer. Berlin, 1875. Reprinted from Nation, 1875, 21,
233-234. ED.]

12

[1875] GERMAN PESSIMISM

one — we find everywhere that same cold-blooded
self-corroboration and merging of the personal deed
in universal considerations which, more than ma
terial spoliation and Draconian discipline, exasper
ated the French during the late invasion, and have
made them call the Germans "hypocrites" ever
since.

Perhaps as striking an illustration of this over
weening tendency to theorize as can be found is
afforded by the popular German school of pessi
mistic philosophy, of which Professor Pfleiderer's
pamphlet is the latest and one of the ablest criti
cisms. In other countries, aristocratic misan
thropes, dyspeptic pleasure-seekers, and unappreci
ated geniuses have existed, and their utterances
never passed beyond the sphere of splenetic or
pathetic individuality. Souls with an unassuage-
able love of justice and harmony have also existed,
and their utterances, like Leopardi's and Shelley's,
have been lyrical cries of defiance or despair, which
perished with them. It was reserved for Schopen
hauer to show his countrymen that the cursing and
melting moods could be kept alive permanently,
and extended indefinitely by making proper theo
retic deliberation; and Schopenhauer's disciple
Hartmann, whose work, the Philosophic des Unbe-
wussten, has met with one of the greatest literary
successes of the time, and carried the new gospel
into regions where the torch of metaphysics had
never yet begun to glimmer, has made everything so
simple and perfect in his system, that all who have

13

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

a quarrel with destiny, whether peevish or tragic,
can be housed there side by side, without altering
their mode of life or losing any of their "home com
forts" in the process of cure. For it would be un
pardonable in these philosophers to preach disgust
with life unless the disgust were likely to lead the
way to a cure. Existence being of course the original
sin of that substance or essence of things which
Schopenhauer calls "Will," and to which Von Hart-
mann gives the name of "the Unconscious," anni
hilation or nirvana is of course the cure. And in
both philosophies this may be attained through the
thorough and final intellectual persuasion of the
vanity of all the goods of life and the consequent
extinction of every desire.

But here begins the divergence. The aristocratic
master has no hopes of the human or any other
race as a whole, and his nirvana is restricted to the
few who are ascetics and saints. In the witty
words of Pfleiderer, the battle-cry with which he
plunges into life's fray and rallies his followers
about him is the well-known "sauve qui pent." The
pupil, on the contrary, equipped with a Berlin edu
cation and imbued with notions of evolution and
progress which to Schopenhauer (who wrote before
Darwin) were profoundly distasteful, provides for
a collective salvation, based on no less a perform
ance than a unanimous resolve on the part of all
sentient beings, penetrated at last through and
through with tedium vitce, and despair of gaining
anything by fighting it out on the line of existence —

14

[1875] GERMAN PESSIMISM

to stop, and back out of it, when this world will
cease at any rate. Whether there will ever be
another world depends wholly on whether the
wicked old "Unconscious" chooses again to emerge
from its state of mere potentiality; and as it is
being without rhyme or reason, a mere brutum, the
chances for and against that unlucky eventuality
are just even, or expressed in mathematical lan
guage by the fraction one-half. Schopenhauer's
philosophy, says Hartmann, is one of despair. So
far is this from being the worst of all possible
worlds, that it is the best, for it tends invincibly
to the summum bonum of extinction. Let no man
then desert the ranks, but each labor in the Lord's
vineyard, sneering, lamenting, and cursing as he
pleases, getting indigestion himself, and begetting
young, to inoculate them with a disgust greater
than his own, and co-operating so with the grand
movement of things which is bound to culminate
in deliverance. Above all, let us have no standing
aloof and trying prematurely to save one's individ
ual self, like Schopenhauer's ascetics. This delight
fully unselfish submission to epicurean practice in
the midst of pessimistic theory is Hartmann's
cleverest stroke. As in Beranger's song :

"Nous laisserions finir le monde
Si nos femmes le voulaient bien !"

Schopenhauer was truly a bungler. But, joking
apart, the reader can easily see how little living
seriousness Hartmann possesses. He seems to us

15

I

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

to have a clever journalistic mind, with a Prussian
education, ready for any paradox which will make
a sensation, and without a grain of that auctoritas
which belongs to the sombre and impressive genius
of his teacher.

The latter is assuredly one of the greatest of
writers. When such a one expatiates upon the texts
of Homo homini lupus and Woman the focus of the
world's illusion, he will have all the cynics with
a taste for good literature for his admirers. And
when he preaches compassion to be the one cardinal
virtue, and morbidly reiterates the mystic Sanskrit
motto, Tat twan asi — This [maniac or cripple] art
thou — as the truth of truths, he will of course exert
a spell over persons in the unwholesome sentimental
moulfing-time of youth. But the thing which to our
Anglo-Saxon mind seems so outlandish is that
crowds of dapper fellows, revelling in animal spirits
and conscious strength, should enroll themselves in
cold blood as his permanent apostles, and feel as
sorely when their pessimism is attacked as the
fabled old dead inmate of the almshouse did when,
not good enough for heaven, she was also shut out
from hell, and sat on the road and wept that she
should have to return to Tewkesbury.

For, however it may stand with Tewkesbury, in
the world at large, practically considered, optimism
is just as true as pessimism. These Germans can
attain their absolute luxury of woe only by speaking
of things transcendentally and metaphysically. As
far as the outward animal life goes, the existence

16

[1875] GERMAN PESSIMISM

of a Walt Whitman confounds Schopenhauer quite
as thoroughly as the existence of a Leopard! refutes
Dr. Pangloss; and Hartmann's elaborate indict
ment of the details of life is precisely on a par in
point of logic with the "wisdom and beneficence"
philosophy of the most edifying and gelatinous
Sunday-school orator. Common-sense contents it
self with the unreconciled contradiction, laughs
when it can, and weeps when it must, and makes,
in short, a practical compromise, without trying a
theoretical solution. This attitude is of course re
spectable. But if one must needs have an ultimate
theoretical solution, nothing is more certain than
this, that no one need assent to that of pessimism
unless he freely prefer to do so. Concerning the
metaphysical world, or the ultimate meaning of
things, there is no outward evidence — nothing but
conceptions of the possible. Distinct among these is
that of a moral order whose life may be fed by the
contradictions of good and evil that occur in the ex
ternal phenomenal order. Those empiricists who
are celebrating nowadays with such delight the
novel mathematical notion of a fourth or "tran
scendental" dimension in space, should be the last
persons to dogmatize against the possibility of a
deeper dimension in being than the flat surface-
pattern which is offered by its pleasures and pains,
taken merely as such. Now, if such an order in the
world is possibly true, and if, supposing it to be
true, it may afford the basis for an ultimate opti
mism (quite distinct from mere nerveless sent!-

17

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS [1875]

mentalism), there is no reason which should deter
a person bent on having some commanding theory
of life from adopting it as his hypothesis or working
faith. He may of course prefer pessimism, but only
at the price of a certain internal inconsistency.
(We purposely neglect to consider dogmatic ma
terialism here.) For pessimism is really only con
sistent with a strictly dogmatic attitude. It is
fatalistic in the thorough Oriental sense, being by
its very definition a theory from which one is bound
to escape, if he can. Its account of things is con
fessedly abhorrent, and nothing but coercive out
ward evidence should make one stay within its pale.
Now, a hypothetical door like that offered by the
notion of a ransoming moral order "behind the veil"
is better than no loophole of escape ; and to refuse
to give one's self the benefit of its presence argues
either a perfectly morbid appetite for dogmatic
forms of thought, or an astounding lack of genuine
sense for the tragic, which sense undoubtedly
varies, like every other, from man to man.

With transcendental optimism, on the other
hand, it is just the reverse. If it is true, why, then,
there is the deepest internal congruity in its not
being mechanically forced on our belief. As a
fatalistic nolens-volens creed, it would be devoid of
all moral character. Or rather, we may not talk of
its being true, but becoming true. Its full verifi
cation must be contingent on our complicity, both
theoretical and practical. All that it asserts is
that the facts of the world are a fit basis for the

18

[1875] GERMAN PESSIMISM

summum bonum, if we do our share and react upon
them as it is meant we should (with fortitude, for
example, and undismayed hope). The world is
thus absolutely good only in a potential or hypo
thetic sense, and the hypothetic form of the opti
mistic belief is the very signature of its consistency,
and first condition of its probability. At the final
integration of things, the world's goodness will be
an accomplished fact and self-evident, but, till then,
faith is the only legitimate attitude of mind it can
claim from us.

So plain is all this that the pessimistic contro
versy has far more of an ethnic than a philosophic
interest for us. We are only sorry that, at this
distance, the data are too few for us to see what its
full ethnic import is. If it simply result in con
firming in Germany the tonic creed that there
comes a time when every good, however precious, is
fit for nothing but destruction, for the sake of a
higher good, and that passive felicity is a dream, it
can do no harm. Dr. Pfleiderer-s pamphlet, which
takes substantially the same ground as we do, is
both temperate and witty, and may be cordially
recommended to those interested in the subject.

19

IV

CHAUNCEY WRIGHT1

[1875]

THE death which we briefly noticed last week re
minds us most sadly of the law, that to be an effec
tive great man one needs to have many qualities
great. If power of analytic intellect pure and
simple could suffice, the name of Chauncey Wright
would assuredly be as famous as it is now obscure,
for he was not merely the great mind of a village —
if Cambridge will pardon the expression — but
either in London or Berlin he would, with equal
ease, have taken the place of master which he held
with us. The reason why he is now gone without
leaving any work which his friends can consider as
a fair expression of his genius, is that his shyness,
his want of ambition, and to a certain degree his
indolence, were almost as exceptional as his power
of thought. Had he, in early life, resolved to con-

[* Reprinted from Nation, 1875, 21, 194. James acknowledged
bis indebtedness to Wright's "intellectual companionship in old
times," in the Preface to the Principles of Psychology, I, p. vii.
He borrowed the expression cosmical "weather," in Will to
Believe, p. 52. There are important points of resemblance be
tween Wright and C. S. Pedrce, to whom James gives the credit
for pragmatism. Wright's death occurred on September 12,
1875, in his forty-fifth year. His Philosophical Discussions
have been collected and edited with a biography by C. E.
Norton, New York, 1877. ED.]

20

[1875] CHAUNCEY WRIGHT

centrate these and make himself a physicist, for
example, there is no question but that his would
have ranked to-day among the few first living
names. As it was, he preferred general criticism
and contemplation, and became something resem
bling more a philosopher of the antique or Socratic
type than a modern Gelehrter. His best work has
been done in conversation; and in the acts and
writings of the many friends he influenced his spirit
will, in one way or another, as the years roll on, be
more operative than it ever was in direct produc
tion. Born at Northampton in 1830, graduating at
Harvard in 1852, he left us in the plenitude of his
powers. His outward work is limited to various
articles in the North American Review (one of
which Mr. Darwin thought important enough to re
print as a pamphlet in England), a paper or two
in the Transactions of the Academy of Arts and
Sciences, and a number of critical notices in our
own pages — the latest of these being the article en
titled "German Darwinism/' which we1 published
only two weeks ago. As a writer, he was defective
in the shaping faculty — he failed to emphasize the
articulations of his argument, to throw a high
light, so to speak, on the important points ; so that
many a casual peruser has probably read on and
never noticed the world of searching consequences
which lurked involved in some inconspicuously
placed word. He spent many years in computing
for the Nautical Almanac and from time to time

1 The Nation.
21

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

accepted some pedagogic work. He gave a course
of University lectures on psychology in Harvard
College in 1871, and last year he conducted there a
course in mathematical physics. As little of a reader
as an educated man well can be, he yet astonished
every one by his omniscience, for no specialist could
talk with Chauncey Wright without receiving some
sort of instruction in his specialty. This was due
to his irrepressible spontaneous habit of subtle
thinking. Every new fact he learned set his whole
mental organism in motion, and reflection did not
cease till the novel thought was firmly woven with
the entire system of his knowledge. Of course in
this process new conclusions were constantly
evolved, and many a man of science who hoped to
surprise him with news of a discovery has been him
self surprised by finding it already constructed by
Wright from data separately acquired in this or
that conversation with one or other of the many
scholars of Cambridge or Boston, most of whom he
personally knew so well.

In philosophy, he was a worker on the path
opened by Hume, and a treatise on psychology writ
ten by him (could he have been spared and induced
to undertake the drudgery) would probably have
been the last and most accomplished utterance of
what he liked to call the British school. He would
have brought the work of Mill and Bain for the
present to a conclusion. Of the two motives to
which philosophic systems owe their being, the crav
ing for consistency or unity in thought, and the de-

22

[1875] CHAUNCEY WRIGHT

sire for a solid outward warrant for our emotional
ends, his mind was dominated only by the former.^
Never in a human head was contemplation more
separated from desire. Schopenhauer, who defined
genius as a cognitive faculty manumitted from the
service of the will, would have found in him an even
stronger example of his definition than he cared to
meet. For to Wright's mode of looking at the uni
verse such ideas as pessimism or optimism were
alike simply irrelevant. Whereas most men's inter
est in a thought is proportioned to its possible re
lation to human destiny, with him it was almost the
reverse. When the mere actuality of phenomena
will suffice to describe them, he held it pure excess
and superstition to speak of a metaphysical whence
or whither, of a substance, a meaning, or an end.
Just as in cosmogony he preferred Mayer's theory
to the nebular hypothesis, and in one of his earliest
North American Review articles used the happy
phrase, "cosmical weather," to describe the irregu
lar dissipation and aggregation of worlds; so, in
contemplating the totality of being, he preferred to
think of phenomena as the result of a sort of on-
tologic weather, without inward rationality, an
aimless drifting to and fro, from the midst of which
relatively stable and so (for us) rational combina
tions may emerge. The order we observe in things
needs explanation only on the supposition of a pre
liminary or potential disorder; and this he pointed
out is, as things actually are orderly, a gratuitous
notion. Anaxagoras, who introduced into philos-

23

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS £18751

ophy the notion of the vou<;? also introduced with it
that of an antecedent chaos. But if there be no es
sential chaos, Mr. Wright used to say, an anti-
chaotic voug is superfluous. He particularly con
demned the idea of substance as a metaphysical
idol. When it was objected to him that there must
be some principle of oneness in the diversity of
phenomena — some glue to hold them together and
make a universe out of their mutual independence,
he would reply that there is no need of a glue to
join things unless we apprehend some reason
why they should fall asunder. Phenomena are
grouped — more we cannot say of them. This no
tion that the actuality of a thing is the absolute
totality of its being was perhaps never grasped by
any one with such thoroughness as by him.

However different a philosophy one may hold
from his, however one may deem that the lack of
emotional bias which left him contented with the
mere principle of parsimony as a criterion of uni
versal truth was really due to a defect in the active
or impulsive part of his mental nature, one must
value none the less his formulae. For as yet philos
ophy has celebrated hardly any stable achievements.
The labors of philosophers have, however, been con
fined to deepening enormously the philosophic
consciousness) and revealing more and more mi
nutely and fully the import of metaphysical prob
lems. In this preliminary task ontologists and
phenomenalists, mechanists and teleologists, must
join friendly hands, for each has been indispensable

24

[1875] CIIAUNCEY WRIGHT

to the work of the other, and the only foe of
either is the common foe of both — namely, the
practical, conventionally thinking man, to whom,
as has been said, nothing has true seriousness but
personal interests, and whose dry earnestness in
those is only excelled by that of the brute, which
takes everything for granted and never laughs.

Mr. Wright belonged to the precious band of gen
uine philosophers, and among them few can have
been as completely disinterested as he. Add to this
eminence his tireless amiability, his beautiful mod
esty, his affectionate nature and freedom from
egotism, his childlike simplicity in worldly affairs,
and we have the picture of a character of which his
friends feel more than ever now the elevation and
the rarity.

25

BAIN AND BENOUVIEK1

[1876]

PHILOSOPHY and psychology are such difficult
studies that most of us may be said to read in the
works of philosophers rather than to read them.
We like, as it were, physically to rub our minds
against the abstract problems in their pages; we
enjoy the glimpses we get of their solution ; but we
grasp nothing but the concrete illustrations by the
way and the explanations of details the author may
give us. Accordingly, the more fertile a philosopher
is in these, the more popular he will become. The
two philosophers of indubitably the widest influ-

E1 Review of The Emotions and the Will, by Alexander Bain,
third edition, New York, 1876 ; and Essa-is de Critique ggne'rale,
by Charles Renouvier, second edition, Paris, 1875. Reprinted
from Nation, 1876, 22, 367-369. Bain was born in 1818 and
died in 1903. James and Renouvier were for many years con
nected by bonds of friendship and mutual admiration. On
James's part this admiration continued up to the time of his
death. The posthumous Some Problems of Philosophy was
dedicated to Renouvier in accordance with the author's express
wish, James having left on record the following statement of
his indebtedness : "He [Renouvier] was one of the greatest of
philosophical characters, and but for the decisive impression
made on me in the seventies by his masterly advocacy of
pluralism, I might never have got free from the monistic super
stition under which I had grown up" (Some Problems of Phi
losophy, p. 165, note). Cf. also ibid., p. 163; Will to Believe,
p. 143 ; and below, p. 98. Renouvier was born in 1815, and died
in full intellectual vigor in 1903. ED.]

26

[1876] BAIN AND RENOUVIER

ence in England and America since Mill's death are
Messrs. Bain and Spencer, who have little in com
mon except the tendency to explain things by physi
cal reasons as much as possible, and this abundance
of illustrative fact; whilst Mr. Hodgson, a writer
in our opinion vastly more thorough and original
than either, is unread and unknown because in his
books the concatenation of the thoughts is every
thing, and the illustrative instances subordinate.
The thoroughness of the descriptive part of Bain's
treatises, and the truly admirable sagacity of many
of the psychological analyses and reductions they
contain, has made them deservedly classical. It
seems hardly worth while to devote our space to
giving an account of the third edition of one of
them, for every one interested in psychology must
read the originals themselves. We propose, there
fore, merely to use Mr. Bain for the purpose of giv
ing greater relief to the merits of a French philos
opher, Renouvier, who seems as yet unknown to
English readers, but who has given to the philos
ophy which Bain represents a form in our opinion
far more clear, perfect, and consistent than has
been attained by any English writer.

For Bain is not only a psychologist proper, does
not merely describe mental facts as items in the
inventory of nature, but also speculates about na
ture as a whole. The fault we find in him in this
capacity is his fragmentariness and consequent in
consistency. Fragmentariness — the willingness to
settle only so much of a subject at a time as is

27

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

practically needful — has become such a tradition in
the history of the British mind, that philosophers
who, like Spencer, are thoroughly systematic and
constructive in their form, are viewed with sus
picion and dislike on that very account by many
minds of Anglo-Saxon type. This is surely a
vicious extreme, for the very impulse to which
philosophies owe their being is the craving for a
consistent completeness; and every powerful at
tempt to rear a thorough system of thought has an
intellectual style about it which is, aesthetically
considered, to say the least, far nobler than the
slouchy dumping of materials to which Mr. Bain
treats us.

The most important of these fragmentary British
contributions to philosophy are the criticisms and
negations called nominalism and nihilism. To
gether they form the positivism, empiricism, or
phenomenalism which within a certain sphere are
so congenial to the Anglo-Saxon mind. They assert
that nothing has reality except actual particular
facts. Such noumenal substances as matter, nature,
power, are admitted alike by metaphysics and by
popular philosophy or common sense; but criticism
scrutinizes them only to proclaim that they are ab
solutely void of meaning except as names descrip
tive of particular phenomena. Describe these com
pletely, and you have named all there is. If the
particulars will happen just so each time, the as
sumption of a "substance" to produce them is mere
image-worship — a fifth wheel to a coach. Accord-

28

[1876] BAIN AND RENOUVIER

ingly, the school of Mill and Bain regard the world
as a mere sura of separate phenomena or representa
tions which habitually group themselves into cer
tain orders, with which we grow more or less
familiar, and which consequently seem more or less
rational and necessary. To account for the par
ticular habits of grouping, or "laws" of nature
and of mind, is on this theory the next problem.
The English school has always tried more or less to
evade this part of the subject, and, reducing the
principles of grouping to as small a number as pos
sible (e.g., space and causality to time), it has
treated what remained in a hazy sort of manner, as
not worthy of much attention anyhow. M. Renou-
vier's polemic against the metaphysical notions of
Substance, of Infinite in existence, and of abstract
ideas seems to us more powerful than anything
which has been written in English ; but he differs
from his English allies in giving as great an empha
sis to the laws of grouping as to the phenomena
grouped. The laws are for him equally with the
phenomena absolute and distinct. In fact, a "phe
nomenon" apart from its group, law, or function
is an inconceivable nonentity.

But his great point of divergence from Bain and
Mill lies in his treatment of the problem of Free
dom, and here, it seems to us, is shown the advan
tage of a systematically-thought philosophy over
one fragmentarily fed from heterogeneous sources.
We have no space to discuss the sources of the Eng
lish prejudice in favor of psychical determinism.

29

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

Every reader of Mill's Autobiography will remem
ber the striking passage in which he narrates the
hypochondria which this doctrine produced in his
youthful mind. It is the strongest proof of the es
sentially pious character of that mind that this in
herited belief was clung to in spite of its not being
logically called for by the rest of Mill's philosophic
creed. For if any man may believe in free-will it is
surely one who repudiates the notion of an infinite
pre-existing substance from which "the remediless
flux of existence" proceeds, and who denies that
there is any real coerciveness in the relation of cause
to effect. Both these denials were Mill's. M. Re-
nouvier most justly insists that the only logical
enemy of free-will is the doctrine of Substance or
Pantheism. Spencer, for example, with his "Un
knowable," is bound in honor to oppose it; but the
opposition of Bain, who seems to hold to the ulti
mate distinctness of each phenomenon, and with
the ultimate inexplicability of their order of suc
cession, can only be regarded as a caprice.

Renouvier at a stroke clears the question of a
cloud of quibbles by stating it in simple phenomenal
terms. For him it is merely a question as to the
ambiguity of certain futures, those human acts,
namely, which are preceded by deliberation. What
are the phenomena here? A representation arises
in a mind, but ere it can discharge itself into a train
of action, it is inhibited by another which confronts
it. This, on the point of discharging itself, is again
checked by the first, which returns with a reinforced

30

[1876] BAIN AND RENOUVIER

intensity, and so for a time the pendulum swings to
and fro, till finally one or the other representation
recurs with such a degree of reinforcement that the
tumult ceases, and an act, a decision for the future,
or the arrest of a passionate impulse takes place.
This stable survival of one representation is called a
volition. The whole question of its predetermina
tion relates to the intensity of the degree of re
inforcement with which the triumphant representa
tion recurs. As a matter of fact, in critical cases
(which are the only cases bearing on the question)
this intensity is utterly unknown beforehand. Is it
potentially and essentially a knowable quantity?
If not, our acts are in certain cases original com
mencements of series of phenomena, whose realiza
tion excludes other series which were previously
possible. If so, they form part of an adamantine
and eternal uniformity. But who shall decide? The
argumentation of Bain that as a matter of fact men
always do expect each other to act with predictable
uniformity is — sit venia verbo — rubbish. It could
never be urged by one who was not already on other
grounds prejudiced in favor of determinism. In one
of his earliest works, Helmholtz, who as well as any
living man may claim to give voice to the scientific
spirit, says that when the proximate causes of
phenomena are alterable themselves, we must seek
further for a cause of their alteration, and so on till
we reach an unalterable principle.

"Now, whether [he continues], all events are to be
carried back to such causes, whether nature be fully

31

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

explicable, or whether changes occur in it which do
not fall under the law of necessary causality, and do
consequently belong to the realm of freedom or spon
taneity, cannot now be decided. It is, at all events, clear
that a science whose object it is to understand nature
must start with the assumption of her intelligibility,
and conclude and enquire according to this assumption
until it at last is forced by irrefutable facts to the ad
mission of its own limitations."

The "assumption" of a fixed law in natural
science is thus, according to this authority, an in
tellectual postulate, just as the assumption of an
ultimate law of indetermination might be a moral
postulate in treating of certain human delibera
tions. Is each assumption true in its sphere, or is
determinism universal? Since no man can decide
empirically, must one remain for ever uncertain,
or shall one anticipate evidence and boldly choose
one's side? Apart from the fact that doubt is prac
tically impossible in certain cases which touch the
conduct of life, doubt itself is an active state, one of
voluntary inhibition or suspense. So that which
ever plan one adopts, one's state is the result of
other facts than pure receptivity of intelligence.
The entire nature of the man, intellectual, affective,
and volitional, is (whether avowedly or not) ex
hibited in the theoretic attitude he takes in such a
question as this. And this leads M. Kenouvier to a
most vigorous and original discussion of the ulti
mate grounds of certitude, of belief in general, from
which he returns to make his decision about this
particular point. All yard-stick criteria of certi-

32

[1876] BAIN AND RENOUVIER

tude have failed. Mr. Spencer's "inconceivability
of the opposite" breaks down from the practical im
possibility of unanimity in any given case. When
the Philosopher of Evolution says we ought to find
the opposite of his First Principles inconceivable
and dubs us "pscudo" thinkers if we do not, he
simply begs the question and appeals to the author
ity of his personal insight as against ours. Now,
says Renouvier, such an appeal is at bottom
inevitable so soon as we leave the narrow standing-
point of the present moment in consciousness
(Pyrrhonism). This latter alone is the align id
inconcussum philosophers have sought; but it is
barren. Beyond it everywhere is doubt.

"The radical sign of will, the essential mark of that
achieved development which makes man capable of spec
ulating on all things and raises him to his dignity of
an independent and autonomous being, is the possibility
of doubt. . . . The ignorant man doubts little, the fool
still less, the madman not at all. . . . Certitude is not
and cannot be an absolute condition. It is, what is too
often forgotten, a state and an act of man ... a state
in which he posits his consciousness, such as it is, and
stands by it. Properly speaking, there is no certitude ;
all there is is men who are certain. . . . Certitude is
thus nothing but belief ... a moral attitude."

Thus in every wide theoretical conclusion we
must seem more or less arbitrarily to choose our
side. Of course the choice may at bottom be pre
determined in each case, but also it may not. This
brings us back to our theoretical dilemma about

S3

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

freedom, concerning which we must now bow to the
necessity -of making a choice; for suspense itself
would be a choice, and a most practical one, since
by it we should forfeit the possible benefits of boldly
espousing a possible truth. If this be a moral world,
there are cases in which any indecision about its
being so must be death to the soul. Now, if our
choice is predetermined, there is an end of the mat
ter ; whether predetermined to the truth of fatality
or the delusion of liberty, is all one for us. But if
our choice is truly free, then the only possible way
of getting at that truth is by the exercise of the free
dom which it implies. Here the act of belief and
the object of belief coalesce, and the very essential
logic of the situation demands that we wait not for
any outward sign, but, with the possibility of doubt
ing open to us, voluntarily take the alternative of
faith. Renouvier boldly avows the full conditions
under which alone we can be right if freedom is
true, and says : "Let our liberty pronounce on its
own real existence." It and necessity being alike
indemonstrable by any quasi-material process, must
be postulated if taken at all.

"I prefer to affirm my liberty and to affirm it by
means of my liberty. . . . My moral and practical certi
tude begins logically by the certitude of my freedom,
just as practically my freedom has always had to inter
vene in the constitution of my speculative certitude."

Others need not decide in the same way, but let
them confess, if their way is determinism, that un-

34

ti876] BAIN AND RENOUVIER

less they deduce it a priori from the existence of a
metaphysical substance, they choose it just as our
author chooses his way, because on the whole they
prefer it. This fact is usually unconsciously smug
gled out of sight; but, concealed or expressed, it
debars either side from protesting on grounds of
logical method, or form of procedure, against the
other. The protest must come from extra-logical
considerations; and the ultimate decision of which
side is right and which wrong shall only be reached
ambulando or at the final integration of things, if at
all. Of course, freedom thus carried into the very
heart of our theoretic activity becomes the corner
stone of our author's philosophy, and by its use he
thinks "the minimum of faith produces the maxi
mum of result."

35

VI
KENAN'S "DIALOGUES"1

[1876]

"Encore une e" toile qui file ;
File, file, et disparait!"

THIS last production of a writer who at one time
seemed, to say the least, the most exquisite literary
genius of France, is really sad reading for any one
who would gladly be assured that that country is
robust and fertile still. It seems to us no less than
an example of mental ruin — the last expression of
a nature in which the seeds of insincerity and
foppishness, which existed at the start alongside of
splendid powers, have grown up like rank weeds
and smothered the better possibilities. The dia
logues which form the only new part of the book
are simply priggishness rampant, an indescribable
unmanliness of tone compounded of a sort of his
trionically sentimental self-conceit, and a nerveless
and boneless fear of what will become of the uni
verse if "riiomme vulgaire" is allowed to go on. M.
Kenan's idea of God seems to be that of a power to
whom one may successfully go like a tell-tale child
and say: "Please, won't you make Thomme vul-

[J Review of Dialogues et Fragments Philosophiques, by
Ernest Renan, Paris, 1876. Reprinted with omissions from
Nation, 1876, 23, 78-79. ED.]

36

[1876] KENAN'S "DIALOGUES"

gaire' stop?" As the latter waxes every day more
fat and insolent, the belief in God burns dim, and
is replaced by the idea of a kind of cold-blooded des
tiny whose inscrutable and inhuman purposes we
are blindly serving, with at most the relief of mak
ing piquant guesses and epigrams as we go, about
our Master and ourselves.

The other papers in the volume show the same
qualities and defects — sweetness of diction and
delicacy of apprehension in detail, with vagueness,
pretension, and deep ignorance of the subject
where the subject is the history of philosophic
thought. The best excuse one can make for them is
that they are but half sincere. But, in a writer of
Kenan's peculiar pretensions, that is a fatal excuse.
In his earlier writings all the suavities and many
of the severities of language were employed in
painting the distinction between the "ame d'elite,"
the "esprit honnete," and the common man; how
the latter was wedded to superficiality and pas
sive enjoyment, whilst the former found austere
"joys of the soul" in the pursuit of wisdom
and virtue. These surely imply sincerity. The
gifted writer particularly congratulated himself
on having preserved the vigor of his soul "dans
un pays 6teint, en un siecle sans esperance. . . .
Consolons nous," he cried, "par nos chimeres, par
notre noblesse, par notre dedain !" "The true atheist
is the frivolous man" is one of his early phrases
which has been often quoted. But already in his

37

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEYIEWS

Antichrist, published after the Commune, he spoke
of the summit of wisdom being the persuasion that
at bottom all is vanity; and if this book be really
half trifling, he would seem practically to have
espoused that persuasion — in other words, to have
become a frivolous man, or, according to his own
definition, an atheist. Indeed, if one were to seek
a single phrase which should define the essence of
religion, it would be the phrase : all is not vanity.
The solace and anaesthetic which lies in the conclu
sion of Ecclesiastes is good for many of us ; but M.
Kenan's ostentatious pretension to an exquisite sort
of religious virtue has debarred him from the right
to enjoy its comforts. That esprit vulgaire. Josh
Billings, says that if you have $80,000 at interest,
and own the house you live in, it is not much trouble
to be a philosopher. M. Kenan, after parading be
fore our envious eyes in fine weather the spectacle
of a man savourer-iiig his dedain and enjoying the
exquisitely voluptuous sensation of tasting his own
spiritual pre-eminence, must not take it hard if we
insist on a little more courage in him when the wind
begins to blow. We do not know any better than he
what the Democratic religion which is invading the
Western world has in store for us. We dislike the
"Commune" as well as he ; but it is a fair presump
tion that the cards of humanity have not all been
played out. And meanwhile, since no one has any
authoritative information about the final upshot of
things, and yet, since all men have a mighty desire
to get on if they can, it cannot be too often repeated

38

[1870] KENAN'S "DIALOGUES"

that they will all use the practical standard in
measuring the excellence of their brother men : not
the man of the most delicate sensibility but he who
on the whole is the most helpful man will be reck
oned the best man. The political or spiritual hero
will always be the one who, when others crumbled,
stood firm till a new order built itself around him ;
who showed a way out and beyond where others
could only see written "no thoroughfare." M.
Kenan's dandified despair has nothing in common
with this type.

39

VII
LEWES'S "PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND"1

[1877]

THOSE readers whom the superiority of the sec
ond volume of Mr. Lewes's Problems over the first
has led to expect an even crescendo of excellence in
that ponderous and somewhat pretentious publica
tion, will be much disappointed after reading this
third instalment. The diffuseness and damnable
iteration are there as much as ever, but the new
truths hang fire and fail to appear. It seems in
deed as if the author had started to write rather
with a vague aspiration after some truth than a
distinct apprehension of any, and were letting his
pen run on in the persuasion that a great discovery
would surely trickle out of it, if only the scythe of
Chronos might not cut him short. This is truly an
excellent way of making discoveries, but usually it
is the discovery that we publish, while the process
is suppressed. Mr. Lewes has given us the process
in five hundred pages, and — let us charitably say —
reserved the discovery for the next volume. Con
stantly he seems on the point of making it. An un-

[* Opening paragraph of a review of G. H. Lewes's Physical
Basis of Mind, 1877, the sequel to the book reviewed above,
p. 4. Reprinted with omissions from Nation, 1877, 25, 290.
ED.]

40

[1877] LEWES'S "BASIS OF MIND"

impeachable scaffolding of first principles is laid
down, the arguments seem to mass together like
thunder-clouds, the air quivers with expectation,
and we are sure that on turning the page the sacred
rain will descend on our patient and thirsty souls,
when lo ! a new chapter begins with a new statement
of the first principles, adorned with fresh illustra
tions : we forget the event we felt ourselves led up
to, the sky empties itself again, and we return to
our original drought. Not that the first principles
of Mr. Lewes are not admirable. They surely are.
But the mind can no more feed on pure first prin
ciples than the body can live on pure nitrogen and
carbon. Only the axiomata media are fertile, and
lead to particular discoveries. It is a bad sign when
a thinker keeps falling back on abstractions so true
that all must applaud them, but so broad that they
form quite as good a shelter for one doctrine as for
another. What boots it when we are really curious
to find some one elementary factor or law of living
matter to be told that "Life is the connexus of func
tions"? Or if a psychologist is really puzzling his
brain about very special and particular difficulties,
how can it profit him to be elaborately reminded by
Mr. Lewes that confusion of terms is a great source
of error, that we should everywhere keep account
of special differences no less than fundamental
identities, that property must never be confounded
with function, that sensibility makes life a phe
nomenon of a higher order than mechanism, and
the like? Not, indeed, since reading Daniel De-

41

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

ronda have we been so annoyed by a writer's redun
dancy, have we found ourselves so persistently
seized by the button and moralized to when we were
most impatient for the story to move along and for
the author to effect something with his materials.

VIII

EEMAEKS ON SPENCER'S DEFINITION
OF MIND AS CORRESPONDENCE x

[1878]

As a rule it may be said that, at a time when
readers are so overwhelmed with work as they are
at the present day, all purely critical and destruc
tive writing ought to be reprobated. The half-gods
generally refuse to go, in spite of the ablest criti
cism, until the gods actually have arrived; but then,
too, criticism is hardly needed. But there are cases
in which every rule may be broken. "What!" ex
claimed Voltaire, when accused of offering no sub
stitute for the Christianity he attacked, (fje vous
delivre d'une bete feroce, et vous me demandez par
quoi je la remplace!" Without comparing Mr.
Spencer's definition of Mind either to Christianity
or to a "bete feroce" it may certainly be said to be
very far-reaching in its consequences, and, accord-

C1 Reprinted from Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1878, 12,
1-18. The central idea of this essay is the teleological char
acter of mind. This idea may be said to be the germinal idea
of James's psychology, episteinology, and philosophy of religion.
Cf. Will to Believe, p. 117 ("Reflex Action and Theism"), where
this essay is referred to, with the remark that "the conceiving
or theorizing faculty . . . functions exclusively for the sake of
ends that . . . are set by our emotional and practical subjec
tivity." ED.]

43

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

ing to certain standards, noxious; whilst probably
a large proportion of those hard-headed readers who
subscribe to the Popular Science Monthly and
Nature, and whose sole philosopher Mr. Spencer is,
are fascinated by it without being in the least aware
what its consequences are.

The defects of the formula are so glaring that I
am surprised it should not long ago have been
critically overhauled. The reader will readily
recollect what it is. In part III of his Principles
of Psychology* Mr. Spencer, starting from the sup
position that the most essential truth concerning
mental evolution will be that which allies it to the
evolution nearest akin to it, namely, that of Life,
finds that the formula "adjustment of inner to
outer relations," which was the definition of life,
comprehends also "the entire process of mental
evolution/' In a series of chapters of great appar
ent thoroughness and minuteness he shows how all
the different grades of mental perfection are ex
pressed by the degree of extension of this adjust
ment, or, as he here calls it, "correspondence," in
space, time, specialty, generality, and integration.
The polyp's tentacles contract only to immediately
present stimuli, and to almost all alike. The mam
mal will store up food for a day, or even for a sea
son; the bird will start on its migration for a goal
hundreds of miles away; the savage will sharpen
his arrows to hunt next year's game; while the as
tronomer will proceed, equipped with all his instru-
L1 Published in 1855. ED.]

44

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

ments, to a point thousands of miles distant, there
to watch, at a fixed day, hour, and minute, a transit
of Venus or an eclipse of the Sun.

The picture drawn is so vast and simple, it in
cludes such a multitude of details in its monotonous
frame-work, that it is no wonder that readers of a
passive turn of mind are, usually, more impressed
by it than by any portion of the book. But on the
slightest scrutiny its solidity begins to disappear.
In the first place, one asks, what right has one, in a
formula embracing professedly the "entire process
of mental evolution," to mention only phenomena of
cognition, and to omit all sentiments, all aesthetic
impulses, all religious emotions and personal affec
tions? The ascertainment of outward fact consti
tutes only one species of mental activity. The genus
contains, in addition to purely cognitive judg
ments, or judgments of the actual — judgments that
things do, as a matter of fact, exist so or so — an
immense number of emotional judgments: judg
ments of the ideal, judgments that things should
exist thus and not so. How much of our mental
life is occupied with this matter of a better or a
worse? How much of it involves preferences or
repugnances on our part? We cannot laugh at a
joke, we cannot, go to one theatre rather than an
other, take more trouble for the sake of our own
child than our neighbor's ; we cannot long for vaca
tion, show our best manners to a foreigner, or pay
our pew rent, without involving in the premises of
our action some element which has nothing what-

45

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

ever to do with simply cognizing the actual, but
which, out of alternative possible actuals, selects
one and cognizes that as the ideal. In a word,
"Mind," as we actually find it, contains all sorts
of laws — those of logic, of fancy, of wit, of taste,
decorum, beauty, morals, and so forth, as well as
of perception of fact. Common sense estimates
mental excellence by a combination of all these
standards, and yet how few of them correspond to
anything that actually is — they are laws of the
Ideal, dictated by subjective interests pure and
simple. Thus the greater part of Mind, quantita
tively considered, refuses to have anything to do
with Mr. Spencer's definition. It is quite true that
these ideal judgments are treated by him with great
ingenuity and felicity at the close of his work —
indeed, his treatment of them there seems to me to
be its most admirable portion. But they are there
handled as separate items having no connection
with that extension of the "correspondence" which
is maintained elsewhere to be the all-sufficing law
of mental growth.

Most readers would dislike to admit without co
ercion that a law was adequate which obliged them
to erase from literature (if by literature were
meant anything worthy of the title of "mental
product") all works except treatises on natural
science, history, and statistics. Let us examine the
reason that Mr. Spencer appears to consider co
ercive.

It is this: That, since every process grows more

46

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

and more complicated as it develops, more swarmed
over by incidental and derivative conditions which
disguise and adulterate its original simplicity, the
only way to discover its true and essential form is
to trace it back to its earliest beginning. There it
will appear in its genuine character pure and un-
defiled. Religious, aesthetic, and ethical judgments,
having grown up in the course of evolution, by
means that we can very plausibly divine, of course
may be stripped off from the main stem of intelli
gence and leave that undisturbed. With a similar
intent Mr. Tylor says: "Whatever throws light on
the origin of a conception throws light on its
validity.'7 Thus, then, there is no resource but to
appeal to the polyp, or whatever shows us the form
of evolution just before intelligence, and what that,
and only what that, contains will be the root and
heart of the matter.

But no sooner is the reason for the law thus enun
ciated than many objections occur to the reader. In
the first place, the general principle seems to lead
to absurd conclusions. If the embryologic line of
appeal can alone teach us the genuine essences of
things, if the polyp is to dictate our law of mind to
us because he came first, where are we to stop? He
must himself be treated in the same way. Back of
him lay the not-yet-polyp, and. back of all, the uni
versal mother, fire-mist. To seek there for the
reality, of course would reduce all thinking to
nonentity, and, although Mr. Spencer would prob
ably not regard this conclusion as a re&uctio ad

47

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

absurdum of his principle, since it would only be
another path to his theory of the Unknowable, less
systematic thinkers may hesitate. But, waiving for
the moment the question of principle, let us admit
that relatively to our thought, at any rate, the
polyp's thought is pure and undefiled. Does the
study of the polyp lead us distinctly to Mr. Spen
cer's formula of correspondence? To begin with, if
that formula be meant to include disinterested
scientific curiosity, or "correspondence" in the
sense of cognition, with no ulterior selfish end, the
polyp gives it no countenance whatever. He is as
innocent of scientific as of moral and aesthetic en
thusiasm; he is the most narrowly teleological of
organisms ; reacting, so far as he reacts at all, only
for self-preservation.

This leads us to ask what Mr. Spencer exactly
means by the word correspondence. Without ex
planation, the word is wholly indeterminate. Ev
erything corresponds in some way with everything
else that co-exists in the same world with it. But,
as the formula of correspondence was originally
derived from biology, we shall possibly find in our
author's treatise on that science an exact definition
of what he means by it. On seeking there, we find
nowhere a definition, but numbers of synonyms.
The inner relations are "adjusted," "conformed,"
"fitted," "related," to the outer. They must "meet"
or "balance" them. There must be "concord" or
"harmony" between them. Or, again, the organism
must "counteract" the changes in the environment.

48

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

But these words, too, are wholly indeterminate.
The fox is most beautifully "adjusted" to the
hounds and huntsmen who pursue him; the lime
stone "meets" molecule by molecule the acid which
corrodes it; the man is exquisitely "conformed" to
the trichina which invades him, or to the typhus
poison which consumes him ; and the forests "har
monize" incomparably with the fires that lay them
low. Clearly, a further specification is required;
and, although Mr. Spencer shrinks strangely from
enunciating this specification, he everywhere works
his formula so as to imply it in the clearest manner.

Influence on physical well-being or survival is
his implied criterion of the rank of mental action.
The moth which flies into the candle, instead of
away from it, "fails," in Spencer's words (vol. I,
p. 409), to "correspond" with its environment; but
clearly, in this sense, pure cognitive inference of the
existence of heat after a perception of light would
not suffice to constitute correspondence; while a
moth which, on feeling the light, should merely
vaguely fear to approach it, but have no proper
image of the heat, would "correspond." So that the
Spencerian formula, to mean anything definite at
all, must, at least, be re- written as follows : "Right
or intelligent mental action consists in the estab
lishment, corresponding to outward relations, of
such inward relations and reactions as will favor
the survival of the thinker, or, at least, his physical
well-being."

Such a definition as this is precise, but at the

49

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

same time it is frankly teleological. It explicitly
postulates a distinction between mental action pure
and simple, and right mental action; and further
more, it proposes, as criteria of this latter, certain
ideal ends — those of physical prosperity or sur
vival, which are pure subjective interests on the ani
mal's part, brought with it upon the scene and cor
responding to no relation already there.1 No men
tal action is right or intelligent which fails to fit
this standard. No correspondence can pass muster
till it shows its subservience to these ends. Corre
sponding itself to no actual outward thing; refer
ring merely to a future which may be, but which
these interests now say shall be ; purely ideal, in a
word, they judge, dominate, determine all corre-

1 These interests are the real a priori element in cognition.
By saying that their pleasures and pains have nothing to do
with correspondence, I mean simply this: To a large number
of terms in the environment there may be inward correlatives
of a neutral sort as regards feeling. The "correspondence" is
already there. But, now, suppose some to be accented with
pleasure, others with pain ; that is a fact additional to the cor
respondence, a fact with no outward correlative. But it im
mediately orders the correspondences in this way : that the
pleasant or interesting items are singled out, dwelt upon, de
veloped into their farther connections, whilst the unpleasant or
insipid ones are ignored or suppressed. The future of the
Mind's development is thus mapped out in advance by the way
in which the lines of pleasure and pain run. The interests pre
cede the outer relations noticed. Take the utter absence of
response of a dog or a savage to the greater mass of environing
relations. How can you alter it unless you previously awaken
an interest — i.e., produce a susceptibility to intellectual pleas
ure in certain modes of cognitive exercise? Interests, then,
are an all-essential factor which no writer pretending to give
an account of mental evolution has a right to neglect.

50

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

spondences between the inner and the outer. Which
is as much as to say that mere correspondence with
the outer world is a notion on which it is wholly
impossible to base a definition of mental action
Mr. Spencer's occult reason for leaving unexpressed
the most important part of the definition he works
with probably lies in its apparent implication of
subjective spontaneity. The mind, according to his
philosophy, should be pure product, absolute deri
vative from the non-mental. To make it dictate
conditions, bring independent interests into the
game which may determine what we shall call cor
respondence, and what not, might, at first sight,
appear contrary to the notion of evolution which
forbids the introduction at any point of an abso
lutely new factor. In what sense the existence of
survival interest does postulate such a factor we
shall hereafter see. I think myself that it is pos
sible to express all its outward results in non-
mental terms. But the unedifying look of the thing,
its simulation of an independent mental teleology,
seems to have frightened Mr. Spencer here, as else
where, away from a serious scrutiny of the facts.
But let us be indulgent to his timidity, and assume
that survival was all the while a "mental reserva
tion" with him, only excluded from his formula by
reason of the comforting sound it might have to
Philistine ears.

We should then have, as the embodiment of the
highest ideal perfection of mental development, a
creature of superb cognitive endowments, from

51

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

whose piercing perceptions no fact was too minute
or too remote to escape ; whose all-embracing fore
sight no contingency could find unprepared ; whose
invincible flexibility of resource no array of out
ward onslaught could overpower; but in whom all
these gifts were swayed by the single passion of love
of life, of survival at any price. This determination
filling his whole energetic being, consciously real
ized, intensified by meditation, becomes a fixed idea,
would use all the other faculties as its means, and,
if they ever flagged, would by its imperious intensity
spur them and hound them on to ever fresh exer
tions and achievements. There can be no doubt
that, if such an incarnation of earthly prudence
existed, a race of beings in whom this monotonously
narrow passion for self-preservation were aided by
every cognitive gift, they would soon be kings of
all the earth. All known human races would wither
before their breath, and be as dust beneath their
conquering feet.

But whether any Spencerian would hail with
hearty joy their advent is another matter. Cer
tainly Mr. Spencer would not; while the common
sense of mankind would stand aghast at the
thought of them. Why does common opinion abhor
such a being? Why does it crave greater "rich
ness" of nature in its mental ideal? Simply be
cause, to common sense, survival is only one out of
many interests — primus inter pares, perhaps, but
still in the midst of peers. What are these inter
ests? Most men would reply that they are all that

52

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

makes survival worth securing. The social affec
tions, all the various forms of play, the thrilling in
timations of art, the delights of philosophic con
templation, the rest of religious emotion, the joy of
moral self-approbation, the charm of fancy and of
wit — some or all of these are absolutely required to
make the notion of mere existence tolerable; and
individuals who, by their special powers, satisfy
these desires are protected by their fellows and en
abled to survive, though their mental constitution
should in other respects be lamentably ^-"ad
justed" to the outward world. The story-teller, the
musician, the theologian, the actor, or even the mere
charming fellow, have never lacked means of sup
port, however helpless they might individually have
been to conform with those outward relations which
we know as the powers of nature. The reason is
very plain. To the individual man, as a social be
ing, the interests of his fellow are a part of his en
vironment. If his powers correspond to the wants
of this social environment, he may survive, even
though he be ill-adapted to the natural or "outer"
environment. But these wants are pure subjective
ideals, with nothing outward to correspond to
them. So that, as far as the individual is concerned,
it becomes necessary to modify Spencer's survival
formula still further, by introducing into the term
environment a reference, not only to existent
things1, but also to ideal wants. It would have

[lrrhe word "non-existent" has been omitted as being due,
apparently, to a misprint. ED.]

53

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

to run in some such way as this : "Excellence of the
individual mind consists in the establishment of
inner relations more and more extensively con
formed to the outward facts of nature, and to the
ideal wants of the individual's fellows, but all of
such a character as will promote survival or physi
cal prosperity."

But here, again, common sense will meet us with
an objection. Mankind desiderate certain qualities
in the individual which are incompatible with his
chance of survival being a maximum. Why do we
all so eulogize and love the heroic, recklessly gen
erous, and disinterested type of character? These
qualities certainly imperil the survival of their pos
sessor. The reason is very plain. Even if headlong
courage, pride, and martyr-spirit do ruin the in
dividual, they benefit the community as a whole
whenever they are displayed by one of its members
against a competing tribe. "It is death to you, but
fun for us." Our interest in having the hero as he
is, plays indirectly into the hands of our survival,
though not of his.

This explicit acknowledgment of the survival in
terests of the tribe, as accounting for many inter
ests in the individual which seem at first sight
either unrelated to survival or at war with it, seems,
after all, to bring back unity and simplicity into the
Spencerian formula. Why, the Spencerian may
ask, may not all the luxuriant foliage of ideal inter
ests — aesthetic, philosophic, theologic, and the rest —
which co-exist along with that of survival, be pres-

54

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

ent in the tribe and so form part of the individual's
environment, merely by virtue of the fact that they
minister in an indirect way to the survival of the
tribe as a whole? The disinterested scientific ap
petite of cognition, the sacred philosophic love of
consistency, the craving for luxury and beauty, the
passion for amusement, may all find their proper
significance as processes of mind, strictly so-called,
in the incidental utilitarian discoveries which flow
from the energy they set in motion. Conscience,
thoroughness, purity, love of truth, susceptibility
to discipline, eager delight in fresh impressions, al
though none of them are traits of Intelligence in se,
may thus be marks of a general mental energy,
without which victory over nature and over other
human competitors would be impossible. And, as
victory means survival, and survival is the criterion
of Intelligent "Correspondence," these qualities,
though not expressed in the fundamental law of
mind, may yet have been all the while understood
by Mr. Spencer to form so many secondary conse
quences and corollaries of that law.

But here it is decidedly time to take our stand
and refuse our aid in propping up Mr. Spencer's
definition by any further good-natured transla
tions and supplementary contributions of our own.
It is palpable at a glance that a mind whose sur
vival interest could only be adequately secured by
such a wasteful array of energy squandered on side
issues would be immeasurably inferior to one like
that which we supposed a few pages back, in which

55

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

the monomania of tribal preservation should be the
one all-devouring passion.

Surely there is nothing in the essence of intelli
gence which should oblige it forever to delude itself
as to its own ends, and to strive towards a goal suc
cessfully only at the cost of consciously appearing
to have far other aspirations in view.

A furnace which should produce along with its
metal fifty different varieties of ash and slag, a
planing-mill whose daily yield in shavings far ex
ceeded that in boards, would rightly be pronounced
inferior to one of the usual sort, even though more
energy should be displayed in its working, and at
moments some of that energy be directly effective.
If ministry to survival be the sole criterion of men
tal excellence, then luxury and amusement, Shake
speare, Beethoven, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, stel
lar spectroscopy, diatom markings, and nebular
hypotheses are by-products on too wasteful a scale.
The slag-heap is too big — it abstracts more energy
than it contributes to the ends of the machine ; and
every serious evolutionist ought resolutely to bend
his attention henceforward to the reduction in num
ber and amount of these outlying interests, and the
diversion of the energy they absorb into purely pru
dential channels.

Here, then, is our dilemma: One man may say
that the law of mental development is dominated
solely by the principle of conservation; another,
that richness is the criterion of mental evolution;
a third, that pure cognition of the actual is the es-

56

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF

sence of worthy thinking — but who shall pretend
to decide which is right? The umpire would have
to bring a standard of his own upon the scene,
which would be just as subjective and personal as
the standards used by the contestants. And yet
some standard there must be, if we are to attempt
to define in any way the worth of different mental
manifestations.

Is it not already clear to the reader's mind that
the whole difficulty in making Mr. Spencer's law
work lies in the fact that it is not really a constitu
tive, but a regulative, law of thought which he is
erecting, and that he does not frankly say so? Every
law of Mind must be either a law of the cogitatum
or a law of the cogitandum. If it be a law in the
sense of an analysis of what we do think, then it
will include error, nonsense, the worthless as well
as the worthy, metaphysics, and mythologies as well
as scientific truths which mirror the actual en
vironment. But such a law of the cogitatum is
already well known. It is no other than the asso
ciation of ideas according to their several modes;
or, rather, it is this association definitively per
fected by the inclusion of the teleological factor of
interest by Mr. Hodgson in the fifth chapter of his
masterly "Time and Space."

That Mr. Spencer, in the part of his work which
we are considering, has no such law as this in view
is evident from the fact that he has striven to give
an original formulation to such a law in another
part of his book, in that chapter, namely, on the

57

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

associability of relations, in the first volume, where
the apperception of times and places, and the sup
pression of association by similarity, are made to
explain the facts in a way whose operose ineptitude
has puzzled many a simple reader.

Now, every living man would instantly define
right thinking as thinking in correspondence with
reality. But Spencer, in saying that right thought
is that which conforms to existent outward rela
tions, and this exclusively, undertakes to decide
what the reality is. In other words, under cover of
an apparently formal definition he really smuggles
in a material definition of the most far-reaching im
port. For the Stoic, to whom vivere convenienter
naturce was also the law of mind, the reality was an
archetypal Nature ; for the Christian, whose mental
law is to discover the will of God, and make one's
actions correspond thereto, that is the reality. In
fact, the philosophic problem which all the ages
have been trying to solve in order to make thought
in some way correspond with it, and which dis
believers in philosophy call insoluble, is just that :
What is the reality? All the thinking, all the con
flict of ideals, going on in the world at the present
moment is in some way tributary to this quest. To
attempt, therefore, with Mr. Spencer, to decide the
matter merely incidentally, to forestall discussion
by a definition — to carry the position by surprise,
in a word — is a proceeding savoring more of piracy
than philosophy. No, Spencer's definition of what
we ought to think cannot be suffered to lurk in am-

58

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

bush ; it must stand out explicitly with the rest, and
expect to be challenged and give an account of
itself like any other ideal norm of thought.

We have seen how he seems to vacillate in his de
termination of it. At one time, "scientific" thought,
mere passive mirroring of outward nature, purely
registrative cognition; at another time, thought in
the exclusive service of survival, would seem to be
his ideal. Let us consider the latter ideal first, since
it has the polyp's authority in its favor : "We must
survive — that end must regulate all our thought."
The poor man who said to Talleyrand, "II faut bien
que je vive!" expressed it very well. But criticise
this ideal, or transcend it as Talleyrand did by his
cool reply, "Je n'en vois pas la necessite" and it can
say nothing more for itself. A priori it is a mere
brute teleological affirmation on a par with all
others. Vainly you should hope to prove it to a
person bent on suicide, who has but the one long
ing — to escape, to cease. Vainly you would argue
with a Buddhist or a German pessimist, for they
feel the full imperious strength of the desire, but
have an equally profound persuasion of its essential
wrongness and mendacity. Vainly, too, would you
talk to a Christian, or even to any believer in the
simple creed that the deepest meaning of the world
is moral. For they hold that mere conformity with
the outward — worldly success and survival — is not
the absolute and exclusive end. In the failures to
"adjust" — in the rubbish-heap, according to Spen
cer — lies, for them, the real key to the truth — the

59

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

sole mission of life being to teach that the outward
actual is not the whole of being.

And now — if, falling back on the scientific ideal,
you say that to know is the one TeXos of intelli
gence — not only will the inimitable Turkish cadi in
Layard's Mneveh praise God in your face that he
seeks not that which he requires not, and ask, "Will
much knowledge create thee a double belly?" — not
only may I, if it please me, legitimately refuse to
stir from my fooPs paradise of theosophy and mys
ticism, in spite of all your calling (since, after all,
your true knowledge and my pious feeling have
alike nothing to back them save their seeming good
to our respective personalities) — not only this, but
to the average sense of mankind, whose ideal of
mental nature is best expressed by the word "rich
ness," your statistical and cognitive intelligence
will seem insufferably narrow, dry, tedious, and
unacceptable.

The truth appears to be that every individual man
may, if it please him, set up his private categori
cal imperative of what Tightness or excellence in
thought shall consist in, and these different ideals,
instead of entering upon the scene armed with a
warrant — whether derived from the polyp or from
a transcendental source — appear only as so many
brute affirmations left to fight it out upon the chess
board among themselves. They are, at best, postu
lates, each of which must depend on the general
consensus of experience as a whole to bear out its
validity. The formula which proves to have the

60

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

most massive destiny will be the true one. But this
is a point which can only be solved ambulando, and
not by any a priori definition. The attempt to fore
stall the decision is free to all to make, but all make
it at their risk. Our respective hypotheses and post
ulates help to shape the course of thought, but the
only thing which we all agree in assuming is, that
thought will be coerced away from them if they are
wrong. If Spencer to-day says, "Bow to the ac
tual," whilst Swinburne spurns "compromise with
the nature of things/' I exclaim, "Fiat justitia,
pereat mundus," and Mill says, "To hell I will go,
rather than 'adjust' myself to an evil God," what
umpire can there be between us but the future? The
idealists and the empiricists confront each other
like Guelphs and Ghibellines, but each alike waits
for adoption, as it were, by the course of events.

In other words, we are all fated to be a priori
teleologists whether we will or not. Interests
which we bring with us, and simply posit or take
our stand upon, are the very flour out of which our
mental dough is kneaded. The organism of thought,
from the vague dawn of discomfort or ease in the
polyp to the intellectual joy of Laplace among his
formulas, is teleological through and through. Not
a cognition occurs but feeling is there to comment
on it, to stamp it as of greater or less worth.
Spencer and Plato are ejusdem farinw. To attempt
to hoodwink teleology out of sight by saying noth
ing about it, is the vainest of procedures. Spencer
merely takes sides with the isXo? he happens to

61

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

prefer, whether it be that of physical well-being or
that of cognitive registration. He represents a par
ticular teleology. Well might teleology (had she
a voice) exclaim with Emerson's Brahma:

"If the red slayer think he slays,

Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass and turn again.

"They reckon ill who leave me out ;

When me they fly, I am the wings ;
I am the doubter and the doubt," etc.

But now a scientific man, feeling something un
canny in this omnipresence of a teleological factor
dictating how the mind shall correspond — an in
terest seemingly tributary to nothing non-mental
— may ask us what we meant by saying sometime
back that in one sense it is perfectly possible to
express the existence of interests in non-mental
terms. We meant simply this : That the reactions
or outward consequences of the interests could be
so expressed. The interest of survival which has
hitherto been treated as an ideal should-be, presid
ing from the start and marking out the way in
which an animal must react, is, from an outward
and physical point of view, nothing more than an
objective future implication of the reaction (if it
occurs) as an actual fact. If the animal's brain
acts fortuitously in the right way, he survives. His
young do the same. The reference to survival in
no way preceded or conditioned the intelligent act;

62

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

but the fact of survival was merely bound up with
it as an incidental consequence, and may, therefore,
be called accidental, rather than instrumental, to
the production of intelligence. It is the same with
all other interests. They are pleasures and pains
incidentally implied in the workings of the nervous
mechanism, and, therefore, in their ultimate origin,
non-mental; for the idiosyncrasies of our nervous
centres are mere "spontaneous variations," like any
of those which form the ultimate data for Darwin's
theory. A brain which functions so as to insure
survival may, therefore, be called intelligent in no
other sense than a tooth, a limb, or a stomach,
which should serve the same end — the sense,
namely, of appropriate ; as when we say "that is an
intelligent device," meaning a device fitted to secure
a certain end which we assume. If nirvana were
the end, instead of survival, then it is true the
means would be different, but in both cases alike
the end would not precede the means, or even be
coeval with them, but depend utterly upon them,
and follow them in point of time. The fox's cunning
and the hare's speed are thus alike creations of the
non-mental. The TeXo? they entail is no more an
agent in one case than another, since in both alike
it is a resultant. Spencer, then, seems justified in
not admitting it to appear as an irreducible ulti
mate factor of Mind, any more than of Body.

This position is perfectly unassailable so long as
one describes the phenomena in this manner from
without. The TeXo? in that case can only be hypo-

63

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

thetieally, not imperatively, stated: if such and
such be the end, then such brain functions are the
most intelligent, just as such and such digestive
functions are the most appropriate. But such and
such cannot be declared as the end, except by the
commenting mind of an outside spectator. The
organs themselves, in their working at any instant,
cannot but be supposed indifferent as to what prod
uct they are destined fatally to bring forth, cannot
be imagined whilst fatally producing one result to
have at the same time a notion of a different result
which should be their truer end, but which they are
unable to secure.

Nothing can more strikingly show, it seems to me,
the essential difference between the point of view
of consciousness and that of outward existence. We
can describe the latter only in teleological terms,
hypothetically, or else by the addition of a sup
posed contemplating mind which measures what it
sees going on by its private teleological standard,
and judges it intelligent. But consciousness itself
is not merely intelligent in this sense. It is intelli
gent intelligence. It seems both to supply the
means and the standard by which they are meas
ured. It not only serves a final purpose, but brings
a final purpose — posits, declares it. This purpose
is not a mere hypothesis — "if survival is to occur,
then brain must so perform," etc. — but an impera
tive decree : "Survival shall occur, and, therefore,
brain must so perform!'7 It seems hopelessly im
possible to formulate anything of this sort in non-
64

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

mental terms, and this is why I must still contend
that the phenomena of subjective "interest," as soon
as the animal consciously realizes the latter, ap
pears upon the scene as an absolutely new factor,
which we can only suppose to be latent thitherto
in the physical environment by crediting the physi
cal atoms, etc., each with a consciousness of its own,
approving or condemning its motions.

This, then, must be our conclusion : That no law
of the cogitandum, no normative receipt for excel
lence in thinking, can be authoritatively promul
gated. The only formal canon that we can apply
to mind which is unassailable is the barren truism
that it must think rightly. We can express this in
terms of correspondence by saying that thought
must correspond with truth ; but whether that truth
be actual or ideal is left undecided.

We have seen that the invocation of the polyp
to decide for us that it is actual (apart from the
fact that he does not decide in that way) is based
on a principle which refutes itself if consistently
carried out. Spencer's formula kas crumbled into
utter worthlessness in our hands, and we have noth
ing to replace it by except our several individual
hypotheses, convictions, and beliefs. Far from
being vouched for by the past, these are verified
only by the future. They are all of them, in some
sense, laws of the ideal. They have to keep house
together, and the weakest goes to the wall. The
survivors constitute the right way of thinking.
While the issue is still undecided, we can only call

65

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

them our prepossessions. But, decided or not,
"go in" we each must for one set of interests or an
other. The question for each of us in the battle of
life is, "Can we come out with it?" Some of these
interests admit to-day of little dispute. Survival,
physical well-being, and undistorted cognition of
what is, will hold their ground. But it is truly
strange to see writers like Messrs. Huxley and
Clifford, who show themselves able to call most
things in question, unable, when it comes to the
interest of cognition, to touch it with their solvent
doubt. They assume some mysterious imperative
laid upon the mind, declaring that the infinite ascer
tainment of facts is its supreme duty, which he
who evades is a blasphemer and child of shame.
And yet these authors can hardly have failed to
reflect, at some moment or other, that the disin
terested love of information, and still more the love
of consistency in thought' (that true scientific
oestrus), and the ideal fealty to Truth (with a
capital T), are all so many particular forms of
aesthetic interest, late in their evolution, arising
in conjunction with a vast number of similar aes
thetic interests, and bearing with them no a priori
mark of being worthier than these. If we may
doubt one, we may doubt all. How shall I say that
knowing fact with Messrs. Huxley and Clifford is
a better use to put my mind to than feeling good
with Messrs. Moody and Sankey, unless by slowly
and painfully finding out that in the long run it
works best?

66

[1878] SPENCER'S DEFINITION OF MIND

I, for my part, cannot escape the consideration,
forced upon me at every turn, that the knower is
not simply a mirror floating with no foot-hold any
where, and passively reflecting an order that he
comes upon and finds simply existing. The knower
is an actor, and co-efficient of the truth on one side,
whilst on the other he registers the truth which he
helps to create. Mental interests, hypotheses,
postulates, so far as they are bases for human
action — action which to a great extent transforms
the world — help to make the truth which they de
clare. In other words, there belongs to mind, from
its birth upward, a spontaneity, a vote. It is in the
game, and not a mere looker-on; and its judgments
of the should-be, its ideals, cannot be peeled off
from the body of the cogitandum as if they were ex
crescences, or meant, at most, survival. We know
so little about the ultimate nature of things, or of
ourselves, that it would be sheer folly dogmatically
to say that an ideal rational order may not be real.
The only objective criterion of reality is coercive-
ness, in the long run, over thought. Objective facts,
Spencer's outward relations, are real only because
they coerce sensation. Any interest which should
be coercive on the same massive scale would be
eodem jure real. By its very essence, the reality of
a thought is proportionate to the way it grasps us.
Its intensity, its seriousness — its interest, in a word
—taking these qualities, not at any given instant,
but as shown by the total upshot of experience. If
judgments of the should-be are fated to grasp us in

67

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS ^878]

this way, they are what "correspond." The ancients
placed the conception of Fate at the bottom of
things — deeper than the gods themselves. "The
fate of thought," utterly barren and indeterminate
as such a formula is, is the only unimpeachable reg
ulative Law of Mind.

68

IX

QUELQUES CONSIDERATIONS SUE LA
METHODE SUBJECTIVE1

[1878]
Aux REDACTEURS DE LA Critique philosophique

Messieurs,

Depuis longtemps d6ja, quand des idees noires,
pessimisme, fatalisme, etc., me viennent obseder,
j'ai 1'habitude de m'en debarrasser par un raison-
nement fort simple, et tellement d'accord avec les
principes de la philosophic a laquelle votre revue
est consacre"e, que je m'etonne presque de ne 1'avoir
pas encore rencontre* totidem verbis dans quelqu'un
de vos cahiers hebdomadaires. J'ose vous le sou-
mettre.

II s'agit de savoir si Von est en droit de repousser
une theorie confirmee en apparence par un nombre
tres-considerable de faits objectifs, uniquement
parce qu'elle ne repond point a nos preferences in-
terieures.

t1 Reprinted from Critique Philosophique, 1878, 6me annc§e,
2, 407-413. The present article is a brief preliminary state
ment of matters afterwards discussed in "Rationality, Activity
and Faith," first published in the Princeton Review in 1882,
and later reprinted in the Will to Believe. Cf. below, p. 83,
note. The early date of the composition of this communication,
and its flattering reception by Renouvier, show that James's
interests and fame were from the beginning of his career identi
fied with that philosophical tendency which culminated in his
Pragmatism. See above, p. 43, note. ED.]

69

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

On n'a pas ce droit, nous disent les homines qui
cultivent aujourd'hui les sciences, ou du moins
presque tons, et tons les positivistes. Repousser
une .conclusion par ce seul motif qu'elle contrarie
nos sentiments intimes et nos desirs, c'est faire
emploi de la methode subjective; et la methode
subjective, a les en croire, est le peche originel de la
science, la racine de toutes les erreurs scientifiques.
Suivant eux, loin d'aller ou le portent ses attraits,
l'homme qui cherche la verite doit se reduire a la
simple condition d'instrument enregistreur, faire de
sa conscience de savant une sorte de feuille blanche
et de surface morte, sur laquelle la realite" exterieure
viendrait se retracer sans alteration ni courbure.

Je nie absolument la legitimite d'un tel parti pris
chez ceux qui pretendent le poser en regie univer-
selle de la methode. Cette regie est bonne a appli-
quer a un ordre de recherches, mais elle est denuee
de valeur, elle est meme absurde, dans un autre
ordre de verites a trouver. Rejeter rigoureusement
la methode subjective partout ou la verite existe en
dehors de mon action et se determine avec certitude
independamment de tout ce que je peux desirer ou
craindre, rien de plus sage. Ainsi, les faits acquis
de 1'histoire, les mouvements futurs des astres sont
des maintenant determines, soit qu'ils me plaisent
ou non comme ils sont ou seront. Mes preferences
ici sont impuissantes a produire ou a modifier les
choses et ne pourraient qu'obscurcir mon jugement.
Je dois resolument leur iinposer silence.

Mais il est une classe de faits dont la matiere n'est

70

[1878] QUELQUES CONSIDERATIONS

point ainsi constitute ou fixee d'avance, — des faits
qui ne sont pas donnes. — Je fais une ascension
alpestre. Je me trouve dans un mauvais pas dont
je ne peux sortir que par un saut hardi et dange-
reux, et ce saut, je voudrais le pouvoir faire, mais
j 'ignore, faute d'experience, si j'en aurai la force.
Supposons que j'emploie la methode subjective: je
crois ce que je desire; ma confiance me donne des
forces et rend possible ce qui, sans elle, ne 1'eut
peut-etre pas ete. Je franchis done 1'espace et me
voila hors de danger. Mais supposons que je sois
dispose a nier ma capacite, par ce motif qu'elle ne
m'a pas encore etc" demontree par ce genre d'ex-
ploits : alors je balance, j'hesite, et tant et tant qu'a
la fin, affaibli et tremblant, reduit a prendre un
elan de pur desespoir, je manque mon coup et je
tombe dans 1'abime. En pareil cas, quoi qu'il en
puisse advenir, je ne serai qu'un sot si je ne crois
pas ce que je desire, car ma croyance se trouve etre
une condition preliminaire, indispensable de Tac-
complissement de son objet qu'elle affirme. Croyant
a mes forces, je m'elance; le resultat donne raison
a ma croyance, la verifie; c'est alors seulement
qu'elle dcvient vraie, mais alors on peut dire aussi
qu'elle vtait vraie. II y a done des cas ou une croy
ance cree sa propre verification. Ne croyez pas,
vous aurez raison; et, en effet, vous tomberez dans
1'abime. Croyez, vous aurez encore raison, car vous
vous sauverez. Toute la difference entre les deux
cas, c'est que le second vous est fort avantageux.
Des que j'admets qu'une certaine alternative

71

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

existe, et que 1'option pour moi n'est possible qu'a
ce prix que je veuille fournir une contribution per-
sonnelle ; des que je reconnais que cette contribution
personnelle depend d'un certain degre d'energie sub
jective, qui lui-meme a besoin, pour se realiser, d'un
certain degre de foi dans le resultat, et qu'ainsi
Pavenir possible repose sur la croyance actuelle, je
dois voir en quelle absurdite profonde je tomberais
en voulant bannir la methode subjective, la foi de
Tesprit. Sur 1'existence actuelle de cette foi, la
possibilite de Pavenir se f onde. Cette foi peut trom-
per, tres-bien. Les efforts dont elle me rend ca
pable peuvent ne pas aboutir a creer un ordre de
choses qu'elle entrevoit et voudrait determiner;
voila qui est dit. Eh Men ! ma vie est manquee, c'est
indubitable ; mais la vie de M. Huxley, par exemple,
— de M. Huxley, qui ecrivait dernierement : "Croire
parce qu'on voudrait croire serait faire preuve de
la derniere immoralite", — cette vie ne serait-elle
pas tout aussi manquee, s'il se trouvait par hasard
que la croyance qu'il voudrait proscrire comme
denuee de garantie objective fut en definitive la
vraie !

Le cas est toujours possible. Quoi qu'on fasse,
en ce jeu qu'on appelle la vie, qu'on croie, qu'on
doute, qu'on nie, on est £galement expose a perdre.
Est-ce une raison pour ne pas jouer? Non, evi-
demment ; mais puisque ce qu'on perd est une quan-
tit6 fixe (on ne fait apres tout que payer de sa per-
sonne), c'est une raison de s'assurer, par tous les
moyens legitimes qu?on a, qu'au cas que Ton gagne,

72

[1878] QUELQUES CONSIDERATIONS

le gain soit uii maximum. Si, par exemple, on peut,
en croyant, augmenter le grand Men qu'on poursuit,
le prix possible, voilk une raison de croire.

Or, il*en est pr6cise"ment ainsi touchant plusieurs
de ces questions universelles, qui sont les problemes
de la philosophic. Prenons celle du pessimisme.
Sans etre arrive partout a Fetat de dogme philo-
sophique, comme nous le voyons en Allemagne, le
pessimisme pose a tout penseur un serieux pro-
bl£me : A quoi bon la vie? ou, comme on dit vulgaire-
ment, le jeu en vaut-il la chandelle? Si on prend
parti pour la reponse pessimiste, que gagne-t-on a
avoir raison? Pas grand'chose, assurement. Au
contraire, on gagne un maximum, au cas qu'on ait
raison en decidant en faveur de Fopinion qui tient
que le monde est bon. Que pouvons-nous faire pour
que ce monde soit bon? y contribuer de notre part;
et comment une contribution minime peut-elle chan
ger la valeur d'un total si grand? en ce qu'elle est
d'une qualite incomparablement superieure. Telle
est la qualite des faits de la vie morale.

Soit M la masse des faits independants de moi,
et soit r ma reaction propre, le contingent des faits
qui derivent de mon activite personnelle. M con-
tient, nous le savons, une somme immense de phe-
nomenes de besoin, inisere, vieillesse, douleur, et de
choses faites pour inspirer le degout et Feffroi. II
se pourrait alors que r se produisit comme une re"ac-
tion du d^sespoir, fut un acte de suicide, par ex
emple, M + r, la totalite avec ce qui me concerne,
representerait done un etat de choses mauvais de

73

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

tout point. Nul rayon dans cette nuit. Le pes
simisme, dans cette hypothese, se trouve paracheve"
par mon acte lui-meme, derive de ma croyance. Le
voila fait, et j'avais raison de raffirmer.

Supposons, au contraire, que le sentiment du mal
contenu dans M, au lieu de me decourager, n'ait
fait qu'accroitre ma resistance interieure. Cette
fois ma reaction sera Toppose du desespoir; r con-
tiendra patience, courage, devouement, foi a 1'in-
visible, toutes les vertus heroiques et les joies qui
decoulent de ces vertus. Or, c'est un fait d'ex-
perience, et Tempirisme ne peut le contester, que
de telles joies sont d'une valeur incomparable aupres
des jouissances purement passives qui se trouvent
exclues par le fait de la constitution de M telle
qu'elle est. Si done il est vrai que le bonheur moral
est le plus grand bonheur actuellement connu; si,
d'autre part, la constitution de M, par le mal qu'il
contient et la reaction qu'il provoque, estla condition
de ce bonheur, n'est-il pas clair que M est au moins
susceptible d'appartenir au meilleur des mondes?
Je dis susceptible seulement, parce que tout depend
du caractere de r. M en soi est ambigu, capable,
selon le complement qu'il recevra, de figurer dans
un pessimisme ou dans un optimisme moral.1

1 II est clair qu'il ne faut pas donner ici a ce mot optimisme
le sens qu'il a regu par rapport aux questions de tlieodicee, ov*
celui qu'on y attache dans la philosophie de Tliistoire : sens que
r6sument les propositions: Tout est Men, Tout est necessaire.
Mais le pessimisme signifiant ci-dessus la doctrine du Tout est
mal, on entend sans doute ici par Voptimisme non pas le con-
traire logique, mais simpleinent le contradictoire logique (pour
employer les termes de 1'Ecole) de cette doctrine; a savoir non

74

[1878] QUELQUES CONSIDERATIONS

II fera dii'Jirilcment partie d'uu optimisme, si
nous perdons notre energie morale; il pourra en
faire partie, si nous la conservons. Mais comment
la conserver, & moins de croire £L la possibility d'une
r£ussite, a moins de coinpter sur Pavenir et de se
dire: Ce monde cst bon, puisque, au point de vue
moral, il est ce que je le fais, et que je le ferai bon?
En un mot, comment exclure de la connaissance du
fait la methode subjective, alors que cette methode
est le propre instrument de la production du fait?

En toute proposition dont la portee est uni-
verselle, il faut que les actes du sujet et leurs suites
sans fin soient renfermes d'avance dans la formule.
Telle doit etre 1'extension de la formule M + r,
des qu'on la prend pour representer le monde. Ceci
pose, nos vreux, nos souhaits e"tant des coefficients
reels du terme r, soit en eux-memes, soit par les
croyances qu'ils nous inspirent ou, si Ton veut, par
les hypotheses qu'ils nous suggerent, on doit avouer
que ces croyances engendrent une partie au moins
de la verite" qu'elles affirment. Telles croyances,
tels faits; d'autres croyances, d'autres faits. Et
notons Men que tout ceci est independant de la
question de la liberte absolue ou du determinisme
absolu. Si nos faits sont determines, c'est que nos
croyances le sont aussi; mais determinees ou non
que soient ces dernieres, elles sont une condition
phenomenale necessairement prealable aux faits,

pas que tout cst bien, mais qu'il est faux que tout soit mal,
qu'iZ y a clu bien, que le monde pent £tre bon. Au dela les
questions subsistent (Note de la Critique philosophique.)

75

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

necessairement constitutive, par consequent, de la
verite que nous cherchons a connaitre.

Voila done la methode subjective justifiee logique-
ment, pourvu qu'on en limite convenablement
Pemploi. Elle ne serait que pernicieuse, et il faut
meme dire immorale, appliquee a des cas ou les f aits
H formuler ne renfermeraient pas comme facteur le
terme subjectif r. Mais par tout ou entre un tel
facteur, 1'application en est 16gitime. Prenons en
core ce probleme pour exemple :

La nature intime du monde est-elle morale, ou
le monde n'est-il qu'un pur fait, une simple exis
tence actuellef C'est au fond la question du mate-
rialisme. Les positivistes objecteront qu'une ques
tion pareille est insoluble, ou meme irrationnelle,
attendu que la nature intime du monde, existat-elle,
n'est pas un phenomene et ne peut en consequence
etre verifiee. Je reponds que toute question a un
sens et se pose nettement, de laquelle resulte une
claire alternative pratique, en telle sorte que, selon
qu'on y reponde d'une maniere ou d'une autre, on
doive adopter une conduite ou une autre. Or, c'est
le cas : le materialiste et celui qui affirme une nature
morale du monde devront agir differemment Tun de
Fautre en bien des circonstances. Le materialiste,
quand les faits ne concordent pas avec ses senti
ments moraux, est toujours maitre de sacrifier ces
derniers. Le jugement qu'il porte sur un fait, en
tant que bon ou mauvais, est relatif & sa constitu
tion psychique et en depend; mais cette constitu
tion n'etant elle-m£me qu'un fait et une donnee,

76

[1878] Qi;j<;LyUl-;S CONSIDERATIONS

n'est en soi ni bonne ni mauvaise. II est done permis
de la modifier,— d'cnguimlir, par cxemple, le senti
ment moral & 1'aide de toutes sortes de moyens, — et
de changer ainsi le jugement, en transformant la
donnee de laquelle il derive. Au contraire, celui qui
croit a la nature morale intime du monde, estime
que les attributs de Men et de mal conviennent a
tons les phenomenes et s'appliquent aux donnees
psychlques aussi bien qu'aux faits relatifs a ces
donnees. II ne saurait done songer, comme a une
ehose toute simple, a fausser ses sentiments. Ses
sentiments eux-memes doivcnt, selon lui, etre d'une
maniere et non d'une autre.

D'un cote done, resistance au mal, pauvretS ac-
ceptee, martyre s'il le faut, la vie tragique, en un
mot; de 1'autre, les concessions, les accommode-
ments, les capitulations de conscience et la vie £pi-
curienne; tel est le partage entre les deux croy-
ances. Observons seulement que leurs divergences
ne se marquent avec force qu'aux moments decisifs
et critiques de la vie, quand Finsuffisance des maxi-
mes journalieres oblige de recourir aux grands prin-
cipes. La, la contradiction eclate. L'un dit: Le
monde est chose serieuse, partout et tou jours, et
il y a fondements pour le jugement moral. L'autre,
le materialiste, repond: Qu'importe comment je
juge, puisque vanitas vanitatum est le fond de tout?
Le dernier mot de la sagesse aux abois, pour celui-ci,
c'est anesthesie; pour celui-la, cnergie.

On voit que le probl£me a un sens, puisqu'il com-
porte deux solutions contradictoires dans la

77

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

pratique de la vie. Comment savoir a present quelle
solution est la bonne? Mais comment un savant
sait-il si son hypothese est la bonne? II la prend
pour bonne et il precede aux deductions, il agit
en consequence de ce qu'il a pose. Tot ou tard les
suites de son activite le detromperont, si son point
de depart a 6te pris faussement. N'en est-il pas ici
de meme? Nous avons tou jours affaire a If+r. Si
My en sa nature intime, est moral et que r soit
fourni par un materialiste, ces deux elements sont
en disaccord et ils iront s'ecartant de plus en plus
Pun de Pautre. La meme divergence devra s'accuser
au cas que Pagent regie sa conduite sur la croyance
que le monde est un fait moral, et que le monde, en
realite, ne soit qu'un fait brut, une somme de phe-
nomenestoutmateriels. Des deux parts, il y a attente
trompee ; d'ou la necessite d'hypotheses subsidiaires,
et de plus en plus compliqu6es, comme celles dont
Phistoire de Pastronomie nous fournit un exemple
dans la multiplicite des epicycles qu'on dut imaginer
pour faire cadrer les faits de mieux en mieux ob
serves avec le systeme de Ptolemee. Si done le
partisan du monde moral, en sa croyance, s'est
determine pour Phypothese fausse, il eprouvera une
suite de mecomptes et n'arrivera pas definitive-
ment a la paix du cceur; il restera inconsole dans
ses peines; son choix tragique ne sera pas justifie.
Dans le cas contraire, H-\-r formant une harmonic
et non plus un assemblage d'elements disparates,
le temps irait confirmant Phypothese, et Pagent qui
Paurait embrassee aurait tou jours plus de raisons

78

[1878] QUELQUES CONSIDERATIONS

de se feliciter de son choix : il nagerait pour ainsi
dire & pleines voiles dans la destined qu'il se serait
faite.

Le moyen est done le meme ici que dans les
sciences, de prouver qu'une opinion est fondle, et
nous n'en connaissons pas d'autre. Observons seule-
ment que, selon les questions, le temps requis pour
la verification varie. Telle hypothese, en physique,
sera ve"rifiee au bout d'une demi-heure. Une hypo-
th£se comme celle du transformisme demandera
plus d'une generation pour s'etablir solidement, et
des hypotheses d'un ordre universel, telles que celles
dont nous parlons, pourront rester sujettes au doute
pendant bien des si£cles encore. Mais en attendant
il faut agir, et pour agir il faut choisir son hypo
these. Le doute meme equivaut souvent & un choix
actif. Du moment qu'on est oblige d'opter, il n'y a
rien de plus rationnel que de donner sa preference a
celui des partis a prendre pour lequel on se sent
le plus d'attrait, quitte ensuite a se voir dementi
et condamne par la nature des choses si Ton a mal
juge. Au resume foi et working hypothesis sont
ici la meme chose. Avec le temps, la verit6 se
devoilera.

Je peux aller plus loin. Je demande pourquoi
le materialisme et la croyance en un monde moral
ne seraient pas I'nn comme I'autre verifiables de
la inaniere que je viens de dire? Qu'est-ce, en
d'autres termes, qui empeche que M ne soit essen-
tiellement ambigu et n'attende de son complement
r la determination ultime qui le fera ou rentrer

79

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

dans un systeme moral ou se reduire a un systeme
de fails bruts?

Le cas est concevable. Telle ligne peut faire
partie d'un nombre infini de courbes, tel mot peut
entrer dans beaucoup de phrases differentes. Si
nous avions affaire a un cas de ce genre, il pourrait
dependre de r de faire pencher la balance en un sens
ou en Fautre. Agissons, je suppose, en nous in-
spirant de la croyance en Funivers moral: cette
verite que le monde est chose tres-serieuse eclatera
chaque jour davantage. Au contraire, agissons en
materialistes, et la suite des temps montrera de
plus en plus que le monde est chose frivole et que
vanitas vamtatum est Men le fond de tout. Ainsi
le moude sera ce que nous le ferons.

Et qu'on ne me dise pas qu'une chose infime
telle que r ne saurait changer du tout au tout
le caractere de M, cette masse immense. Une simple
particule negative renverse Men le sens des plus
longues phrases ! Si Fon avait a definir Funivers au
point de vue de la sensibilite, il faudrait ne re-
garder qu'au seul regne animal, pourtant si pauvre
comme fait quantitatif. La definition morale du
monde pourrait dependre de phenomenes plus re-
streints encore. Croyons a ce monde-la: les fruits
de notre croyance remedieront aux defauts qui
Fempechaient d'etre. Croyons qu'il n'est qu'une idee
vaine, et en effet il sera vain. La methode subjec
tive est ainsi legitime en pratique et en theorie.

J'ai deja remarque qu'il n'etait pas question de
liber te absolue dans les exemples que j'ai pris.

80

[1878] QUELQUES CONSIDERATIONS

Cette libert^ peut etre ou n'etre pas rSellement.
Mais si des actes libres sont possibles, ils peuvent
se produire et devenir plus frequents, grace a la
me'thode subjective. En effet, la foi en leur pos-
sibilite" augmente 1'energie morale qui les suscite.
Mais parler de liberte dans la Critique philosophi
que, c'est porter de For en Californie. J'aime done
mieux finir et me r&sumer en disant que je crois
avoir montre dans la me'thode subjective autre
chose que le proc6d£ qualifi6 de honteux par un
Strange abus de 1'esprit soi-disant scientifique. II
faut passer outre a cette espece de proscription, h
ce veto ridicule qui, si nous voulions nous y con-
former, paralyserait deux de nos plus essentielles
facultes : celle de nous proposer, en vertu d'un acte
de croyance, un but qui ne peut etre atteint que par
nos propres efforts, et celle de nous porter coura-
geusement a Faction dans les cas ou le succes ne
nous est pas assure d'avance.

Croyez, messieurs, a la sympathie tres-parti-
culiere avec laquelle je suis, votre tout devoue,

WM. JAMES.

Harvard College, Cambridge (Mass.), Etats-Unis
d'Ainerique, 20 nov. 1877.

1 L'auteur du tr^s-remarquable article qu'on vient
de lire fait a la Critique philosophique beaucoup

t1 This note, as well as that above on p. 74, was presumably
written by Charles Renouvier, who was at this time editor of
the Critique Philosophique. Cf. above, p. 2G, note. ED.]

81

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

d'honneur en voulant Men s'etonner de ce qu'il n'a
pas encore rencontre F expression de ses propres pen-
sees totidem verbis dans nos pages. II est vrai
qu'elles sont en tout conformes a la methode criti-
ciste et nous nous estimerions heureux de pouvoir
les signer. Mais la maniere dont elles sont pr6sen-
tees, la forme originale du raisonnement et la saveur a
la fois delicate et forte des legons donnees a la f ausse
science par un homme qui est fort au courant de la
vraie, impriment un reel cachet de personnalite a
cette justification de la "methode subjective." Nous
sommes bien surs que nos lecteurs seront de notre
avis, dussent-ils faire leurs reserves sur un point ou
sur un autre, ou plutot reelamer des eclaircisse-
ments qui parfois ne seraient pas de trop. Quant
a nous, nous ne manquerons pas de reprendre ce
grand sujet et d'essayer d7 a j outer aux ingenieuses
demonstrations de M. Wm. James, quelques-uns des
nombreux commentaires qu'elles sont de nature a
appeler.

82

X

THE SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY1

[1879]

WHAT is the task which philosophers set them
selves to perform? And why do they philosophise
at all? Almost every one will immediately reply:
They desire to attain a conception of the frame of
things which shall on the whole be more rational
than the rather fragmentary and chaotic one which
everyone by gift of nature carries about with him
under his hat. But suppose this rational concep
tion attained by the philosopher, how is he to rec
ognise it for what it is, and not let it slip through
ignorance? The only answer can be that he will
recognise its rationality as he recognises everything
else, by certain subjective marks with which it af-

f1 Reprinted from Mind, 1879, //, 317-346. It was translated
into French with a note of tribute by C. Renouvier, in Critique
Philosophique, 1879, 8me annee, 2, 72-89; 113-118; 129-136.
Portions were combined with "Rationality, Activity and Faith"
(Princeton Review, 1882, 2, 58-86) to form the essay entitled
"The Sentiment of Rationality" in The Will to Believe and other
Essays (1897). For the bearing of this present essay on James's
general plan, cf. the author's note on p. 136, below. The statement
of instrumentalism on pp. 86-88 below was reprinted as a note
in the Principles of Psychology (1890), 2, pp. 335-^336. Pencilled
corrections by the author made in the copy of Mind belonging
to the Harvard College Library have been adopted in the
present reprinting. ED.]

83

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

fects Mm. When he gets the marks he may know
that he has got the rationality.

What then are the marks? A strong feeling of
ease, peace, rest, is one of them. The transition
from a state of puzzle and perplexity to rational
comprehension is full of lively relief and pleasure.

But this relief seems to be a negative rather than
a positive character. Shall we then say that the
feeling of rationality is constituted merely by the
absence of any feeling of irrationality? I think
there are very good grounds for upholding such a
view. All feeling whatever, in the light of certain
recent psychological speculations, seems to depend
for its physical condition not on simple discharge
of nerve-currents, but on their discharge under
arrest, impediment or resistance. Just as we feel
no particular pleasure when we breathe freely, but
a very intense feeling of distress when the respira
tory motions are prevented; so any unobstructed
tendency to action discharges itself without the pro
duction of much cogitative accompaniment, and
any perfectly fluent course of thought awakens but
little feeling. But when the movement is inhibited
or when the thought meets with difficulties, we ex
perience a distress which yields to an opposite
feeling of pleasure as fast as the obstacle is over
come. It is only when the distress is upon us that
we can be said to strive, to crave, or to aspire. When
enjoying plenary freedom to energise either in the
way of motion or of thought, we are in a sort of
anaesthetic state in which we might say with Walt

84

[1879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

Whitman, if we cared to say anything about our
selves at such times, "I am sufficient as I am". This
feeling of the sufficiency of the present moment, of
its absoluteness — this absence of all need to explain
it, account for it or justify it — is what I call the
Sentiment of Rationality. As soon, in short, as we
are enabled from any cause whatever to think of a
thing with perfect fluency, that thing seems to us
rational.

Why we should constantly gravitate towards the
attainment of such fluency cannot here be said. As
this is not an ethical but a psychological essay, it
is quite sufficient for our purposes to lay it down
as an empirical fact that we strive to formulate ra
tionally a tangled mass of fact by a propensity as
natural and invincible as that which makes us ex
change a hard high stool for an arm-chair or prefer
travelling by railroad to riding in a springless cart.

Whatever modes of conceiving the cosmos facili
tate this fluency of our thought, produce the senti
ment of rationality. Conceived in such modes
Being vouches for itself and needs no further philo
sophic formulation. But so long as mutually ob
structive elements are involved in the conception,
the pent-up irritated mind recoiling on its present
consciousness will criticise it, worry over it, and
never cease in its attempts to discover some new
mode of formulation which may give it escape from
the irrationality of its actual ideas.

Now mental ease and freedom may be obtained in
various ways. Nothing is more familiar than the

85

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS ti879]

way in which mere custom makes us at home with
ideas or circumstances which, when new, filled the
mind with curiosity and the need of explanation.
There is no more common sight than that of men's
mental worry about things incongruous with per
sonal desire, and their thoughtless incurious ac
ceptance of whatever happens to harmonise with
their subjective ends. The existence of evil forms
a "mystery" — a "problem" : there is no "problem
of happiness". But, on the other hand, purely
theoretic processes may produce the same mental
peace which custom and congruity with our native
impulses in other cases give ; and we have forthwith
to discover how it is that so many processes can
produce the same result, and how Philosophy, by
emulating or using the means of all, may attain
to a conception of the world which shall be rational
in the maximum degree, or be warranted in the most
composite manner against the inroads of mental
unrest or discontent.

II

It will be best to take up first the theoretic way.
The facts of the world in their sensible diversity
are always before us, but the philosophic need
craves that they should be conceived in such a way
as to satisfy the sentiment of rationality. The
philosophic quest then is the quest of a conception.
What now is a conception? It is a teleological v ,
instrument. It is a partial aspect of a thing I
which for our purpose we regard as its essen-

86

[1879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY.

tial aspect, as the representative of the entire
thing. In comparison with this aspect, whatever
other properties and qualities the thing may have,
are unimportant accidents which we may without
blame ignore. But the essence, the ground of con- i
ception, varies with the end we have in view. A
substance like oil has as many different essences as
it has uses to different individuals. One man con
ceives it as a combustible, another as a lubricator,
another as a food; the chemist thinks of it as a
hydro-carbon ; the furniture-maker as a darkener of
wood ; the speculator as a commodity whose market
price to-day is this and to-morrow that. The soap
boiler, the physicist, the clothes-scourer severally
ascribe to it other essences in relation to their
needs. Ueberweg's doctrine1 that the essential
quality of a thing is the quality of most worth, is
strictly true ; but Ueberweg has failed to note that
the worth is wholly relative to the temporary in
terests of the conceiver. And, even, when his in
terest is distinctly defined in his own mind, the
discrimination of the quality in the object which
has the closest connexion with it, is a thing which
no rules can teach. The only a priori advice that
can be given to a man embarking on life with a
certain purpose is the somewhat barren counsel :
Be sure that in the circumstances that meet you,
you attend to the right ones for your purpose. To
pick out the right ones is the measure of the man.
"Millions," says Hartmann, "stare at the phenome-

1 Logic, English tr., p. 139.
87

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

non before a genialer Kopf pounces on the con
cept."1 The genius is simply he to whom, when he
opens his eyes upon the world, the "right" charac
ters are the prominent ones. The fool is he who,
with the same purposes as the genius, infallibly gets
his attention tangled amid the accidents.

Schopenhauer expresses well this ultimate truth
when he says that Intuition (by which in this pas
sage he means the power to distinguish at a glance the
essence amid the accidents) "is not only the source
of all knowledge, but is knowledge *«T' s£ox^v
... is real insight. . . . Wisdom, the true view of
life, the right look at things, and the judgment that
hits the mark, proceed from the mode in which the
man conceives the world which lies before him.
. . . He who excels in this talent knows the (Pla
tonic) ideas of the world and of life. Every case
he looks at stands for countless cases; more and
more he goes on to conceive of each thing in accord
ance with its true nature, and his acts like his judg
ments bear the stamp of his insight. Gradually
his face too acquires the straight and piercing look,
the expression of reason, and at last of wisdom.
For the direct sight of essences alone can set its
mark upon the face. Abstract knowledge about
them has no such effect."2

The right conception for the philosopher depends
then on his interests. Now the interest which he
has above other men is that of reducing the mani-

1 Philosophic des Uribewussten, 2te Auflage, p. 249.
2 Welt als Wille u. Vorstellung, II., p. 83.

88

[1879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

fold in thought to simple form. We can no more
say why the philosopher is more peculiarly sensitive
to this delight, than we can explain the passion
some persons have for matching colours or for ar
ranging cards in a game of solitaire. All these pas
sions resemble each other in one point; they are
all illustrations of what may be called the aesthetic
Principle of Ease. Our pleasure at finding that
a chaos of facts is at bottom the expression of a
single underlying fact is like the relief of the mu
sician at resolving a confused mass of sound into
melodic or harmonic order. The simplified result
is handled with far less mental effort than the
original data ; and a philosophic conception of na
ture is thus in no metaphorical sense a labour-
saving contrivance. The passion for parsimony,
for economy of means in thought, is thus the philo
sophic passion par excellence, and any character or
aspect of the world's phenomena which gathers up
their diversity into simplicity will gratify that
passion, and in the philosopher's mind stand for
that essence of things compared with which all their
other determinations may by him be overlooked.

Mere universality or extensiveness is then the one
mark the philosopher's conceptions must possess.
Unless they appear in an enormous number of cases
they will not bring the relief which is his main
theoretic need. The knowledge of things by their
causes, which is often given as a definition of ra
tional knowledge, is useless to him unless the causes
converge to a minimum number whilst still pro-

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ducing the maximum number of effects. The more
multiple are the instances he can see to be cases of
his fundamental concept, the more flowingly does
his mind rove from fact to fact in the world. The
phenomenal transitions are no real transitions;
each item is the same old friend with a slightly-
altered dress. This passion for unifying things may
gratify itself, as we all know, at truth's expense.
Everyone has friends bent on system and everyone
has observed how, when their system has once taken
definite shape, they become absolutely blind and
insensible to the most flagrant facts which cannot
be made to fit into it. The ignoring of data is, in
fact, the easiest and most popular mode of obtaining
unity in one's thought.

But leaving these vulgar excesses let us glance
briefly at some more dignified contemporary ex
amples of the hypertrophy of the unifying passion.

Its ideal goal gets permanent expression in the
great notion of Substance, the underlying One in
which all differences are reconciled. D'Alembert's
often quoted lines express the postulate in its most
abstract shape: "L'univers pour qui saurait I'em-
brasser d'un seul point de vue ne serait, s'il est
permis de le dire, qu'un fait unique et une grande
verite." Accordingly Mr. Spencer, after saying on
page 158 of the first volume of his Psychology, that
"no effort enables us to assimilate Feeling and
Motion, they have nothing in common," cannot re
frain on page 162 from invoking abruptly an "Un
conditional Being common to the two".

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The craving for Monism at any cost is the parent
of the entire evolutionist movement of our day, so
far as it pretends to be more than history. The
Philosophy of Evolution tries to show how the
world at any given time may be conceived as abso
lutely identical, except in appearance, with itself
at all past times. What it most abhors is the ad
mission of anything which, appearing at a given
point, should be judged essentially other than what
went before. Notwithstanding the lacunce in Mr.
Spencer's system; notwithstanding the vagueness
of his terms; in spite of the sort of jugglery by
which his use of the word "nascent" is made to
veil the introduction of new primordial factors like
consciousness, as if, like the girl in Midshipman
Easy, he could excuse the illegitimacy of an infant,
by saying it was a very little one — in spite of all
this, I say, Mr. Spencer is, and is bound to be, the
most popular of all philosophers, because more than
any other he seeks to appease our strongest theo
retic craving. To undiscriminating minds his sys
tem will be a sop ; to acute ones a programme full
of suggestiveness.

When Lewes asserts in one place that the nerve-
process and the feeling which accompanies it are
not two things but only two "aspects" of one and
the same thing, whilst in other passages he seems
to imply that the cognitive feeling and the outward
thing cognised (which is always other than the
nerve-process accompanying the cognitive act) are
again one thing in two aspects (giving us thereby

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as the ultimate truth One Thing in Three Aspects,
very much as Trinitarian Christians affirm it to be
One God in Three Persons), — the vagueness of his
mode only testifies to the imperiousness of his need
of unity.

The crowning feat of unification at any cost is
seen in the Hegelian denial of the Principle of Con
tradiction. One who is willing to allow that A
and not-A are one, can be checked by few farther
difficulties in Philosophy.

Ill

But alongside of the passion for simplification,
there exists a sister passion which in some minds —
though they perhaps form the minority — is its rival.
This is the passion for distinguishing; it is the im
pulse to be acquainted with the parts rather than
to comprehend the whole. Loyalty to clearness and
integrity of perception, dislike of blurred outlines,
of vague identifications, are its characteristics. It
loves to recognise particulars in their full complete
ness, and the more of these it can carry the happier
it is. It is the mind of Cuvier versus St. Hilaire,
of Hume versus Spinoza. It prefers any amount of
incoherence, abruptness and fragmentariness (so
long as the literal details of the separate facts are
saved) to a fallacious unity which swamps things
rather than explains them.

Clearness versus Simplicity is then the theoretic
dilemma, and a man's philosophic attitude is de-

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termined by the balance in him of these two crav
ings. When John Mill insists that the ultimate
laws of nature cannot possibly be less numerous
than the distinguishable qualities of sensation
which we possess, he speaks in the name of this
aesthetic demand for clearness. When Professor Bain
says1: — "There is surely nothing to be dissatisfied
with, or to complain of in the circumstance that
the elements of our experience are in the last resort
two and not one. . . . Instead of our being 'un
fortunate' in not being able to know the essence of
either matter or mind — in not comprehending their
union, our misfortune would rather be to have to
know anything different from what we do know," —
he is animated by a like motive. All makers of
architectonic systems like that of Kant, all multi
pliers of original principles, all dislikers of vague
monotony, whether it bear the character of Eleatic
stagnancy or of Heraclitic change, obey this ten
dency. Ultimate kinds of feeling bound together in
harmony by laws, which themselves are ultimate
kinds of relation, form the theoretic resting-place
of such philosophers.

The unconditional demand which this need makes
of a philosophy is that its fundamental terms should
be representable. Phenomena are analysable into
feelings and relations. Causality is a relation be
tween two feelings. To abstract the relation from
the feelings, to unify all things by referring them
to a first cause, and to leave this latter relation

'"On Mystery, etc." Fortnightly Review, Vol. IV. N.S., p. 394.

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with no term of feeling before it, is to violate the
fundamental habits of our thinking, to baffle the im
agination, and to exasperate the minds of certain
people much as everyone's eye is exasperated by a
magic-lantern picture or a microscopic object out of
focus. Sharpen it, we say, or for heaven's sake re
move it altogether.

The matter is not at all helped when the word
Substance is brought forward and the primordial
causality said to obtain between this and the phe
nomena ; for Substance in se cannot be directly im
aged by feeling, and seems in fact but to be a pecul
iar form of relation between feelings — the relation
of organic union between a group of them and time.
Such relations, represented as non-phenomenal enti
ties, become thus the bete noire and pet aversion of
many thinkers. By being posited as existent they
challenge our acquaintance but at the same instant
defy it by being denned as noumenal. So far is this
reaction against the treatment of relational terms
as metempirical entities carried, that the reigning
British school seems to deny their function even in
their legitimate sphere, namely as phenomenal ele
ments or "laws" cementing the mosaic of our feel
ings into coherent form. Time, likeness, and un-
likeness are the only phenomenal relations our
English empiricists can tolerate. One of the
earliest and perhaps the most famous expression
of the dislike to relations considered abstractedly
is the well-known passage from Hume: "When we
run over libraries, persuaded of these principles,

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what havoc must we make ! If we take in our hand
any volume of divinity or school metaphysic, for
instance*, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract
reasoning concerning quantity or number? No.
Does it contain any experimental reasoning con
cerning matter of fact existence? No. Commit it
then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but
sophistry and illusion."1

Many are the variations which succeeding writers
have played on this tune. As we spoke of the ex
cesses of the unifying passion, so we may now say
of the craving for clear representability that it
leads often to an unwillingness to treat any abstrac
tions whatever as if they were intelligible. Even
to talk of space, time, feeling, power, &c., oppresses
them with a strange sense of uncanniness. Any
thing to be real for them must be representable in
the form of a lump. Its other concrete determi
nations may be abstracted from, but its tangible
thinghood must remain. Minds of this order, if
they can be brought to psychologise at all, abound
in such phrases as "tracts" of consciousness,
"areas" of emotion, "molecules" of feeling, "agglu
tinated portions" of thought, "gangs" of ideas, &c.,
&c.

Those who wish an amusing example of this style
of thought should read Le Cerveau by the anatomist
Luys, surely the very worst book ever written on
the much-abused subject of mental physiology. In
another work, Psychologic realiste, by P. Sierebois

1 Essays, ed. Green and Grose, II., p. 135.

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(Paris 1876), it is maintained that "our ideas exist
in us in a molecular condition, and are subject to
continual movements. . . . Their mobility is as
great as that of the molecules of air or any gas."
When we fail to recall a word it is because our ideas
are hid in some distant corner of the brain whence
they cannot come to the muscles of articulation, or
else "they have lost their ordinary fluidity". . . .
"These ideal molecules are material portions of the
brain which differs from all other matter precisely
in this property which it possesses of subdividing
itself into very attenuated portions which easily
take on the likeness in form and quality of all ex
ternal objects." In other words, when I utter the
word 'rhinoceros' an actual little microscopic
rhinoceros gallops towards my mouth.

A work of considerable acuteness, far above the
vulgar materialistic level, is that of Czolbe, Grund-
ziige einer extensionalen Erkenntnisstheorie (1875).
This author explains our ideas to be extended sub
stances endowed with mutual penetrability. The
matter of which they are composed is "elastic like
india-rubber". When "concentrated" by "mag
netic self -attraction" into the middle of the brain,
its "intensity" is such that it becomes conscious.
When the attraction ceases, the idea-substance ex
pands and diffuses itself into infinite space and so
sinks from consciousness.

Again passing over these gtwm-pathological ex
cesses, we come to a permanent and, for our purpose,
most important fact — the fact that many minds of

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the highest analytic power will tolerate in Philoso
phy no unifying terms but elements immanent in
phenomena, and taken in their phenomenal and rep-
resentable sense. Entities whose attributes are not
directly given in feeling, phenomenal relations
functioning as entities, are alike rejected. Spino-
zistic Substance, Spencerian Unknowable, are ab
horred as unrepresentable things, numerically addi
tional to the representable world. The substance
of things for these clear minds can be no more than
their common measure. The phenomena bear to it
the same relation that the different numbers bear
to unity. These contain no other matter than the
repeated unit, but they may be classed as prime
numbers, odd numbers, even numbers, square num
bers, cube numbers, &c., just as truly and naturally
as we class concrete things. The molecular motions,
of which physicists hope that some day all events
and properties will be seen to consist, form such an
immanent unity of colossal simplifying power. The
"infinitesimal event" of various modern writers,
Taine for example, with its two "aspects," inner
and outer, reaches still farther in the same direc
tion. Writers of this class, if they deal with Psy
chology, repudiate the "soul" as a scholastic entity.
The phenomenal unity of consciousness must flow
from some element immutably present in each and
every representation of the individual and binding
the whole into one. To unearth and accurately de
fine this phenomenal self becomes one of the funda
mental tasks of Psychology.

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But the greatest living insister on the principle
that unity in our account of things shall not over
whelm clearness, is Charles Renouvier. His mas
terly exposition of the irreducible categories of
thought in his Essais de Critique generate ought
to be far better known among us than it is. The on
slaughts which this eminently clear-headed writer
has made and still makes in his weekly journal,
the Critique Philosophique, on the vanity of the
evolutionary principle of simplification, which sup
poses that you have explained away all distinctions
by simply saying "they arise" instead of "they are,"
form the ablest criticism which the school of Evolu
tion has received. Difference "thus displaced, trans
ported from the esse to the fieri, is it any the less
postulated? And does the fieri itself receive the
least commencement of explanation when we sup
pose that everything which occurs, occurs little by
little, by insensible degrees, so that, if we look at
any one of these degrees, what happens does so as
easily and clearly as if it did not happen at all? ...
If we want a continuous production ex nihiloy why
not say so frankly, and abandon the idea of a
'transition without break' which explains really
nothing?"1

1 Critiaue PMlosophique, 12 Juillet, 1877, p. 383.

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IV

Our first conclusion may then be this: No sys
tem of philosophy can hope to be universally ac
cepted among men which grossly violates either of
the two great aesthetic needs of our logical nature,
the need of unity and the need of clearness, or
entirely subordinates the one to the other. Doc
trines of mere disintegration like that of Hume and
his successors, will be as widely unacceptable on
the one hand as doctrines of merely engulphing sub-
stantialism like those of Schopenhauer, Hartmann
and Spencer on the other. Can we for our own
guidance briefly sketch out here some of the con
ditions of most favourable compromise?

In surveying the connexions between data we are
immediately struck by the fact that some are more
intimate than others. Propositions which express
those we call necessary truths; and with them we
contrast the laxer collocations and sequences which
are known as empirical, habitual or merely fortui
tous. The former seem to have an inward reason
ableness which the latter are deprived of. The link,
whatever it be, which binds the two phenomena to
gether, seems to extend from the heart of one into
the heart of the next, and to be an essential reason
why the facts should always and indefeasibly be as
we now know them. "Within the pale we stand."
As Lotze says1 : "The intellect is not satisfied with
merely associated representations. In its constant

1 M ierocosmus, 2d ed. I., p. 261.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS [1879]

critical activity thought seeks to refer each repre
sentation to the rational ground which conditions
the alliance of what is associated and proves that
what is grouped belongs together. So it separates
from each other those impressions which merely
coalesce without inward connexions, and it renews
(while corroborating them) the bonds of those
which, by the inward kinship of their content, have
a right to permanent companionship."

On the other hand many writers seem to deny the
existence of any such inward kinship or rational
bond between things. Hume says : "All our distinct
perceptions are distinct existences and the mind
never perceives any real connexion among distinct
existences."1

Hume's followers are less bold in their utterances
than their master, but throughout all recent British
Nominalism we find the tendency to enthrone mere
juxtaposition as lord of all and to make of the
Universe what has well been styled a Nulliverse.
"For my part," says Professor Huxley, "I utterly re
pudiate and anathematise the intruder [Necessity].
Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this
Necessity, save an empty shadow of the mind's own
throwing?"

And similarly J. S. Mill writes : "What is called
explaining one law by another is but substituting
one mystery for another, and does nothing to render
the course of nature less mysterious. We can no
more assign a why for the more extensive laws than

1 Treatise on Human Nature, cd, T. H. Green, I., p. (559.

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[1879] SENTIMENT OF KATIONALITY

for the partial ones. The explanation may substi
tute a mystery which has become familiar and has
grown to seem not mysterious for one which is still
strange. And this is the meaning of explanation in
common parlance. . . . The laws thus explained or
resolved are said to be accounted for; but the ex
pression is incorrect if taken to mean anything more
than what has been stated."1

And yet the very pertinacity with which such
writers remind us that our explanations are in a
strict sense of the word no explanations at all ; that
our causes never unfold the essential nature of their
effects; that we never seize the inward reason why
attributes cluster as they do to form things, seems
to prove that they possess in their minds some ideal
or pattern of what a genuine explanation would be
like in case they should meet it. How could they
brand our current explanations as spurious, if they
had no positive notion whatever of the real thing?

Now have we the real thing? And yet may they
be partly right in their denials? Surely both; and
I think that the shares of truth may be easily as
signed. Our "laws" are to a great extent but facts
of larger growth, and yet things are inwardly and
necessarily connected notwithstanding. The entire
process of philosophic simplification of the chaos of
sense consists of two acts, Identification and Asso
ciation. Both are principles of union and therefore
of theoretic rationality ; but the rationality between
things associated is outward and custom-bred. Only

1 Logic, 8th Edition, I., p. 549.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS [1879]

when things are identified do we pass inwardly and
necessarily from one to the other.

The first step towards unifying the chaos is to
classify its items. "Every concrete thing/' says
Professor Bain, "falls into as many classes as it has
attributes. m When we pick out a certain attribute
to conceive it by, we literally and strictly identify it
in that respect with the other concretes of the class
having that attribute for its essence, concretes
which the attribute recalls. When we conceive of
sugar as a white thing it is pro tanto identical with
snow ; as a sweet thing it is the same as liquorice ;
qua hydro-carbon, as starch. The attribute picked
out may be per se most uninteresting and familiar,
but if things superficially very diverse can be found
to possess it buried within them and so be assimi
lated with each other, "the mind feels a peculiar and
genuine satisfaction. . . . The intellect, oppressed
with the variety and multiplicity of facts, is joyfully
relieved by the simplification and the unity of a
great principle."2

Who does not feel the charm of thinking that the
moon and the apple are, as far as their relation to
earth goes, identical? of knowing respiration and
combustion to be one? of understanding that the
balloon rises by the same law whereby the stone
sinks? of feeling that the warmth in one's palm
when one rubs one's sleeve is identical with the
motion which the friction checks? of recognising
the difference between beast and fish to be only a

1 Ment. and Mor. Science, p. 107.
2 Bain, Logic, II., p. 120.

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higher degree of that between human father and
son? of believing our strength when we climb or
chop to be no other than the strength of the sun's
rays which made the oats grow out of which we
got our morning meal?

We shall presently see how the attribute perform
ing this unifying function, becomes associated with
some other attribute to form what is called a gen
eral law. But at present we must note that many
sciences remain in this first and simplest classifica-
tory stage. A classificatory science is merely one
the fundamental concepts of which have few asso
ciations or none with other concepts. When I say
a man, a lizard, and a frog are one in being verte
brates, the identification, delightful as it is in itself,
leads me hardly any farther. "The idea that all
the parts of a flower are modified leaves, reveals a
connecting law, which surprises us into acquies
cence. But now try and define the leaf, determine
its essential characteristics, so as to include all the
forms that we have named. You will find your
self in a difficulty, for all distinctive marks vanish,
and you have nothing left, except that a leaf in this
wider sense of the term is a lateral appendage of
the axis of a plant. Try then to express the propo
sition 'the parts of a flower are modified leaves' in
the language of scientific definition, and it reads,
'the parts of the flower are lateral appendages of
the axis'."1 Truly a bald result ! Yet a dozen years
ago there hardly lived a naturalist who was not

1 Helmholtz, Popular Scientific Lectures, p. 47.
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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS ti879]

thrilled with rapture at identifications in "philo
sophic" anatomy and botany exactly on a par with
this. Nothing could more clearly show that the
gratification of the sentiment of rationality depends
hardly at all on the worth of the attribute which
strings things together but almost exclusively on
the mere fact of their being strung at all. Theologi
cal implications were the utmost which the attri
butes of archetypal zoology carried with them, but
the wretched poverty of these proves how little
they had to do with the enthusiasm engendered by
archetypal identifications. Take Agassiz's concep
tion of class-characters, order-characters, &c., as
"thoughts of God." What meagre thoughts ! Take
Owen's archetype of the vertebrate skeleton as re
vealing the artistic temperament of the Creator. It
is a grotesque figure with neither beauty nor ethical
suggestiveness, fitted rather to discredit than
honour the Divine Mind. In short the conceptions
led no farther than the identification pure and
simple. The transformation which Darwin has ef
fected in the classificatory sciences is simply this —
that in his theory the class-essence is not a unify
ing attribute pure and simple, but an attribute with
wide associations. When a frog, a man and a lizard
are recognised as one, not simply in having the
same back-bone, &c., but in being all offspring of one
parent, our thought instead of coming to a stand
still, is immediately confronted with further prob
lems and, we hope, solutions. Who were that par
ent's ancestors and cousins? Why was he chosen

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out of all to found such an enormous line? Why did
he himself perish in the struggle to survive? etc.

Association of class-attributes, inter se, is thus
the next great step in the mind's simplifying in
dustry. By it Empirical Laws are founded and
sciences, from classificatory, become explanatory.
Without it we should be in the position of a judge
who could only decide that the cases in his court
belonged each to a certain class, but who should be
inhibited from passing sentence, or attaching to the
class-name any further notion of duty, liability, or
penalty. This coupling of the class-concept with
certain determinate consequences associated there
withal, is what is practically important in the laws
of nature as in those of society.

When, for example, we have identified prisms,
bowls of water, lenses and strata of air as distort
ing media, the next step is to learn that all distort
ing media refract light rays towards the perpendic
ular. Such additional determination makes a law.
But this law itself may be as inscrutable as the
concrete fact we started from. The entrance of a
ray and its swerving towards the perpendicular,
may be simply associated properties, with, for aught
we see, -no inwardly necessary bond, coupled to
gether as empirically as the colour of a man's eyes
with the shape of his nose.

But such an empirical law may have its terms
again classified. The essence of the medium may
be to retard the light-wave's speed. The essence
(in an obliquely-striking wave) of deflexion towards

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

the perpendicular may be earlier retardation of that
part of the wave-front which enters first, so that
the remaining portion swings round it before get
ting in. Medium and bending towards perpendicu
lar thus coalesce into the one identical fact of
retardation. This being granted gives an inward
explanation of all above it. But retardation itself
remains an empirical coupling of medium and light-
movement until we have classified both under a
single concept. The explanation reached by the
insight that two phenomena are at bottom one and
the same phenomenon, is rational in the ideal and
ultimate sense of the word. The ultimate identifi
cation of the subject and predicate of a mathemati
cal theorem, an identification which we can always
reach in our reasonings, is the source of the inward
necessity of mathematical demonstration. We see
that the top and bottom of a parallelogram must
be equal as soon as we have unearthed in the paral
lelogram the attribute that it consists of two equal,
juxtaposed triangles of which its top and bottom
form homologous sides — that is, as soon as we have
seen that top and bottom have an identical essence,
their length, as being such sides, and that their po
sition is an accident. This criterion of identity is
that w^hich we all unconsciously use when we dis
criminate between brute fact and explained fact.
There is no other test.

In the contemporary striving of physicists to in
terpret every event as a case of motion concealed or
visible, we have an adumbration of the way in which

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[1870] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

a common essence may make the sensible hetero
geneity of things inwardly rational. The cause is
one motion, the effect the same motion transferred
to other molecules ; in other words, physics aims at
the same kind of rationality as mathematics. In
the second volume of Lewes's Problems we find this
anti-Humean view that the effect is the "procession"
of the cause, or that they are one thing in two
aspects brought prominently forward.1

And why, on the other hand, do all our contem
porary physical philosophers so vie with each other
in the zeal with which they reiterate that in reality
nerve-processes and brain-tremors "explain" noth
ing of our feelings? Why does "the chasm between
the two classes of phenomena still remain intel
lectually impassable"?2 Simply because, in the
words of Spencer which we quoted a few pages
back, feeling and motion have nothing whatever
in common, no identical essence by which we can
conceive both, and so, as Tyndall says, "pass by a
process of reasoning from one to the other." The
"double-aspect" school postulate the blank form of
"One and the Same Fact," appeal to the image of the
circle which is both convex and concave, and think
that they have by this symbolic identification made
the matter seem more rational.

1 This view is in growing favour with thinkers fed from
empirical sources. See Wundt's PhysilialiscUe Axiome and the
important article by A. Riehl, "Catisalitiit und Identitat," in
Vi< rteljahrssch. f. wiss. Philos. Bd. I., p. 265. The Humean
view is ably urged by Chauncey Wright, Philosophical Discus
sions, N.Y., 1877, p. 406.

2 Tyndall, Fragments of Science, 2d ed., p. 121.

107

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS ti879]

Thus then the connexions of things become
strictly rational only when, by successive substitu
tions of essences for things, and higher for lower
essences, we succeed in reaching a point of view
from which we can view the things as one. A and
B are concretes ; a and 6 are partial attributes with
which for the present case we conceive them to be
respectively identical (classify them) and which
are coupled by a general law. M is a further attri
bute which rationally explains the general law as
soon as we perceive it to form the essence of both
a and ft, as soon as we identify them with each other
through it. The softening of asphalt pavements in
August is explained first by the empirical law that
heat, which is the essence of August, produces melt
ing, which is the essence of the pavement's change,
and secondly this law is inwardly rationalised by
the conception of both heat and melting being at
the bottom one and the same fact, namely, increased
molecular mobility.

Proximate and ultimate explanations are then
essentially the same thing. Classification involves
all that is inward in any explanation, and a per
fected rationalisation of things means only a com
pleted classification of them. Every one feels that
all explanation whatever, even by reference to the
most proximate empirical law, does involve some
thing of the essence of inward rationalisation. How
else can we understand such words as these from
Professor Huxley? "The fact that it is impossible
to comprehend how it is that a physical state gives

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rise to a mental state, no more lessens the value of
our [empirical] explanation of the latter case, than
the fact that it is utterly impossible to comprehend
how motion is communicated from one body to an
other weakens the force of the explanation of the
motion of one billiard-ball by showing that another
has hit it."1

To return now to the philosophic problem. It is
evident that our idea of the universe cannot assume
an inwardly rational shape until each separate
phenomenon is conceived as fundamentally identi
cal with every other. But the important fact to
notice is that in the steps by which this end is
reached the really rationalising, pregnant moments
are the successive steps of conception, the moments
of picking out essences. The association of these
essences into laws, the empirical coupling, is done
by nature for us and is hardly worthy to be called
an intellectual act, and on the other hand the coales-
cence-into-one of all items in which the same essence
is discerned, in other words the perception that an
essence whether ultimate, simple and universal, or
proximate and specific, is identical with itself
wherever found, is a barren truism. The living
question always is, Where is it found? To stand
before a phenomenon and say what it is; in other
words to pick out from it the embedded character
(or characters) also embedded in the maximum
number of other phenomena, and so identify it with
them — here lie the stress and strain, here the test of

1 "Modern Symposium," XlXth Century, Vol. I., 1877.
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the philosopher. So we revert to what we said far
back : the genius can do no more than this ; in
Butler's words:

"He knows what's win at, and that's as high

As metaphysic wit can fly." x

1 This doctrine is perfectly congruous with the conclusion that
identities are the only propositions necessary a priori, though
of course it does not necessarily lead to that conclusion, since
there may be in things elements which are not simple but
bilateral or synthetic, like straightness and shortness in a line,
convexity and concavity in a curve. Should the empiricists
succeed in their attempt to resolve such Siamese-twin elements
into habitual juxtapositions, the Principle of Identity would
become the only a priori truth, and the philosophic problem
like all our ordinary problems would become a question as to
facts : What are these facts which we perceive to exist? Are
there any existing facts corresponding to this or that conceived
class? Lewes, in the interesting discussion on necessary and
contingent truth in the Prolegomena to his History and in Chap
ter XIII. of his first Problem, seems at first sight to take up an
opposite position, in that lie maintains our commonly so-called
contingent truths to be really necessary. But his treatment of
the question most beautifully confirms the doctrine I have ad
vanced in the text. If the proposition "A is B" is ever true, he
says it is so necessarily. But he proves the necessity by show
ing that what we mean by A is its essential attribute #, and
what we mean by B is again x. Only in so far as A and B are
identical is the proposition true. But he admits that a fact
sensibly just like A may lack a?, and a fact sensibly unlike B
may have it. In either case the proposition, to be true, must
change. The contingency which he banishes from propositions,
he thus houses in their terms ; making as I do the act of con
ception, subsumption, classification, intuition, naming, or what
ever else one may prefer to call it, the pivot on which thought
turns. Before this act there is infinite indeterminateness — A
and B may be anything. After the act there is the absolute
certainty of truism — all a?'s are the same. In the act — is A,
off is B, x? or not? — we have the sphere of truth and error, of
living experience, in short, of Fact. As Lewes himself says:
"The only necessity is that a thing is what it is; the only
contingency is that our proposition may not state what the thing
is" (Problems, Vol. I., p. 395).

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11879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

We have now to ask ourselves how far this identi
fication may be legitimately carried and what, when
perfected, its real worth is. But before passing to
these further questions we had best secure our
ground by defending our fundamental notion itself
from nominalistic attacks. The reigning British
school has always denied that the same attribute is
identical with itself in different individuals. I
started above with the assumption that when we
look at a subject with a certain purpose, regard it
from a certain point of view, some one attribute
becomes its essence and identifies it, pro hac vice,
with a class. To this James Mill replies : "But what
is meant by a mode of regarding things? This is
mysterious ; and is as mysteriously explained, when
it is said to be the taking into view the particulars
in which individuals agree. For what is there,
which it is possible for the mind to take into view,
in that in which individuals agree? Every colour
is an individual colour, every size is an individual
size, every shape is an individual shape. But
things have no individual colour in common, no
individual shape in common ; no individual size in
common; that is to say, they have neither shape,
colour, nor size in common. What, then, is it which
they have in common, which the mind can take into
view? Those who affirmed that it was something,
could by no means tell. They substituted words
for things; using vague and mystical phrases,

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which, when examined, meant nothing;"1 the truth
being according to this heroic author, that the
only thing that can be possessed in common is a
name. Black in the coat and black in the shoe
agree only in that both are named black — the fact
that on this view the name is never the same when
used twice being quite overlooked. But the blood
of the giants has grown weak in these days, and the
nominalistic utterances of our contemporaries are
like sweet-bells jangled, sadly out of tune. If they
begin with a clear nominalistic note, they are sure
to end with a grating rattle which sounds very
like universalia in re, if not ante rem. In M. Taine,2
who may fairly be included in the British School,
they are almost ante rem. This bruit de cloche
felee, as the doctors say, is pathognomonic of the
condition of Ockham's entire modern progeny.

But still we may find expressions like this:
"When I say that the sight of any object gives me
the same sensation or emotion to-day that it did
yesterday, or the same which it gives to some other

1 Analysis, Vol. I., p. 249.

aHow can M. Taine fail to have perceived that the entire
doctrine of "Substitution" so clearly set forth in the nomi
nalistic beginning of his brilliant book is utterly senseless ex
cept on the supposition of realistic principles like those which
he so 'admirably expounds at its close? How can the image be
a useful substitute for the sensation, the tendency for the image,
the name for the tendency, unless sensation, image, tendency
and name be identical in some respect, in respect namely of
function, of the relations they enter into? Were this realistic
basis laid at the outset of Taine's De V Intelligence, it would
be one of the most consistent instead of one of the most self-
contradictory works of our day.

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person, this is evidently an incorrect application
of the word same; for the feeling which I had yes
terday is gone never to return. . . . Great con
fusion of ideas is often produced, and many falla
cies engendered, in otherwise enlightened under
standings, by not being sufficiently alive to the
fact (in itself not always to be avoided), that they
use the same name to express ideas so different as
those of identity and undistinguishable resem
blance."1

What are the exact facts? Take the sensation I
got from a cloud yesterday and from the snow to
day. The white of the snow and that of the cloud
differ in place, time and associates; they agree in
quality, and we may say in origin, being in all prob
ability both produced by the activity of the same
brain tract. Nevertheless, John Mill denies our
right to call the quality the same. He says that it
essentially differs in every different occasion of its
appearance, and that no two phenomena of which
it forms part are really identical even as far as it
goes. Is it not obvious that to maintain this view
he must abandon the phenomenal plane altogether?
Phenomenally considered, the white per se is identi
cal with itself wherever found in snow or in cloud,
to-day or to-morrow. If any nominalist deny the
identity I ask him to point out the difference. Ex
hypothesi the qualities are sensibly indistinguish
able, and the only difference he can indicate is that
of time and place; but these are not differences in

1 J. S. Mill, Logic, 8th Ed., I., p. 77.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS ti879]

the quality. If our quality be not the same with
itself, what meaning has the word "same"? Our
adversary though silenced may still grudge assent,
but if he analyse carefully the grounds of this re
luctance he will, I think, find that it proceeds from
a difficulty in believing that the cause of the quality
can be just the same at different times. In other
words he abandons altogether the platform of the
sensible phenomenon and ascends into the empy
rean, postulating some inner noumenal principle
of quality + time + place + concomitants. The en
tire group being never twice alike, of course this
ground, or being in se, of the quality must each time
be distinct and, so to speak, personal. This tran
scendental view is frankly avowed by Mr. Spencer
in his Psychology, II., p. 63 (the passage is too
complex to quote) ; but all nominalists must start
from it, if they think clearly at all.1

We, who are phenomenists, may leave all meta
physical entities which have the power of produc
ing whiteness to their fate, and content ourselves
with the irreversible datum, of perception that the
whiteness after it is manifested is the same, be it
here or be it there. Of all abstractions such entities

1 1 fear that even after this some persons will remain uncon
vinced, but then it seems to me the matter has become a dispute
about words. If my supposed adversary, when he says that
different times and places prevent a quality which appears in
them from ever being twice the same, will admit that they do
not make it in any conceivable way different, I will willingly
abandon the words "same" and "identical" to his fury ; though
I confess it becomes rather inconvenient to have no single posi
tive word left by which to indicate complete absence of differ
ence.

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[1879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

are the emptiest, being ontological hypostatisations
of the mere susceptibility of being distinguished,
whilst this susceptibility has its real, nameable,
phenomenal ground all the while, in the time, place,
and relations affected by the attribute considered.

The truly wise man will take the phenomenon in
its entirety and permanently sacrifice no one aspect
to another. Time, place, and relations differ, he
will freely say ; but let him just as freely admit that
the quality is identical with itself through all these
differences. Then if, to satisfy the philosophical in
terest, it becomes needful to conceive this identical
part as the essence of the several entire phenomena,
he will gladly call them one; whilst if some other
interest be paramount, the points of difference will
become essential and the identity an accident.
Realism is eternal and invincible in this phenomenal
sense.

We have thus vindicated against all assailants
our title to consider the world as a matter suscepti
ble of rational formulation in the deepest, most
inward sense, and not as a disintegrated sand-heap ;
and we are consequently at liberty to ask: (1)
Whether the mutual identification of its items meet
with any necessary limit; and (2) What, suppos
ing the operation completed, its real worth and
import amount to.

VI

In the first place, when we have rationally ex
plained the connexion of the items A and B by iden-

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

tifying both with their common attribute #, it is
obvious that we have really explained only so much
of these items as is x. To explain the connexion
of choke-damp and suffocation by the lack of oxygen
is to leave untouched all the other peculiarities both
of choke-damp and of suffocation, such as convul
sions and agony on the one hand, density and ex-
plosibility on the other. In a word, so far as A
and B contain I, m, n and o, p, q, respectively, in
addition to x, they are not explained by x. Each
additional particularity makes its distinct appeal
to our rational craving. A single explanation of a
fact only explains it from a single point of view.1
The entire fact is not accounted for until each and
all of its characters have been identified with their
likes elsewhere. To apply this now to universal
formulas we see that the explanation of the world
by molecular movements explains it only so far as
it actually is such movements. To invoke the "Un
knowable" explains only so much as is unknow
able; "Love" only so much as is love; "Thought,"
so much as is thought ; "Strife," so much as is strife.
All data whose actual phenomenal quality cannot

1 In the number of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy for
April, 1879, Prof. John Watson most admirably asserts and
expresses the truth which constitutes the back-bone of this
article, namely that every manner of conceiving a fact is rela
tive to some interest, and that there are no absolutely essential
attributes — every attribute having the right to call itself es
sential in turn, and the truth consisting of nothing less than
all of them together. I avow myself unable to comprehend as
yet this author's Hegelian point of view, but his pages 164 to
172 are a most welcome corroboration of what I have striven
to advance in the text.

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[1879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

be identified with the attribute invoked as Uni
versal Principle, remain outside as ultimate, inde
pendent kinds or natures, associated by empirical
laws with the fundamental attribute but devoid of
truly rational kinship with it. If A and B are to
be thoroughly rationalized together, I, m, n, and o,
p, q, must each and all turn out to be so many cases
of x in disguise. This kind of wholesale identifica
tion is being now attempted by physicists when
they conceive of all the ancient, separate Forces
as so many determinations of one and the same
essence, molecular mass, position and velocity.

Suppose for a moment that this idea were carried
out for the physical world, — the subjective sensa
tions produced by the different molecular energies,
colour, sound, taste, etc., etc., the relations of like
ness and contrast, of time and position, of ease
and effort, the emotions of pain and delight, in
short, all the mutually irreducible categories of
mental life, would still remain over. Certain
writers strive in turn to reduce all these to a com
mon measure, the primordial unit of feeling, or
infinitesimal mental event which builds them up
as bricks build houses. But this case is wholly
different from the last. The physical molecule is
conceived not only as having a being in se apart
from representation, but as being essentially of
representable kind. With magnified perceptions we
should actually see it. The mental molecule, on the
other hand, has by its very definition no existence
except in being felt, and yet by the same definition

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

never is felt. It is neither a fact in consciousness
nor a fact out of consciousness, and falls to the
ground as a transcendental absurdity. Nothing
could be more inconclusive than the empirical argu
ments for the existence of this noumenal feeling
which Taine and Spencer draw from the sense of
hearing.

But let us waive for an instant all this and sup
pose our feelings reduced to one. We should then
have two primordial natures, the molecule of matter
and the molecule of mind, coupled by an empirical
law. Phenomenally incommensurable, the attempt
to reduce them to unity by calling them two "as
pects" is vain so long as it is not pointed out who
is there adspicere; and the Machtspruch that they
are expressions of one underlying Eeality has no
rationalising function so long as that reality is con
fessed unknowable. Nevertheless the absolute ne
cessity of an identical material substratum for the
different species of feeling on the one hand, and the
genera feeling and motion on the other, if we are
to have any evolutionary explanation of things, will
lead to ever renewed attempts at an atomistic
hylozoism. Already Clifford and Taine, Spencer,
Fechner, Zollner, G. S. Hall, and more besides,
have given themselves up to this ideal.

But again let us waive this criticism and admit
that even the chasm between feeling and motion
may be rationally bridged by the conception of the
bilateral atom of being. Let us grant that this
atom by successive compoundings with its fellows

118

[1879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

builds up the universe ; is it not still clear that each
item in the universe would still be explained only
as to its general quality and not as to its other par
ticular determinations? The particulars depend on
the exact number of primordial atoms existing at
the outset and their exact distances from each other.
The "universal formula" of Laplace which Du Bois-
Reymond has made such striking use of in his lec
ture Uebcr die Grcnzen des Naturerkenncns, cannot
possibly get along with fewer than this almost in
finite number of data. Their homogeneity does not
abate their infinity — each is a separate empirical
fact.

And when we now retract our provisional admis
sions, and deny that feelings incommensurable inter
se and with motion can be possibly unified, we see at
once that the reduction of the phenomenal Chaos
to rational form must stop at a certain point. It
is a limited process, — bounded by the number of
elementary attributes which cannot be mutually
identified, the specific qualia of representation, on
the one hand, and, on the other, by the number of
entities (atoms or monads or what not) with their
complete mathematical determinations, requisite
for deducing the fulness of the concrete world. All
these irreducible data form a system, no longer
phenomenally rational, inter se, but bound together
by what are for us empirical laws. We merely find
the system existing as a matter of fact, and write
it down. In short, a plurality of categories and an
immense number of primordial entities, determined

119

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS £1879]

; according to these categories, is the minimum of
1 philosophic baggage, the only possible compromise
between the need of clearness and the need of unity.
All simplification, beyond this point, is reached
either by throwing away the particular concrete
determinations of the fact to be explained, or else
it is illusory simplification. In the latter case it
is made by invoking some sham term, some pseudo-
principle, and conglomerating it and the data into
one. The principle may be an immanent element
but no true universal : Sensation, Thought, Will are
principles of this kind ; or it may be a transcendent
entity like Matter, Spirit, Substance, the Unknow
able, the Unconscious, &C.1 Such attempts as these
latter do but postulate unification, not effect; and
if taken avowedly to represent a mere claim, may
be allowed to stand. But if offered as actual ex
planations, though they may serve as a sop to the
rabble, they can but nauseate those whose philo
sophic appetite is genuine and entire. If we choose
the former mode of simplification and are willing
to abstract from the particulars of time, place and
combination in the concrete world, we may simplify
our elements very much by neglecting the numbers
and collocations of our primordial elements and
attending to their qualitative categories alone. The
system formed by these will then really rationalise
the universe so far as its qualities go. Nothing can

1 The idea of "God" in its popular function is open to neither
of these objections, being conceived as a phenomenon standing
in causal relation to other phenomena. As such, however, it
has no unifying function of a properly explanatory kind.

120

[1879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

happen in it incommensurable with these data, and
practically this abstract treatment of the world
as quality is all that philosophers aim at. They are
satisfied when they can see it to be a place in which
none but these qualities appear, and in which the
same quality appears not only once but identically
repeats itself. They are willing to ignore, or leave
to special sciences the knowledge of what times,
places and concomitants the recurring quality is
likely to affect. The Essais de Critique generate of
Renouvier form, to my mind, by far the ablest
answer to the philosophic need thus understood,
clearness and unity being there carried each to the
farthest point compatible with the other's existence.

VII

And now comes the question as to the worth of ^
such an achievement. How much better off is the
philosopher when he has got his system than he was
before it? As a mere phenomenal system it stands
between two fires. On the one hand the unbridled t
craver of unity scorns it, as being incompletely
rational, still to a great extent an empirical sand-
heap ; whilst on the other the practical man de- *
spises its empty and abstract barrenness. All it
says is that the elements of the world are such and
such and that each is identical with itself wherever
found; but the question : Where is it found? (which
is for the practical man the all-important question
about each element) he is left to answer by his own

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

wit. Which, of all the essences, shall here and now
be held the essence of this concrete thing, the
fundamental philosophy never attempts to decide.
We seem thus led to the conclusion that a system
of categories is, on the one hand, the only possible
philosophy, but is, on the other, a most miserable
and inadequate substitute for the fulness of the
truth. It is a monstrous abridgment of things which
like all abridgments is got by the absolute loss and
casting out of real matter. This is why so few hu
man beings truly care for Philosophy. The particu
lar determinations which she ignores are the real
matter exciting other aesthetic and practical needs,
quite as potent and authoritative as hers. What
does the moral enthusiast care for philosophical
ethics? Why does the 2Esthetik of every German
philosopher appear to the artist like the abomina
tion of desolation? What these men need is a par
ticular counsel, and no barren, universal truism.

"Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie
Und grim des Lebens goldner Baum."

The entire man, who feels all needs by turns,
will take nothing as an equivalent for Life but the
fulness of living itself. Since the essences of things
are as a matter of fact spread out and disseminated
through the whole extent of time and space, it is in
their spread-outness and alternation that he will
enjoy them. When weary of the concrete clash and
dust and pettiness, he will refresh himself by an
occasional bath in the eternal spring, or fortify
himself by a daily look at the immutable Natures.

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But he will only be a visitor, not a dweller in the
region; lie will never carry the philosophic yoke
upon his shoulders, and when tired of the gray
monotony of her problems and insipid spaciousness
of her results, will always escape gleefully into
the teeming and dramatic richness of the concrete
world.

So our study turns back here to its beginning.
We started by calling every concept a teleological
instrument (supra, p. 86). No concept can be a
valid substitute for a concrete reality except with
reference to a particular interest in the conceiver.
The interest of theoretic rationality, the relief of
identification, is but one of a thousand human pur
poses. When others rear their heads it must pack
up its little bundle and retire till its turn recurs.
The exaggerated dignity and value that philoso
phers have claimed for their solutions is thus
greatly reduced. The only virtue their theoretic
conception need have is simplicity, and a simple
conception is an equivalent for the world only so
far as the world is simple; the world meanwhile,
whatever simplicity it may harbour, being also a
mightily complex affair. Enough simplicity re
mains, however, and enough urgency in our craving
to reach it, to make the theoretic function one of the
most invincible and authoritative of human im
pulses. All ages have their intellectual populace.
That of our own day prides itself particularly on
its love of Science and Facts and its contempt for
all metaphysics. Just weaned from the Sunday-

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS [1879]

school nurture of its early years, with the taste of
the catechism still in its mouth, it is perhaps not
surprising that its palate should lack discrimina
tion and fail to recognise how much of ontology
is contained in the "Nature," "Force" and "Neces
sary Law," how much mysticism in the "Awe,"
"Progress" and "Loyalty to Truth," or whatever
the other phrases may be with which it sweetens
its rather meagre fare of fragmentary physiology
and physics. But its own inconsistency should
teach it that the eradication of music, painting
and poetry, games of chance and skill, manly
sports and all other aesthetic energies from human
life, would be an easy task compared with that
(.suppression of Metaphysics which it aspires to ac
complish. Metaphysics of some sort there must be.
The only alternative is between the good Meta-
* physics of clear-headed Philosophy and the trashy
Metaphysics of vulgar Positivism. Metaphysics,
the quest of the last clear elements of things, is
but another name for thought which seeks thorough
self-consistency; and so long as men must think at
all, some will be found willing to forsake all else to
follow that ideal.

VIII

Suppose then the goal attained. Suppose we have
at last a Metaphysics in which clearness and unity
join friendly hands. Whether it be over a system
of interlocked elements, or over a substance, or
over such a simple fact as "phenomenon" or "rep-

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reservation," need not trouble us now. For the
discussion which follows we will call the result the
metaphysical Datum and leave its composite or
simple nature uncertain. Whichever it be, and
however limited as we have seen be the sphere of
its utility, it satisfies, if no other need, at least the
need of rationality. But now I ask : Can that which
is the ground of rationality in all else be itself
properly called rational? It would seem at first
sight that in the sense of the word we have hitherto
alone considered, it might. One is tempted at any
rate to say that, since the craving for rationality
in a theoretic or logical sense consists in the identi
fication of one thing with all other outstanding
things, a unique datum which left nothing else out
standing would leave no play for further rational
demand, and might thus be said to quench that de
mand or to be rational in se. No otherness being
left to annoy the minds we should sit down at peace.

In other words, just as the theoretic tranquillity
of the boor results from Ids spinning no further
considerations about his chaotic universe which
may prevent him from going about his practical
affairs; so any brute datum whatever (provided it
were simple and clear) ought to banish mystery from
the Universe of the philosopher and confer perfect
theoretic peace, inasmuch as there would then be for
him absolutely no further considerations to spin.

This in fact is what some persons think. Profes
sor Bain says: "A difficulty is solved, a mystery
unriddled, when it can be shown to resemble some-

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

thing else; to be an example of a fact already
known. Mystery is isolation, exception, or it may
be apparent contradiction : the resolution of the
mystery is found in assimilation, identity, fra
ternity. When all things are assimilated, so far as
assimilation can go, so far as likeness holds, there
is an end to explanation; there is an end to what
the mind can do, or can intelligently desire. . . .
The path of science as exhibited in modern ages, is
towards generality, wider and wider, until we reach
the highest, the widest laws of every department
of things; there explanation is finished, mystery
ends, perfect vision is gained."

But unfortunately this first answer will not hold.
Whether for good or evil, it is an empirical fact
that the mind is so wedded to the process of seeing
an other beside every item of its experience, that
when the notion of an absolute datum which is all
is presented to it, it goes through its usual pro
cedure and remains pointing at the void beyond, as
if in that lay further matter for contemplation. In
short, it spins for itself the further positive con
sideration of a Nonentity enveloping the Being of
its datum ; and as that leads to no issue on the fur
ther side, back recoils the thought in a circle
towards its datum again. But there is no logical
identity, no natural bridge between nonentity and
this particular datum, and the thought stands oscil
lating to and fro, wondering "Why was there any
thing but nonentity? Why just this universal
datum and not another? Why anything at all?"

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and finds no end, in wandering mazes lost. Indeed,
Professor Bain's words are so untrue that in re
flecting men it is just when the attempt to fuse the
manifold into a single totality has been most suc
cessful, when the conception of the universe as a fait
unique (in D'Alembert's words) is nearest its per
fection, that the craving for further explanation,
the ontological Oaupux^eiv arises in its extremest
pungency.

As Schopenhauer says, "The uneasiness which
keeps the never-resting clock of metaphysics in mo
tion, is the consciousness that the non-existence of
this world is just as possible as its existence".1

The notion of Nonentity may thus be called the
parent of the philosophic craving in its subtlest and
profoundest sense. Absolute existence is absolute
mystery. Although selbststandig, it is not selbstver-
stcindUch; for its relations with the Nothing remain
unmediated to our understanding. One philos
opher only, so far as I know, has pretended to throw
a logical bridge over this chasm. Hegel, by trying
to show that Nonentity and Being as actually de
termined are linked together by a series of succes
sive identities, binds the whole of possible thought
into an adamantine unity with no conceivable outly
ing notion to disturb the free rotary circulation of
the mind within its bounds. Since such unchecked
motion constitutes the feeling of rationality, he
must be held, if he has succeeded, to have eternally
and absolutely quenched all its logical demands.

1 Welt als Wille dc., 3 Auflage, I., p. 189.
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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

But for those who, like most of us, deem Hegel's
heroic effort to have failed, nought remains but to
confess that when all has been unified to its supreme
degree (Professor Bain to the contrary notwith
standing), the notions of a Nonentity, or of a pos
sible Other than the actual, may still haunt our
imagination and prey upon the ultimate data of our
system. The bottom of Being is left logically
opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the
word, something which we simply come upon and
find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should
pause and wonder as little as possible. In this con
fession lies the lasting truth of Empiricism, and in
it Empiricism and imaginative Faith join hands.
The logical attitude of both is identical, they both
say there is a plus ultra beyond all we know, a womb
of unimagined other possibility. They only differ
in their sentimental temper : Empiricism says, "Into
the plus ultra you have no right to carry your an
thropomorphic affirmations" ; Faith says, "You have
no right to extend to it your denials". The mere
ontologic emotion of wonder, of mystery, has in
some minds such a tinge of the rapture of sublimity,
that for this aesthetic reason alone, it will be diffi
cult for any philosophic system completely to exor
cise it.

In truth, the philosopher's logical tranquillity is
after all in essence no other than the boor's. Their
difference regards only the point at which each
refuses to let further considerations upset the ab
soluteness of the data he assumes. The boor does

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[1S79J SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

so immediately, and is therefore liable at any mo
ment to the ravages of many kinds of confusion and
doubt. The philosopher does not do so till unity
has been reached, and is therefore warranted against
the inroads of those considerations — but only practi
cally, not essentially, secure from the blighting
breath of the ultimate "Why?" Positivism takes a
middle ground, and with a certain consciousness of
the beyond, abruptly refuses by an inhibitory action
of the will to think any further, stamps the ground
and says, "Physics, I espouse thee! for better or
worse, be thou my absolute !"

The Absolute is what has not yet been tran
scended, criticised or made relative. So far from
being something quintessential and unattainable as
is so often pretended, it is practically the most fa
miliar thing in life. Every thought is absolute to
us at the moment of conceiving it or acting upon it.
It only becomes relative in the light of further re
flection. This may make it flicker and grow pale —
the notion of nonentity may blow in from the infinite
and extinguish the theoretic rationality of a univer
sal datum. As regards this latter, absoluteness and
rationality are in fact convertible terms. And the
chief effort of the rationalising philosopher must be
to gain an absoluteness for his datum which shall be
stable in the maximum degree, or as far as possible
removed from exposure to those further considera
tions by which we saw that the vulgar Weltan
schauung may so promptly be upset. I shall hence
forward call the further considerations which may

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS t1879l

supervene and make relative or derationalise a mass
of thought, the reductive of that thought. The re
ductive of absolute being is thus nonentity, or the
notion of an aliter possibile whicli it involves. The
reductive of an absolute physics is the thought that
all material facts are representations in a mind.
The reductive of absolute time, space, causality,
atoms, &c., are the so-called antinomies which arise
as soon as we think fully out the thoughts we have
begun. The reductive of absolute knowledge is the
constant potentiality of doubt, the notion that the
next thought may always correct the present one
— resulting in the notion that a noumenal world is
there mocking the one we think we know. What
ever we think, some reductive seems in strict theo
retic legitimacy always imminently hovering over
our thought ready to blight it. Doubleness dis
missed at the front door re-enters in the rear and
spoils the rationality of the simple datum we flat
tered ourselves we had attained. Theoretically the
task of the philosopher, if he cannot reconcile the
datum with the reductive by the way of identifica
tion a la Hegel, is to exorcise the reductive so that
the datum may hold up its head again and know no
fear. Professor Bain would no doubt say that non
entity was a pseud-idea not derived from experience
and therefore meaningless, and so exorcise that re
ductive.1 The antinomies may be exorcised by the

1Tlie author of A Candid Examination of Theism (Triibner,
1878) exercises Nonentity by tbe notion of the all-excluding in
finitude of Existence, — whether reasonably or not I refrain

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[1879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

distinction between potentiality and actuality.1 The
ordinary half educated materialist comforts him
self against idealists by the notion that, after all,
thought is such an obscure mystical form of exist
ence that it is almost as bad as no existence at all,
and need not be seriously taken into account by a
sensible man.

If nothing else could be conceived than thoughts
or fancies, these would be credited with the maxi
mum of reality. Their reductive is the belief in an
objective reality of which they are but copies.
When this belief takes the form of the affirmation of
a noumenal world contrasted with all possible
thought, and therefore playing no other part than
that of reductive pure and simple, — to discover the
formula of exorcism becomes, and has been recog
nized ever since Kant to be, one of the principal
tasks of philosophy rationally understood.

The reductive used by nominalists to discredit
the self-identity of the same attribute in different
phenomena is the notion of a still higher degree of
identity. We easily exorcise this reductive by chal
lenging them to show what the higher degree of
sameness can possibly contain which is not already
in the lower.

The notion of Nonentity is not only a reductive;
it can assume upon occasion an exorcising function.

from deciding. The last chapter of this work (published a
year after the present text was written) is on "the final
Mystery of Things," and expresses in striking language much
that I have said.

1 See Renouvier : Premier Essai.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

If, for example, a man's ordinary mundane con
sciousness feels staggered at the improbability of
an immaterial thinking-principle being the source
of all things, Nonentity comes in and says, "Con
trasted with me (that is, considered simply as
existent) one principle is as probable as another''.
If the same mundane consciousness recoils at the
notion of providence towards individuals or individ
ual immortality as involving, the one too infinite a
subdivision of the divine attention, the other a too
infinite accumulation of population in the heavens,
Nonentity says, "As compared with me all quanti
ties are one : the wonder is all there when God has
found it worth His while to guard or save a single
soul".

But if the philosopher fails to find a satisfac
tory formula of exorcism for his datum, the only
thing he can do is to "blink" the reductive at a cer
tain point, assume the Given as his necessary ulti
mate, and proceed to a life whether of contempla
tion or of action based on that. There is no doubt
this half wilful act of arrest, this acting on an
opaque necessity, is accompanied by a certain pleas
ure. See the reverence of Carlyle for brute fact :
"There is an infinite significance in Fact." "Neces
sity," says a German philosopher,1 and he means not
rational but simply given necessity, "is the last and
highest point that we can reach in a rational con
ception of the world. ... It is not only the in
terest of ultimate and definitive knowledge, but also

1 Diihring : Cursus der Philosophic, Leipzig, 1875, p. 35.
132

[1879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

that of the feelings, to find a last repose and an
ideal equilibrium, in an uttermost datum which can
simply not be other than it is."

Such is the attitude of ordinary men in their
theism, God's fiat being in physics and morals such
an uttermost datum. Such also is the attitude of
all hard-minded analysts and Verstandesmenschen.
Eenouvier and Hodgson, the two foremost con
temporary philosophers, promptly say that of ex
perience as a whole no account can be given, but do
not seek to soften the abruptness of the confession
or reconcile us with our impotence.

Such mediating attempts may be made by more
mystical minds. The peace of rationality may be
sought through ecstacy when logic fails. To re
ligious persons of every shade of doctrine moments
come when the world as it is seems so divinely
orderly, and the acceptance of it by the heart so
rapturously complete, that intellectual questions
vanish, nay the intellect itself is hushed to sleep —
as Wordsworth says, "Thought is not, in enjoyment
it expires". Ontological emotion so fills the soul
that onfological speculation can no longer overlap
it and put her girdle of interrogation-marks around
existence. Even the least religious of men must
have felt with our national ontologic poet, Walt
Whitman, when loafing on the grass on some trans
parent summer morning, that "Swiftly arose and
spread around him the peace and knowledge that
pass all the argument of the earth". At such mo
ments of energetic living we feel as if there were

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

something diseased and contemptible, yea vile, in
theoretic grubbing and brooding. To feel "I am the
truth" is to abolish the opposition between knowing
and being.

Since the heart can thus wall out the ultimate
irrationality which the head ascertains, the erection
of its procedure into a systematised method would
be a philosophic achievement of first-rate impor
tance. As used by mystics hitherto it has lacked
universality, being available for few persons and
at few times, and even in these being apt to be fol
lowed by fits of "reaction" and "dryness"; but it
may nevertheless be the forerunner of what will ulti
mately prove a true method. If all men could per
manently say with Jacobi, "In my heart there is
light," though they should for ever fail to give an
articulate account of it, existence would really be
rationalised.1

But if men should ever all agree that the mystical

1A curious recent contribution to the construction of a uni
versal mystical method is contained in the Ancesthetic Revela
tion by Benj. P. Blood (Amsterdam, N.Y., 1874). The author,
who is a writer abounding in verbal felicities, thinks we may
all grasp the secret of Being if we only intoxicate ourselves
often enough with laughing-gas. "There is in the instant of
recall from the anaesthetic stupor a moment in which the genius
of being is revealed. . . . Patients try to speak of it but in
variably fail in a lost mood of introspection. . . . But most will
accept this as the central point of the illumination that sanity
is not the basic quality of intelligence, . . . but that only in
sanity is formal or contrasting thought, while the naked life
is realised outside of sanity altogether. It is the instant con
trast of this tasteless water of souls with formal thought as
we come to that leaves the patient in an astonishment that the
awful mystery of life is at last but a homely and common

134

[1879] SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY

method is a subterfuge without logical pertinency,
a plaster, but no cure, that the Hegelian method is
fallacious, that the idea of Nonentity can therefore
neither be exorcised nor identified, Empiricism will
be the ultimate philosophy. Existence will be a
brute Fact to which as a whole the emotion of onto-
logic wonder shall rightfully cleave, but remain
eternally unsatisfied. This wonderfulness or mys-
teriousness will then be an essential attribute of the
nature of things, and the exhibition and emphasiz
ing of it will always continue to be an ingredient in
the philosophic industry of the race. Every genera
tion will produce its Job, its Hamlet, its Faust or
its Sartor Resartus.

With this we seem to have exhausted all the pos
sibilities of purely theoretic rationality. But we
saw at the outset that wrhen subjectively considered
rationality can only be defined as perfectly unim
peded mental function. Impediments which arise
in the purely theoretic sphere might perhaps be
avoided if the stream of mental action should leave

thing. . . . To minds of sanguine imagination there will be a
sadness in the tenor of the mystery, as if the key-note of the
universe were low — for no poetry, no emotion known to the
normal sanity of man, can furnish a hint of its primaeval pres
tige, and its all-hut appalling solemnity ; but for such as have
felt sadly the instability of temporal things there is a comfort
of serenity and ancient peace ; while for the resolved and im
perious spirit there are majesty and supremacy unspeakable."
The logical characteristic of this state is said to be "an apodal
sufficiency — to which sufficiency a wonder or fear of why it is
sufficient cannot pertain and c-ould be attributed only as an
impossible disease or lack. . . . The disease of Metaphysics
vanishes in the fading of the question and not in the coming of
an answer."

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

that sphere betimes and pass into the practical.
The structural unit of mind is in these days, deemed
to be a triad, beginning with a sensible impression,
ending with a motion, and having a feeling of
greater or less length in the middle. Perhaps the
whole difficulty of attaining theoretic rationality is
due to the fact that the very quest violates the
nature of our intelligence, and that a passage of the
mental function into the third stage before the
second has come to an end in the cul de sac of its
contemplation, would revive the energy of motion
and keep alive the sense of ease and freedom which
is its psychic counterpart. We must therefore in
quire what constitutes the feeling of rationality in
its practical aspect; but that must be done at
another time and in another place.

NOTE. — This article is the first chapter of a psychological
work on the motives which lead men to philosophise. It deals
with the purely theoretic or logical impulse. Other chapters
treat of practical and emotional motives and in the conclusion
an attempt is made to use the motives as tests of the sound
ness of different philosophies.

136

XI

CLIFFORD'S "LECTURES AND

ESSAYS" x

[1879]

IT is impossible to read these volumes without
taking an even greater interest in the human charac
ter they reveal than in the matters of which they
treat. The author was cut down last March at the
age of thirty-three. Many who have read hastily
and at long intervals the essays here gathered to
gether may have caught the impression of a genius
too iconoclastic to be sympathetic, too fond of
paradoxical statement to be wise, too eager for
battle to be fair; but the massive effect of all the
essays taken together and combined with the per
sonal account of Clifford in the introduction strongly
modifies this feeling. We see a man profuse of gifts
of body and mind, of "boundless human interests
and sympathies," so intensely social that "personal
enmity was to him a thing impossible" ; of a genius
in mathematics so original that we have heard an

C1 Review of Lectures and Essays, and Seeing ana Thinking,
by W. K. Clifford, London and New York, 1879. Reprinted
from Nation, 1879, 29, 312-313. Clifford's views on "The
Ethics of Belief" most perfectly embodied that vigorous posi
tivism to which James opposed his "Will-to-Believe" doc
trine. See references to Clifford in Will to Believe (1897)
passim. ED.]

137

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

authority than whom none could be more compe
tent say that he might have rivalled the fame of
Newton had he lived; but, on the other hand, en
dowed with that sense for the color and human
expression of things which poets have and mathe
maticians too often lack, and which irradiates every
page he writes with humor and fancy ; of insatiable
curiosity, but as eager to give all he gained as to
receive it ; possessed of such reckless animal spirits
that we find him now hanging by his toes on the
crossbars of a church-steeple weather-cock, now per
forming the almost incredible feat of writing his
articles on the "Unseen Universe'' and on Virchow's
address each in a single night — we see all this, and
we feel that, as Mr. Pollock says, his printed work
must be a very slender representative of all he
was to those who knew him, and that the incom
municable and indescribable thing called genius,
das Damonische, when it exists in a man as it did
in him, transcends all his specific performances,
and, "lightening the air his friends breathe," may
very well justify them in making claims which to
the distant reader sound exorbitant.

But even the distant reader must allow that Clif
ford's mental personality belonged to the highest
possible type, to say no more. The union of the
mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure,
passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
And if in these modern days we are to look for
any prophet or saviour who shall influence our feel
ings towards the universe as the founders and re-

138

[1879] CLIFFORD'S "LECTURES"

newers of past religions have influenced the minds
of our fathers, that prophet, if he ever come, must,
like Clifford, be no mere sentimental worshipper of
science, but an expert in her ways. And he must
have what Clifford had in so extraordinary a de
gree — that lavishly generous confidence in the
worthiness of average human nature to be told all
truth, the lack of which in Goethe made him an in
spiration to the few but a cold riddle to the many.
But why, with all of Clifford's powers, does the
result appear so small? Why do these lectures seem
to the reader almost funny in the inadequacy with
which they shadow forth anything fit to form a
"creed" for modern life? Why, indeed, to put the
case more broadly, would an almost impossible
cumulation of faculties in a single man — Clifford's
scientific faith and skill, a poetic craft equal to his
poetic feeling, a faculty for public affairs which he
never possessed, a genius for familiar oratory, an
expansive communicativeness, and a humanity
greater than his — why would all these aptitudes to
gether certainly fail now to give their possessor
that altogether incalculable sort of power over the
mind of his generation which the prophets of the
past have held? The answer to these questions is
short enough. Our modern mind is nothing if not
critical — the craving for consistency has entered
into its soul, and nothing will deeply move it but a
synthesis of things which is radically reasoned out.
No array of separate gifts, with this synthesis still
unachieved, will make a prophet now. Ever some

139

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

vital factor of our mental life will rebel and refuse
to be dragged the same way with the rest. The
miraculous achievement, the achievement upon
which we are all waiting for our faculties to burst
into movement like mill-wheels at the touch of a
torrent, must be a metaphysical achievement, the
greatest of all time — the demonstration, namely,
that all our different motives, rightly interpreted,
pull one way. Now our Science tells our Faith
that she is shameful, and our Hopes that they are
dupes ; our Eeverence for truth leads to conclusions
that make all reverence a falsehood ; our new Good,
survival of our tribe, is the one thing certain to
perish with our planet; our Freedom annuls our
opportunities for lofty deeds ; our Equality with our
brethren quenches all tendency to be proud of their
brotherhood ; our Art, instead of intimating divine
secrets, becomes an intellectual sensuality, reveal
ing no secrets but those of our nervous systems ; our
craving for personal recognition at the heart of
things is flatly contradicted by our persuasion that
we none of us possess any independent personality
at all ; in short, if we wish to keep in action, we have
no resource but to clutch some one thing out of the
chaos to serve as our hobby, and trust to our native
blindness and mere animal spirits to make us in
different to the loss of all the rest. Can the synthe
sis and reconciliation come? It would be as rash to
despair of it as to swear to it in advance. But when
it does come, whatever its specific character may be,
it will necessarily have to be of the theoretic order,

140

[1879] CLIFFORD'S "LECTURES"

a result of deeper philosophic analysis and discrimi
nation than has yet been made. He who makes it
will indeed be a leader of his time ; for then, in our
author's words, will there be a "universe fresh born,
a new heaven, a new earth, a new elysium open to
our eager feet." Then, indeed, will la verite be toute
pour tons, in the phrase which the editors have
placed as an epigraph on the title-page of these lec
tures. Then we can all re-echo with Clifford :

"If a thing is true, let us all believe it, rich and poor,
men, women, and children. If a thing is untrue, let us
all disbelieve it, rich and poor, men, women, and chil
dren. Truth is a thing to be shouted from the house
tops, not to be whispered over lose-water after dinner,
when the ladies are gone away. . . ."

But what sort of a figure does Clifford's own phi
losophy make when treated in this fashion? Surely
there never was an intenser illustration than is
spread out in these pages of the chaotic state of our
contemporary thinking, or a creed on the whole less
fit to be proclaimed to the people as the matured
and clarified result of scientific thought. There are,
of course, exquisitely simple and vivid statements
of particular physical theories. It is hard to imag
ine better reading to inflame a boy with thirst for
physics than the lecture on "Atoms," and the
articles entitled "The Unseen Universe" and "The
First and Last Catastrophe." The one on "Boun
daries" in the smaller volume is marvellously clear ;
and the chapters on the "Philosophy of the Pure
Sciences" in the larger form as luminous an in-

141

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

troduction to mathematical philosophy as was ever
written. Image after image of perfect felicity pur
sue each other through a style of which the only
fault is too great ease and too many Saxon words
for our degenerate ears. But in the fundamental
ideas what mere subjective capriciousness ! A scep
ticism which fears to call the axioms of geometry
true, but which takes no umbrage at the self-contra
dictions of continuity and infinite division in space
and time; a scrupulousness which speaks with all
the unction of the theological vocabulary of the
"guilt" and "sin" of believing even the truth before
it has been scientifically demonstrated, but which
fears not to lay down as dogmas, to be believed
by all, such pure conceptions of the possible as the
existence of primordial atoms of "mind-stuff" which
are the true things in se, the impotence of feeling
to influence action, and the rigorous fatality of
human acts. Then as to Ethics : Clifford's great dis
covery is that what is objectively good, as distin
guished from what is merely subjectively pleasant,
is what conduces to the survival of the tribe.
Loyalty to truth and all other virtues draw their
nobility from being means to this effect. And the
symbolic figure of the tribe is invoked as a substi
tute for superhuman deities, "a grander and nobler
figure" than theirs, the figure of "Him who made
all gods and shall unmake them" :

"A presence in which one's own poor personality is
shrivelled into nothingness, . . . which in moments of
utter sincerity, when a man has bared his own soul be-

142

[1879] CLIFFORD'S "LECTURES"

fore the immensities and the eternities, arises within
him and says, as plainly as words can say, 'I am with
thee, and I am greater than thou.' Many names of gods,
of many shapes, have men given to this presence ; seek
ing by names and pictures to know more clearly and to
remember more continually the guide and the helper of
men. No such comradeship with the great Companion
shall have anything but reverence from me. . . . From
the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depth of
every soul, the face of our father Man looks out upon us
with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says:
'Before Jehovah was, I am !' '

Surely splendid rhetoric; but observe the circle
in the logic : "We must show piety to our race be
cause our race is worthy" means, simply stated,
that we must help it to survive because it can sur
vive. But if it can survive, it will anyhow, and
needs none of our help. Whilst, if it needs our help,
it can't survive per se, and lacking, therefore, those
attributes which we learn to call objectively good,
can have no claim on our sympathy. In any case we
may turn our backs upon it. It is beside the mark
to say, "As a matter of fact we can't turn our backs ;
instinct forbids." Other instincts Ud; and the
whole use of open-eyed philosophy is to teach us
how we ought to decide when our blind instincts
clash. Professor Clifford's fine organ-music, like
the bands and torches of our political campaigns,
must be meant for our nerves rather than for our
reason. The entire modern deification of survival
per se, survival returning into itself, survival naked
and abstract, with the denial of any substantive ex-

143

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

cellence in what survives, except the capacity for
more survival still, is surely the strangest intellect
ual stopping-place ever proposed by one man to
another.

Take, again, Clifford's notion that high action
means free action. Seating himself firmly on this
high horse, he immediately proceeds with the ut
most fury to chop off its legs. For he first defines
free action as action from within, and then describes
action from within as that whose immediate ante
cedents are molecular, and not the massive motions
of distant bodies. Think of firing the popular heart
for virtue by promulgating, as the only true and
scientifically warranted moral law, the formula:
"So act that all thy deeds have molecular, not mas
sive, antecedents"!

Clifford's great metaphysical theory of units of
mind-stuff forming things in themselves, and ap
pearing to each other as molecules of matter, so far
from clearing up our ideas makes confusion worse
confounded for the present. It would really require
a fourth or a fifth dimension of space to make an
intelligible diagram of the relations between the
thing, the thought of the thing, and the brain proc
ess subserving the thought, which this theory neces
sitates. But, as the author himself says, "the ques
tion is one in which it is peculiarly difficult to
make out precisely what another man means, and
even what one means one's self." Only we think a
clearer grasp of this theory might have dispos
sessed from Clifford's mind that other theory, that

144

[1879] CLIFFORD'S "LECTURES"

our feelings are powerless to influence our deeds.
The theory says that the atoms of mind-stuff, when
they fortuitously coalesce in certain ways, form a
consciousness, and in other ways do not. Now,
noting that the conscious combinations tend the
more to survive as their consciousness is more de
veloped, what is more natural than to conclude that
the consciousness as such aids them by its pres
ence, and has a real utility, making self-preserva
tion the end for which it actively works, by rein
forcing all actions and feelings which lead thereto,
and checking all the rest? But this conclusion
would oblige us to ascribe to it just that causal
efficacy which Clifford denies.

Far be it from our thought to cast a stigma on
any of these beliefs. The beliefs which have moved
the world have always been directed upon some
material content, and have been quite indifferent to
logic. When the true prophet arises the right will
be sifted from the wrong in Clifford's doctrines, and
in those of all of us. Till then we should all be
left free to mix our mental porridge as we please.
What we complain of is that Clifford should have
been willing, with his ideas still in their Halbheit
and unshapeliness, to use the conjuring spell of the
name of Science, and to harp on Reverence for Truth
as means whereby to force them on the minds of
simple public listeners, and so still more unsettle
what is already too perplexed. Splintered ends,
broken threads, broken lights, and, at last, broken
hearts and broken life ! So ends this bright romance !

145

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

But louder and more joyously than any of us would
its generous hero have sung :

"Wo immer mtide Fechter
Sinken im muthigen Strauss,
Es kommen neue Geschlechter
Und kampfen es ekrlich aus."

XII
SPENCEK'S "DATA OF ETHICS"1

[1879]

THE facts of evolution have crowded upon the
thinking world so fast within the last few years that
their philosophy has fared rather hard. Chaotic
cohorts of outlandish associates, the polyp's ten
tacles, the throat of the pitcher-plant, the nest of
the bower-bird, the illuminated hind-quarters of the
baboon, and the manners and customs of the Dyaks
and Andamanese, have swept like a deluge into the
decent gardens in which, with her disciples, refined
Philosophy was wont to pace, and have left but
little of their human and academic scenery erect.
Many of the previous occupants, though broken
hearted at the desecration, have submitted, in a sort
of pessimistic despair, to the barbarian invaders.
Others, temporarily routed, are uncertain what to
do. The victors meanwhile, intoxicated with suc
cess, assume, for the most part, that Philosophy her
self is dead, or that, if she still has vitality enough
left to continue propounding any of her silly conun
drums, she will be shamed to silence, as now one,
now another, of the conquering ragged regiment

t1 Selections from a review of Spencer's Data of Ethics, 1879,
printed in Nation, 1879, 29, 178-179. ED.]

147

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS ti*79j

stands forth to face her down. We are the truth
and the whole truth, they cry. Emotion, in short,
has paralyzed reflection on both sides, as it always
does in sudden revolutions. But when the new
comers grow accustomed to their situation, and the
original possessors get better acquainted with their
strange bedfellows, things will settle down on very
much the old basis.

Whereas to all other revolutionary moralists the
status belli has received a new consecration from the
new ideas; whereas in Germany especially the
"struggle for existence" has been made the bap
tismal formula for the most cynical assertions of
brute egoism; with Mr. Spencer the same theories
have bred an almost Quakerish humanitarianism
and regard for peace. Frequently in these pages
does his indignation at the ruling powers of Britain
burst forth, for their policy of conquest over lower
races. Might, in his eyes, would hardly seem to be
right, even when evolution is carried on by its
means. And this brings us to the only criticism we
care to make. We can never on evolutionist princi
ples altogether bar out personal bias, or the sub
jective method, from the construction of the ethical
standard of right, however fatalistic we may be.
For if what is right means what succeeds, however
fatally doomed to succeed that thing may be, it yet
succeeds through the determinate acts of determin
ate individuals ; and until it has been revealed what

148

[1879] SPENCER'S "DATA OF ETHICS"

shall succeed, we are all free to "go in" for our pref
erences and try to make them right by making them
victorious. Now, it may be strictly true that, as
Mr. Spencer says, no preference of ours possibly can
succeed in the long run, unless, with its other con
tents, it be also a preference for peace, justice, and
sympathy. But we still are free to decide when to
settle down on the equitable and peaceful basis. A
postponement of fifty years may wipe the Sioux and
Zulus out of the game, and with them the type of
character which they represent. Evolutionists must
not forget that we all have five fingers merely be
cause the first vertebrate above the fishes happened
to have that number. He owed his prodigious suc
cess in founding a line of descent to some entirely
other quality — we know not which as yet — but the
inessential five fingers were taken in tow and pre
served to the present day. So of minor moral
points; we have to decide which of them the peace
and sympathy shall take in tow and carry on to
triumph. What kind of fellows shall we be willing
to be peaceful with, and whose sympathy shall we
enjoy? An unlettered workingman of the writer's
acquaintance once made the profound remark:
"There's very little difference betwixt one man and
another, but what little there is is very important."
Shall we settle down to peaceful competition
already now with the Chinese? shall our messmates
in the millennial equilibrium be of the fat-minded
Esquimaux type? or shall we put up with some gen
erations more of status belli in order to get a good

149

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

congenial working majority of artists, metaphysi
cians, wits, and yearners after the ineffable with
whom we may live contented? According to evolu
tion each human type and exemplar of character
has small beginnings like everything else. The
"best" is that which has the biggest endings. Mine
may have these if I get ahead and violently crush
yours out in time; yours, if I let the precious occa
sion slip and you outgrow and suppress me. For
the conditions which once produced me, just as I
am, may never recur again.

Mr. Spencer has forgotten to consider this inevit
able field of warring antipathies, in which each must
just fight doggedly and hope the event may prove
him right. Or probably he has not so much forgot
ten as contemned it in his vast dream of universal
fatalism.

150

XIII
THE FEELING OF EFFORT1

[1880]

La locomotion animale n'a mil rapport direct avec ce
qu'on appelle velonte". . . . L'effort, le nisus, ne doit
pas etre fixe" dans le rapport de la volition avec 1'acte
propre du mobile materiel. . . . L'effort, dans 1'accep-
tion rationnelle de ce mot, est le rapport de la represen
tation avec elle-meme. RENOUVIER.

I PROPOSE in the following pages to offer a scheme
of the physiology and psychology of volition, more
completely worked out and satisfactory than any I
have yet met with. The matter is a little intricate,
and I shall have to ask the reader to bear patiently
a good deal of detail for the sake of the importance
of the result.

That we have a feeling of effort there can be no
doubt. Popular language has sufficiently conse
crated the fact by the institution of the word effort,
and its synonyms exertion, striving, straining. The
difference between a simply passive sensation, and

t1 Reprinted from the Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston
Society of Natural History, Boston, 1880, pp. 32. It was sum
marized by the Editor of Mind, 1880, 5, p. 582. It constitutes
the author's earliest discussions of the will, the "feeling of in-
nervation," ideo-motor action, and the psychology of free-will.
Pp. 163-174 were reprinted in the Principles of Psychology, 1890,
II, pp. 503-511. But in the main Chapter XXVI of the Prin
ciples is a rewriting rather than a reprinting of the present
article. ED.]

151

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS ti880]

one in which the elements of volition and attention
are found, has also been recorded by popular speech
in the difference between such verbs as to see and to
look; to hear and to listen; to smell and to scent;
to feel and to touch. Effort, attention, and volition
are, in fact, similar elements of Feeling differing all
in the same generic manner from its receptive, or
simply sensational elements ; and forming the active
as distinguished from the passive parts of our
mental nature. This distinction is styled by Bain
the most vital one within the sphere of mind ; and
at all times psychologists of the a priori school have
emphasized the utter opposition between our con
sciousness of spontaneity or outgoing energy, and
the consciousness of any mere impression whatever.
Fully admitting the feelings of active energy as
mental facts, our question simply is of what nervous
processes are they concomitants f As the feeling of
effort is nowhere more coarsely and obviously pres
ent than in the phenomenon of muscular exertion,
let us limit our inquiry first to that.

V

I. MUSCULAR EXERTION AN AFFERENT FEELING

Johannes Mtiller was, so far as I know, the first
to say1 that the nerve-process accompanying the
feeling of muscular exertion is the discharge from
the motor centre into the motor nerve. The sup
position is a most natural and plausible one ; for if
afferent nerve processes are felt, each in its charac-

1 Physiologic, 1840, Bd. ii, p. 500.

152

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

teristic way, why should not efferent processes be
felt by equal right, and with equally characteristic
qualities? Accordingly we find in writers of all
nations since Mtiller's time, repetitions implicit or
explicit, of his suggestion. But the authors who
have most emphatically insisted on it, and raised it
to the position of a fundamental doctrine, are Bain,
Hughlings Jackson and Wundt.

Bain says: "The sensibility accompanying mus
cular movement coincides with the outgoing stream
of nervous energy, and does not, as in the case of
pure sensation, result from any influence passing
inwards, by incarrying or sensitive nerves."1

Jackson writes : "Sensations, in the sense of men
tal states, arise, I submit, during energizing of
motor as well as of sensory nerve processes — with
the outgoing as well as with the ingoing current."2

Wundt separates the feeling of force exerted,
from the feeling of effected movement.3 And in
later writings he adopts the term Inncrvationsgcfiihl
to designate the former in relation to its supposed
cause, the efferent discharge. Feelings of innerva-
tion have since then become household words in
psychological literature. Two English writers
only, so far as I know, Dr. Chaiiton Bastian and

1 The Senses and the Intellect. 3d edition, p. 77.

1 Clinical and Physiological Researches on the Nervous Sys
tem (reprinted from the Lancet, 1873), London, J. & A.
Churchill, p. xxxiv. See also this author's very original though
somewhat obscure paper on "Aphasia" in Brain for October,
1879, p. 351.

8 Bcitrdffc zur Theorie dcr Sinncswahrnchmung, p. 420.
Physiologischc Psychologic, p. 316.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

Dr. Ferrier, have expressed skepticism as to the
existence of any feelings connected with the efferent
nervous discharge. But their arguments being im
perfect, and in the case of Bastian rather confusedly
expressed, have passed unnoticed. Lotze in Ger
many has also raised a skeptical voice, but has not
backed his doubts by many arguments.1 The noto
rious existence of the feeling of effort in muscular
exertion; the fact that the efferent discharge there
plays the principal role, and the plausibility of the
postulate so often insisted on by Lewes that identity
of structure involves identity of function, have all
conspired to make us almost believe, as a matter of
course, that motor cells when they discharge into
motor fibres, should have their own "specific energy"
of feeling, and that this should be no other than the
sense of energy put forth.

In opposition to this popular view, I maintain
that the feeling of muscular energy put forth is a
complex afferent sensation coming from the tense
muscles, the strained ligaments, squeezed joints,
fixed chest, closed glottis, contracted brow, clenched
jaws, etc., etc. That there is over and above this
another feeling of effort involved, I do not deny ; but
this latter is purely moral and has nothing to do
with the motor discharge. We shall study it at the end
of this essay, and shall find it to be essentially iden
tical with the effort to remember, with the effort to
make a decision, or to attend to a disagreeable task.

^ee his Metaphysik, 1869, p. 589. See also Revue Philo-
sophique, t. iv, p. 359.

154

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

First then, let us disprove the notion that there is
any feeling connected with the motor or efferent
nervous discharge. We may begin by asking : Why
should there be? Even accepting Lewes's postulate
in the abstract, what degree of "identity" should be
demanded between the afferent and efferent nerve
apparatus, to insure their being both alike, "sen
tient"? Even to our coarse optical examination, the
sensory and the motor cells are widely different.
But apart from a priori postulates, and however
strange to logic it may appear, it is a fact that the
motor apparatus is absolutely insentient in an affer
ent direction, although we know that the fibres of
the anterior root will propagate a disturbance in
that direction as well as in the other. Why may not
this result from a true insentiency in the motor cell,
an insentiency which would accompany all action
there, and characterize its normal discharges as well
as the unnatural irritations made by the knife of the
surgeon or the electrodes of the physiologist upon
the motor nerve.

Plausibility accrues to this presumption when we
call to mind this general law: that consciousness
seems to desert all processes where it can no longer
be of any use. The tendency of consciousness to a
minimum of complication is in fact a dominating
law in Psychology. The logical law of parsimony is
only its best-known case. We grow unconscious of
every feeling which is useless as a sign to lead us to
our ends, and where one sign will suffice, others drop
out, and that one remains to function alone. We

155

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

observe this in the whole history of sense per
ception, and in the acquisition of every art. We
ignore which eye we see with, because a fixed
mechanical association has been formed between
our motions and each retinal image. Our motions
are the ends of our seeing, our retinal images the
signals to these ends. If each retinal image, which
ever it be, can suggest automatically a motion
in the right direction, what need for us to know
whether it be in the right eye or the left? The
knowledge would be superfluous complication. So
in acquiring any art or voluntary function. The
marksman thinks only of the exact position of the
goal, the singer only of the perfect sound, the bal
ancer only of the point in space whose oscillations
he must counteract by movement. The associated
mechanism has become so perfect in all these per
sons, that each variation in the thought of the end,
is functionally correlated with the one movement
fitted' to bring the latter about. Whilst they were
tyros, they thought of their means as well as their
end ; the marksman of the position of his gun or bow,
or the weight of his stone, the pianist of the visible
position of the note on the keyboard, the singer of
his throat or breathing, the balancer of his feet on
the rope, or his hand or chin under the pole. But
little by little they succeeded in dropping all this
supernumerary consciousness, and they became
secure in their movements exactly in proportion as
they did so.

Now if we analyze the nervous mechanism of vol-

156

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

untary action, we shall see that by virtue of this
principle of parsimony in consciousness, the motor
discharge ought to be devoid of sentience. The es
sentials of a voluntary movement are : 1, a prelimi
nary idea of the end we wish to attain ; 2, a "fiat" ;
3, an appropriate muscular contraction ; 4, the end
felt as actually accomplished. In man, at any rate,
it is admitted that the idea of the end and the mus
cular contraction were originally coupled by empir
ical association; that is to say, the child with his
end in view, made random movements until he acci
dentally found one to fit. This movement awakened
its own characteristic feeling which thenceforward
remained with him as the idea of the movement
appropriate to that particular end. If the man
should acquire a million distinct ends, he must
acquire a million such motor ideas and a million
connections between them and the ends. But one
such connection, subserved by an exclusive nerve
tract used for no other purpose, will be enough for
each end. The end conceived will, when these asso
ciations are formed, always awaken its own proper
motor idea. As for the manner in which this idea
awakens its own proper movement — the one which
will convert it from an idea into an actual sensation
—the simplest possible arrangement would be to let
it serve directly (through its peculiar neural proc
ess) as a stimulus to the special motor centre, the
ultimate sensible effect of whose discharge it pre
figures and represents.

The ordinary theory, however, makes the matter

157

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

much more complicated. The idea of the end is
supposed to awaken first a feeling of the proper
motor innervation, and this, when adjudged right,
to discharge the muscular combination.

Now what can be gained by the interposition of
this second relay of feeling between the idea and
the movement? Nothing on the score of economy
of nerve tracts; for it takes just as many of them
to associate a million ideas with a million motor
feelings/ each specific, as to associate the same
million ideas with a million insentient motor cen
tres. And nothing on the score of precision; for
the only conceivable way in which they might fur
ther precision would be by giving to a mind whose
notion of the end was vague, a sort of halting stage
with sharper imagery on which to collect its wits
before uttering its fiat. But not only are the con
scious discriminations between "ends" much
sharper than any one pretends the shades of dif
ference between feelings of innervation to be, but
even were this not the case, it is impossible to
see how a mind with its end vaguely conceived,
could tell out of a lot of Inner 'vat ions gefiihle, were
they never so sharply differentiated, which one
fitted that end exactly, and which did not. A
sharply conceived end will on the other hand di
rectly awaken a distinct movement as easily as it
will awaken a distinct feeling of innervation. If
feelings can go astray through vagueness, surely the

1The association between the two orders of feeling being of
course brought about by a separate neural connection between
the tracts supporting each.

158

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

fewer steps of feeling there are interposed, the more
securely we shall act. We ought then on a priori
grounds alone to regard the Innervationsgefiihl as a
pure encumbrance.

Let us turn now to a posteriori evidence.

It is a notorious fact, recognized by all writers1
on voluntary motion, that the will seems concerned
only with results and not with the muscular details
by which they are executed. But when we say
"results," what is it exactly that we mean? We
mean, of course, the movements objectively consid
ered, and revealing themselves (as either accom
plished or in process of being accomplished) to our
sensible perceptions. Our idea, notion, thought, of
a movement, what we mean whenever we speak of
the movement, is this sensible perception which we
get of it when it is taking place, or has completely
occurred.

What then is this sensible perception?

What does it introspectively seem to be? I un
hesitatingly answer: an aggregate of afferent feel
ings, coming primarily from the contraction of
muscles, the stretching of tendons, ligaments, and
skin, and the rubbing and pressing of joints ; and
secondarily, from the eye, the ear, the skin, nose,
or palate, any or all of which may be indirectly
affected by the movement as it takes place in an
other part of the body. The only idea of a move-

1 By no one more clearly set forth than by Hume himself in
his essay on the "Idea of Necessary Connection." The best
recent statement I know is by Jaccoud : DCS Paraplegics et de
VAtaxie du Mouvcmcnt, Paris, 1864, p. 591.

159

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

ment which we can possess is composed of images of
these, its afferent effects. By these differences alone
are movements mentally distinguished from each
other, and these differences are sufficient for all the
discriminations we can possibly need to make when
we intend one movement rather than another.

The recent writers who have been prompt to
recognize the fact that volition is directed only to
results, have hardly been sensible of the far-reach
ing consequences of this admission, — consequences
which will develop themselves as our inquiry pro
ceeds. Meanwhile one immediate conclusion fol
lows: namely, that there are no such things as
efferent feelings, or feelings of innervation. These
are wholly mythological entities. Whoever says
that in raising his arm he is ignorant of how many
muscles he contracts, in what order of sequence,
and in what degrees of intensity, expressly avows a
colossal amount of unconsciousness of the processes
of motor discharge. Each separate muscle at any
rate cannot have its distinct feeling of innervation.
Wundt,1 who makes such enormous use of these
hypothetical feelings in his psychologic construc
tion of space, is himself led to admit that they have
no differences of quality, but feel alike in all
muscles, and vary only in their degrees of intensity.2

1Leidesdorf u. Meynert's Vierteljsch. f. Psychiatric, Bd. i,
Heft i, S. 30-37, 1SG7. Physiologische Psychologic, S. 316.

a Harless, in an article which in many respects forestalls what
I have to say ("Der Apparat des Willens," in Pichte's
Zeitschrift /. Philos., Bd. 38, 1861), uses the convenient word
Effectsbild to designate our idea of this sensory result of a
movement.

160

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

They are used by the mind as guides, not of what
movement, but of hoiv strong a movement it is mak
ing, or shall make. But does not this virtually sur
render their existence altogether?

For if anything be obvious to introspection it is
that the degree of strength of our muscular con
tractions is completely revealed to us by afferent
feelings coming from the muscles themselves and
their insertions, from the vicinity of the joints,
and from the general fixation of the larynx,
chest, face, and body, in the phenomenon of
effort, objectively considered. When a certain
degree of energy of contraction rather than another
is thought of by us, this complex aggregate of
afferent feelings, forming the material of our
thought, renders absolutely precise and distinctive
our mental image of the exact strength of movement
to be made, and the exact amount of resistance to be
overcome.

Let the reader try to direct his will towards a
particular movement, and then notice what consti
tuted the direction of the will. Was it anything
over and above the notion of the different feelings to
which the movement when effected would give rise?
If we abstract from these feelings, will any sign,
principle, or means of orientation be left, by which
the will may innervate the right muscles with the
right intensity, and not go astray into the wrong
ones? Strip off these images of result,1 and so far

*Wo speak here only of the muscular exertion, properly so
called. The difficulty often involved in making the flat still
remains a reserved question.

161

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

from leaving us with a complete assortment of direc
tions into which our will may launch itself, you
leave our consciousness in an absolute and total
vacuum. If I will to write "Peter" rather than
"Paul," it is the thought of certain digital sensa
tions, of certain alphabetic sounds, of certain ap
pearances on the paper, and of no others, which
immediately precedes the motion of my pen.

If I will to utter the word Paul rather than Peter,
it is the thought of my voice falling on my ear, and
of certain muscular feelings in my tongue, lips, and
larynx, which guide the utterance. All these feel
ings are afferent, and between the thought of them,
by which the act is mentally specified with all pos
sible completeness, and the act itself, there is no
room for any third order of mental phenomenon.
Except, indeed, what I 'have called the fiat, the ele
ment of consent, or resolve that the act shall ensue.
This, doubtless, to the reader's mind, as to my own,
constitutes the essence of the voluntariness of the
act. This fiat will be treated of in detail farther
on. It may be entirely neglected here, for it is a
constant coefficient, affecting all voluntary actions
alike, and incapable of serving to distinguish them.
No one will pretend that its quality varies accord
ing as the right or the left arm, for example, is used.

So far then, we seem free to conclude that an
anticipatory image of the sensorial consequences of
a movement, hard or easy, plus the fiat that these
consequences shall become actual, ought to be able
to discharge directly the special movement with

162

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

which in our past experiences the particular con
sequences were combined as effects. Furthermore,
there is no introspective evidence whatever of the
existence of any intermediate feelings, possessing
either qualitative or quantitative differences, and
accompanying the efferent discharge.1

Is there, notwithstanding, any circumstantial evi
dence? At first sight, it appears as if the circum
stantial evidence in favor of efferent feelings were
very strong. Wundt says2 that were our motor
feelings of an afferent nature, "it ought to be ex
pected that they would increase and diminish with
the amount of outer or inner work actually effected
in contraction. This, however, is not the case, but
the strength of the motor sensation is purely propor
tional to the strength of the impulse to movement,
which starts from the central organ innervating the
motor nerves. This may be proved by observations
made by physicians in cases of morbid alteration in
the muscular effect. A patient whose arm or leg is
half paralyzed, so that he can only move the limb
with great effort, has a distinct feeling of this effort ;
the limb seems to him heavier than before, appear
ing as if weighted with lead; he has, therefore, a
sense of more work effected than formerly, and yet
the effected work is either the same or even less.
Only he must, to get even this effect, exert a

*The various degrees of difficulty with which the fiat is given
form a complication of the utmost importance, reserved for
discussion further on.

*Vorlefsunycn iiber Menschen und Thierseele, Bd. i, p. 222.

163

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

stronger innervation, a stronger motor impulse than
formerly."

In complete paralysis also, patients will be con
scious of putting forth the greatest exertion to move
a limb which remains absolutely still upon the bed,
and from which of course no afferent muscular or
other feelings can come.1

Dr. Ferrier in his Functions of the Brain (Am.
Ed. pp. 222-224) disposes very easily of this line of
argument. He says : "It is necessary, however, to
exclude movements altogether before such an expla
nation [as Wundt's] can be adopted. Now, though
the hemiplegic patient cannot move his paralyzed
limb, though he is conscious of trying hard, yet he
will be found to be making powerful muscular exer-

1 In some instances we get an opposite result. Dr. H. Charlton
Bastian (British Medical Journal, 1869, p. 461, note) says :

"Ask a man whose lower extremities are completely par
alyzed, whether, when he ineffectually wills to move either of
these limbs, he is conscious of an expenditure of energy in any
degree proportionate to that which he would have experienced
if his muscles had naturally responded to his volition. He will
tell us rather that he has a sense only of his utter powerless-
ness, and that his volition is a mere mental act, carrying with
it no feelings of expended energy such as he is accustomed to
experience when his muscles are in powerful action, and from
which action and its consequences alone, as I think, he can
derive any adequate notion of resistance."

Dr. J. J. Putnam has quite recently reported to me a case
of this sort of only a few months' standing. Many amputated
patients who still feel their lost limbs are unable to make any
conscious effort to move them. One such case informs me
that he feels more able to will a distant table to move, than
to exert the same volition over his acutely-felt lost leg. Others,
on the contrary (vide Weir Mitchell's book on Gunshot In
juries to Nerves), say they can not only will, but, as far as
their feeling is concerned, execute, movements of their ampu-

164

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFOKT

tion of some kind. Vulpian has called attention to
the fact, and I have repeatedly verified it, that when
a hemiplegic patient is desired to close his paralyzed
fist, in his endeavors to do so he unconsciously per
forms this action with the sound one. It is, in fact,
almost impossible to exclude such a source of com
plication, and unless this is taken into account very
erroneous conclusions as to the cause of the sense of
effort may be drawn. In the fact of muscular con
traction and the concomitant centripetal impres
sions, even though the action is not such as is de
sired, the conditions of the consciousness of effort ex
ist without our being obliged to regard it as depend
ing on central innervation or outgoing currents.
"It is, however, easy to make an experiment of a

tated limbs. It would be extremely interesting to unravel the
causes of these divergences. May it be that in recent cases with
the recollection of varied movements fresh in the mind, the
patient has a stock of distinct images of position on which to
base his fiat ; while in an inveterate case, either of paralysis
with contraction, or of amputation with consciousness of the
limb in an invariable position, reminiscences of other positions
have through long desuetude become so incapable of revival
that there is no preliminary idea of an End for the fiat to knit
itself to. Such a supposition conforms well to the utterances
of two amputated persons with whom I have conversed. They
said it was like "willing into the void," they "did not know how
to set about it," and so forth. The recency of Dr. Putnam's
case above mentioned seems, however, to conflict with such an
explanation and I only make the suggestions in the hope that
some one with better opportunities for observation than I
possess, may become interested in the matter. I may add that
in teaching a new and unnatural movement, the starting-point
is to awaken by its passive production a distinct sense of what
the movement, if effected, would feel like. This defines the
direction of the exertion the pupil is to make.

165

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

simple nature which will satisfactorily account for
the sense of effort, even when these unconscious con
tractions of the other side, such as hemiplegics
make, are entirely excluded.

"If the reader will extend his right arm and hold
his forefinger in the position required for pulling
the trigger of a pistol, he may without actually mov
ing his finger, but by simply making believe, experi
ence a consciousness of energy put forth. Here,
then, is a clear case of consciousness of energy with
out actual contraction of the muscles either of the
one hand or the other, and without any perceptible
bodily strain. If the reader will again perform the
experiment, and pay careful attention to the condi
tion of his respiration, he will observe that his con
sciousness of effort coincides with a fixation of the
muscles of his chest, and that in proportion to the
amount of energy he feels he is putting forth, he is
keeping his glottis closed and actively contracting
his respiratory muscles. Let him place his finger as
before, and continue breathing all the time, and he
will find that however much he may direct his atten
tion to his finger, he will experience not the slightest
trace of consciousness of effort until he has actually
moved the finger itself, and then it is referred
locally to the muscles in action. It is only when
this essential and ever present respiratory factor is,
as it has been, overlooked, that the consciousness of
effort can with any degree of plausibility be as
cribed to the outgoing current. In the contraction
of the respiratory muscles there are the necessary

166

[1880] fHE FEELING OF EFFOKT

conditions of centripetal impressions, and these are
capable of originating the general sense of effort.
When these active efforts are withheld, no con
sciousness of effort ever arises, except in so far as it
is conditioned by the local contraction of the group
of muscles towards which the attention is directed,
or by other muscular contractions called uncon
sciously into play in the attempt.

"I am unable to find a single case of consciousness
of effort which is not explicable in one or other of
the ways specified. In all instances the conscious
ness of effort is conditioned by the actual fact of
muscular contraction. That it is dependent on
centripetal impressions generated by the act of con
traction, I have already endeavored to show. When
the paths of the centripetal impressions, or the cere
bral centres of the same, are destroyed, there is no
vestige of a muscular sense. That the central organs
for the apprehension of the impressions originating
from muscular contraction, are different from those
which send out the motor impulse, has already been
established. But when Wundt argues that this can
not be so, because then the sensation would always
keep pace with the energy of muscular contraction,
he overlooks the important factor of the fixation of
the respiratory muscles, which is the basis of the
general sense of effort in all its varying degrees."

To these remarks of Ferrier's I have nothing to
add. Any one may verify 'them, and they prove
conclusively that the consciousness of muscular ex
ertion, being impossible without movement effected

167

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

somewhere, must be an afferent and not an efferent
sensation, a consequence and not an antecedent of
the movement itself. An idea of the amount of mus
cular exertion requisite to perform a certain move
ment can consequently be nothing other than an an
ticipatory image of the movement's sensible effects.

Driven thus from the body at large, where shall
the circumstantial evidence for the feeling of inner-
vation lodge itself? Where but in the muscles of
the eye, from which last small retreat it judges itself
inexpugnable. And, to say the truth, it may well
be excused for its confidence; for Ferrier alone, so
far as I know, has ventured to attack it there, and
his attack must be deemed a very weak failure.
Nevertheless, that fastness too must fall, and by the
lightest of bombardments. But, before trying the
bombardment, let us examine the position with a
little care, laying down first a few general principles
about optical vertigo, or illusory appearance of
movement in objects.

We judge that an object moves under two dis
tinct sets of circumstances:

1. When its image moves on the retina, and we
know that the eye is still.

2. When its image is stationary on the retina,
and we know that the eye is moving. In this case
we feel that we follow the object.

In either of these cases a mistaken judgment about
the state of the eye will produce optical vertigo.

If in case 1, we think our eye is still when it is
really moving, we shall get a movement of the

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[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

retinal image which we shall judge to be due to a
real outward motion of the object. This is what
happens after looking at rushing water, or through
the windows of a moving railroad car, or after turn
ing on one's heel to giddiness. The eyes, without
our intending to move them, go through a series of
involuntary rotations, continuing those they were
previously obliged to make to keep objects in view.
If the objects had been whirling by to our right, our
eyes when turned to stationary objects will still
move slowly towards the right. The retinal image
upon them will then move like that of an object pass
ing to the left. We then try to catch it by volun
tarily and rapidly rotating the eyes to the left, when
the involuntary impulse again rotates the eyes to the
right, continuing the apparent motion, and so the
game goes on.

If in case 2, we think our eyes moving when they
are in reality still, we shall judge that we are
following a moving object when we are but fixat
ing a steadfast one. Illusions of this kind occur
after sudden and complete paralysis of special eye
muscles, and the partizans of feelings of efferent
innervation regard them as experimenta crucis.
Helmholtz writes1: "When the external rectus
muscle of the right eye, or its nerve, is paralyzed,
the eye can no longer be rotated to the right side.
So long as the patient turns it only to the nasal side
it makes regular movements, and he perceives cor
rectly the position of objects in the visual field. So

1 Physiologische Optik, p. 600.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

soon, however, as he tries to rotate it outwardly,
i.e., towards the right, it ceases to obey his will,
stands motionless in the middle of its course, and
the objects appear flying to the right, although posi
tion of eye and retinal image are unaltered.1

"In such a case the exertion of the will is fol
lowed neither by actual movement of the eye, nor
by contraction of the muscle in question, nor even
by increased tension in it. The act of will pro
duced absolutely no effects beyond the nervous sys
tem, and yet we judge of the direction of the line of
vision as if the will had exercised its normal effects.
We believe it to have moved to the right, and since
the retinal image is unchanged, we attribute to the
object the same movement we have erroneously as
cribed to the eye. . . . These phenomena leave no
room for doubt that we only judge the direction of
the line of sight by the effort of will with which we
strive to change the position of our eyes. There are
also certain weak feelings in our eyelids, . . . and
furthermore in excessive lateral rotations we feel
a fatiguing strain in the muscles. But all these
feelings are too faint and vague to be of use in the
perception of direction. We feel then what impulse
of the will, and how strong a one, we apply to turn
our eye into a given position."

Partial paralysis of the same muscle, paresis^ as
it has been called, seems to point even more con-

1The left and sound eye is here supposed covered. If both
eyes look at the same field there are double images which still
more perplex the judgment. The patient, however, learns to
see correctly before many days or weeks are over. W. J.

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clusively to the same inference, that the will to
innervate is felt independently of all its afferent
results. I will quote the account given by a very
recent authority,1 of the effects of this accident :

"When the nerve going to an eye muscle, e.g., the
external rectus of one side, falls into a state of
paresis, the first result is that the same volitional
stimulus, which under normal circumstances would
have perhaps rotated the eye to its extreme position
outwards, now is competent to effect only a mod
erate outward rotation, say of 20°. If now, shut
ting the sound eye, the patient looks at an object
situated just so far outwards from the pare tic eye
that this latter must turn 20° in order to see it dis
tinctly, the patient will feel as if he had moved it
not only 20° towards the side, but into its extreme
lateral position, for the impulse of innervation
requisite for bringing it into view is a perfectly
conscious act, whilst the diminished state of con
traction of the paretic muscle lies for the present out
of the ken of consciousness. The test proposed by
von Graefe, of localization by the sense of touch,
serves to render evident the error which the patient
now makes. If we direct him to touch rapidly the
object looked at, with the forefinger of the hand of
the same side, the line through which the finger
moves will not be the line of sight directed 20° out
ward, but will approach more nearly to the extreme
possible outward line of vision."2

1 Alfred Graefe, in Handbuch dcr gesammten Augenhcilkunde,
Bd. vi, S. 18.

*Il)id., p. 21.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

A stone cutter with the external rectus of the left
eye paralyzed, will strike his hand instead of his
chisel with his hammer, until experience has taught
him wisdom.

It appears as if here the judgment of direction
could only arise from the excessive innervation of
the rectus when the object is looked at. All the af
ferent feelings must be identical with those experi
enced when the eye is sound, and the judgment is
correct. The eyeball is rotated just 20° in the one
case as in the other, the image falls on the same
part of the retina, the pressures on the eyeball and
the tensions of the skin and conjunctiva are iden
tical. There is only one feeling which can vary,
and lead us to our mistake. That feeling must
be the effort which the will makes, moderate
in the one case, excessive in the other, but in both
cases an efferent feeling, pure and simple.

Beautiful and clear as this reasoning seems to be,
it is based on an incomplete inventory of the afferent
data. The writers have all omitted to consider
what is going on in the other eye. This is kept
covered during the experiments to prevent double
images, and other complications. But if its condi
tion under these circumstances be examined, it will
be found to present changes which must result in
strong afferent feelings. And the taking account
of these feelings demolishes in an instant all the
conclusions which the authors from whom I have
quoted, base upon their supposed absence. This I
will now proceed to show.

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[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

Take first the case of complete paralysis and
assume the right eye affected. Suppose the patient
desires to rotate his gaze to an object situated in
the extreme right of the field of vision. As Hering
has so beautifully shown, botli eyes move by a
common act of innervation, and in this instance
both move towards the right. But the paralyzed
right eye stops short in the middle of its course,
the object still appearing far to the right of its
fixation point. The left sound eye, meanwhile,
although covered, continues its rotation until the
extreme rightward limit thereof has been reached.
To an observer looking at both eyes the left will
seem to squint. Of course this continued and ex
treme rotation produces afferent feelings of right-
ward motion in the eyeball, which momentarily
overpower the faint feelings of central position in
the diseased and uncovered eye. The patient feels
by his left eyeball as if he were following an object
which by his right retina he perceives he does not
overtake. All the conditions of optical vertigo
are here present: the image stationary on the ret
ina, and the erroneous conviction that the eyes are
moving.

The objection that a feeling in the right eyeball
ought not to produce a conviction that the left eye
moves, will be considered in a moment. Let us
meanwhile turn to the case of simple paresis with
apparent translocation of the field.

Here the right eye succeeds in fixating the object,
but observation of the left eye will reveal to an

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

observer the fact that it squints just as violently
inwards as in the former case. The direction which
the finger of the patient takes in pointing to the
object, is the direction of this squinting and cov
ered left eye. As Graefe says (although he fails
to seize the true import of his own observation),
"It appears to have been by no means sufficiently
noticed how significantly the direction of the line
of sight of the secondarily deviating eye [i.e., of the
left] and the line of direction of the pointed finger
agree."

The translocation would, in a word, be perfectly
explained, could we suppose that the sensation of a
certain degree of rotation in the left eyeball were
able to suggest to the patient the position of an
object whose image falls on the right retina alone.
Can, then, a feeling in one eye be confounded with
a feeling in the other?

Not only Donders and Adamtik, by their vivi
sections, but Hering, by his exquisite optical ex
periments, have proved that the apparatus of inner-
vation for both eyes is single, and that they func
tion as one organ — a double eye, according to Her
ing, or what Helmholtz calls a Cyclopenauge. Now
the retinal feelings of this double organ, singly in
nervated, are also to a great extent absolutely in
distinguishable, namely, where they fall in corre
sponding points. But even where they are
numerically distinguishable, they are indistinguish
able with respect to our knowing whether they be
long to the left retina or to the right. When, as

174

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

so often happens, part of a distant object is hidden
from one eye by the edge of an intervening body,
and seen only by the other eye, we rarely know by
our spontaneous feeling that this is the case, nor
when we have noticed the fact can we tell which
eye is seeing and which is eclipsed. If the reader
will hold two needles in front of his nose, one of
them behind the other, and look at the distant one
with both eyes, the near one will appear to him
double. But he will be quite unable, by his mere
feeling, to say to which eye either of the double im
ages belong. If he gives an opinion, he will prob
ably say the right image belongs to the right eye,
the reverse being really the case.1 In short, we use
our retinal sensations indifferently, and only to
tell us where their objects lie. It takes long prac
tice directed specially ad hoc, to teach us on which
retina the sensations respectively fall.

Now the different sensations which arise from
the positions of the eyeballs are also used exclu
sively as signs of the position of objects ; an object
directly fixated, being localized habitually at the
intersection of the two optical axes, but without any
separate consciousness on our part that the position
of one axis is different from another. All we are
aware of is a consolidated feeling of a certain
"strain" in the eyeballs, accompanied by the per
ception that just so far in front and so far to the
right or to the left, there is an object which we see.

1 See also W. B. Rogers, Sillimari's Journal, 1860, for other
curious examples of this incapacity.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS t188°J

This being the case, our patient paretic of the right
external rectus, might be expected to see objects,
not only transposed to the right, but also nearer
because the intersection of his squinting axes is
nearer, and smaller because a retinal image of fixed
size awakens the judgment of an object small in
proportion as it is judged near. Whether paretic
patients of this kind are subject to this additional
illusion remains to be discovered by examinations
which ophthalmologists in large practice alone have
the opportunity of making.1 It is worth while to

*In three recent cases examined for me by ophthalmological
friends this additional delusion seemed absent, and I also found
it absent in a case of paralysis of the external rectus with
translocation which, by Dr. Wadsworth's kindness, I lately ex
amined at the hospital. The "absence" spoken of was in all
these cases a vacillating and uncertain judgment rather than
a steadfastly positive judgment that distance and size were
unaltered.

The extraordinary vacillation of our judgments of size and
distance will be noticed by any one who has experimented with
slightly concave, convex, or prismatic glasses. The most famil
iar example is that of looking at the moon through an opera-
glass. It looks larger, so its details are more distinctly seen;
being so distinct it looks nearer, and because it seems nearer
it is also judged smaller (Auber's secundare Urtheilstduschung).
Many experiments may be devised by which the left eye may be
made to converge by a prism whilst the right looks either at
the same object or sees one of the double images of a more
distant object whose other double image is cut off by a screen
from the left retina. Under these circumstances we get trans-
locations which may be similar to those in paresis but they
prove nothing to our purpose, for the moment the prism is in
troduced before the left eye, altering its convergence, the right
eye moves sympathetically, giving rise to a translation of its
retinal image, which of course suggests translocation of the
object. The only experiment capable of proving the theory
advanced in the text would be one in which no shifting of the

176

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFOKT

observe, however, that the feeling of accommodation
and the knowledge of the true size of the object con
spire with the feeling of convergence to give the
judgment of distance. And where the convergence
is an altogether abnormal one, as in the paretic
squint, the feeling of the left eyeball being excessive,
might well simply overpower all other feelings and
leave no clear impression whatever save a general
one of looking far towards the right.

The only thoroughly crucial test of the explana
tion here proposed of the paretic translocation,
would be a case in which the left eye alone looked at
the object whilst the right, looking at nothing,
strongly converged. Since, however, the only way
of making a normal eye converge is to give it an
object to look at, it would seem at first sight as if
such a case could never be obtained. It has oc
curred to me, notwithstanding, that slight atropini-
zation of one eye might cause such strong accommo
dative innervation, that the convergent muscles
might sympathetically contract, and a squint tend
to occur. The squint would be steadfast, and situ
ated in the non-atropinized eye, if it were covered
and the poisoned eye alone made to fixate a near
object. And if under these circumstances the ob
ject thus monocularly seen were translocated out-
image on the right retina accompanied the turning inwards of
the left eye. The experiment without prisms mentioned by
tiering (Lehre vom linocularcn Sehcn, pp. 12-14) seems the
nearest approach which we can make to this, but there both
eyes fixate the same objects, and there is some translation of
the image.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS t188°J

wardly, we should have a complete verification of
the explanation I present. The innervation is
wholly different from that in paresis, and the only
point the two cases have in common is the covered
eye rotated nasalwards. Probably it would not be
easy to find the patient, or the dose of atropia just
fitted for producing the squint. But one positive
instance would outweigh a hundred negative ones.
I have had a chance to experiment on but one per
son. A large needle was stuck in a horizontal
board, whose edges touched the face, the needle
being from eight to twelve inches in front of the
right atropinized eye. The subject was told to touch
with her finger the under surface of the board, just
beneath the needle. The results were negative, — no
well-marked squint being perceptible, — but on the
third day after the atropinization, the patient regu
larly placed her finger from one-half to three-quar
ters of an inch too far to the right. Other observa
tions ought to be made.

There seems meanwhile to be a very good nega
tive instance by which to corroborate our argu
ments. If we whirl about on our heel to the right,
objects will, as above-mentioned, seem to whirl
about us to the left as soon as we stand still. This
is due to the fact that our eyes are unwittingly
making slow movements to the right, corrected at
intervals by quick voluntary ones to the left. There
is then in the eyes a permanent excess of rightward
innervation, the reflex resultant of our giddiness.
The intermittent movements to the left by which we

178

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

correct this, simply confirm and intensify the im
pression it gives us of a leftward whirling in the
field of view : we seem to ourselves to be periodically
pursuing and overtaking the objects in their left
ward flight. Now if we convert this periodic volun
tary action into permanent action, by holding the
eyeballs still in spite of their reflex tendency to
rotate (i.e., by using such an excess of leftward
voluntary innervation as would keep us fixating one
object), we ought, if truly conscious of the degree of
our voluntary innervation, to feel our eyes actually
moving towards the left. And this feeling should
produce in us the judgment that we are steadily
following with our gaze a leftward moving field of
view. As a matter of fact, however, this never hap
pens. What does happen is that the field of view
stops its motion the moment our eyes stop theirs.1

1The subject of optical vertigo has been best treated by
Breuer in Strieker's Medizinische Jahrbucher, Jahrg. 1874, 1
Heft (see also 1875, 1 Heft). Hoppe's more recent work "Die
Scheinbewegungen," I have not seen. I ought to say that
Mach (Grundlinien der Lehre von den Bewegungsempflndun-
gen, 1875, pp. 83-85) denies that in his case fixating a point
causes the apparent movement of objects to stop. His case is
certainly exceptional, but need not invalidate in the least our
theory. The eye-motions in all cases are reflex results of a
sensation of subjective whirling of the body due most prob
ably to excitement of the semi-circular canals. This is not
arrested in any one by fixing the eyes ; and persisting in Mach
with a constant field of view, may in him be sufficient to sug
gest the judgment that the field follows him in his flight,
whilst in the average observer the further addition of a moving
retinal image may be requisite for the full production of that
psychic impression. All the feelings in question are rather
confused and fluctuating, while the nausea which rapidly
supervenes stands in the way of our becoming adepts in their
observation.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

Nothing could more conclusively prove the inability
of mere innervation (however complex or intense)
to influence our perception. Nothing could more
completely vindicate the idea that effected move
ments, through the afferent sensations they give rise
to, are alone what serve as premises in our motor
judgments.1

II. IDEO-MOTOR ACTION

So far then, so good. We have got rid of a very
obstructive complication in relegating the feeling of
muscular exertion properly so called, to that vast
and well-known class of afferent feelings, none of

'Let it not be objected that the involuntary rightward
motion of the eyeballs which misled us, after standing still,
into the impression that the world was moving, was "effected"
and ought to have given us afferent sensations strong enough
to prevent our being deluded by the image passing over the
retina. No doubt we get these afferent sensations and with
sufficient practice would rightly interpret them. But as the
experiment is actually made, neither they nor the moving image
on the retina (which far overpowers them in vivacity of im
pression) are expected. When we intend a movement of the
eyes, the world being supposed at rest, we always expect both
these sensations. Whenever the latter has come unexpectedly
we have been in presence of a really moving object, and every
moment of our lives moving objects are giving us unexpectedly
this experience. Of prolonged unexpected movements of the
eyes we never under normal circumstances have any experi
ence whatever. What wonder then that the intense and familiar
sensation of an unexpectedly moving retinal image should
wholly overpower the feeble and almost unknown one of an
unexpected and prolonged movement of the eyeballs and be
interpreted as if it existed alone. I cannot doubt however
that with sufficient practice we should all learn so to attend
to and interpret the feelings of the moving eyeballs as to reduce
the retinal experience to its proper signification.

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[1880] THE PEELING OF EFFORT

whose other members are held by any one to be es
pecially connected with the mysterious sentiments
of effort and power, which are the subjects of our
study. All muscle feelings eliminated, the question
stands out pure and simple : What is the volitional
effort proper? What makes it easy to raise the
finger, hard to get out of bed on a cold morning,
harder to keep our attention on the insipid image
of a procession of sheep when troubled with insom
nia, and hardest of all to say No to the temptation of
any form of instinctive pleasure which has grown
inveterate and habitual. In a word what is the na
ture of this fiat of which we have so often spoken?1

'The philosophic importance of clearing the ground for the
question may be shown by the example of Maine de Biran.
This thoroughly original writer's whole life was devoted to
the task of showing that the primordial fact of conscious
personality was the sentiment of volitional effort. This intimate
sense is the self in each of us. "It becomes the self by the sole
fact of the distinction which establishes itself between the sub
ject of the effort and the term which resists by its own inertia.
The ego cannot begin to know itself or to exist for itself, except
in so far as it can distinguish itself as subject of an effort, from
a term which resists" ((Euvres Ineditcs, Vol. I, pp. 208, 212).
Maine de Biran makes this resisting term the muscle, though
it is true he does not, like so many of his successors, think we
have an efferent sense of its resistance. Its resistance is known
to us by a muscular sensation proper, the effect of the contrac
tion (p. 213). We shall show in the sequel that this sensation
resists our fiat or volitional effort proper in no degree qud mus
cular, but simply qua disagreeable. Any other disagreeable
sensation whatever may equally well serve as the term which
resists our fiat that it become real. M. de B.'s giving such a
monstrous monopoly to the muscular feelings is a consequence
of his not having completed the discrimination I make in the
text between all afferent sensations together on the one hand,
and the fiat on the other. Muscle feelings for him still occupy
an altogether singular, hybrid and abnormal sort of position.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

In our bed we think of the cold, and we feel the
warmth and lie still, but we all the time feel that
we can get up with no trouble if we will. The diffi
culty is to will. We say to our intemperate ac
quaintance, "You can be a new man, if you will."
But he finds the willing impossible. One who talks
nonsense under the influence of hasheesh, realizes
all the time his power to end his sentences soberly
and sensibly, if he will. But his will feels as yet no
sufficient reason for exerting itself. A person lying
in one of those half -trance-like states of immobility
not infrequent with nervous patients, feels the power
to move undiminished, but cannot resolve to mani
fest it. And cases might be multiplied indefinitely in
which the fiat is not only a distinct, but a difficult
and effort-requiring moment in the performance.

On the other hand cases may be multiplied in
definitely of actions performed with no distinct
volitional fiat at all, — the mere presence of an in
tellectual image of the movement, and the absence
of any conflicting image, being adequate causes of
its production. As Lotze says1 : "The spectator ac
companies the throwing of a billiard ball, or the

1 Medicinische Psychologic, 1852, p. 293. In his admirably
acute chapter on the will this author has most explicitly main
tained the position that what we call muscular exertion is
an afferent and not an efferent feeling: "We must affirm uni
versally that in the muscular feeling we are not sensible of the
force on its way to produce an effect, but only of the sufferance
already produced in our moveable organs, the muscles, after the
force has, in a manner unobservable by us, exerted upon them
its causality" (p. 311). How often the battles of psychology
have to be fought over again, each time with heavier armies
and bigger trains, though not always with so able generals.

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[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

thrust of the swordsman with slight movements of
his arm ; the untaught narrator tells his story with
many gesticulations; the reader while absorbed in
the perusal of a battle scene feels a slight tension
run through his muscular system, keeping time as it
were with the actions he is reading of. These
results become the more marked the more we are
absorbed in thinking of the movements which sug
gest them; they grow fainter exactly in proportion
as a complex consciousness, under the dominion of a
crowd of other representations, withstands the pass
ing over of mental contemplation into outward
action. . . . We see in writing or piano-playing a
great number of very complicated movements fol
lowing quickly one upon the other, the instigative
representations of which remained scarcely a second
in consciousness, certainly not long enough to
awaken any other volition than the general one of
resigning oneself without reserve to the passing over
of representation into action. All the actions of
our daily life happen in this wise: Our standing
up, walking, talking, all this never demands a dis
tinct impulse of the will, but is adequately brought
about by the pure flux of thought."

Dr. Carpenter has proposed the name ideo-motor
for these actions without a special fiat. And in the
chapter of his Mental Physiology bearing this title
may be found a very full collection of instances.1

1 Professor Bain has also amply illustrated the subject in his
work on the Senses and Intellect, 3d edition, pp. 336-343. He
considers that these facts prove that the ideas of motion inhabit
identical nerve tracts with the actualized motions.

183

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS ti880]

It is to be noted that among the most frequent cases
of this sort are those acts which result from ideas
or perceptions, intercurrent as it were to the main
stream of our thought, and it may be logically dis
connected therewith. I am earnestly talking with a
friend, when I notice a piece of string on the floor.
The next instant I have picked it up, with no delib
erate resolve to do so, and with no check to my con
versation. Or, I am lying in my warm bed, en
grossed in some revery or other, when the notion
suddenly strikes me "it is getting late," and before
I know it, I am up in the cold, having executed
without the smallest effort of resolve, an action
which, half an hour previous, with full conscious
ness of the pros and the cons, the warm rest and the
chill, the sluggishness and the manliness, time lost
and the morning's duties, I was utterly unable to
decide upon.

I then lay it down as a second corner-stake in our
inquiry, that every representation of a motion
awakens the actual motion which is its object,
unless inhibited by some antagonistic representation
simultaneously present to the mind.

It is somewhat dangerous to base dogmatic con
clusions on the experiments so far made on the
cerebral cortex, nevertheless they may help to con
firm conclusions already probable on other grounds.
Munk's vivisectional experiments on the cortical
centres seem much the most minute and elaborate
which have yet been reported. Now Munk con
cludes from them that the so-called motor centres

184

H880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

of Hitzig and Ferrier, each of which, when elec
trically irritated, provokes a characteristic move
ment in some part of the body, are sensory centres,
—the centres for the feelings of touch, pressure, po
sition, and motion of the bodily parts in question.
The entire zone which contains them is called by him
the Fiihlsphdre of the cerebral surface, and is made
co-ordinate with the Sehsphare and Horsphare.*

Electric excitement of the forepaw centre can
then only give us an image of the paw in some result
ant state of flexion or extension. And the reason
why motor effects occur like clock-work when this
centre is irritated, would be that this image is
awakened with such extraordinary vivacity by the
stimulus that no other idea in the animal's mind can
be strong enough to inhibit its discharging into the
insentient motor centres below.

Now the reader may still shake his head and say :
"But can you seriously mean that all the wonder
fully exact adjustment of my action's strength to its
ends, is not a matter of outgoing innervation? Here
is a cannon-ball, and here a pasteboard box: in
stantly and accurately I lift each from the table, the

'Munk (Du Bois-Reymond's Archiv fur Physiologic, 1878,
pp. 177-178 and 549). It is true that Mvmk still believes in
the Inncrvationsgcfiihl, only he supposes it to be a result of the
activity of the lower motor centres, not coming to conscious
ness in situ, but transmitted upwards by fibres to the zone in
question, and there perceived along with the passive feelings of
the part involved. It is needless to say that there is not an
atom of objective ground for the belief in these afferent inner
vation feelings — even less than for the efferent ones ordinarily
assumed.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

ball not refusing to rise because my innervation was
too weak, the box not flying abruptly into the air be
cause it was too strong. Could representations of
the movement's different sensory effects in the two
cases be so delicately foreshadowed in the mind? or
being there, is it credible that they should, all un
aided, so delicately graduate the stimulation of the
unconscious motor centres to their work?" Even
so! I reply to both queries. We have a most ex
tremely delicate foreshadowing of the sensory ef
fects. Why else the start of surprise that runs
through us, if some one has filled the light-seeming
box with sand before we try to lift it, or has substi
tuted for the cannon-ball which we know, a painted
wooden imitation? Surprise can only come from
getting a sensation which differs from the one we
expect. But the truth is that when we know the
objects well, the very slightest difference from the
expected weight will surprise us, or at least attract
our notice. With unknown objects we begin by ex
pecting the weight made probable by their appear
ance. The expectation of this sensation innervates
our lift, and we "set" it rather small at first. An
instant verifies whether it is too small. Our expec
tation rises, i.e., we think in a twinkling of a setting
of the chest and teeth, a bracing of the back, and a
more violent feeling in the arms. Quicker than
thought we have them, and with them the burden
ascends into the air. Bernhardt1 has shown in a

1 Archiv filr Psychiatric, III, pp. 618-635. Bernhardt strangely
enough seems to think that what his experiments disprove is

186

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

rough experimental way that our estimation of the
amount of a resistance is as delicately graduated
when our wills are passive, and our limbs made to
contract by direct local faradization, as when we
ourselves innervate them. Ferrier1 has repeated
and verified the observations. They admit of no
great precision, and too much stress should not be
laid upon them either way, but at the very least,
they tend to show that no added delicacy would
accrue to our perception from the consciousness of
the efferent process, even if it existed.

III. THE INSCRUTABLE PSYCHO-PHYSIC NEXUS is
IDENTICAL IN ALT. INNERVATION AND LIES OUTSIDE
THE SPHERE OP THE WILL

On the ordinary theory, the movements which ac
company emotion, and those which we call volun
tary, are of a fundamentally different character.
The emotional movements are admitted to be dis
charged without intermediary by the mere presence
of the exciting idea. The voluntary motions are
said to follow the idea only after an intermediate

the existence of afferent muscular feelings, not those of efferent
innervation — apparently because he deems that the peculiar
thrill of the electricity ought to overpower all other afferent
feelings from the part. But it is far more natural to interpret
his results the other way, even aside from the certainty yielded
by other evidence that passive muscular feelings exist. This
other evidence is compendiously summed up by Sachs in
Iteichert und Du Bois' Archiv, 1874, pp. 174-188.
1 Functions of the Brain, p. 228.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS t188°l

conscious process of "innervation" has been aroused.
On the present theory the only difference lies in the
fact that the emotions show a peculiar congenital
connection of certain forms of idea with certain
very specially combined movements, largely of the
"involuntary" muscles, but also of the others — as
in fear, anger, etc. — such connection being non-
congenital in voluntary action; and in the further
fact that the discharge of idea into movement is
much more readily inhibited by other casually pres
ent ideas in the case of voluntary action, and less
so in the case of emotions ; though here, too, inhibi
tion takes place on a large scale.1

That one set of ideas should compel the vascular,
respiratory, and gesticulatory symptoms of shame,
another those of anger, a third those of grief, a
fourth those of laughter, and a fifth those of sexual
excitement, is a most singular fact of our organiza
tion, which the labors of a Darwin have hardly even
begun to throw light upon. Where such a prear-
rangement of the nerve centres exists, the way to
awaken the motor symptoms is to awaken first the
idea and then to dwell upon it. The thought of our
enemy soon brings with it the bodily ebullition,
of our loss the tears, of our blunder the blush. We
even read of persons who can contract their pupils
voluntarily by steadily imagining a brilliant light —
that being the sensation to which the pupils nor
mally respond.

1 Witness the evaporation of manifestations of disgust in the
presence of fear, of lust in the presence of respect, etc., etc.

188

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

"It is possible to weep at will by trying to recall
that peculiar feeling in the trigeminal nerve which
habitually precedes tears. Some can even succeed
in sweating voluntarily, by the lively recollection of
the characteristic skin sensations, and the volun
tary reproduction of an indescribable sort of feeling
of relaxation, which ordinarily precedes the flow
of perspiration. Finally, it is well known how
easily the thought of gustatory stimuli excites the
activity of the salivary glands. This capacity to
indirectly excite activities usually involuntary, is
much more pronounced in certain diseases. Hy
pochondriacs know well how easily the heart-beat
may be made to alter, or even cramps of single
muscles, feelings of aura, and so forth, be brought
about in this way, which no doubt in the religious
epidemics of the Middle Ages, led to the imitative
spread of ecstatic convulsions, from one person to
another."1 It suffices to think steadily of the feel
ing of yawning, to provoke the act in most persons;
and in every one in certain states, to imagine vomit
ing is to vomit.

The great play of individual idiosyncrasy in all
these matters, shows that the following or not fol
lowing of action upon representation is a matter
of connections among nervous centres, which con
nections may fluctuate widely in extent. The ordi
nary "voluntary" act results in this way: First,
some feeling produces a movement in a reflex, or as
we say, accidental way. The movement excites a

'Lotze, Mcdicinischc Psychologic, p. 303.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS t1880]

sensorial tract, causing a feeling which, whenever
the sensorial tract functions again, revives as an
idea. Now the sensorial and motor tracts, thus
associated in their actions, remain associated for
ever afterwards, and as the motor originally
aroused the sensory, so the sensory may now arouse
the motor (provided no outlying ideational tracts
in connection with it prevent it from so doing).
Voluntary acts are in fact nothing but acts whose
motor centres are so constituted that they can be
aroused by these sensorial centres, whose excite
ment was originally their* effect. Acts, the inner-
vation of which cannot thus run up its primal
stream, are not voluntary. But the line of division
runs differently in different individuals.

Now notice that in all this, whether the act do
follow or not upon the representation is a matter
quite immaterial so far as the wiling of the act
represented goes. I will to write, and the act fol
lows. I will to sneeze, and it does not. I will that
the distant table slide over the floor towards me;
it also does not. My willing representation can no
more instigate my sneezing centre, than it can insti
gate the table, to activity. But in both cases, it is as
true and good willing as it was when I willed to
write. In a word, volition is a psychic or moral
fact pure and simple, and is absolutely completed
when the intention or consent is there. The super
vention of motion upon its completion is a super
numerary phenomenon belonging to the department
of physiology exclusively, and depending on the or-

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[1880] THE FUELING OF EFFORT

ganic structure and condition of executive ganglia,
whose functioning is quite unconscious.

In St. Vitus' dance, in locomotor ataxy, the repre
sentation of a movement and the consent to it take
place normally. But the inferior executive cen
tres are deranged, and although the ideas discharge
them, they do not discharge them so as to reproduce
the precise sensations which they prefigure. In
aphasia the patient has an image of certain words
which he wishes to utter, but when he opens his
mouth, he hears himself making quite unintended
sounds. This may fill him with rage and despair —
which passions only show how intact his will re
mains.1

Paralysis only goes a step farther. The associa
tive mechanism is not only deranged but altogether
broken through. The volition occurs, but the hand
remains as still as the table. The paralytic is made
aware of this by the absence of the expected change
in his afferent sensations. He tries harder, i.e., he

1 In ataxy it is true that the sensations resultant from move
ment are usually disguised by anaesthesia. This has led to
false explanations of the symptom (Leyden, Die graue Degen
eration des Ruckenmarks, 1863). But the undeniable existence
of atactics without a trace of insensibility proves the trouble
to be due to disorder of the associating machinery between the
centres of ideation and those of discharge. These latter cases
have been used by some authors in support of the Innerva-
tiongefiihl theory (Classen: Das Schlussverfahren dcs Schactcs,
1863, p. 50) ; the spasmodic irregular movements being
interpreted as the result of an imperfect sense of the amount
of innervation we are exerting. There is no subjective evidence
whatever of such a state. The undoubtedly true theory is
best expounded by Jaccoud : DCS ParapUgies et de VAtaxie
Motricc, 1864, Part iii., Chap. ii.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS [188°1

mentally frames the sensation of muscular "effort"
with consent that it shall occur. It does so: he
frowns, he heaves his chest, he clenches his other
fist, but the palsied arm lies passive.1 It may then
be that the thought of his impotence shall make
his will, like a Karey-tamed horse, forever after
wards cowed, inhibited, impossible, with respect to
that particular motion.2

The special case of the limb being completely an-
sesthetic, as well as atactic, curiously illustrates
the merely external and quasi-accidental connection
between muscular motion and the thought which in
stigates it. We read of cases like this:

"Voluntary movements cannot be estimated the
moment the patient ceases to take note of them
by his eyes. Thus after having made him close his
eyes, if one asks him to move one of his limbs either
wholly or in part, he does it but cannot tell whether
the effected movement is large or small, strong or
weak, or even if it has taken place at all. And
when he opens his eyes after moving his leg from
right to left, for example, he declares that he had
a very inexact notion of the extent of the effected
movement. ... If, having the intention of execut
ing a certain movement, I prevent Mm, he does not

*A normal palsy occurs during sleep. We will all sorts oi
motions in our dreams, but seldom perform any of them. In
nightmare we become conscious of the non-performance, and
will the "effort" This seems then to occur in a restricted way,
limiting itself to the occlusion of the glottis and producing the
respiratory anxiety which wakes us up.

2 Vide supra, p. 8, note 3.
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[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

perceive it, and supposes the limb to have taken the
position he intended to give it."1 Or this :

"The patient when his eyes were closed in the
middle of an unpractised movement, remained with
the extremity in the position it had when the eyes
closed and did not complete the movement properly.
Then after some oscillations the limb gradually
sank by reason of its weight (the sense; of fatigue
being absent). Of this the patient was not aware,
and wondered when he opened his eyes, at the
altered position of his limb."2

In the normal state of man there is always a
possibility that action may not occur in this simple
ideo-motor way. The motor ideas may awaken
other ideas which inhibit the disci large into the
executive ganglia. But in the state called hypno
tism we have a condition analogous to sleep in so
far forth that the ideas which turn up do not
awaken their habitual and most reasonable asso
ciates. Their motor effects are therefore not in
hibited, and the hypnotized subject not only believes
everything that is told him, however improbable,
but he acts out every motor suggestion which he
receives. The eminent French philosopher, Kenou-
vier, as early as 1859, expressly assimilated these
facts of hypnotism to the ordinary ideo-motor ac
tions, and to those effects of moral vertigo and fasci-

'Landry: "M6moire sur la Paralysie du Sens Musculaire,"
in Gazette des Hopitaux, 1855, p. 270.

*Takacs, "Ueber die Verspatimg der Empfmdungsleitung,"
Archiv fur Psychiatric, Bd. x, Heft ii, p. 533.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

nation which make us fall when we are on heights,
laugh from the fear of laughing, etc., etc. His ac
count of the psychology of volition1 is the firmest,
and in my opinion, the truest connected treatment
yet given to the subject by any author with whom I
am acquainted.

IV. THE WILL CONNECTS TERMS IN THE MENTAL
SPHERE ONLY

We must now leave behind us the cases of ex
tremely uncomplicated mental motivation, which
we have hitherto considered, and take up others
where the tendency of a particular motor idea to
take effect is arrested or delayed. These are the
cases where the fiat, the distinct decision, or the
volitional effort, come in; and we find them of
many degrees of complexity.

First there are cases with no effort properly so
called, either of muscle or resolution: shall I put
on this hat or that? Shall I draw a horse or a man
on the sheet of paper which this amusement-craving
child brings me? Shall I move my index finger or
my little finger to show my "liberum arbitrium in-

1 Essais de Critique G£n&rale; 2me Essai, Psychologie ration-
nelle, pp. 237 and following. 2me Edition, 1875, Tome 1, pp.
367-408. Heidenhain, in an interesting pamphlet (Der sogen-
nante thierische Magnetismus, Leipzig, 1880), has recently pro
pounded the opinion that in hypnotized subjects the hemi
spheres are thrown entirely out of gear and no ideas whatever
awakened. This opinion is so much at variance with that of
English and French observers that further corroboration is re
quired.

194

[isso] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

differentice?" In the mountains, in youth, on some
intoxicating autumn morning, after invigorating
slumber, we feel strong enough to jump over the
moon, and, casting about us for a barrier, a rock, a
tree, or any object on which to measure our bodily
prowess, we perform with perfect spontaneity feats
which at another time might demand an almost im
possible exertion of muscle and of will.

Both of these exertions are present in a vast class
of actions. Exhausted with fatigue and wet and
watching, the sailor on a wreck throws himself
down to rest. But hardly are his limbs fairly re
laxed, when the order "to the pumps !" again sounds
in his ears. Shall he, can he, obey it? Is it not
better just to let his aching body lie, and let the ship
go down if she will? So he lies on, till, with a des
perate heave of the will, at last he staggers to his
legs, and to his task again.

Again, there are instances where the volitional
fiat demands great effort though the muscular ex
ertion be insignificant, e.g.,, the getting out of bed
and bathing oneself on a cold morning.

Finally, we may have the fiat in all its rigor, with
no motor representation whatever involved, or one
so remote as not to count directly at all in the men
tal motivation.

Of the former class are all resolutions to be
patient rather than to act. Such a one we have to
make in the dentist's chair: The alternatives are
a state of inward writhing, and mental swearing,
coupled with spasmodic respiration, and all sorts of

195

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

P

irregularly antagonistic muscular attractions —

a state of shrinking and protest in a word, on the
one hand; and on the other a state of muscular re
laxation and free breathing, a sort of mental wel
coming of the pain, and the elated consciousness
that be it never so savage, we can stand it. This is
a state of consent, and the passage from the former
state to it, not the passage the other way, is in this
instance the one requiring the fiat, and character
ized by the mental "click" of resolve.

As examples of the last class, take Kegulus return
ing to Carthage, the priest who decides to break
with his church, the girl who makes up her mind to
live single with her ideal, rather than accept the
good old bachelor who is her only suitor, the em
bezzler who fixes a certain day on which to make
public confession, the deliberate suicide, yea the
wretch who after long hesitation resolves that he
will put arsenic into his wife's cup. These pass
through one moment which like a knife-edge parts
all their past from all their future, but which leads
to no immediate muscular consequences at all.

Now if we analyze this great variety of cases, we
shall find that the knife-edge moment where it ex
ists, has the same identical constitution in all. It
is literally a fiat, a state of mind which consents,
agrees, or is willing, that certain represented ex
periences shall continue to be, or should now for
the first time become, part of Reality. The consent
comes after hesitation. The hesitation came because
something made us imagine another alternative.

196

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

When both alternatives are agreeable, as in the in
toxication of the mountain morning, or the liberum
arbitrium indiffer 'entice, the hesitation is but mo
mentary; for either course is better than delay,
and the one which lies nearest when the sense that
we are uselessly delaying becomes pungent, is the
one which discharges into act — thus no mental ten
sion has time to arise.

But in other cases both alternatives are images
of mixed good and evil. Whatever is done has to
be done against some inhibitory agency, whether of
intrinsic unpleasantness in the doing, or of rep
resented odiousness of the doing's fruits: the
fiat has to occur against resistance. Volition
then comes hand in hand with the sentiment of
effort, and the proper problem of this essay lies
before us.

What does the effort seem to do? To bring the
decisive volition. What is this volition? The
stable victory of an idea, although it may be dis
agreeable, the permanent suppression of an idea
although it may be immediately and urgently
pleasant.

What do we mean by "victory"? The survival in
the mind in such form as to constitute unwavering
contemplation, expectation, assent, or affirmation.
What do we mean by "suppression"? Either com
plete oblivescence, or such presence as to evoke the
steady sentiment of aversion or negation.

Volition with effort is then incidental to the
conflict of ideas of what our experience may be.

197

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

Conflict involves those strange states or general at
titudes of feeling, which when we speak logically
or intellectually, we call affirmation and negation,
but when we speak emotionally, we call assent and
refusal. Psychologically of course, like every other
mental modification, these attitudes are feelings
sui generis, not to be described, but only labelled
and pointed out. What they are in se, what their
conflict is, and what its decision and resolution are,
we know in every given case introspectively with
an absolute clearness that nothing can make clearer.
But what forms of cerebral nerve-process corre
spond to these mind-processes is an infinitely darker
matter, and one as to which I will here make no
suggestion except the simple and obvious one that
they and volition with them are subserved by the
ideational centres exclusively and involve no down
ward irradiation into lower parts. The irradiation
only comes when they are completed.

In the dentist's chair, one idea is that of the man
liness of enduring the pain, the other is that of its
intolerable character. We assent to the manliness,
saying, "let it be the reality," and behold, it becomes
so, though with a mental effort exactly proportion
ate to the sensitiveness of our nerves. To the sailor
on the wreck, one idea is that of his sore hands, and
the nameless aching exhaustion of his whole frame
which further pumping involves. The other, is that
of a hungry sea ingulfing him. He says: "rather
the former !" and it becomes reality, in spite of the
inhibiting influence of the comparatively luxurious

198

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

sensations of the spot in which he for the moment
lies.

To the sinner in the agony of his mind, one idea
is of the social shame and all the outward losses
and degradations to which confession will expose
him, the other is that of the rescue from the damned
unending inward foulness to which concealment
seeins to doom him. He says to the confession,
"fiat! with all its consequences," and sure enough,
when the time comes, fit, but not without mental
blood and sweat.

Everywhere the difficulty is the same: to keep
affirming and adopting a state of mind of which dis-
agreeableness is an integral factor. The disagree-
ableness need not be of the nature of pain ; it may
be the merely relative disagreeableness of insipidity.
When the spontaneous course of thought is to excit
ing images, whether sanguine or lugubrious, loving
or revengeful, all reasonable representations come
with a deadly flatness and coldness that strikes a
chill to the soul. To cling to them however, as soon
as they show their faces, to consent to their pres
ence, to affirm them, to negate all the rest, is the
characteristic energy of the man whose will is
strong. If 011 this purely mental plane his effort
succeeds, the outward consequences will take care
of themselves, for the representation will work un
aided its motor effects. The simplest cases are the
best for illustrating the point, and in the case of a
man afflicted with insomnia, and to whose body
sleep comes through the persistent successful diver-

199

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

sion of the mind from the train of whirling
thoughts, to the monotonous contemplation of one
letter after another of a verse of poetry, spelled out
synchronously with the acts of respiration, we have
all the elements that can anywhere be found: a
struggle of ideas, a victory of one set and certain
bodily effects automatically consequent thereon.
To sustain a representation, to think, is what re
quires the effort, and is the true moral act. Maniacs
know their thoughts to be insane, but they are too
pressing to be withstood. Again and again sober
notions come, but like the sober instants of a
drunken man, they are so sickeningly cadaverous,
or else so still and small and imperceptible, that the
lunatic can't bear to look them fully in the face and
say : "let these alone represent my realities." Such
an extract as this will illustrate what I mean :

"A gentleman of respectable birth, excellent edu
cation, and ample fortune, engaged in one of the
highest departments of trade . . . and being in
duced to embark in one of the plausible speculations
of the day . . . was utterly ruined. Like other men
he could bear a sudden overwhelming reverse better
than a long succession of petty misfortunes, and
the way in which he conducted himself on the occa
sion met with unbounded admiration from his
friends. He withdrew, however, into rigid seclu
sion, and being no longer able to exercise the gener
osity and indulge the benevolent feelings which
had formed the happiness of his life, made himself
a substitute for them by daydreams, gradually fell

200

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

into a state of irritable despondency, from which
he only gradually recovered with the loss of reason.
He now fancied himself possessed of immense
wealth, and gave without stint his imaginary riches.
He has ever since been under gentle restraint, and
leads a life not merely of happiness, but of bliss;
converses rationally, reads the newspapers, where
every tale of distress attracts his notice, and being
furnished with an abundant supply of blank checks,
he fills up one of them with a munificent sum, sends
it off to the sufferer, and sits down to his dinner with
a happy conviction that he has earned the right to
a little indulgence in the pleasures of the table ; and
yet, on a serious conversation with one of his old
friends, he is quite conscious of his real position,
but the conviction is so exquisitely painful that he
will not let himself believe it"'1

Now to turn to the special case of the decision
to make a muscular movement. This decision may
require a volitional effort, or it may not. If I am
well, and the movement is a light one (like the
brushing of dust from my coat-sleeve), and suggests
no consequences of an unpleasant nature, it is effort
less. But if unpleasant consequences are expected,
that effective sustaining of the idea which results
in bringing the motion about, and which is equiva
lent to mental consent that those consequences be
come real, involves considerable effort of volition.
Now the unpleasant consequences may be immediate
—my body may be weary, or the movement violent,

*The Duality of the Mind, by A. L. Wigan, M.D., p. 123.
201

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

and involve a great amount of that general and
special afferent feeling which we learned above to
constitute muscular exertion. Under these circum
stances the idea of the movement is the imagination
of these massively unpleasant feelings, and nothing
else. The willing of the movement is the consent to
these imagined feelings becoming real, — the saying
of them, "fiant" The effort which the willing re
quires is the purely mental transition from the mere
conception of the feelings to their expectation,
steadfastly maintaining itself before the mind, dis
agreeable though it be. The motor idea, assuming
at last this victorious status, not only uninhibited by
remote associations, but inhibited no longer even by
its own unpleasantness, discharges by the preap-
pointed mechanism into the right muscles. Then
the motor sensations accrue in all their expected
severity, and the muscular effort as distinguished
from the volitional effort has its birth.

It is needless after this to say what absolutely
different phenomena these two efforts are, or to
expatiate upon the unfortunateness of their being
confounded under the same generic name. Muscu
lar feelings whenever they are massive, and the
body is not "fresh," are rather disagreeable, espe
cially when accompanied by stopped breath, con
gested head, bruised skin of fingers, toes, or shoul
ders, and strained joints. And it is only as thus
disagreeable that the mind has difficulty in consent
ing to their reality. That they happen to be made
real by our bodily activity is a purely accidental cir-

202

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

cumstance. A soldier standing still to be fired at,
expects disagreeable sensations engendered by Ms
bodily passivity. The action of his will, in consent
ing to the expectation, is identical with that of the
sailor rising to go to the pumps. What is hard for
both is facing an idea as real.

The action of the will must not be limited to the
willing of an act. To exert the will and to make
soft muscles hard, are not one thing, but two en
tirely different things. Extremely frequent associa
tion may account for, but not excuse their confusion
by the psychologist. The represented disagreeable-
ness of a muscular motion may often be that which
an exertion of will is called on to overcome; but
as well might a cook, who daily associates the burn
ing of the fire with the boiling of the potatoes, define
the inward essence of combustion as t}ie making of
hard potatoes soft.

The action of the will is the reality of consent to
a fact of any sort whatever, a fact in which we our
selves may play either an active or a suffering part.
The fact always appears to us in an idea : and it is
willed by its idea becoming victorious over inhibit
ing ideas, banishing negations, and remaining
affirmed. The victorious idea is in every case what
soever built up of images of feelings afferent in their
origin. And the first philosophical conclusion prop
erly so-called, into which our inquiry leads us, is a
confirmation of the older sensationalist view that
all the mind's materials without exception are de
rived from passive sensibility. Those who have

203

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS t1880]

thought that sensationalism abdicated its throne
and mental spontaneity came in when Professor
Bain admitted a "sensation of energy exerted by the
outgoing stream/' have rejoiced in the wrong place
altogether. There is a feeling of mental spontaneity,
opposed in nature to all afferent feelings; but it
does not, like the pretended feeling of muscular in-
nervation, sit among them as among its peers. It is
something which dominates them all, by simply
choosing from their midst. It may reinforce either
one in turn — a retinal image by attending to it, a
motor image by willing it, a complex conception,
like that of the world having a divine meaning, by
believing it. Whatever mental material this ele
ment of spontaneity comes and perches on, is sus
tained, affirmed, selected from the rest; though but
for the feeling of spontaneous psychic effort, which
thus reinforces it, we are conscious every moment
that it might cease to be. The whole contrast of a
priori and empirical elements in the mind lies, I am
fully convinced, in this distinction. All our mind's
contents are alike empirical. What is a priori is
only their accentuation and emphasis. This greet
ing of the spirit, this acquiescence, connivance, par
tiality, call it what you will, which seems the in
ward gift of our selfhood, and no essential part of
the feelings, to either of which in turn it may be
given, — this psychic effort pure and simple, is the
fact which a priori psychologists really have in mind
when they indignantly deny that the whole intellect
is derived from sense.

204

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

V. No CONSCIOUS DYNAMIC CONNECTION BETWEEN
THE INNER AND OUTER WORLDS

Now if we take this psychic fact for just what on
the face of it it seems to be, namely, the giving to an
idea the full degree of reality it can have in and for
the mind, we are led to a curious view of the re
lations between the inner and the outer worlds.
The ideas, as mere representatives of possibility,
seem set up midway between them to form a sort of
atmosphere in which Reality floats and plays. The
mind can take any one of these ideas and make it its
reality — sustain it, adopt it, adhere to it. But the
mind's state will be Error, unless the outer force
<fbacks" the same idea. If it backs it, the mind is
cognitive of Truth; but whether in error, or in
truth, the mind's espousal of the idea is called
Belief. The outer force seems in no wise con
strained to back the mind's adoptions, except in one
single kind of case, — where the idea is that of bodily
movement. Here the outer force ( with certain reser
vations ) obeys and follows the mind's lead, agreeing
to father as it were every child of that sort which
the mind may conceive. And the act by which the
mind thus takes the lead is called a Volition.

The ideas backed by both parties are the Reality ;
those backed by neither, or by the mind alone, form
a residuum, a sort of limbo or no-man's land, of
wasted fancies and aborted possibilities.

But is it not obvious from this that the differ-

205

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS E188°l

ence between Belief and Volition is not intrinsic?
What the mind does in both cases is the same. It
takes an image, and says, "so far as I am concerned,
let this stand ; let it be real for me." The behavior
of the outer force is what makes all the difference.
Generally constrained in the case of the motor voli
tion, it is independent in the case of the belief. It
is true that volition may be impotent and belief
delusive ; but be they however never so false or pow
erless, by their inward nature they are ejusdem
farina, — beliefs and volitions still.

Belief and Will are thus concerned immediately
only with the relation between possibilities for the
mind and realities for the mind. The notion of
reality for the mind becomes thus the pivotal notion
in the analysis of both. To analyze this notion itself
seems at present an impossible task. Professor
Bain has exerted his utmost powers upon it, but, to
our mind, without avail ; and what J. S. Mill says1
still remains true, that when we arrive at the ele
ment which makes a belief differ from a mere con
ception, "we seem to have reached as it were, the
central point of our intellectual nature, presup
posed and built upon in every attempt to explain the
more recondite phenomena of our being."

The sense of reality must then be postulated as
an ultimate psychic fact. But we know that it may
come with effort, or without, in the theoretic as well

1His edition of James Mill's Analysis, Vol. i, p. 423.
Bain's reply is in the chapter on "Belief" in the 3d edition of
his Emotions and Will.

206

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

as in the motor sphere ; and the reader who has had
the patience to follow our study of effort as far as
this, will not object to going on now to consider it
in both spheres together.

Hume said that to believe an idea was simply to
have it in a lively manner. We, on our part, have
seen the ideo-motor cases in which to will an idea
is simply to have it. But a moment's reflection
shows that such spontaneous belief and will are
possible only where the mind's contents are at a
minimum of complication. In the trance-subject's
mind any simple suggestion will be both believed
and acted on, because none of its usual associates
are awakened. Bain1 and Taine2 have beautifully
shown how in the normal subject all ideas taken
per se are hallucinatory or held as true. Doubt
never comes from any intrinsic insufficiency in a
thought, but from the manner in which extrinsic
ideas conflict with it, or in Taine's phrase, serve as
its reductive. Before they come we have the primal
state of theoretic and practical innocence.

But wider suggestions bring the fall, and turn the
simple credulity to doubt and the fearless spon
taneity to hesitation. A stable faith, a firm decree,
can then only come after reflection, and be its
fruits. What is reflection? A conflict between
many ideas of possibility. During the conflict the
sense of reality is lost or rather the connexion be
tween it and each of the ideas in turn. The conflict

1 Emotions and Will, 3d Ed., pp. 511-517.
*De V Intelligence, Part i, Book ii, Chap. i.

207

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS t188°J

is over when the sense of reality returns, like the
tempered steel, ten times more precious and invinci
ble for its icy bath in the waters of uncertainty.
But why and how does it return? and why does it
so often return with the symptom of effort by its
side? Is it an independent entity which merely
took its flight at the first alarm of the battle, and
which now with effort as its ally and affirmation at
its right hand and negation at its left, comes back
to give the victory to one idea? Or is it a simple
resultant of the victory which was a foregone con
clusion decided by the intrinsic strength of the con
flicting ideas alone?

We stand here in the presence of another mighty
metaphysical problem. If the latter alternative be
true there is no genuine spontaneity, no ambiguous
power of decision, no real freedom either of faith
or of act. The effort which seems to come and rein
force one side, endowing it with the feeling of
reality, can be no new force adding itself to those
already in the arena. It can only be a sort of eddy
or derivative from their movement, whose sem
blance of independent form is illusory, and whose
amount and direction are implicitly given the mo
ment they are posited.

This has been the doctrine of powerful schools.
The ideas themselves and their conflict have been
held to constitute the total history of the mind, with
no unaccounted-for phenomenon left over. Long
before mutual inhibition by nerve processes had
been discovered, the inhibitions and furtherances

208

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

of one idea by another, had by Herbart been erected
into a completely elaborated system of psychic
statics and dynamics. The English associationist
school, without using the word inhibition, and in
a much less outwardly systematic, though by no
means less successful way, had also represented
choice and decision as nothing but the resultant of
different ideas failing to neutralize each other
exactly. Doubt, fear, contradiction, curiosity, de
sire, assent, conviction, affirmation, negation and
effort, are all alike, on this view, but collateral pro
duct, incidents of the form of equilibrium of the
representations, as they pass from the oscillating
to the stable state.

This is of course conceivable; and to have the
conception in a lively manner (as Hume says)
may well in us, as in so many others, carry the sense
of reality with it, and command conviction. But
still the other alternative conflicts, and may reduce
this conception to one of mere possibility, degrading
it from a creed to an hypothesis. It seems im
possible, if our minds are in this open state, to
find any crucial evidence which may decide. I shall,
therefore, not pretend to dogmatize myself, but
close this essay by a few considerations, which may
give at least an appearance of liveliness to the alter
native notion, that the mental effort with which the
affirmation of reality so often comes conjoined, may
be an adventitious phenomenon, not wholly given
and pre-determined by the ideas of whose struggle
it accompanies the settlement.

209

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS [1880]

A little natural history becomes here necessary.
When outer forces impinge upon a body we say that
its resultant motion follows the line of least re
sistance, or of greatest traction. When we deliber
ately symbolize the mental drama in mechanical
language, we also say that belief and will follow
the lines of least resistance, or of most attractive
motivation. But it is a curious fact that our spon
taneous language is by no means compatible with
the law that mental action always follows lines of
least resistance. Of course, if we proceed a priori
and define the line of least resistance, as the line
that is followed, the law must hold good. But in
all hard cases either of belief or will, it seems to the
agent as if one line were easier than another, and
offered least resistance, even at the moment when
the other line is taken. The sailor at the pumps, he
who under the surgeon's knife represses cries of
pain, or he who exposes himself to ostracism for
duty's sake, feels as if he were following the line of
greatest temporary resistance. He speaks of con
quering and overcoming his impulses and tempta
tions.

But the sluggard, the drunkard, the coward,
never talk of their conduct in that way or say they
resist their energy, overcome their sobriety, con
quer their courage, and so forth. If in general we
class all motives as sensual on the one hand and
moral on the other, the sensualist never says of his
behavior that it results from a victory over his
conscience, but the moralist always speaks of his

210

[issoj THE FEELING OF EFFORT

as a victory over his appetite. The sensualist uses
terms of inactivity, says he forgets his ideal, is
deaf to duty, and so forth; which terms seem to
imply that the moral motives per se can be annulled
without energy or effort, and that the strongest
mere traction lies in the line of the sensual impulse.
The moral one appears in comparison with this, a
still small voice which must be artificially rein
forced to prevail. Effort is what reinforces it,
making things seem as if, while the sensual force
were essentially a fixed quantity, the moral might
be of various amount. But what determines the
amount of the effort when by its aid moral force
becomes victorious over a great sensual resistance?
The very greatness of the resistance itself. If the
sensual impulses are small, the moral effort is small.
The latter is made great by the presence of a great
antagonist to overcome. And if a brief defini
tion of moral action were required, none could be
given which would better fit the appearances than
this: It is action in the line of the greatest re
sistance.

The facts may be most briefly symbolized thus,
S standing for the sensual motive, M for the moral,
and E for the effort :

M per se < S.

M + E > S.

In other words, if E adds itself to M, S immedi
ately offers the least resistance, and motion occurs
in spite of it.

211

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS t188°J

But the E does not seem to form an integral part
of the M. It appears adventitious and indeter
minate in advance. We can make more or less as we
please, and if we make enough we can convert the
greatest mental resistance into the least.

Now the question whether this appearance of
ambiguity is illusory or real, is the question of the
freedom of the will. Many subtle considerations
may be brought to prove that the amount of effort
which a moral motive comports as its ally, is a fixed
function of the motive itself, and like it, determined
in advance. On the other hand, there is the notion
of an absolute ambiguity in the being of this thing,
and its amount, sun-clear to the consciousness of
each of us. He who loves to balance nice doubts
and probabilities, need be in no hurry to decide.
Like Mephistopheles to Faust, he can say to himself,
"dazu hast du noch eine lange Frist," for from
generation to generation the evidence for both sides
will grow more voluminous, and the question more
exquisitely refined. But if his speculative delight is
less keen, if the love of a parti pris outweighs that
of keeping questions open, or if, as a French philoso
pher of genius1 says, "F amour de la vie qui s'in-
digne de tant de discours/' awakens in him, craving
the sense of either peace or power ; then taking the
risk of error on his head, he must project upon one
of the alternatives in his mind, the attribute of
reality for him. The present writer does this for
the alternative of freedom. May the reader derive

1 J. Lequier: La Recherche d'une Premiere Verity 1865, p. 90.
212

£1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

no less contentment if he prefer to take the opposite
course !

Only one further point remains, but that is an
important one philosophically. There is no com
moner remark than this, that resistance to our mus
cular effort is the only sense which makes us aware
of a reality independent of ourselves. The reality re
vealed to us in this experience takes the form of a
force like the force of effort which we ourselves
exert, and the latter after a certain fashion serves
to measure.1 This force we do not similarly exert
when we receive tactile, auditory, visual, and other
impressions, so the same reality cannot be revealed
by those passive senses.

Of course if the foregoing analysis be true, such
reasoning falls to the ground. The "muscular
sense'' being a sum of afferent feelings is no more a
"force-sense" than any other sense. It reveals to us
hardness and pressure as they do colour, taste,
smell, sonority, and the other attributes of the
phenomenal world. To the naive consciousness all
these attributes are equally objective. To the criti
cal all equally subjective. The physicist knows
nothing whatever of force in a non-phenomenal
sense. Force is for him only a generic name for all
those things which will cause motion. A falling

1 See for example, Psychology [presumably Spencer's. ED.],
Part VII., Chaps. XVI. and XVII.; Herschel's Familiar Lec
tures, Lecture XII. ; an article on "the Force behind Nature,"
by Dr. Carpenter, reprinted in the Popular Science Monthly for
March, 1880 ; Martineau's Review of Bain ; Mansel's Meta-
physics, pp. 105, 346.

213

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

stone, a magnet, a cylinder of steam, a man, just as
they appear to sense, are forces. There is no super
sensible force in or behind them. Their force is
just their sensible pull or push, if we take them
naturally, and just their positions and motions if
we take them scientifically. If we aspire to strip
off from Nature all anthropomorphic qualities, there
is none we should get rid of quicker than its
"Force." How illusory our spontaneous notions of
force grow when projected into the outer world
becomes evident as soon as we reflect upon the phe
nomenon of muscular contraction. In pure objec
tive dynamic terms (i.e., terms of position and
motion), it is the related state of the muscle which
is the state of stress and tension. In the act of con
traction, on the contrary, the tension is resolved,
and disappears. Our feeling about it is just the
other way, — which shows how little our feeling has
to do with the matter.

The subject has an interest in connection with the
free-will controversy. It is an admitted mechanical
principle that the resultant movement of a system
of bodies linked together in definite relations of
energy, may vary according to changes in their
collocation, brought about by moving them at right
angles to their pre-existing movements; which
changes will not interfere with the conservation of
the system's energy, as they perform work upon it.
Certain persons desiring to harmonize free will
with the theory of conservation, have used this con
ception to symbolize the dynamic relations of will

214

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

with brain, by saying that the mental effort merely
determines the moment and the spot at which a
certain molecular vis viva shall start, by a sort of
rectangular pressure which plays the part of an
independent variable in the equations of movement
required by the principles of conservation. Thus
free will may be conceived without any of the in
ternal energy of the system being either augmented
or destroyed.

Now so long as mental effort in general was sup
posed to have a particular connection with mus
cular effort, and so long as muscular effort was sup
posed to reveal to us behind the resistance of bodies,
a "force" which they contained, there was a ready
reply to all this speculation. Your will, it could be
said, is doing "work" upon the system. "Work" is
defined in mechanics as movement done against re
sistance, and your will meets with a resistance
which it has to overcome by moral effort. Were the
molecular movements brought about by the will,
rectangular to pre-existing movements, they would
not resist, and the volition would be effortless. But
the volition involves effort, and since, according to
the will-muscle-force-sense theory, its effort is an
inner force which overcomes a real outer force,
since, indeed, without this antagonism we should be
without the notion of outer force altogether, why
then the effort, if free, must be an absolutely new
contribution and creation so far as the sum of
cosmic energy is concerned. The only alternative
then (if one still held to the will-muscle-force-sense

215

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

theory) was either with Sir John Herschel,1 frankly
to avow that "force" may be created anew, and that
"conservation" is only an approximate law; or else
to drop free-will in favor of conservation, and sup
pose the ego, in willing, to be merely cognitively
conscious, in the midst of the universal force-stream,
of certain currents with which it was mysteriously
fated to identify itself.

To my mind all such discussions rest on an an-
thropomorphization of outward force, which is to
the last degree absurd. Outward forces, so far as
they are anything, are masses in certain positions,
or in certain movements, and nought besides. The
muscular "force-sense" reveals to us nothing but
hardness and pressure, which are subjective sensa
tions, like warmth or pain. The moral effort is
not transitive between the inner and the outer
worlds, but is put forth upon the inner world
alone. Its point of application is an idea. Its
achievement is "reality for the mind," of that idea.
That, when the idea is realized, the corresponding
nerve tracts should be modified, and so de proche
en proche, the muscles contract, is one of those
harmonies between inner and outer worlds, before
which our reason can only avow its impotence. If
our reason tries to interpret the relation as a
dynamic one, and to conceive that the neural modi
fication is brought about by the idea shoving the
molecules of the ganglionic matter sideways from
their course, well and good! Only we had better

1Loc. Git., p. 468.

216

[1880] THE FEELING OF EFFORT

assume ourselves unconscious of the dynamism.
We are unconscious of the molecules as such, and of
our lateral push as such. Why should we be con
scious of the "force" as such, by which the mole
cules resist the push? They are one thing, and the
consciousness which they subserve is always an idea
of another thing. The only resistance which the
force of consciousness feels or can feel, is the resist- I V
ancc which the idea makes to being consented to as
real.

CONCLUSIONS

1. Muscular effort, properly so called, and mental
effort, properly so called, must be distinguished.
What is commonly known as "muscular exertion"
is a compound of the two.

2. The only feelings and ideas connected with
muscular motion are feelings and ideas of it as
effected. Muscular effort proper is a sum of feel
ings in afferent nerve tracts, resulting from motion
being effected.

3. The pretended feeling of efferent innervation
does not exist — the evidence for it drawn from
paralysis of single eye muscles, vanishing when we
take the position of the sound eye into account.

4. The philosophers who have located the human
sense of force and spontaneity in the nexus between
the volition and the muscular contraction, making
it thus join the inner and the outer worlds, have
gone astray.

5. The point of application of the volitional ef-

217

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

fort always lies within the inner world, being an
idea or representation of afferent sensations of some
sort. From its intrinsic nature or from the pres
ence of other ideas, this representation may spon
taneously tend to lapse from vivid and stable con
sciousness. Mental effort may then accompany its
maintenance. That (being once maintained) it
should by the connection between its cerebral seat
and other bodily parts, give rise to movements in
the so-called voluntary muscles, or in glands, ves
sels, and viscera, is a subsidiary and secondary mat
ter, with which the psychic effort has nothing
immediately to do.

6. Attention, belief, affirmation, and motor vo
lition are thus four names for an identical process,
incidental to the conflict of ideas alone, the survival
of one in spite of the opposition of others.

7. The surviving idea is invested with a sense of
reality which cannot at present be further analyzed.

8. The question whether, when its survival in
volves the feeling of effort, this feeling is deter
mined in advance or absolutely (ambiguous and
matter of chance as far as all the other data are
concerned, is the real question of the freedom of the
will, and explains the strange intimateness of the
feeling of effort to our personality.

9. To single out the sense of muscular resistance
as the "force sense" which alone can make us ac
quainted with the reality of an outward world is
an error. We cognize outer reality by every sense.
The muscular makes us aware of its hardness and

218

[issoj THE FEEL1^G OF EFFORT

pressure, just as other afferent senses make us aware
of its other qualities. If they are too anthropo
morphic to be true, so is it also.

10. The ideational nerve tracts alone are the seat
of the feeling of mental effort. It involves no dis
charge downward into tracts connecting them with
lower executive centres ; though such discharge may
follow upon the completion of the nerve processes
to which the effort corresponds.

219

XIV

\
THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS IN

DEAF-MUTES *

[1882]

PREVENTED by outward circumstances from com
pleting an investigation into the above subject
which I would willingly have made more thor
ough, I publish the facts I have already obtained,
in the hope that some one with better opportunities
may carry on the work. The regular medical at
tendants of deaf-mute institutions seem particularly
well fitted for such a task.

So far as I can make out, the immunity from
dizziness which is characteristic of deaf-mutes has
never been remarked or commented on before, even
at asylums. Another illustration of how few facts
"experience" will discover unless some prior inter
est, born of theory, is already awakened in the mind.

The modern theory, that the semicircular canals
are unconnected with the sense of hearing, but serve
to convey to us the feeling of movement of our head
through space, a feeling which, when very intensely

[* Reprinted from American Journal of Otology, 1882, 4, 239-
254. This article is briefly mentioned in the Principles (1890),
Vol. II., p. 89, note. ED.]

220

[1882] THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS

excited, passes into that of vertigo or dizziness, is
well known.1 It occurred to me that deaf-mute
asylums ought to offer some corroboration of the
theory in question, if a true one. Among their in
mates must certainly be a considerable number in
whom either the labyrinths or the auditory nerves
in their totality have been destroyed by the same
causes that produced the deafness. We ought there
fore to expect, if the semicircular canals be really
the starting-points of the sensation of dizziness, to
find, on examining a large number of deaf-mutes,
a certain proportion of them who are completely
insusceptible of that affection, and others who en
joy immunity in a less complete degree.

The number of deaf-mutes who have been ex
amined to test this suggestion is in all 519. Of
these 186 are reported as totally insusceptible of
being made dizzy by whirling rapidly round with
the head in any position whatever.2 Nearly 200

1 For the benefit of possible readers who may not be physiol
ogists I would say that a summary of the evidence for this view
is given in Foster's Text-book of Physiology, Book III., Chap.
VI., § 2. An attack on this theory has recently been made by
Baginski, a very full abstract of whose article appeared in the
number of this Journal for last January. Baginski's experi
ments seem to me far from conclusive; and his argument has
been satisfactorily replied to by Hogyes in Pfliiger's Archiv,
Vol. XXVI., page 558, and by Spamer, ibid., Vol. XXV., page 177.
[For bibliography, c/. J. Byrne, Physiology of the Semicircular
Canals and their Relation to Seasickness, 1912. Cf. also James's
"A Suggestion for the Prevention of Seasickness," Boston Medi
cal and Surgical Journal, 1887, 116, 490-491. ED.]

alt is well known that with the head leaning forward or
backward, or towards one shoulder, the dizziness is much more
intense.

221

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KE VIEWS

students and instructors in Harvard College were
examined for purposes of comparison, and but a
single one remained exempt from the vertigo. Of
the deaf-mutes, 134 are set down as dizzy in a very
slight degree ; while 199 were normally, and in a few
cases abnormally, sensitive.

The surmise with which I started is thus proved,
and the theory that the semicircular canals are
organs of equilibrium receives renewed corrobora-
tion.

Of course the cases observed represent every kind
of ear disease, and it is impossible to analyze them
so as to show why exemption from vertigo should
be associated with the deafness in one case and in
another not. "Congenital" mutes are found in all
three classes, and so are "semi-mutes," so that the
age at which the deafness comes on has nothing
to do with it. The diseases which are the most
fertile causes of deafness, meningitis, scarlet fever,
typhoid fever, etc., are as apt to leave the patient's
sensibility to vertigo normal as they are to abolish
it.

The cases from which the above aggregate con
clusions are drawn are from several distinct
sources: the Hartford Asylum; the National Col
lege at Washington, and its primary department;
the Horace Mann School in Boston ; the Clarke In
stitution at Northampton ; the Indiana Institution ;
the answers to a printed circular I distributed, and
a number of separate voluntary reports I received.
In tabular form the statistics run as follows :

222

[1882]

THE

DIZZINESS

Institution.

Not dizzy.

Slightly.

Dizzy.

National College ....
Its Primary Department .
Hartford

18
11
49

5

1
49

38
19
57

Boston

45

20

4

Northampton
Indiana

35
6

30
6

20
4

Circulars

28

19

46

Various

4

4

11

186

134

199

Total, 519 cases.1

The same case was often reported through more
than one channel. I have tried as well as I could,
though I fear without perfect success, to eliminate
these reduplications. As regards the accuracy of
the reports, there is this to be said. Among normal
people it is well known how individuals differ in
their sensitiveness to whirling about or swinging.
The cases marked "slight" may possibly therefore
fall within the normal limits. It is more probable
however that the majority of them represent a more
or less abnormally reduced susceptibility. In the

*I add the following communication in a note because it is
less exactly reported, and the observations were perhaps made
more cursorily than those set down in the text. Mr. Fosdick,
of the Institution at Danville, Ky., writes in March, 1881 : "I
selected twenty boys about half of whom had been born deaf,
the other half had lost hearing. ... I applied to them our
test in the three ways. . . . With those who had lost hearing
from disease the result was uniform. No dizziness could be
produced. . . . With those who had been born deaf the results
were equally uniform. A few seconds of spinning were in most
cases sufficient to produce dizziness."

223

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

cases I myself examined, every one where the pres
ence of vertigo was at all doubtful was recorded as
"slight/1' so as not to overload the column of figures
favorable to my hypotheses. In the Harvard Col
lege records, in which each man inscribed his own
result, the expressions "slightly" and "somewhat"
occur, but they do so very few times indeed. Where
the vertigo was slight, it has often happened that
a deaf-mute examined one day or by one person
was reported "not dizzy," whilst another day or
another examiner caused the case to be recorded
either as "slightly dizzy" or as "dizzy." I am dis
posed to think that both normal and abnormal sub
jects differ somewhat in their sensibility to vertigo
from one day to another. Lowenfeld1 says that this
is markedly the case with the vertigo induced by
galvanic currents across the head, of which I shall
have something to say anon.

A certain lack of rigorous accuracy in individual
instances ought then to throw no discredit whatever
on the main result of the investigation, which is
that disease of the internal ear is likely to confer
immunity from dizziness. Nobody could possibly
confound the extreme cases, nor could any differ
ence of opinion arise concerning them. We see on
the one hand an affection which may nauseate the
patient or make it impossible for him to stand on his
feet at all ; on the other, absolute and total indiffer
ence to the whirling in every respect whatsoever.

. u. Icrit. Untersuch. zur Electrothcrapie des Gehirns,
Mttnchen, 1881.

224

[1882] THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS

As regards the method of examination, active
spinning about on the feet with the head succes
sively upright, bent forward, and inclined on one
shoulder, is of course the simplest way of testing
the matter. The eyes must be closed to eliminate
optical vertigo pure and simple, but opened when
the spinning is over, so that the patient may have
every advantage for walking straight. Except in
the Boston and Northampton Schools this was the
method generally used. It is likely to give an un
duly small number of total exemptions, from the
fact that if the whirling has been long and violent,
some feeling of confusion will remain for a few mo
ments as a consequence of head congestion, and
some irregularity of gait as a consequence of in
voluntary continuance of muscular action. This
latter may be called muscular vertigo — it probably
figures in many of the cases marked "slight."

The muscular vertigo may be entirely eliminated
by passive rotation. The children -of the Boston
and Northampton Schools were seated on a square
board, each angle whereof had a rope affixed to it.
The ropes were kept parallel up to a height above
the head of the inmate by a cross-shaped brace of
wood which kept them asunder at that point. Above
the cross-brace they rapidly converged to the point
of suspension of the apparatus. The apparatus is
rotated by the examiner's hands till the ropes above
the brace are tightly twisted. The child is then
seated on the board, with closed eyes, and head in
any position desired, and the torsion of the ropes is

225

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

left to work its effects freely. These consist in a
rapid revolution of the whole apparatus, including
its inmate. The moment the speed of rotation slack
ens, the examiner stops the rotation, and sets the
child, who has been instructed previously, to open
his eyes and walk as straight as possible towards
a distant point on the floor. I examined all the
Northampton children myself in this way, and
(with my brother's assistance) repeated thus the
examinations made of the children of the Horace
Mann School by their teachers a year before.1
The Harvard students were also examined in
this way.

It is difficult to be sure, in many of the cases
marked "slightly dizzy," whether the sensation ex
perienced by the subject was a mild degree of true
vertigo, or a slight confusion arising from the ef
fects of centrifugal movement of the intracranial
fluids and viscera. That changes of intracranial
pressure will give rise to dizziness by directly in
fluencing the brain independently of the semicir-

aln a preliminary report of these inquiries published in the
Harvard University Bulletin No. 18 (1881), the figures are dif
ferent from those I give here. The differences are due to later
observations. I regret very much that, owing to a rather in
comprehensible degree of thoughtlessness, it never occurred to
me to test the pupils' sense of rotation after the original Crum-
Brown and Mach method; that is, to seat them in the swing
with closed eyes, to rotate it gently through a comparatively
small number of degrees, and to see how accurately they could
afterwards assign the direction and amount of rotation. It
is to be hoped that any one repeating the observations will not
leave this one out. We should expect that non-dizzy deaf-mutes
would be quite unaware of the rotation if it were absolutely
frictionless and slow.

226

[1882] THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS

cular canals is evident from the number of sub
jects who are of reduced sensibility as respects
dizziness from whirling, but who say that they feel
dizzy when their head is suddenly raised from a
bent position, or when they get up after stooping
to the ground. In reply to a question in the circu
lar, "Do you ever experience dizziness under any
other circumstances?" [than whirling] two of the
"not dizzy" class, six of the "slightly dizzy" class,
and five of the "dizzy" class speak of experiencing
this feeling.

In the light of all these facts it became an inter
esting question to ascertain whether the dizziness
produced by galvanic currents through the head be
due to irritation of the vertigo centres themselves
or of their peripheral organ the semicircular canals.
Hitzig, as is well known, made a careful study of
these phenomena on normal persons; it may be
found in his "Untersuchungen uber das Gehirn."
With its theoretical conclusions it is impossible to
agree. The objective facts, however, which I be
lieve he first accurately analyzed, are these : If the
subjects' eyes are open they move slowly towards
the side of the anode when the current is strong,
then rapidly recover themselves by a quick move
ment towards the side of the kathode. At the same
time the world appears to swim towards the kath
ode, and the head and body inclined over towards
the anode.

At the Northampton School we tested forty-three
pupils with a galvanic current strong enough to

227

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

make four normal adults, on whom it was tried,
bend body and head strongly over. Of twenty-three
deaf-mutes of the "not dizzy" class, only five showed
this phenomenon. Of twenty pupils of the "dizzy"
class ("slight" cases were not tried) fourteen
showed it in a greater or less degree. At the Bos
ton School the girls became so nervous that the few
results I obtained with them were valueless. Of the
boys, fifteen "not dizzy" cases were tried, and but
one swayed towards the anode. Three "slight"
cases were tried ; one swayed, the other two did not.
One "quite dizzy" case had the current passed, but
did not sway.

With respect to the subjective feelings accom
panying the current's passage, they are so numer
ous and often so intense that a deaf-mute child
experiencing them for the first time can hardly
be expected to give a very lucid account of them.
Stinging of the skin over the mastoid processes,
subjective noises (often very loud), flashes before
the eyes, strange cerebral confusion, are prominent
among them. Nevertheless, it seemed evident that
many of the patients whose body did not sway at
all and whose eyes showed no perceptible nystag
mus, did have some sort of a vertiginous feeling,
which they expressed by moving the hand wavingly
across the forehead, by saying they were "dizzy"
or felt like "falling." I regard the experiments,
therefore, as almost inconclusive. To be of value
they should be repeated many times with the same
subjects on different days, and with non-polarizable

228

[1882] THE SENSE OP DIZZINESS

electrodes fastened by a spring arc behind the ears,
so as to follow the head in its movements without
modifying the contact. The current should also
be measured, which was not done accurately in the
above cases.

Taken as they stand, all I feel like saying of them
is that they make it appear not improbable that
both the vertigo centre and its peripheral organ are
galvanically excitable; but that the peripheral or
gan is much more sensitive to the current than is
the centre. There was certainly a marked differ
ence of demeanor, on the whole, between the "dizzy"
and the "not dizzy" pupils of the Northampton
School, when under the current, even though in
many cases the difference were only one of degree.

In view of the great probability that seasickness
is due to an overexcitement of the organs of vertigo,
propagated to the cerebellum or whatever other
"centres" of nausea there may be, I inquired of
many deaf-mutes whether they had been exposed to
rough weather at sea and suffered in the usual way.
The majority, of course, had not been exposed. Fif
teen of the "not dizzy" or "scarcely dizzy" classes
had been exposed, and of these not one had been
seasick. This, it is true, is negative evidence, and
might easily be upset by two or three cases of ex
emption from dizziness with susceptibility to sea-
seasick. This, it is true, is negative evidence, and

1 1 have three such possible counter-cases, but in all the record
is so imperfect (and no address being given further inquiry
cannot be made) that they cannot be used. To question 8 in
the circular, "Have you been exposed to seasickness and been

229

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

sumption that non-dizzy deaf-mutes may, ipso facto,
enjoy immunity from seasickness. And it suggests
the application of small blisters behind the ears as
a possible counter-irritant to that excitement of
the organs beneath, in which that most intolerable
of all complaints may take its rise.1

Perhaps the most interesting of all the results to
which our inquiries have led is the following. A
certain number of non-dizzy deaf-mutes when
plunged under water seem to be affected by an in
describable alarm and bewilderment, which only
ceases when they find their heads above the surface.
Every one who has lost himself in the woods, or
wakened in the darkness of the night to find the
relation of his bed's position relatively to the doors
and windows of his room forgotten, knows the alto
gether peculiar discomfort and anxiety of such
"disorientation" in the horizontal plane. In ordi
nary life, however, the sense of what is the vertical
direction is never lost. Even with eyes closed, and
the "static" sense, as Brewer calls it, of the semi
circular canals lost, gravity exerts its never-ceasing

seasick since losing your hearing?" one, forty-two years old,
not dizzy, replies, "Yes, but once in my childhood." Another,
slightly dizzy, thirty-nine years old, deaf at thirteen years,
says, "Was greatly nauseated by my first ride in the rail cars
when fourteen years old." The third, not dizzy, writes, "Was
on a coast steamer for three days out of sight of land in a
storm; felt slightly uncomfortable in state-room, but was all
right in the open air of the deck." The state-room sickness
may have been due to smell.

[* Cf. the author's "A Suggestion for the Prevention of Sea
sickness," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1887, 116, 490-
491. ED.]

230

[1882] THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS

influence on our limbs, and tells us where the ground
is and where the zenith, no matter what our move
ments may be. "So shakes the magnet, and so stands
the pole." Helmholtz, who wrote his Optics before
the semicircular canal sense was discovered, as
cribes much of the seasick vertigo to the sufferer's
sense of the direction of gravity being thrown out
of gear : "One feels the traction of gravity [on board
ship] now apparently to the right, now to the left,
now forwards and now backwards, because one is
no longer able to find [with his eyes] the direction
of the vertical. Only after long practice, as I can
myself testify, does one come to use gravity as an
exclusive means of orientation, and only then does
the vertigo cease." *

But imagine a person without even the sense of
gravity to guide him, and the "disorientation" ought
to be complete, — a sort of bewilderment concerning
his relations to his environment in all three dimen
sions will ensue, to which ordinary life offers abso
lutely no parallel. Now this case seems realized
when a non-dizzy deaf-mute dives under water with

1 Physiol. Optik, page 664. One of my colleagues, an eminent
geologist, with a good topographical instinct, tells me that
whenever he "loses his bearings" in the country, he becomes
nauseated. I myself became distinctly nauseated one night
after trying for a long time to imagine the right position of my
bed in the dark, it having been changed a day or two previous.
These facts seem to show that a purely ideal excitement of
images of "direction," when strong and confused, such images
being probably faint repetitions of semicircular canal feelings,
may engender precisely the same physical consequences as
would an equally strong and confused excitement of the canals
themselves.

231

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

his eyes closed. He hears nothing (except perhaps
subjective roaring) ; sees nothing; his semicircular
canal sense tells him nothing of motion up or down,
right or left, or round about ; the water presses on
his skin equally in each direction; he is literally
cut off from all knowledge of their relations to outer
space, and ought to suffer the maximum possible de
gree of bewilderment to which in his mundane life
a creature can attain.

I have received information bearing on this point,
and distinct enough to be quoted, from thirty-three
cases in all. Curious exceptions occur which I
cannot understand, and which I will presently state.
Meanwhile here are some extracts from my corre
spondents' replies which show the condition above
described to be no fiction. Prof. Samuel Porter of
the College at Washington, from whom I have de
rived most of my information on this point, says,
"I am told it is the case with some deaf-mutes that
they sometimes find a difficulty in rising after a dive
from uncertainty as to up and down."

L. G. (not dizzy) writes:

"A year after I lost my hearing, on a day when the
sun was shining brightly, I dove from a high place, and
immediately after entering the water had no knowledge
of locality. In what direction the top was I could not
determine, and it was the same as respects the bottom.
I endured agonies in searching for the surface. At
last, when I had given up all hope, my head was for
tunately at the surface, and I was soon master of the
situation. I was told that I had been swimming on
the surface with the back of my head sometimes out

232

[1882] THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS

of water, and at other times completely immersed.
For years I could not summon up courage to dive again.
I never feel at my ease under water."1

W. H. (scarcely dizzy) writes:

"Since I became deaf it has been difficult to control
myself under water. . . . When I undertake to dive
into the water I immediately lose all control over my
movements, and cannot tell which way is up or which
is down. . . . Once I struck against something, but I
am not able to say whether it was the bottom of the
river or the steep rocks near the shore."

A. S. L. (not dizzy) :

"If I get my head under water it is impossible for
me to tell which is the top or bottom of the river or
pond, and there is a great roaring and buzzing in my
head."

G. M. T. (not dizzy) :

"Before I lost my hearing I was a good diver, but
after that time I could never trust my head under
water."

M. C. (not dizzy) :

"Difficult to swim or dive without being frightened
terribly. ... I generally close eyes till under water,
then open them till top is reached. If eyes are kept
closed I become confused."

J. L. H. (doubtfully dizzy) :

"It is very seldcxn that any deaf-mute can escape
drowning when his head has got under water. Persons
with such heads as mine are rendered unable to come
out of the water in the right direction."
1 Says eyes were closed.

233

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

J. C. B. (not dizzy) :

"Dare not go under water at all unless by day and
with eyes open. . . . Must keep the eyes open. Im
possible to swim in the dark."

C. S. D. (not dizzy) :

"Can't dive at all. As soon as water gets in my eyes,
I can't get them open; get confused, and do not know
whether I am standing on my head or my feet."

A. B. (not dizzy) :

"Gets perfectly bewildered under water. Dives with
closed eyes."

C. P. F. (not dizzy) :

"I undertook on one occasion to turn a summersault
in water only two feet deep. It was done in such a way
that I came down on my hands and knees on the bottom
with my head under water. Instantly I seemed to be
in water fathoms deep, facing a cliff which I was
trying to climb up with my hands and feet. I pawed
and pawed but could not rise, neither could I sink.
There was no sensation to prove to me that I was in a
horizontal position; every sensation was that of stand
ing upright in water above my head. It seemed hours
before I could climb that cliff, though it was only a
second or two before my pawing brought me into
water so shallow that my head appeared above the sur
face. Instantly the sensation of being in an upright
position vanished, and I felt myself to be where I really
was, on my hands and knees in the water."

Of this class of cases there are fifteen out of the
thirty-three. The remaining ten "not dizzy" say
they can dive perfectly well. Two of them report
that they do so equally well with eyes closed or

234

[1882] THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS

open, and of two others Professor Porter sends me
the same account. Of the residual eight there are
five normal as respects dizziness. One complains
of losing equilibrium, another of turning giddy, a
third of "not knowing which way I am going," a
fourth of "losing presence of mind," the fifth of
having "lost power of directing movements."
Closer inquiry of this last case showed that the per
plexity only happened once, and that its cause was
then the bright sunshine on the bottom of the bath
ing-tank which he mistook for the light of the sky.1

Finally three cases, "slightly dizzy," complain of
noises in the ears, and peculiar feelings which make
diving difficult of performance.

Obviously the conditions are very complicated.
In the eight last cases the symptoms might be due
(in all but the fifth) to the entrance of water
through a perforated tympanum. This is well
known to cause both dizziness and roaring, but the
presence of tympanic perforation in the subjects in
question is unknown. It is impossible to say
whether some of the "bewilderment" of the first
fourteen may not be due to this cause, but as they
report themselves "not dizzy" to whirling, this
seems in the main unlikely.

The intermediate class of ten "not dizzy," four of
whom we know to be able to dive with closed eyes

1 The same cause seems to have increased the bewilderment
of Mr. L. G. on the occasion described in the first quotation
above (page 232). He informs Professor Porter that he always
keeps his eyes open under water, and that they were open on
that occasion. He speaks of the sun shining brightly.

235

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

without being bewildered, is the hardest to deal
with, and threatens even to upset our pretty little
theory. The only reason why we do not immedi
ately confess that it does so is the suspicion ( always
possible) of some error in the report, which a mi
nute personal examination would reveal. I can
therefore only hand the matter over to those with
opportunities for investigation, as an as yet un
solved mystery upon which it is to be hoped they
may throw some farther light.

A noteworthy fact (which shall be immediately
explained) is that the non-dizzy patients who got
bewildered under water were all more or less af
flicted with ataxia or some other disorder of move
ment. A natural explanation of their trouble would
then be that they had simply lost control of their
limbs for swimming movements. This may be true
of some : two report trouble under water soon after
loss of hearing, but not now, the ataxia having
meanwhile improved. But the ten non-dizzy who
can dive happen also all to be ataxic. So that
ataxia per se cannot be held to be an all-sufficient
reason for the phenomenon in question.

The reason for the great predominance of loco-
motor disorders in the persons who answered my
circulars is this : one of the first things I discovered
on beginning my inquiries was the fact, notorious at
deaf and dumb institutions but apparently not
much known to the outer world, that large numbers
of deaf-mutes stagger and walk zigzag, especially
after dark, and are unable to stand steady with

236

[1882] THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS

their eyes closed. To such deaf-mutes as these were
most of my circulars purposely sent. I do not refer
to the awkward gait and shuffling of the feet which
are so commonly exhibited at asylums,1 but to a
real difficulty in controlling their equilibrium. Con
genital deaf-mutes appear hardly ever to show this
peculiarity. I have only heard of two or three cases
of their doing so. The bulk of those that stagger
were made deaf by scarlet fever or some form of
meningeal inflammation. When the facts first be
gan to come in I naturally thought that the stag
gering,2 which usually improves in course of time,
might be due to the loss of the afferent sense most
used in locomotor muscular co-ordination, suppos
ing the semicircular canal feelings to constitute
this afferent sense. In the preliminary note pub
lished in the Harvard University Bulletin, I wrote
as follows :

"The evidence I already have in hand justifies the
formation of a tentative hypothesis, as follows : The
normal guiding sensation in locomotion is that
from the semicircular canals. This is co-ordinated
in the cerebellum (which is known to receive audi-

1 This seems little more than a bad habit produced by two
causes: (1) When they walk with each other their eyes are
occupied in looking at each other's fingers and faces, and cannot
survey the ground which then is, as it were, explored by the
feet; and (2) Their deafness makes them insensitive to the
disagreeable noise that their feet make.

2 Moos, quoted by McBride (Edinburgh Medical Journal,
February, 1882), says the staggering is cured in twenty-seven
months after cerebro-spinal meningitis. I find it to have often
lasted much longer.

237

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

tory nerve fibres) with the appropriate muscles, and
the nervous machinery becomes structurally organ
ized in the first few years of life. If, then, this
guiding sensation be suddenly abolished by disease,
the machinery is thrown completely out of gear,
and must form closer connections than before either
with sight or touch. But the cerebellar tracts, be
ing already organized in another way, yield but
slowly to the new co-ordinations now required, and
for many years make the patient's gait uncertain,
especially in the dark. Where the defect of the
auditory nerve is congenital the cerebellar ma
chinery is organized from the very outset in co-ordi
nation with tactile sensations, and no difficulty oc
curs. To prove this hypothesis a minute medical
examination of many typical cases will be required.
If this prove confirmatory, it will then appear prob
able that many of the so-called paralyses after diph
theria, scarlet fever, etc., may be nothing but sudden
anaesthesias of the semicircular canals."

The minute medical examination I spoke of, I
have been prevented by circumstances from making
or getting made. What ought to be done would be
to carefully test the staggering patients for such
anaesthesias of the body or limbs, losses of tendon
reflex, and various locomotor symptoms of ataxia,
as would show the presence of central nervous dis
order independent of the labyrinthine trouble, but
joint results with it of the disease that left the
subject deaf. If a certain residuum of patients
were found without any signs of such nerve-central

238

[1882] THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS

disorder, the hypothesis quoted would receive cor-
roboration. I must confess, however, that the very
large number of staggering and zigzagging deaf-
mutes, who are free from any labyrinthine lesion
(as evidenced by their being normal as respects
dizziness), and whose cases have been made known
to me since the preliminary report was written,
make it seem plausible that the ataxic disorders
usually flow directly from lesions of the locomotor
centres, sequels of the meningitis, scarlet fever, or
whatever other disease the patient may have had.
Whether they do so exclusively cannot now be de
cided. I know of no more interesting problem for
a physician with good opportunities for observa
tion to solve, than that of the relation of the semi
circular canal sense to our ordinary locomotor in-
nervation. And certainly fresh cases of deafness
coupled with loss of sensibility to rotation seem the
most favorable field of study.

It has been suggested, I no longer know by whom,
that the mysterious topographic instinct which
some animals and certain classes of men possess,
and which keeps them continuously informed of
their "bearings," of which way they are heading,
of the "lay of the land," etc., might be due to a kind
of unconscious dead reckoning of the algebraic sum
of all the angles through which they had twisted
and turned in the course of their journey. If the
semicircular canals are the organs of sensibility for
angular rotation, the abolition of their function
ought to injure the topographic faculty. I accord-

239

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

ingly asked in my circular the question: "Have
you a good bump of locality ?" A rather stupidly
expressed phrase, but. one which I supposed would
be popularly intelligible. Forty-seven persons, not
dizzy, or scarcely dizzy, answered this question dis
tinctly, forty with a "yes," and seven with a "no."
So that in this (truly vague enough) matter, my in
quiries give no countenance to the suggestion al
luded to.1

"Dizziness" on high places was also made the sub
ject of one of my questions. This feeling, in those
who experience it normally, is a compound of vari
ous muscular, cutaneous, and visceral sensations
with vertigo ; and of course the answers of my corre
spondents, not being of an analytical sort, would be
of very little value, even were they much more nu
merous than they are. They stand as follows :

"Are you dizzy on high places?"

Of those not or scarcely dizzy on whirling, sixteen
say "yes," twenty-nine "no."

Of those dizzy on whirling, twenty-nine say "yes,"
and fourteen "no."

Taken in their crudity these answers suggest the
bare possibility that anaesthesia of the semicircular

'In a long and interesting article in the Revue Philosophique
for July, 1882 ("le Sens de 1'Orientation et ses Organes"),
M. C. Viguier maintains the view that the semicircular canals
are organs in whose endolymph terrestrial magnetism deter
mines induced currents which vary with the position of the
canals, and (apparently) enable the animal to recognize a lost
direction as soon as he finds it again. Clever and learned as
are M. Viguiers arguments, I confess they fail to awaken in me
any conviction that their thesis is true.

240

[1882] THE SENSE OF DIZZINESS

canals may confer some little immunity from that
particularly distressing form of imaginative weak
ness. The centres of imagination of falling may
grow weak with the disuse of the sense for falling,
and the various reflex results (feelings in the calves,
hypogastrium, skin, respiratory apparatus, etc.),
which help to constitute the massive feeling of
dread, not following upon the sight of the abyss, as
they normally should do, the subject may remain
cool-headed, when in former times he would have
been convulsed with emotion.

One more point, of perhaps greater interest. The
following letter from Dr. Beard of New York speaks
for itself:

NEW YORK, July 2, 1881.

Dear Dr. James, — Acting upon your suggestion, I
have succeeded in abolishing the sense of vertigo in my
trance subjects. I have accomplished this in two
ways. First, by means of the swing which you have
used in your experiments. I find that persons when
put into trance sleep and placed in a swing which is
twisted up tightly, so that it untwists rapidly, and for
a considerable time, feel no dizziness or nausea, but
when brought out of the trance, at once walk away
without the least difficulty.

I find — as you did — that the great majority of indi
viduals cannot in the normal state do this; but are
made very dizzy and sick, and sometimes even fall out
of the swing.

Secondly, by having the subject look at some limited
space on the ceiling, holding his head up, and turning
around rapidly four or five times. Scarcely any one
can do this, in the normal condition, and walk off

241

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

straight. They will stagger, as though intoxicated or
suffering from ataxia. These trance subjects, when put
into that condition with their eyes open, can go through
this test, and immediately walk off without any diffi
culty whatever.

These experiments— I may say — have been witnessed
by a large number of physicians in this city, and have
been confirmed independently by some of them. There
is no difficulty in confirming these experiments, when
you have trained subjects to cooperate with you.

I regard these experiments as of a demonstrative
character; that is, as belonging to the class of experi
ments that prove the genuineness of the trance phenom
ena, since there are very few indeed who can simulate
them.

I have no doubt whatever that seasickness could be
cured entirely by putting persons into trance.

Yours, truly,

GEORGE M. BEARD.

Finally (to wring the last drop from an inquiry
which, however slender may be its basis of fact, will
be accused by no one of not having had the maxi
mum possible number of theoretic conclusions ex
tracted from it!), I will subjoin the following ex
tract from one of my correspondents' letters as a
crumb for vivisectional physiologists to whom the
fact narrated may be unknown:

"If a dog grows up and his tail is cut off suddenly, he
staggers so badly he cannot cross a foot log."1

To all my correspondents I owe thanks for the
facts imparted in this paper. Without the most

1 Experiment made >by a preacher in East Tennessee, a friend
of the writer.

242

[1882] THE SE^SE op DIZZINESS

painstaking co-operation of Prof. Samuel Porter, in
particular, it could hardly have been written. To
Principal Williams of the Hartford School, Miss
Fuller of the Boston School, and Miss Rogers, of
Northampton, my best thanks are also due. Dr.
J. J. Putnam has assisted me with counsel and aid
in the galvanic observations. Dr. Clarence J. Blake
examined the condition of the ears of the Northamp
ton children, but not being able to deduce any con
clusions relevant to my own inquiry from his ob
servations, I leave them unrecorded here.

243

XV

WHAT IS AN EMOTION? *

[1884]

THE physiologists who, during the past few years,
have been so industriously exploring the functions
of the brain, have limited their attempts at explana
tion to its cognitive and volitional performances.
Dividing the brain into sensorial and motor centres,
they have found their Division to be exactly par
alleled by the analysis made by empirical psychol
ogy, of the perceptive and volitional parts of the
mind into their simplest elements. But the wsthetic
sphere of the mind, its longings, its pleasures and

[J Reprinted from Mind, 1884, 9, 188-205. This is James's
original statement of the famous "James-Lange" theory of the
emotions, made before James was acquainted with Lange's
views. It is the article to which the author refers in the Princi
ples of Psychology (1890) as follows: "Now the general causes
of the emotions are indubitably physiological. Prof. C. Lange of
Copenhagen, in a pamphlet from which I have already quoted
(ibid.), published in 1885 a physiological theory of their con
stitution and conditioning, which I had already broached the
previous year in an article in Mind" (Vol. II., p. 449). Most of
the article is reprinted in the Principles (1890), Chap. XXV.,
but in scattered paragraphs. The treatment is there reorganized
and greatly amplified, by the introduction, for example, of
pathological material. Of the present article, the accounts of.
expressive reflexes (pp. 248-252) ; of the association of inherited
emotional expressions with conventional stimuli (pp. 256-258) ;
of the example from Brachet (p. 265) ; of the evidence from
anaesthesia (p. 271) ; and of his correspondence with Striiinpell
(pp. 272-275) — appear not to have been reprinted. ED.)

244

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

pains, and its emotions, have been so ignored in all
these researches that one is tempted to suppose
that if either Dr. Terrier or Dr. Munk were asked
for a theory in brain-terms of the latter mental
facts, they might both reply, either that they had
as yet bestowed no thought upon the subject, or
that they had found it so difficult to make distinct
hypotheses, that the matter lay for them among the
problems of the future, only to be taken up after
the simpler ones of the present should have been
definitively solved.

And yet it is even now certain that of two things
concerning the emotions, one must be true. Either
separate and special centres, affected to them alone,
are their brain-seat, or else they correspond to proc
esses occurring in the motor and sensory centres,
already assigned, or in others like them, not yet
mapped out. If the former be the case we must
deny the current view, and hold the cortex to be
something more than the surface of "projection"
for every sensitive spot and every muscle in the
body. If the latter be the case, we must ask whether
the emotional "process" in the sensory or motor
centre be an altogether peculiar one, or whether
it resembles the ordinary perceptive processes of
which those centres are already recognised to be
the seat. The purpose of the following pages is to
show that the last alternative comes nearest to the
truth, and that the emotional brain-processes not
only resemble the ordinary censorial brain-proc
esses, but in very truth are nothing but such

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processes variously combined. The main result of
this will be to simplify our notions of the possible
complications of brain-physiology, and to make us
see that we have already a brain-scheme in our
hands whose applications are much wider than its
authors dreamed. But although this seems to be
the chief result of the arguments I am to urge, I
should say that they were not originally framed for
the sake of any such result. They grew out of frag
mentary introspective observations, and it was only
when these had already combined into a theory that
the thought of the simplification the theory might
bring to cerebral physiology occurred to me, and
made it seem more important than before.

I should say first of all that the only emotions
I propose expressly to consider here are those that
have a distinct bodily expression. That there are
feelings of pleasure and displeasure, of interest and
excitement, bound up with mental operations, but
having no obvious bodily expression for their conse
quence, would, I suppose, be held true by most read
ers. Certain arrangements of sounds, of lines, of
colours, are agreeable, and others the reverse, with
out the degree of the feeling being sufficient to
quicken the pulse or breathing, or to prompt to
movements of either the body or the face. Certain
sequences of ideas charm us as much as others tire
us. It is a real intellectual delight to get a prob
lem solved, and a real intellectual torment to have
to leave it unfinished. The first set of examples, the
sounds, lines, and colours, are either bodily sensa-

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[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

tions, or the images of such. The second set seem to
depend on processes in the ideational centres ex
clusively. Taken together, they appear to prove
that there are pleasures and pains inherent in cer
tain forms of nerve-action as such, wherever that
action occur. The case of these feelings we will at
present leave entirely aside, and confine our atten
tion to the more complicated cases in which a wave
of bodily disturbance of some kind accompanies the
perception of the interesting sights or sounds, or the
passage of the exciting train of ideas. Surprise,
curiosity, rapture, fear, anger, lust, greed, and the
like, become then the names of the mental states
with which the person is possessed. The bodily dis
turbances are said to be the "manifestation" of these
several emotions, their "expression" or "natural
language" ; and these emotions themselves, being so
strongly characterized both from within and with
out, may be called the standard emotions.

Our natural way of thinking about these standard
emotions is that the mental perception of some fact
excites the mental affection called the emotion, and
that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily
expression. My thesis on the contrary is that the
'bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of
the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same
changes as they occur is the emotion. Common sense
says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we
meet a bear, are frightened and run ; we are insulted
by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis
here to be defended says that this order of sequence

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is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immedi
ately induced by the other, that the bodily mani
festations must first be interposed between, and that
the more rational statement is that we feel sorry
because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid be
cause we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or
tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as
the case may be. Without the bodily states follow
ing on the perception, the latter would be purely
cognitive in form, pale, colourless, destitute of emo
tional warmth. We might then see the bear, and
judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it
right to strike, but we could not actually feel afraid
or angry.

Stated in this crude way, the hypothesis is pretty
sure to meet with immediate disbelief. And yet
neither many nor far-fetched considerations are re
quired to mitigate its paradoxical character, and
possibly to produce conviction of its truth.

To begin with, readers of this Journal do not
need to be reminded that the nervous system of
every living thing is but a bundle of predispositions
to react in particular ways upon the contact of par
ticular features of the environment. As surely as
the hermit-crab's abdomen presupposes the existence
of empty whelk-shells somewhere to be found, so
surely do the hound's olfactories imply the ex
istence, on the one hand, of deer's or foxes' feet, and
on the other, the tendency to follow up their tracks.
The neural machinery is but a hyphen between de
terminate arrangements of matter outside the body

248

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

and determinate impulses to inhibition or discharge
within its organs. When the hen sees a white oval
object on the ground, she cannot leave it ; she must
keep upon it and return to it, until at last its
transformation into a little mass of moving chirping
down elicits from her machinery an entirely new set
of performances. The love of man for woman, or
of the human mother for her babe, our wrath at
snakes and our fear of precipices, may all be de
scribed similarly, as instances of the way in which
peculiarly conformed pieces of the world's furni
ture will fatally call forth most particular mental
and bodily reactions, in advance of, and often in
direct opposition to, the verdict of our deliberate
reason concerning them. The labours of Darwin
and his successors are only just beginning to reveal
the universal parasitism of each special creature
upon other special things, and the way in which
each creature brings the signature of its special
relations stamped on its nervous system with it
upon the scene.

Every living creature is in fact a sort of lock,
whose wards and springs presuppose special forms
of key, — which keys however are not born attached
to the locks, but are sure to be found in the world
near by as life goes on. And the locks are indiffer
ent to any but their own keys, The egg fails to
fascinate the hound, the bird does not fear the preci
pice, the snake waxes not wroth at his kind, the
deer cares nothing for the woman or the human
babe. Those who wish for a full development of

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this point of view, should read Schneider's Der
thierische Wille, — no other book shows how accu
rately anticipatory are the actions of animals, of the
specific features of the environment in which they
are to live.

Now among these nervous anticipations are of
course to be reckoned the emotions, so far as these
may be called forth directly by the perception of
certain facts. In advance of all experience of ele
phants no child can but be frightened if he sud
denly find one trumpeting and charging upon him.
No woman can see a handsome little naked baby
without delight, no man in the wilderness see a
human form in the distance without excitement and
curiosity. I said I should consider these emotions
only so far as they have bodily movements of some
sort for their accompaniments. But my first point
is to show that their bodily accompaniments are
much more far-reaching and complicated than we
ordinarily suppose.

In the earlier books on Expression, written
mostly from the artistic point of view, the signs of
emotion visible from without were the only ones
taken account of. Sir Charles Bell's celebrated
Anatomy of Expression noticed the respiratory
changes; and Bain's and Darwin's treatises went
more thoroughly still into the study of the visceral
factors involved, — changes in the functioning of
glands and muscles, and in that of the circulatory
apparatus. But not even a Darwin has exhaus
tively enumerated all the bodily affections charac-

250

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

teristic of any one of the standard emotions. More
and more, as physiology advances, we begin to dis
cern how almost infinitely numerous and subtle
they must be. The researches of Mosso with the
plethysmograph have shown that not only the heart,
but the entire circulatory system, forms a sort of
sounding-board, which every change of our con
sciousness, however slight, may make reverberate.
Hardly a sensation comes to us without sending
waves of alternate constriction and dilatation
down the arteries of our arms. The blood-vessels of
the abdomen act reciprocally with those of the more
outward parts. The bladder and bowels, the glands
of the mouth, throat, and skin, and the liver, are
known to be affected gravely in certain severe emo
tions, and are unquestionably affected transiently
when the emotions are of a lighter sort. That the
heart-beats and the rhythm of breathing play a lead
ing part in all emotions whatsoever, is a matter too
notorious for proof. And what is really equally
prominent, but less likely to be admitted until
special attention is drawn to the fact, is the con
tinuous co-operation of the voluntary muscles in
our emotional states. Even when no change of
outward attitude is produced, their inward tension
alters to suit each varying mood, and is felt as a dif
ference of tone or of strain. In depression the
flexors tend to prevail ; in elation or belligerent ex
citement the extensors take the lead. And the vari
ous permutations and combinations of which these
organic activities are susceptible, make it abstractly

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

possible that no shade of emotion, however slight,
should be without a bodily reverberation as unique,
when taken in its totality, as is the mental mood
itself.

The immense number of parts modified in each
emotion is what makes it so difficult for us to repro
duce in cold blood the total and integral expression
of any one of them. We may catch the trick with
the voluntary muscles, but fail with the skin,
glands, heart, and other viscera. Just as an arti
ficially imitated sneeze lacks something of the
reality, so the attempt to imitate an emotion in the
absence of its normal instigating cause is apt to be
rather "hollow."

The next thing to be noticed is this, that every
one of the bodily changes, whatsoever it be, is felt,
acutely or obscurely, the moment it occurs. If the
reader has never paid attention to this matter, he
will be both interested and astonished to learn how
many different local bodily feelings he can detect
in himself as characteristic of his various emotional
moods. It would be perhaps too much to expect
him to arrest the tide of any strong gust of passion
for the sake of any such curious analysis as this;
but he can observe more tranquil states, and that
may be assumed here to be true of the greater which
is shown to be true of the less. Our whole cubic
capacity is sensibly alive ; and each morsel of it con
tributes its pulsations of feeling, dim or sharp,
pleasant, painful, or dubious, to that sense of per
sonality that every one of us unfailingly carries

252

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

with him. It is surprising what little items give
accent to these complexes of sensibility. When
worried by any slight trouble, one may find that the
focus of one's bodily consciousness is the contrac
tion, often quite inconsiderable, of the eyes and
brows. When momentarily embarrassed, it is some
thing in the pharynx that compels either a swallow,
a clearing of the throat, or a slight cough ; and so on
for as many more instances as might be named.
Our concern here being with the general view rather
than with the details, I will not linger to discuss
these but, assuming the point admitted that every
change that occurs must be felt, I will pass on.1

I now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole
theory, which is this. If we fancy some strong emo
tion, and then try to abstract from our conscious
ness of it all the feelings of its characteristic bodily
symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no
"mind-stuff" out of which the emotion can be con
stituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intel-

1 Of course the physiological question arises, how are the
changes felt? — after they are produced, by the sensory nerves
of the organs bringing back to the brain a report of the modifi
cations that have occurred? or before they are produced, by our
being conscious of the outgoing nerve-currents starting on their
way downward towards the parts they are to excite? I believe
all the evidence we have to be in favour of the former alter
native. The question is too minute for discussion here, but
I have said something about it in a paper entitled "The Feeling
of Effort," in the Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston Natural
History Society, 1880 (translated in La Critique Philosophique
for that year, and summarized in Mind XX. [1880], 582). [See
above, p. 151. ED.] See also G. K. Mailer's Grundleyuny der
Psychophysik, § 110.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

lectual perception is all that remains. It is true,
that although most people, when asked, say that
their introspection verifies this statement, some per
sist in saying theirs does not. Many cannot be made
to understand the question. When you beg them to
imagine away every feeling of laughter and of
tendency to laugh from their consciousness of the
ludicrousness of an object, and then to tell you
what the feeling of its ludicrousness would be like,
whether it be anything more than the perception
that the object belongs to the class "funny," they
persist in replying that the thing proposed is a
physical impossibility, and that they always must
laugh, if they see a funny object. Of course the task
proposed is not the practical one of seeing a ludic
rous object and annihilating one's tendency to
laugh. It is the purely speculative one of subtract
ing certain elements of feeling from an emotional
state supposed to exist in its fulness, and saying
what the residual elements are. I cannot help
thinking that all who rightly apprehend this prob
lem will agree with the proposition above laid
down. What kind of an emotion of fear would be
left, if the feelings neither of quickened heart-beats
nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips
nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of
visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impos
sible to think. Can one fancy the state of rage and
picture no ebullition of it in the chest, no flushing
of the face, no dilatation of the nostrils, no clench
ing of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but

254

[1884J WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a
placid face? The present writer, for one, certainly
cannot. The rage is as completely evaporated as
the sensation of its so-called manifestations, and the
only thing that can possibly be supposed to take its
place is some cold-blooded and dispassionate judi
cial sentence, confined entirely to the intellectual
realm, to the effect that a certain person or persons
merit chastisement for their sins. In like manner
of grief : what would it be without its tears, its sobs,
its suffocation of the heart, its pang in the breast
bone? A feelingless cognition that certain circum
stances are deplorable, and nothing more. Every
passion in turn tells the same story. A purely dis
embodied human emotion is a nonentity. I do not
say that it is a contradiction in the nature of things ;
or that pure spirits are necessarily condemned to
cold intellectual lives ; but I say that for us, emotion
dissociated from all bodily feeling is inconceivable.
The more closely I scrutinise my states, the more
persuaded I become, that whatever moods, affec
tions, and passions I have, are in very truth consti
tuted by, and made up of, those bodily changes we
ordinarily call their expression or consequence ; and
the more it seems to me that if I were to become
corporeally anaesthetic, I should be excluded from
the life of the affections, harsh and tender alike, and
drag out an existence of merely cognitive or intel
lectual form. Such an existence, although it seems
to have been the ideal of ancient sages, is too apa
thetic to be keenly sought after by those born after

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

the revival of the worship of sensibility, a few gen
erations ago.

But if the emotion is nothing but the feeling of
the reflex bodily effects of what we call its "object/'
effects due to the connate adaptation of the nervous
system to that object, we seem immediately faced by
this objection : most of the objects of civilised men's
emotions are things to which it would be preposter
ous to suppose their nervous systems connately
adapted. Most occasions of shame and many insults
are purely conventional, and vary with the social
environment. The same is true of many matters of
dread and of desire, and of many occasions of mel
ancholy and regret. In these cases, at least, it
would seem that the ideas of shame, desire, regret,
etc., must first have been attached by education and
association to these conventional objects before the
bodily changes could possibly be awakened. And
if, in these cases the bodily changes follow the ideas,
instead of giving rise to them, why not then in all
cases?

To discuss thoroughly this objection would carry
us deep into the study of purely intellectual
^Esthetics. A few words must here suffice. We will
say nothing of the argument's failure to distinguish
between the idea of an emotion and the emotion
itself. We will only recall the well-known evolu
tionary principle that when a certain power has
once been fixed in an animal by virtue of its utility
in presence of certain features of the environment,
it may turn out to be useful in presence of other

256

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

features of the environment that had originally
nothing to do with either producing or preserving
it. A nervous tendency to discharge being once
there, all sorts of unforeseen things may pull the
trigger and let loose the effects. That among these
things should be conventionalities of man's contriv
ing is a matter of no psychological consequence
whatever. The most important part of my environ
ment is my fellow-man. The consciousness of his
attitude towards me is the perception that normally
unlocks most of my shames and indignations and
fears. The extraordinary sensitiveness of this con
sciousness is shown by the bodily modifications
wrought in us by the awareness that our fellow-
man is noticing us at all. No one can walk across
the platform at a public meeting with just the same
muscular innervation he uses to walk across his
room at home. No one can give a message to such a
meeting without organic excitement. "Stage-
fright" is only the extreme degree of that wholly
irrational personal self-consciousness which every
one gets in some measure, as soon as he feels the
eyes of a number of strangers fixed upon him, even
though he be inwardly convinced that their feeling
towards him is of no practical account.1 This
being so, it is not surprising that the additional per-

*Let it be noted in passing that this personal self-conscious
ness seems an altogether bodily affair, largely a consciousness
of our attitude, and that, like other emotions, it reacts on its
physical condition, and leads to modifications of the attitude, —
to a certain rigidity in most men, but in children to a regular
twisting and squirming fit, and in women to various grace
fully shy poses.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

suasion that my fellow-man's attitude means either
well or ill for me, should awaken stronger emotions
still. In primitive societies "Well" may mean hand
ing me a piece of beef, and "111" may mean aiming a
blow at my skull. In our "cultured age/' "111" may
mean cutting me in the street, and "Well," giving
me an honorary degree. What the action itself may
be is quite insignificant, so long as I can perceive in
it intent or animus. That is the emotion-arousing
perception; and may give rise to as strong bodily
convulsions in me, a civilised man experiencing the
treatment of an artificial society, as in any savage
prisoner of war, learning whether his captors are
about to eat him or to make him a member of their
tribe.

But now, this objection disposed of, there arises a
more general doubt. Is there any evidence, it may
be asked, for the assumption that particular percep
tions do produce widespread bodily effects by a sort
of immediate physical influence, antecedent to the
arousal of an emotion or emotional idea?

The only possible reply is, that there is most
assuredly such evidence. In listening to poetry,
drama, or heroic narrative, we are often surprised
at the cutaneous shiver which like a sudden wave
flows over us, and at the heart-swelling and the
lachrymal effusion that unexpectedly catch us at
intervals. In listening to music, the same is even
more strikingly true. If we abruptly see a dark
moving form in the woods, our heart stops beating,
and we catch our breath instantly and before any

258

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

articulate idea of danger can arise. If our friend
goes near to the edge of a precipice, we get the well-
known feeling of "all-overishness," and we shrink
back, although we positively know him to be safe,
and have no distinct imagination of his fall. The
writer well remembers his astonishment, when a boy
of seven or eight, at fainting when he saw a horse
bled. The blood was in a bucket, with a stick in it,
and, if memory does not deceive him, he stirred it
round and saw it drip from the stick with no feeling
save that of childish curiosity. Suddenly the world
grew black before his eyes, his ears began to buzz,
and he knew no more. He had never heard of the
sight of blood producing faintness or sickness, and
he had so little repugnance to it, and so little ap
prehension of any other sort of danger from it, that
even at that tender age, as he well remembers, he
could not help wondering how the mere physical
presence of a pailful of crimson fluid could occa
sion in him such formidable bodily effects.

Imagine two steel knife-blades with their keen
edges crossing each other at right angles, and mov
ing to and fro. Our whole nervous organisation
is "on edge" at the thought; and yet what emotion
can be there except the unpleasant nervous feeling
itself, or the dread that more of it may come? The
entire fund and capital of the emotion here is the
senseless bodily effect the blades immediately arouse.
This case is typical of a class : where an ideal emo
tion seems to precede the bodily symptoms, it is
often nothing but a representation of the symptoms

259

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS £1884]

themselves. One who has already fainted at the
sight of blood may witness the preparations for a
surgical operation with uncontrollable heart-sinking
and anxiety. He anticipates certain feelings, and
the anticipation precipitates their arrival. I am
told of a case of morbid terror, of which the subject
confessed that what possessed her seemed, more than
anything, to be the fear of fear itself. In the
various forms of what Professor Bain calls "tender
emotion," although the appropriate object must
usually be directly contemplated before the emotion
can be aroused, yet sometimes thinking of the symp
toms of the emotion itself may have the same effect.
In sentimental natures, the thought of "yearning"
will produce real "yearning." And, not to speak
of coarser examples, a mother's imagination of the
caresses she bestows on her child may arouse a
spasm of parental longing.

In such cases as these, we see plainly how the
emotion both begins and ends with what we call its
effects or manifestations. It has no mental status
except as either the presented feeling, or the idea,
of the manifestations; which latter thus constitute
its entire material, its sum and substance, and its
stock-in-trade. And these cases ought to make us
see how in all cases the feeling of the manifestations
may play a much deeper part in the constitution of
the emotion than we are wont to suppose.

If our theory be true, a necessary corollary of it
ought to be that any voluntary arousal of the so-
called manifestations of a special emotion ought to

260

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

give us the emotion itself. Of course in the major
ity of emotions, this test is inapplicable; for many
of the manifestations are in organs over which we
have no volitional control. Still, within the limits
in which it can be verified, experience fully corrobo
rates this test. Every one knows how panic is in
creased by flight, and how the giving way to the
symptoms of grief or anger increases those passions
themselves. Each fit of sobbing makes the sorrow
more acute, and calls forth another fit stronger still,
until at last repose only ensues with lassitude and
with the apparent exhaustion of the machinery. In
rage, it is notorious how we "work ourselves up" to
a climax by repeated outbreaks of expression. Re
fuse to express a passion, and it dies. Count ten
before venting your anger, and its occasion seems
ridiculous. Whistling to keep up courage is no mere
figure of speech. On the other hand, sit all day in a
moping posture, sigh, and reply to everything with
a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers. There
is no more valuable precept in moral education than
this, as all who have experience know : if we wish to
conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in our
selves, we must assiduously, and in the first in
stance coldbloodedly, go through the outward mo
tions of those contrary dispositions we prefer to
cultivate. The reward of persistency will infallibly
come, in the fading out of the sullenness or depres
sion, and the advent of real cheerfulness and kindli
ness in their stead. Smooth the brow, brighten the
eye, contract the dorsal rather than the ventral

261

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS ti884]

aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass
the genial compliment, and your heart must be
frigid indeed if it do not gradually thaw !

The only exceptions to this are apparent, not
real. The great emotional expressiveness and mo
bility of certain persons often lead us to say "They
would feel more if they talked less." And in an
other class of persons, the explosive energy with
which passion manifests itself on critical occasions,
seems correlated with the way in which they bottle
it up during the intervals. But these are only eccen
tric types of character, and within each type the law
of the last paragraph prevails. The sentimentalist
is so constructed that "gushing" is his or her normal
mode of expression. Putting a stopper on the
"gush" will only to a limited extent cause more
"real" activities to take its place; in the main it
will simply produce listlessness. On the other hand
the ponderous and bilious "slumbering volcano," let
him repress the expression of his passions as he will,
will find them expire if they get no vent at all;
whilst if the rare occasions multiply which he deems
worthy of their outbreak, he will find them grow in
intensity as life proceeds.

I feel persuaded there is no real exception to the
law. The formidable effects of suppressed tears
might be mentioned, and the calming results of
speaking out your mind when angry and having
done with it. But these are also but specious
wanderings from the rule. Every perception must
lead to some nervous result. If this be the normal

262

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

emotional expression, it soon expends itself, and in
the natural course of things a calm succeeds. But
if the normal issue be blocked from any cause, the
currents may under certain circumstances invade
other tracts, and there work different and worse
effects. Thus vengeful brooding may replace a
burst of indignation; a dry heat may consume the
frame of one who fain would weep, or he may, as
Dante says, turn to stone within ; and then tears or
a storming-fit may bring a grateful relief. When
we teach children to repress their emotions, it is not
that they may feel more, quite the reverse. It is
that they may think more! for to a certain extent
whatever nerve-currents are diverted from the
regions below, must swell the activity of the thought-
tracts of the brain.1

The last great argument in favour of the priority
of the bodily symptoms to the felt emotion is the
ease with which we formulate by its means patho
logical cases and normal cases under a common
scheme. In every asylum we find examples of ab
solutely unmotived fear, anger, melancholy, or con
ceit; and others of an equally unmotived apathy

1 This is the opposite of what happens in injuries to the
brain, whether from outward violence, inward rupture or tumor,
or mere starvation from disease. The cortical permeability
seems reduced, so that excitement, instead of propagating itself
laterally through the ideational channels 'as before, tends to
take the downward track into the organs of the body. The
consequence is that we have tears, laughter, and temper-fits,
on the most insignificant provocation, accompanying a propor
tional feebleness in logical thought and the power of volitional
attention and decision.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

which persists in spite of the best of outward reasons
why it should give way. In the former cases we
must suppose the nervous machinery to be so
"labile" in some one emotional direction, that almost
every stimulus, however inappropriate, will cause it
to upset in that way, and as a consequence to en
gender the particular complex of feelings of which
the psychic body of the emotion consists. Thus, to
take one special instance, if inability to draw deep
breath, fluttering of the heart, and that peculiar
epigastric change felt as "precordial anxiety," with
an irresistible tendency to take a somewhat crouch
ing attitude and to sit still, and with perhaps other
visceral processes not now known, all spontaneously
occur together in a certain person; his feeling of
their combination is the emotion of dread, and he is
the victim of what is known as morbid fear. A
friend who has had occasional attacks of this most
distressing of all maladies, tells me that in his case
the whole drama seems to centre about the region
of the heart and respiratory apparatus, that his
main effort during the attacks is to get control of his
inspirations and to slow his heart, and that the mo
ment he attains to breathing deeply and to holding
himself erect, the dread, ipso facto, seems to depart.1

1 It must be confessed that there are cases of morbid fear in
which objectively the heart is not much perturbed. These how
ever fail to prove anything against our theory, for it is of
course possible that the cortical centres normally percipient of
dread as a complex of cardiac and other organic sensations due
to real bodily change, should become primarily excited in brain-
disease, and give rise to an hallucination of the changes being
there, — an hallucination of dread, consequently, coexistent with

264

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

The account given to Brachet by one of his own
patients of her opposite condition, that of emotional
insensibility, has been often quoted, and deserves
to be quoted again :

"I still continue (she says) to suffer constantly; I
have not a moment of comfort, and no human sensa
tions. Surrounded by all that can render life happy and
agreeable, still to me the faculty of enjoyment and of
feeling is wanting — both have become physical impos
sibilities. In everything, even in the most tender
caresses of my children, I find only bitterness. I cover
them with kisses, but there is something between their
lips and mine; and this horrid something is between
me and all the enjoyments of life. My existence is in
complete. The functions and acts of ordinary life,
it is true, still remain to me; but in every one of them
there is something wanting — to wit, the feeling which
is proper to them, and the pleasure which follows them.
. . . Each of my senses, each part of my proper self,
is as it were separated from me and can no longer af
ford me any feeling; this impossibility seems to depend
upon a void which I feel in the front of my head, and
to be due to the diminution of the sensibility over the
whole surface of my body, for it seems to me that I
never actually reach the objects which I touch. . . . I

a comparatively calm pulse, etc. I say it is possible, for I am
ignorant of observations which might test the fact. Trance,
ecstasy, etc., offer analogous examples,— not to speak of ordinary
dreaming. Under all these conditions one may have the liveli
est subjective feelings, either of eye or ear, or of the more
visceral and emotional sort, as a result of pure nerve-central
activity, with complete peripheral repose. Whether the sub
jective strength of the feeling be due in these cases to the actual
energy of the central disturbance, or merely to the narrowing
of the field of consciousness, need not concern us. In the
asylum cases of melancholy, there is usually a narrowing of
the field.

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feel well enough the changes of temperature on my
skin, ~but I no longer experience the internal -feeling
of the air when I breathe. . . . All this would be a
small matter enough, but for its frightful result, which
is that of the impossibility of any other kind of feeling
and of any sort of enjoyment, although I experience
a need and desire of them that render my life an in
comprehensible torture. Every function, every action
of my life remains, but deprived of the feeling that
belongs to it, of the enjoyment that should follow it.
My feet are cold, I warm them, but gain no pleasure
from the warmth. I recognize the taste of all I eat,
without getting any pleasure from it. ... My chil
dren are growing handsome and healthy, everyone tells
me so, I see it myself, but the delight, the inward
comfort I ought to feel, I fail to get. Music has lost
all charm for me, I used to love it dearly. My daughter
plays very well, but for me it is mere noise. That
lively interest which a year ago made me hear a de
licious concert in the smallest air their fingers played,
— that thrill, that general vibration which made me
shed such tender tears, — all that exists no more."1

Other victims describe themselves as closed in
walls of ice or covered with an india-rubber integu
ment, through which no impression penetrates to
the sealed-up sensibility.

If our hypothesis be true, it makes us realise more
deeply than ever how much our mental life is knit
up with our corporeal frame, in the strictest sense
of the term. Rapture, love, ambition, indignation,
and pride, considered as feelings, are fruits of the

1 Quoted by Semal : De la Sensibility gMrale dans les Affec
tions m^lancoliques, Paris, 1876, pp. 130-135.

266

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

same soil with the grossest bodily sensations of
pleasure and of pain. But it was said at the outset
that this would be affirmed only of what we then
agreed to call the "standard" emotions; and that
those inward sensibilities that appeared devoid at
first sight of bodily results should be left out of our
account. We had better, before closing, say a word
or two about these latter feelings.

They are, the reader will remember, the moral,
intellectual, and aesthetic feelings. Concords of
sounds, of colours, of lines, logical consistencies,
teleological fitness, affect us with a pleasure that
seems ingrained in the very form of the representa
tion itself, and to borrow nothing from any rever
beration surging up from the parts below the brain.
The Herbartian psychologists have tried to distin
guish feelings due to the form in which ideas may be
arranged. A geometrical demonstration may be as
"pretty" and an act of justice as "neat" as a draw
ing or a tune, although the prettiness and neatness
seem here to be a pure matter of sensation, and
there to have nothing to do with sensation. We
have then, or some of us seem to have, genuinely
cerebral forms of pleasure and displeasure, appar
ently not agreeing in their mode of production with
the so-called "standard" emotions we have been
analysing. And it is certain that readers whom
our reasons have hitherto failed to convince, will
now start up at this admission, and consider that by
it we give up our whole case. Since musical percep
tions, since logical ideas, can immediately arouse a

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

form of emotional feeling, they will say, is it not
more natural to suppose that in the case of the so-
called "standard" emotions, prompted by the pres
ence of objects or the experience of events, the emo
tional feeling is equally immediate, and the bodily
expression something that comes later and is added
on?

But a sober scrutiny of the cases of pure cerebral
emotion gives little force to this assimilation. Un
less in them there actually be coupled with the in
tellectual feeling a bodily reverberation of some
kind, unless we actually laugh at the neatness of
the mechanical device, thrill at the justice of the
act, or tingle at the perfection of the musical form,
our mental condition is more allied to a judgment
of right than to anything else. And such a judg
ment is rather to be classed among awarenesses of
truth : it is a cognitive act. But as a matter of fact
the intellectual feeling hardly ever does exist thus
unaccompanied. The bodily sounding-board is at
work, as careful introspection will show, far more
than we usually suppose. Still, where long famili
arity with a certain class of effects has blunted emo
tional sensibility thereto as much as it has sharp
ened the taste and judgment, we do get the intellect
ual emotion, if such it can be called, pure and
undefiled. And the dryness of it, the paleness, the
absence of all glow, as it may exist in a thoroughly
expert critic's mind, not only shows us what an alto
gether different thing it is from the "standard" emo
tions we considered first, but makes us suspect that

268

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

almost the entire difference lies in the fact that the
bodily sounding-board, vibrating in the one case, is
in the other mute. "Not so very bad" is, in a person
of consummate taste, apt to be the highest limit of
approving expression. "Rien ne me choque" is said
to have been Chopin's superlative of praise of new
music. A sentimental layman would feel, and ought
to feel, horrified, on being admitted into such a
critic's mind, to see how cold, how thin, how void of
human significance, are the motives for favour or
disfavour that there prevail. The capacity to make
a nice spot on the wall will outweigh a picture's
whole content; a foolish trick of words will pre
serve a poem; an utterly meaningless fitness of se
quence in one musical composition set at naught
any amount of "expressiveness" in another.

I remember seeing an English couple sit for more
than an hour on a piercing February day in the
Academy at Venice before the celebrated "Assump
tion" by Titian ; and when I, after being chased from
room to room by the cold, concluded to get into the
sunshine as fast as possible and let the pictures go,
but before leaving drew reverently near to them to
learn with what superior forms of susceptibility
they might be endowed, all I overheard was the
woman's voice murmuring: "What a deprecatory
expression her face wears! What self-abne^atfton/
How unworthy she feels of the honour she is receiv
ing!" Their honest hearts had been kept warm
all the time by a glow of spurious sentiment that
would have fairly made old Titian sick. Mr. Ruskin

269

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS £1884]

somewhere makes the (for him) terrible admission
that religious people as a rule care little for pic
tures, and that when they do care for them they
generally prefer the worst ones to the best. Yes!
in every art, in every science, there is the keen
perception of certain relations being right or not,
and there is the emotional flush and thrill conse
quent thereupon. And these are two things, not
one. In the former of them it is that experts and
masters are at home. The latter accompaniments
are bodily commotions that they may hardly feel,
but that may be experienced in their fulness by
Cretins and Philistines in whom the critical judg
ment is at its lowest ebb. The "marvels" of Science,
about which so much edifying popular literature is
written, are apt to be "caviare" to the men in the
laboratories. Cognition and emotion are parted
even in this last retreat, — who shall say that their
antagonism may not just be one phase of the world-
old struggle known as that between the spirit and
the flesh? — a struggle in which it seems pretty cer
tain that neither party will definitively drive the
other off the field.

To return now to our starting-point, the physi
ology of the brain. If we suppose its cortex to con
tain centres for the perception of changes in each
special sense-organ, in each portion of the skin, in
each muscle, each joint, and each viscus, and to
contain absolutely nothing else, we still have a
scheme perfectly capable of representing the proc
ess of the emotions. An object falls on a sense-organ

270

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

and is apperceived by the appropriate cortical
centre ; or else the latter, excited in some other way,
gives rise to an idea of the same object. Quick as
a flash, the reflex currents pass down through their
pre-ordained channels, alter the condition of muscle,
skin and viscus ; and these alterations, apperceived
like the original object, in as many specific portions
of the cortex, combine with it in consciousness and
transform it from an object-simply-apprehended into
an object-emotionally-felt. No new principles have
to be invoked, nothing is postulated beyond the
ordinary reflex circuit, and the topical centres ad
mitted in one shape or another by all to exist.

It must be confessed that a crucial test of thfe
truth of the hypothesis is quite as hard to obtain
as its decisive refutation. A case of complete in
ternal and external corporeal anaesthesia, without
motor alteration or alteration of intelligence except
emotional apathy, would afford, if not a crucial test,
at least a strong presumption, in favour of the truth
of the view we have set forth ; whilst the persistence
of strong emotional feeling in such a case would
completely overthrow our case. Hysterical anaes
thesias seem never to be complete enough to cover
the ground. Complete anaesthesias from organic
disease, on the other hand, are excessively rare. In
the famous case of Kemiglus Leims, no mention is
made by the reporters of his emotional condition,
a circumstance which by itself affords no presump
tion that it was normal, since as a rule nothing ever
is noticed without a pre-existing question in the

271

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS [1884]

mind. Dr. Georg Winter has recently described a
case somewhat similar,1 and in reply to a question,
kindly writes to me as follows : "The case has been
for a year and a half entirely removed from my ob
servation. But so far as I am able to state, the man
was characterised by a certain mental inertia and
indolence. He was tranquil, and had on the whole
the temperament of a phlegmatic. He was not irri
table, not quarrelsome, went quietly about his farm-
work, and left the care of his business and house
keeping to other people. In short, he gave one the
impression of a placid countryman, who has no in
terests beyond his work." Dr. Winter adds that
in studying the case he paid no particular atten
tion to the man's psychic condition, as this seemed
"nebensachlich" to his main purpose. I should add
that the form of my question to Dr. Winter could
give him no clue as to the kind of answer I expected.
Of course, this case proves nothing, but it is to be
hoped that asylum-physicians and nervous special
ists may begin methodically to study the relation
between anaesthesia and emotional apathy. If the
hypothesis here suggested is ever to be definitively
confirmed or disproved it seems as if it must be by
them, for they alone have the data in their hands.

P.S. — By an unpardonable forge tfulness at the time
of despatching my MS. to the Editor, I ignored the
existence of the extraordinary case of total anaesthesia
published by Professor Strumpell in Ziemssen's

1 "Ein Fall von allgemeiner Anaesthesia," Inaugural-Disserta
tion. Heidelberg, Winter, 1882.

272

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

Deutschcs Archiv filr klinischc Medicin xxii., 321,
of which I had nevertheless read reports at the time of
its publication. [Cf. first report of the case in Mind,
X., 263, translated from P finger's Archiv. ED.] I
believe that it constitutes the only remaining case of
the sort in medical literature, so that with it our survey
is complete. On referring to the original, which is
important in many connexions, I found that the patient,
a shoemaker's apprentice of fifteen, entirely anaes
thetic, inside and out, with the exception of one eye
and one ear, had shown shame on the occasion of soil
ing his bed, and grief, when a formerly favourite dish
was set before him, at the thought that he could no
longer taste its flavour. As Dr. Strtimpell seemed
however to have paid no special attention to his psychic
states, so far as these are matter for our theory, I
wrote to him in a few words what the essence of the
theory was, and asked him to say whether he felt sure
the grief and shame mentioned were real feelings in
the boy's mind, or only the reflex manifestations pro
voked by certain perceptions, manifestations that an
outside observer might note, but to which the boy him
self might be insensible.

Dr. Strtimpell has sent me a very obliging reply,
of which I translate the most important passage.

"I must indeed confess that I naturally failed to
institute with my Ancesthetiker observations as special
as the sense of your theory would require. Neverthe
less I think I can decidedly make the statement, that
he was by no means completely lacking in emotional
affections. In addition to the feelings of grief and
shame mentioned in my paper, I recall distinctly that
he showed e.g., anger, and frequently quarrelled with
the hospital attendants. He also manifested fear lest
I should punish him. In short, I do not think that
my case speaks exactly in favour of your theory. On

273

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

the other hand, I will not affirm that it positively
refutes your theory. For my case was certainly one
of a very centrally conditioned anaesthesia (perception-
anaesthesia, like that of hysterics) and therefore the
conduction of outward impressions may in him have
been undisturbed."

I confess that I do not see the releyancy of the last
consideration, and this makes me suspect that my
own letter was too briefly or obscurely expressed to put
my correspondent fully in possession of my own thought.
For his reply still makes no explicit reference to any
thing but the outward manifestations of emotion in
the boy. Is it not at least conceivable that, just as a
stranger, brought into the boy's presence for the first
time, and seeing him eat and drink and satisfy other
natural necessities, would suppose him to have the feel
ings of hunger, thirst, etc., until informed by the boy
himself that he did all these things with no feeling
at all but that of sight and sound — is it not, I say, at
least possible, that Dr. Strtimpell, addressing no direct
introspective questions to his patient, and the patient
not being of a class from which one could expect volun
tary revelations of that sort, should have similarly
omitted to discriminate between a feeling and its habit
ual motor accompaniment, and erroneously taken the
latter as proof that the former was there ? Such a mis
take is of course possible, and I must therefore repeat
Dr. StriimpelPs own words, that his case does not yet
refute my theory. Should a similar case recur, it
ought to be interrogated as to the inward emotional
state that co-existed with the outward expressions of
shame, anger, etc. And if it then turned out that the
patient recognized explicitly the same mood of feeling
known under those names in his former normal state,
my theory would of course fall. It is, however, to me
incredible that the patient should have an identical

274

[1884] WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

feeling, for the dropping out of the organic sounding-
board would necessarily diminish its volume in some
way. The teacher of Dr. StrumpelFs patient found a
mental deficiency in him during his anaesthesia, that
may possibly have been due to the consequences result
ing to his general intellectual vivacity from the sub
traction of so important a mass of feelings, even though
they were not the whole of his emotional life. Who
ever wishes to extract from the next case of total anaes
thesia the maximum of knowledge about the emotions,
will have to interrogate the patient with some such
notion as that of my article in his mind. We can define
the pure psychic emotions far better by starting from
such an hypothesis and modifying it in the way of
restriction and subtraction, than by having no definite
hypothesis at all. Thus will the publication of my
article have been justified, even though the theory it
advocates, rigorously taken, be erroneous. The best
thing I can say for it is, that in writing it, I have almost
persuaded myself it may be true.

275

XVI

THE KELIGIOUS ASPECT OF
PHILOSOPHY1

[1885]

IT is certain that we live in a philosophic age.
Mrs. Partington's mop, as she plied it against the
Atlantic Ocean, was a potent engine compared with
the command to "halt" with which Positivism tried,
and tries, to bring the heaving tides of man's in-
quisitiveness to rest. The worst of it is that we
are getting deeper and deeper in. Every new book
thickens the fray, and is one more thing with which
to settle accounts ; and any bit of scientific research
becomes an angle and place of vantage from which
arguments are brought to bear. When a branch of
human activity is fermenting like this, it happens
that individual sharers in the movement profit by
the common level being raised, and do easily what,
perhaps, in an isolated way they never could have

[* Review of The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, by Josiah
Royce, Boston, 1885. Reprinted from Atlantic Monthly, 1885,
55, 840-843. Interesting for the light which it throws on James's
relations with idealism. In this review he states that he finds
idealism to afford the most promising solution of the problem
of thought's reference to reality. James acknowledged his obli
gations to Royce in a note appended to "The Function of
Cognition" (1885), but he afterwards rejected the idealistic
solution. Cf. Meaning of Truth (1909), p. 22, note. ED.]

276

[1885] KELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY

done at all. We doubt if, at the dawn of our pres
ent philosophic movement, say in Sir William Ham
ilton's time, a writer with Dr. Royce's ideas could
possibly have expressed them in so easy and unen
cumbered and effectual form. A familiar catch
word replaces a tedious setting forth; a reference
to a popular writer serves instead of the heavy con
struction of an imaginary opponent ; and above all,
important objections are not likely to be overlooked
or forgot.

But although the age is philosophical, it is not so
after the fashion of Hegel's age in Germany, or
Cousin's age in France. We have no Emperor of
Philosophy in any country to-day, but a headless
host of princes, with their alliances and feuds.
This seems at first anarchic, and is apt to give com
fort to the scoffers at metaphysical inquiry, and to
all who believe that only the study of "facts" can
lead to definitive results. The addition to the com
batants of Dr. Eoyce, with his book, can only in
crease this first impression of confusion; for, like
Descartes and Fichte and many another hero of
belief, he begins by laying about him ruthlessly, and
establishing a philosophic desert of doubt on which
his own impregnable structure is to be reared. And
yet a closer survey shows that to a great extent all
these quarrels and recriminations of the modern
thinkers are over matters of detail, and tfcat,
although they obey no common leader, they for the
most part obey a common drift, — the drift, namely,
towards a phenomenalistic or idealistic creed. To

277

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

this conclusion Dr. Royce also sweeps, with a mo
mentum that carries him beyond Ferrier and Mill
and Bain, beyond Hodgson, Renouvier, and Bowne,
beyond the disciples of Schopenhauer and the dis
ciples of Fichte and Hegel, wherever found, and
beyond a number of contemporary German idealists
whose names need not be cited here. Such think
ers all agree that there can be no other kind of
Reality than reality-for-thought. They differ only
in the arguments they use to prove this thesis, and
in deciding ivhosc thought and what kind of
thought that thought which is the reality of reali
ties may be.

Dr. Royce's new and original proof of Idealism is,
so far as we know, the most positive and radical
proof yet proposed. It is short and simple, when
once seen, and yet so subtle that it is no wonder it
was never seen before. These short and simple
suggestions that philosophers make from time to
time — Locke's question about essence, for example,
Berkeley's about matter, Hume's about cause, and
Kant's about necessary judgments, — have an intol
erable way with them of sticking, in spite of all one
can do. To scholastic minds, who have made their
bed, and wish for nothing further than to snore
dogmatically and comfortably on, these questions
must seem like very vermin, not to be conquered by
any logical insect powder or philosophic comb.

The particular gadfly which Dr. Royce adds to the
list is this : "How can a thought refer to, intend, or
signify any particular reality outside of itself?"

278

[1885] KELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY

Suppose the reality there, and the thought there;
suppose the thought to resemble just that reality,
and nought besides in the world: still, asks our
author, what is meant by saying that the thought
stands for or represents that reality, or indeed any
reality at all? Why isn't it just like the case of two
eggs, or two toothaches, which may, it is true, re
semble and duplicate each other exactly, but which
are not held to mean or intend each other the least
in the world? If the eggs and the toothaches are,
each one of them, a separate substantive fact, shut
up in its own skin and knowing nothing of the
world outside, why are not one's thought, for ex
ample, of the Moon and the real Moon in exactly
the same predicament? The Moon in our thought
is our thought's Moon. Whatever we may think of
her is true of her, for she is but the creature of
our thinking. If we say "her hidden hemisphere
is inhabited," it is inhabited, for us; and otherwise
than for us that moon, the moon in our mind, has
no existence. A critic cannot prove us wrong by
bringing in a "real" moon with an uninhabited back
hemisphere; he cannot, by comparing that moon
with ours and showing the want of resemblance,
make our moon "false." To do that, he would first
have to establish that the thought in our mind
was a thought of just that external moon, and
intended to be true of it. But neither he nor we
could establish that: it would be worse than a
gratuitous, it would be a senseless, proposition.
Our Moon has nothing to do with the real moon;

279

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

she is a totally additional fact, pursuing her sub
jective destiny all alone, and only accidentally per
ceived by an outside critic to agree or disagree with
another moon, which he knows and chooses to call
real, but which is really out of all relation to the
one in our mind's eye. At most, the critic might
say he was reminded or not reminded of that other
moon by our Moon; but he could not say that ours
gave either a true or a false account of the other,
simply because ours never pretended to give any
account, or to refer to the other moon, at all. Nor
can we ourselves make it refer to that other moon,
by "proposing" or "supposing" that it does so refer ;
all we can propose or suppose is some altogether
new moon in our own mind, and refer the old
one there to that one. Over all such moons we
have complete control, but over nothing else under
heaven. At least, thinks Dr. Koyce, such ought to
be our inference, if the notion of common sense be
true, that our thought and the reality are two
wholly disconnected things.

The more one thinks, the more one feels that
there is a real puzzle here. Turn and twist as we
will, we are caught in a tight trap. Although we
cannot help believing that our thoughts do mean
realities and are true or false of them, we cannot
for the life of us ascertain how they can mean them.
If thought be one thing and reality another, by what
pincers, from out of all the realities, does the
thought pick out the special one it intends to know?
And if the thought knows the reality falsely, the

280

[1885] RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY

difficulty of answering the question becomes indeed
extreme.

Our author calls the question insoluble on these
terms ; and we are inclined to think him right, and
to suspect that his idealistic escape from the
quandary may be the best one for us all to take.
We supposed, just now, a critic comparing the real
moon and our mental moon. Let him now help us
forward. We saw that even he could not make it
out that our mental moon should refer to just that
individual real moon, and to nothing else. We
could not make it out either, and certainly the real
moon itself could not make it out. We saw, how
ever, that we could make anything in our own mind
refer to anything else there, — provided, of course,
the two things were objects of a single act of
thought; and the reason why our moon could not
refer to the real moon was that the two moons were
not facts in a common mind. But now imagine
our "critic," instead of being the mere dissevered
third thing he was, to be a common mind. Imag
ine his thought of our thought to be our thought,
and his thought of the real moon to be the real
moon. Both it and we have now become consub-
stantial ; we are reduced to a common denominator.
Both of us are members of the one total Thought,
and any relation which that Thought draws between
its members is as real as the members themselves.
If that Thought intend one of its members to "rep
resent" the other, and represent it either falsely or
truly, "'tis but thinking, and it is done." There is

281

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EE VIEWS

no other way in which one thing can "represent"
another ; and no possibility of either truth or false
hood unless the function of representation be genu
inely there. An "Over-Soul," of whose enveloping
thought our thought and the things we think of are
alike fractions, — such is the only hypothesis that
can form a basis for the reality of truth and of error
in the world.

The reality of truth and error are, then, Dr.
Koyce's novel reason for believing that all that is
has the foundations of its being laid in an infinite
all-inclusive Mind. Upon the highest heights of
dogmatism and in the deepest depths of skepticism,
alike the argument blooms, saying, "Whatever
things be false, and whatever things be true, one
thing stands forever true, and that is that the En
veloping Mind must be there to make them either
false or true."

To the lay-reader, this absolute Idealism doubt
less seems insubstantial and unreal enough. But
it is astonishing to learn how many paths lead
up to it. Dr. Eoyce's path is only one. The others
are of various kinds and degrees, and may be found
in all sorts of books, few of them together. But
taken altogether, they end by making about as for
midable a convergence of testimony as the history
of opinion affords. The persons most pleased by Dr.
Koyce's book will no doubt be the Hegelians here
and in Great Britain ; for it seems to us that he has
reached a religious result hardly distinguishable
from their own, by a method entirely free from that

282

[1885] RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY

identification of contradictories which is the great
stumbling-block in the Hegelian system of thought.
The result is that all truth is known to one Thought,
that is infinite, in which the world lives and moves
and has its being, which abides and waxes not old,
and in which there is neither variableness nor
shadow of turning. The ordinary objection to a
pantheistic monism like this is the ethical one, that
it makes all that happens a portion of the eternal
reason, and so must nourish a fatalistic mood, and
a willingness to accept and consecrate whatever is,
no matter what its moral quality may be. Dr.
Koyce is not as disdainful of this difficulty as the
Hegelians are. We are not sure he has got over
it, but he has bravely and beautifully attacked it;
and his section on the problem of evil, in his last
chapter, is as original and fresh a treatment of the
subject as we know.

Unfortunately, we have no space to do more than
recommend it to the reader's attention. And now
that we find ourselves at the end of our tether, we
wonder whether a notice entirely made up of quo
tations would not have been a better thing than this
attempt of ours to set forth the most fundamental,
it is true, but still the driest, portion of the book.
Never was a philosophic work less dry; never one
more suggestive of springtime, or, as we may say,
more redolent of the smell of the earth. Never was
a gentler, easier irony shown in discussion; and
never did a more subtle analytic movement keep
constantly at such close quarters with the cubical

283

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

and concrete facts of human life as shown in indi
viduals. In the entire ethical portion of the work
its author shows himself to be a first-rate moralist,
in the old-fashioned sense of the word, as one who
knows delightfully how to describe the lights and
shadows of special moral types and tendencies. In
his discussions of the ethics of "sympathy" and of
the ethics of "progress" are passages which are mas
terpieces in this line. And here again, from the
very depths of the desert of skepticism, the flower of
moral faith is found to bloom. Everything in Dr.
Koyce is radical. There is nothing to remind one j
of that dreary fighting of each step of a slow retreat
to which the theistic philosophers of the ordinary
common-sense school have accustomed us. For this
reason the work must carry a true sursum corda
into the minds of those who feel in their bones that
man's religious interests must be able to swallow
and digest and grow fat upon all the facts and
theories of modern science, but who yet have not the
capacity to see with their own eyes how it may be
done. There is plenty of leveling in Dr. Koyce's
book, but it all ends by being a leveling-up. The
Thought of which our thought is part is lord of all,
and, to use the author's own phrase, he does not see
why we should clip our own wings to keep ourselves
from flying out of our own coop over our own fence
into our own garden. California may feel proud
that a son of hers should at a stroke have scored
so many points in a game not yet exceedingly fa
miliar on the Pacific slope.

284

XVII

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF LOST
LIMBS *

[1887]

MANY persons with lost limbs still seem to feel
them in their old place. This illusion is so well
known, and the material for study is so abundant,
that it seems strange that no more systematic effort
to investigate the phenomenon should have been
made. Dr. Weir Mitchell's observations in his work
on "Injuries to the Nerves" ( 1872) are the most copi
ous and minute with which I am acquainted. They
reveal such interesting variations in the conscious
ness in question, that I began some years ago to
seek for additional observations, in the hope that
out of a large number of data, some might emerge
which would throw on these variations an explana
tory light.

The differences in question are principally these :

1. Some patients preserve consciousness of the
limb after it has been lost ; others do not.

2. In some it appears always in one fixed posi
tion ; in others its apparent position changes.

1 [Reprinted from Proceedings of the American Society for
Psychical Research, 1887, 1, 249-258. Results bearing on sensa
tion, perception, and will, referred to briefly in the Principles
(1890), Vol. II., pp. 105, note, 516, note. ED.]

285

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS t1887l

3. In some the position can be made to seem to
change by an effort of will ; in others no effort of will
can make it change ; in rare cases it would even seem
that the very attempt to will the change has grown
impossible.

I have obtained first-hand information from a
hundred and eighty-five amputated persons. Some
of this was gained by personal interviews ; but much
the larger portion consists of replies to a circular
of questions of which I sent out some eight hundred
copies to addresses furnished me by some of the
leading makers of artificial limbs.1

The results are disappointing, in that they fail to
explain the causes of the enumerated differences.
But they tell certain things and suggest reflections
which I here set down for the use of future in
quirers.2

First, as to the relative frequency of the feeling of
the lost parts. It existed at the time of answering
my interrogatories in about three-quarters of the

1 For these addresses I have to thank Messrs. Fisk & Arnold,
of Boston; Marks, and Wicket & Bradley, of New York;
Clement, and Osborne, of Philadelphia ; and Douglass, of Spring
field, Mass.

* One lesson from them is that in a delicate inquiry like this,
little is to be gained by distributing circulars. A single patient
with the right sort of lesion and a scientific mind, carefully
cross-examined, is more likely to deepen our knowledge than a
thousand circulars answered as the average patient answers
them, even though the answers be never so thoroughly collated
by the investigator. This is becoming apparent in many lines
of psychological inquiry ; and we shall probably, ere long, learn
the limits within which the method of circulars is likely to be
used with fruit.

286

[1887] CONSCIOUSNESS OF LOST LIMBS

cases of which I have reports. I say in about the
proportion of cases, for many of the answers were
not quite clear. It had existed in a much larger
proportionate number, but had faded out before the
time of answering. Some had ceased to feel it "im
mediately," or "an hour or two" after the amputa
tion. In others it had lasted weeks, months, or
years. The oldest case I have is that of a man who
had had a thigh amputation performed at the age of
thirteen years, and who, after he was seventy,
affirmed his feeling of the lost foot to be still every
whit as distinct as his feeling of the foot which
remained. Amongst my one hundred and seventy-
nine cases only seven are of the upper extremity.
In all of these, the sense of the lost hand remained.
The consciousness of the lost limb varies from
acute pain, pricking, itching, burning, cramp, un
easiness, numbness, etc., in the toes, heel, or other
place, to feelings which are hardly perceptible, or
which become perceptible only after a good deal of
"thinking." The feeling is not due to the condition
of the stump, for in both painful and healthy stumps
it may be either present or absent. Where it is dis
tinct both the lost foot or hand and the stump are
felt simultaneously, each in its own place. The
hand and foot are usually the only lost parts very
distinctly felt, the intervening tracts seeming to
disappear. A man, for example, whose arm was cut
off at the shoulder- joint told ine that he felt his hand
budding immediately from his shoulder. This is,
however, not constantly the case by any means.

287

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS U887]

Many patients with thigh-amputation feel, more or
less distinctly, their knee, or their calf. But even
where they do not, the foot may seem separate from
the stump, though possibly located nearer it than
natural. A second shoulder- joint case says his arm
seems to lie on his breast, centrally with fingers
closed on palm just as it did eight or ten hours
before amputation.

It is a common experience, during the first weeks
after amputation, for the patient to forget that his
leg is gone. Many patients tell how they met with
accidents, by rising suddenly and starting to walk
as if their leg were still there, or by getting out of
bed in the same way. Others tell how they have
involuntarily put down their hand to scratch their
departed foot. One man writes that he found him
self preparing with scissors to cut its nails, so dis
tinctly did he feel them. Generally the position of
the lost leg follows that of the stump and artificial
leg. If one is flexed the other seems flexed ; if one
is extended so is the other ; if one swings in walking
the other swings with it. In a few correspondents,
however, the lost leg maintains a more or less fixed
position of its own, independent of the artificial leg.
One such man told me that he felt as if he had three
legs in all, getting sometimes confused, in coming
down stairs, between the artificial leg which he put
forward, and the imaginary one which he felt bent
backwards and in danger of scraping its toes upon
the steps just left behind. Dr. Mitchell tells of cer
tain arms which appeared fixedly in the last pain-

288

[1887] CONSCIOUSNESS OF LOST LIMBS

ful attitude they had occupied before amputation.
One of my correspondents writes that he feels con
stantly a blister on his heel which was there at the
time of his accident ; another that he had chilblains
at the time of the accident, and feels them still on
his toes.

The differences in the apparent mobility of the
lost part, when felt, are strange. About a hundred
of the cases who feel (say) their feet, affirm that
they can "work" or "wiggle" their toes at will.
About fifty of them deny that they have any such
power. This again is not due to the condition of the
stump, for both painful and healthy stumps are
found equally among those who can and among
those who cannot "work their toes." Almost al
ways when the will is exerted to move the toes,
actual contraction may be perceived in the muscles
of the stump. One might, therefore, expect that
where the toe-moving muscles were cut off, the sense
of the toes being moved might disappear. But this
is not the case. I have cases of thigh amputation,
in which all the foot-moving muscles are gone, and
yet in which the feet or toes seem to move at will.
And I have cases of lower-leg amputation in which,
though the foot-moving muscles contract in the
stump, the toes or feet feel motionless.

But although, in a gross sense, we are thus forced
to conclude that neither the state of the stump nor
the place of the amputation absolutely determines
the differences of consciousness which different in
dividuals show, it is nevertheless hard to believe

289

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS ti887]

that they are not among the more important in
fluencing conditions of the illusion which we are
studying. On a priori grounds it seems as if they
must be so. What is the phenomenon? It is what
is commonly known as the extradition, or projection
outwards, of a sensation whose immediate condition
is the stimulation of a central organ of perception
by an incoming nerve or nerves. As the optical
centres respond to stimulation by the feeling of
forms and colors and the acoustic centres by that of
sounds, so do certain other centres respond by the
feeling of a foot, with its toes, heel, etc. This feel
ing is what Johannes Mtiller called the "specific
energy" of the neural tracts involved. It makes no
difference how the tracts are excited, that feeling
of a foot is their only possible response. So long as
they feel at all, what they feel is the foot.1 In the

1 It would seem that, even in the case of congenital defect of
the extremities, the brain-centres might feel in the usual an
cestral way. "A nineteen-year-old girl and a man in the forties,
who had each but one normal hand, the other, instead of fingers,
having only little prominences of skin without bones or muscles,
thought they bent their absent fingers when they bent the de
formed stump. Tickling these eminences, or binding a string
about the forearm, caused the same sensations as in amputated
persons, and a pressure on the ulnar nerve made the outer
fingers tingle. In the same way persons born with a much
shortened arm have stated the length of this member to be
greater than it really was. An individual whose right forearm
almost entirely failed, so that the dwarfed hand seemed to
spring from the elbow, was conscious of the misshapen arm
as normal and almost as long as the other." I quote this re
markable passage from Valentin's Lehrbuch der Physiologic,
Vol. II., p. 609. Valentin gives a number of references to the
contemporaneous literature of the subject, and his own remarks,
which occupy several pages, are well worth reading, even now.

290

[1887] CONSCIOUSNESS OF LOST LIMBS

normal state the foot thus felt is located where the
eye can see and the hand touch it. When the foot
which the eye sees and the hand touches is cut off,
still the immediate inner feeling of it persists so
long as the brain-centres retain their functions ; and
in the absence of any counter-motive, it ought, one
would think, to continue located about where it used
to be. There would be a counter-motive, if nerves
which in the unamputated man went to the foot and
were excited every time the foot was touched, were
to find themselves, after the amputation, excited
every time the stump was touched. The foot-feeling
(which the nerves would continue to give) being
then associated with the stump-contacts, would end
(by virtue of a law of perception of which I made
mention in Mind for 1887, p. 196)1 by locating itself
at the place at which those contacts were believed,
on the testimony of the eye and the hand, to occur.
In other words, the foot-feeling would fuse with the
feeling resident in the stump. In but few cases does
this seem to occur ;2 and the reason is easily found.
At the places where the amputation is apt to be
made, the nerves which supply the foot are all buried
deeply in the tissues. Superficial contact with the
stump never excites, therefore, the sensibility of the
foot-nerves. All ordinary contacts of the stump,
thus failing to awaken the foot-feeling in any notice-

[I0f. Principles (1890), Vol. II., pp. 183-184. ED.]
•I have found none. Dr. Mitchell reports one at least,
in which the lost hand lay "seemingly within the stump"
(p. 356. Cf. also p. 351). This was an upper-arm amputation.

291

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS [1887]

able way, that feeling fails to grow associated with
the stump's experiences; and when (on exceptional
occasions) deep pressure of the stump awakens not
only its own local cutaneous feeling but the foot-
feelings due to the deeper-lying nerve, the two feel
ings still keep distinct in location as in quality.

There is, usually, in fact, a positive reason against
their local fusion. More than one of my correspon
dents writes that the lost foot is best felt when the
end of the stump receives the thrust of the artificial
leg. Whenever the old foot is thus most felt at the
moment when the artificial foot is seen to touch the
ground, that place of contact (being both important
and interesting) should be the place with which the
foot-feeling would associate itself (by virtue of the
mental law already referred to) . In other words, we
should project our foot-feeling upon the ground, as
we used to before we lost the member, and we should
feel it follow the movements of the artificial limb.1
An observation of Dr. Mitchell's corroborates this
view. One of his patients "lost his leg at the age of
eleven, and remembers that the foot by degrees ap
proached, and at last reached the knee. When he be
gan to wear an artificial leg it reassumed in time its
old position, and he is never at present aware of the
leg as shortened, unless for some time he talks and
thinks of the stump, and of the missing leg, when

1 The principle here is the same as that by which we project
to the extremity of any instrument with which we are probing,
tracing, cutting, etc., the sensations which the instrument com
municates to our hand when it presses the foreign matter with
which it is in contact.

292

[1887] CONSCIOUSNESS OF LOST LIMBS

. . . the direction of attention to the part causes a
feeling of discomfort, and the subjective sensation
of active and unpleasant movement of the toes. With
these feelings returns at once the delusion of the
foot as being placed at the knee."1

The latter half of this man's experience shows that
the principles I have invoked (though probably
quite sound as far as they go) are not exhaustive,
and that, between fusion with the stump and pro
jection to the end of the artificial limb, the inter
mediate positions of the foot remain unaccounted
for. It will not do to call them vague remains of the
old normal habit of projection, for often they are
not vague, but quite precise. Leaving this phenome
non on one side, however, let us see what more our
principles can do.

In the first place they oblige us to invert the popu
lar way of looking at the problem. The popular
mind wonders how the lost feet can still be felt.
For us, the cases for wonder are those in which the
lost feet are not felt. The first explanation which
one clutches at, for the loss, is that the nerve-
centres for perception may degenerate and grow
atrophic when the sensory nerve-terminations which
normally stimulate them are cut off. Extirpation
of the eyeballs causes such atrophy in the occipital
lobes of the brain. The spinal cord has been re
peatedly found shrunken at the point of entrance of
the nerves from amputated limbs. And there are
a few carefully reported cases in which the degener-

1 Injuries of Nerves, Philadelphia, 1872, p. 352.

293

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

ation has been traced ascending to the cortical
centres, along with an equal number of cases in
which no such ascending degeneration could be
found.1 A degenerated centre can of course no
longer give rise to its old feelings; and where the
centres are degenerated, that fact explains ail-
sufficiently why the lost member can no longer be
felt. But it is impossible to range all the cases of
non-feeling under this head. Some of them date
from the first hours after the operation, when de
generation is out of the question. In some the
perceptive centres are proved to be there by exciting
electrically the nerve-trunks buried in the stump,
"I recently faradized," says Dr. Mitchell, "a case
of disarticulated shoulder without warning my
patient of the possible result. For two years he had
altogether ceased to feel the limb. As the current
affected the brachial plexus of nerves he suddenly
cried aloud, 'Oh the hand, — the hand!' and at
tempted to seize the missing member. The phantom
I had conjured up swiftly disappeared, but no spirit
could have more amazed the man, so real did it
seem."2

In such a case as this last, the only hypothesis
that remains to us is to suppose that the nerve-ends
are so softly embedded in the stump as, under or
dinary conditions, to carry up no impressions to the
brain, or none strong enough to be noticeable.
Were they carried, the patient would feel, and feel

1 Frangois-Franck : Lecons sur les Fonctions Matrices du Cer-
veau, 1887, p. 291.

2 Op. oit., p. 349.

294

[1887] CONSCIOUSNESS OF LOST LIMBS

a foot. Not feeling the foot, and yet being capable
of feeling it (as the faradization proves), it must
be either that no impressions are carried, or else that
for some reason they do not appeal to conscious
ness. Now it is a general law of consciousness that
feelings of which we make no practicable use tend
to become more and more overlooked. Helmholtz
has explained our habitual insensibility to double
images, to the so-called muscw volitantes caused by
specks in the humors of the eye, to the upper har
monics which accompany various sounds, as so
many effects of the persistent abstraction of our
attention from impressions which are of no use. It
may be that in certain subjects this sort of abstrac
tion is able to complete our oblivescence of a lost
foot; our feeling of it has been already reduced
almost to the vanishing point, by reason of the
shielded condition of the nerve-ends, just assigned.
The feeling of the lost foot tells us absolutely noth
ing which can practically be of use to us.1 It is a
superfluous item in our conscious baggage. Why
may it not be that some of us are able to cast it out
of our mind on that account? Until a few years
ago all oculists believed that a similar superfluity,
namely, the second set of images seen by the squint
ing eye in squinters, was cast out of consciousness
so persistently that the eye grew actually blind.
And, although the competency of the explanation
has probably been disproved as regards the blind-

1 Except the approach of storms ; but then it is in cases where
the feeling is preserved.

295

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

ness, yet there is no doubt that it is quite competent
to prove an almost invincible unconsciousness of the
images cast upon a squinting eye.

Unconsciousness from habitual inattention is,
then, probably one factor in the oblivescence of lost
extremities, — a factor which, however, we must re
gard as unavailing where impressions from the
nerve-ends are strong.1

Let us next consider the differences in regard to
the illusion of voluntary movement in the lost parts.
Most of the patients who seem to themselves able to
move their lost feet, hands, etc., at will, produce a
distinct contraction of the muscles of the stump
whenever they make the voluntary effort. As the
principle of specific energies easily accounted for
the consciousness of the lost limb being there at all,
so here another principle, almost as universally
adopted by psychologists, accounts as easily for the
consciousness of movement in it, and leaves the real

1 1 have quoted my hundred and forty-odd patients as feeling
their lost member, as if they all felt it positively. But many
of those who say they feel it seem to feel it dubiously. Either
they only feel it occasionally, or only when it pains them, or only
when they try to move it ; or they only feel it when they "think
a good deal about it" and make an effort to conjure it up.
When they "grow inattentive," the feeling "flies back," or
"jumps back to the stump." Every degree of consciousness, from
complete and permanent hallucination, down to something
hardly distinguishable from ordinary fancy, seems represented
in the sense of the missing extremity which these patients say
they have. Indeed I have seldom seen a more plausible lot of
evidence for the view that imagination and sensation are but
differences of vividness in an identical process, than these con
fessions, taking them altogether, contain. Many patients say
they can hardly tell whether they feel or fancy the limb.

296

[1887] CONSCIOUSNESS OF LOST LIMBS

puzzle to reside rather in those cases in which the
illusion of movement fails to exist.

The principle I refer to is that of the inheritance
of ancestral habit. It is all but unanimously ad
mitted at the present day that any two experiences,
which during ancestral generations have been in
variably coupled together, will have become so in-
dissolubly associated that the descendant will not
be able to represent them in his mind apart. Now
of all possible coupled experiences it is hard to
imagine any pair more uniformly and incessantly
coupled than the feeling of effected contraction
of muscles, on the one hand, and that of the changed
position of the parts which they move, on the other.
From the earliest ancestors of ours which had feet,
down to the present day, the movement of the feet
must always have accompanied the contraction of
the muscles; and here, if anywhere, habit's heredi
tary consequences ought to be found, if the principle
that habits are transmitted from one generation to
another is sound at all.1 No sooner then should the
brain-centres for perceiving muscular contractions
be excited, than those other centres functionally
consolidated with them ought to share the excite
ment, and produce a consciousness that the foot

1 In saying that if it is sound, then the explanation which I
offer follows, I wish to retain reserved rights as to the general
question of its soundness, regarding which evidence seems to
me as yet somewhat incomplete. But the explanation which I
offer could base itself on the invariable associations of the in
dividual's experience, even if the hereditary transmission of
habitual associations proved not to be a law of nature.

297

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

has moved. If it be objected to this that this latter
consciousness ought to be ideal rather than sensa
tional in character, and ought therefore not to pro
duce a fully developed illusion, it is sufficient to
point to what happens in many illusions of the same
type. In these illusions the mind, sensibly im
pressed by what seems a part of a certain probable
fact, forthwith perceives that fact in its entirety.
The parts supplied by the mind are in these cases no
whit inferior in vividness and reality to those act
ually impressing the sense.1 In all perception, in
deed, but half of the object comes from without.
The larger half usually comes out of our own head.
We can ourselves produce an illusion of movement
similar to those which we are studying by putting
some unyielding substance (hard rubber, e.g.) be
tween our back teeth and biting hard. It is difficult
not to believe that our front teeth approach each
other, when we feel our biting muscles contract.2 In

'They are vivid and real in proportion to the inveterateness
of their association with the parts which impress the sense.
The most perfect illusions are those of false motion, relief, or
concavity, changed size, distance, etc., produced when, by arti
ficial means, an object gives us sensations, or forces us to move
our eyes in ways ordinarily suggestive of the presence of an
entirely different object. We see then the latter object directly
although it is not there. The after-image of a rectangular
cross, of a circle, change their shapes when we project them
on to an oblique surface; and the new shape, which is demon-
strably a reproduction of earlier sense-impressions, feels just
like a present sense-impression.

2 See for another example Sternberg, in Pfluger's Archiv, Bd.
37, S. 1. The author even goes so far as to lay down as a general
rule that we ordinarily judge a movement to be executed as
soon as we have given the impulse.

298

[1887] CONSCIOUSNESS OF LOST LIMBS

ourselves the feeling of the real position of the jaws
persists unchanged to contradict the false sug
gestion. But when we recall that in the amputated
no such positive contradiction can occur, since the
parts are gone, we see how much easier it must be
in their case for the false sense of movement to
flourish unchecked.1

But how, then, comes it that there can be any
patients who lack the false sense in question? In
one hundred and forty of my cases, about fifty
lacked it completely; and even when the stump-
muscles contract violently, many patients are un
able to feel any change at all in the position of the
imaginary extremity. This is not due to the fact
that the amputation is made above the origin of the
hand-or-foot-moving muscles; for there are eleven
cases where these muscles remain and contract, but
yet no sense of movement exists. I must say that
I can offer no clear solution of this anomaly. It
must be left over, together with those obstinate

1 Out of the ninety-eight of my cases who feel their limbs to
move, there are forty-three who can produce no feeling of move
ment in the lost extremity without visibly contracting the
muscles of the stump. But (leaving out doubtful cases) twelve
of the others positively affirm that, after the most careful exam
ination, no contractions can be detected in the stump, whilst
yet the extremity seems to move at will. One such case I ob
served myself. The man had an amputation of the upper arm.
He seemed to himself to flex his fingers at will; but I could
perceive no change whatever in the stump. The thought of the
movement seemed here a sufficient suggestion ; as in those anaes
thetic cases where the patient thinks of a movement and wills
it, and then (if his eyes are closed) fancies it executed, even
though the limb be held still by the bystanders.

299

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

cases of partial apparent shortening of which we
spoke above, for future investigators to treat.

One reflection, however, seems pertinent to the
entire set of phenomena we have studied. They
form a group in which the variations from one in
dividual to another, if they exist at all, are likely
to become extreme. Darwin notices that no organs
in animals are so subject to variation as rudimen
tary organs. Being functionless, selection has no
hold on them, the environment exerts no influence to
keep them up (or down) to the proper standard,
and the consequence is that their aberrations are
unchecked. Now phantasms of lost legs and arms
are to the mental organism just what rudimentary
organs are to the bodily organism. They have no
longer any real relations with the environment,
being mere vestiges of something which formerly
had real relations. The environment does not cor
rect such a phantasm for any odd course it may get
into. If it slips away altogether, the environment
lets it go, and doesn't call it back. If it happen "by
accident" to harden itself in a fixed position, or
shorten itself, or to dissolve connection with its an
cestral associates in the way of muscular feeling,
the accident is not repaired ; and experience, which
throughout the rest of our mental life puts prompt
bounds to too great eccentricity, here lets it lux
uriate unrebuked. I do not know how far one ought
to push this idea. But (what we can call by no better
name but) accident or idiosyncrasy certainly plays
a great part in all our neural and mental processes,

300

[1887] CONSCIOUSNESS OP LOST LIMBS

especially the higher ones. We can never seek
among these processes for results which shall be
invariable. Exceptions remain to every empirical
law of our mental life, and can only be treated as
so many individual aberrations. It is perhaps some
thing to have pointed out the department of lost-
limb-consciousness as that in which the aberrant in
dividuals are likely to reach their maximum number.

The apparent changes of temperature of the lost
parts form an interesting chapter, which, however,
I will not discuss. Suffice it to say, that in many
patients the lost foot can be made to feel warm or
cold by warming or cooling the stump. A draught
of air on the stump produces the feeling of a draught
on the foot. The lost foot also sympathizes some
times with the foot which remains. If one is cold,
the other feels cold. One man writes that when
ever he walks through puddles and wets his sound
foot, his lost foot feels wet too.

My final observations are on a matter which ought
to interest students of "psychic research." Surely
if there be any distant material object with which
a man might be supposed to have clairvoyant or
telepathic relations, that object ought to be his own
cut-off arm or leg. Accordingly, a very wide-spread
belief will have it, that when the cut-off limb is
maltreated in any way, the man, no matter where
he is, will feel the injury. I have nearly a score of
communications on this point, some believing, more
incredulous. One man tells of experiments of warm
ing, etc., which the doctor in an adjoining room

301

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

made on the freshly cut-off leg, without his knowl
edge, and of which his feelings gave him no sus
picion. Of course, did such telepathic rapport
exist, it need not necessarily be found in every case.
But in none of the cases of my collection in which
the writers seek to prove it does their conclusion
inspire confidence. All (with perhaps one excep
tion which, unfortunately, I have lost) are vaguely
told; and, indeed, among all the pains which come
and go in the first weeks of amputation, it would be
strange if some did not coincide with events happen
ing to the buried or "pickled" limb. One man writes
me that he has dug up his buried leg eight times,
and changed its position. He asks me to advise him
whether to dig it up again, saying he "dreads to."

In concluding, I repeat that I have been able to
throw no new light of a positive sort on those in
dividual differences, the explanation of which was
the aim of my inquiry. I have, perhaps, by invoking
certain well-known principles, succeeded in making
the fundamental illusions, that of the existence,
and that of the movement of the lost part, seem
less paradoxical, and the exceptions to these il
lusions less odd than they have hitherto appeared.
But, on the whole, I leave the subject where I took
it up from Dr. Weir Mitchell's hands; and one of
the main effects of the investigation on my own
mind is admiration for the manner in which he
wrote about it fifteen years ago.

302

XVIII

KEPONSE AUX KEMAKQUES DE M.

KENOUVIEB, SUE SA THEOKIE

DE LA VOLONTE1

[1888]
Cher monsieur, —

Je suis extremement sensible a Phonneur grand et
pen merite que vous m'avez fait en presentant an
public f ranc.ais mon petit article sur la volonte, et
en le faisant suivre d'nn commentaire si flatteur.
Je suis cependant un si pauvre faiseur de phrases
que je n'essaierai pas d'exprimer ma gratitude; je
vous prierai simplement de m'accorder une page ou
deux de votre revue pour des explications a donner
au sujet de vos Remarques. Je serai aussi bref que
je le pourrai.

['Reprinted from La Critique Philosophique, 1888, nouv.
se"rie, 4me anne"e, 2, 401-404. Renouvier's "Remarks" appeared
in Hid., pp. 117-126, and were occasioned by the publication
of a translation of James's "What the Will Effects" (1888) in
ibid., 1, 401-420. For James's acknowledgment of Lotze's
priority in this subject, cf. also the Principles (1890), II, 523,
note. The following note was appended to the title by the Editor
of La Critique Philosophique: "Voyez les nume"ros 6 et 8 de la
Critique philosophiquc de la presente ann£e. — L'insertion de
1'aimable et interessante lettre de M. William James a e"te" re-
tarde"e par le d£sir que nous avons eu d'y joindre une traduc-
tion des passages importants signaled par ce dernier dans la
Medicinische psycholoyie de Lotze." The passages referred to
are published in the same issue of La Critique Philosophique,
and are accompanied by "Quelques mots sur la lettre qui
pr£c£de," by Renouvicr. ED.]

303

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

Preincrement, en ce qui concerne mon original! te,
Lotze a ete, autant que je sache, le premier a f ormu-
ler clairement la relation entre representation, voli
tion et mouvement effectue. On trouvera les pas
sages dans les § § 266-7-8 de sa Meddcinische psy-
chologie, publiee en 1852. Votre propre formula
tion, qui n'est pas essentiellement plus profonde,
a ce qu'il me semble, mais qui est beaucoup plus
explicite, a et6 publiee sept ans plus tard, mais
obtenue d'une maniere independante. Mes propres
idees se sont formees Men posterieurement, par la
lecture et de votre ouvrage et de celui de Lotze;
de sorte que je n'ai sur ce point ni independance ni
originalite quelconque.

Secondement, touchant Yespece de representation
d'un mouvement a laquelle le mouvement actuel
fait suite, je m'en suis explique, dans mon article,
comme si elle devait se composer des souvenirs des
sensations internes engendrees par les mouvements
passes dans les parties mouvantes elles-memes. Mon
article, ayant ete ecrit pour un recueil populaire,
a du etre simplifie outre mesure, comme de coutume
en pareil cas; et, dans ce cas-ci, j'ai pris une des
especes de Tidee motrice pour tenir la place du genre
tout entier. Vous avez absolument raison de pro
tester contre cette vue etroite. II est certain, ainsi
que vous y insistez, que le dernier phenomene psy-
chique qui precede un mouvement peut etre et est
souvent une image des effets externes du mouvement
sur Foeil, 1'oreille ou quelque partie eloignee du
corps. Nos mouvements volontaires de vocalisation

304

[1888] REMARQUES DE M. RENOUVIER

paraissent £tre instigues par des images acousti-
ques. Ceux des mouveinents de nos niembres qui
nous sont le plus habituels sont dus ordinairement
a des images optiques. Lorsque je desire tout d'un
coup toucher du doigt un point dans Fespace, j'ai
plus fortement conscience de Fendroit (of where)
ou la place de ce point parait etre, a mon ceil, que
de la maniere (of how) dont inon bras et ma main
doivent sentir quand je le touche. On pourrait
objecter qu'il y a des faits ici qui echappent a notre
conscience introspective; qu'une image tactile des
sensations internes attendues dans le membre doit
intervenir entre Fimage optique de cette place et
le mouvement execute; mais que cette image tac
tile est si rapidement supplantee par les sensations
internes actuelles, pendant que le mouvement
s'effectue, que nous rnanqiions a en prendre con-
naissance comme d'un phenomene independant.
Ceci est une hypoth&se qui merite consideration;
elle doit avoir un re"sultat experimentalement veri
fiable. Si une personne a laquelle un signal est
donne fait un mouvement qui laisse une marque sur
un appareil elironographique, elle obtient une me-
sure de ce qu'on appelle le "temps physiologique"
de ce mouvement particulier. Or, si Fon compare
deux mouveinents ( semblables d'ailleurs ) dont Fun
est represente d'avance pour nous en termes opti
ques, ou "externes," Fautre en termes tactiles, ou
"internes," le premier doit avoir le temps pbysiolo-
gique le plus long, dans la theorie que nous dis-
cutons, parce que la suggestion rapide qu'elle sup-

305

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

pose de 1'image tactile est un evenement auquel rien
ne correspond dans le cas ou la representation est
consciemment tactile des le debut. Je me suis oc-
cupe quelque temps, il y a plusieurs annees, d'exe-
cuter des mesures comparatives de ce genre. Je
regrette de dire qu'il ne m'a pas ete possible de
decouvrir une forme d'experience assez affrancliie
de complications secondaires pour me donner des
r£sultats utilisables.

Toutefois, je dirai que je n'ai trouve aucune raison
de soupgonner que le temps fut allonge lorsque
Pidee motrice etait optique ; non plus que 1'attention
introspective que j'ai du alors accorder a 1'operation
n?a tendu a me confirmer dans Fidee qu'une image
tactile latente y intervient tou jours. Loin de la,
c'est alors que pour la premiere fois je me suis mis
fortement a douter de cette idee.

Pendent ce temps, mon collegue le professeur
Bowditch a fait avec le docteur Southard des ex
periences qui semblent montrer que, quelquefois au
moins, il n'intervient aucune image tactile. Ces
physiologistes ont trouve qu'ils pouvaient, les yeux
fermes, toucher avec plus de precision un point mar
que sur la table, lorsqu'ils Tavaient simplement
regarde que lorsqu'ils 1'avaient simplement touche
un moment auparavant. Pour le docteur S. 1'erreur
moyenne, avec le toucher, etait de 17 millimetres
contre 12 millimetres avec le vue.1 II est certain
qu'ici une rapide image tactile ne pouvait s'etre

1 Ce travail a £16 publie dans le Journal of Physiology, VoL
III., No. 3.

306

[1888] REMARQUES DE M. RENOUVIER

placee comme moyen de passage entre 1'image
optique et la d^charge motrice. Comment la physi-
ologie du cerveau s'accommodera de ces faits, c'est
une question qui regarde les physiologistes ; ils
devront dans tous les cas admettre que le proces
ideationnel qui precede immediatement et provoque
un proces moteur peut quelquefois etre un proces
d'imagination optique.

Troisiemement, je voudrais dire un mot de ma r6-
duction de toutes les actions psychiques au type
reflexe. Je ne suis pas sur que, quand j'affirme et
que vous niez, nous pretions aux m£mes mots les
memes significations. J'entends, pour le faire bref,
que Pobjet de la pensee, a tout instant donne, fait
partie d'une chaine d'objets successivement sug-
geres qui peuvent £tre suivis, en remontant, jusqu'5,
quelque sensation regue, et qui se termineront tot
ou tard a quelque modification de notre mouvement.
Par exemple, mes pensees presentes peuvent etre
suivies, en remontant, jusqu'a Timpression causee
dernierement sur ma retine par vos paroles im-
primees, et se dechargent, en ce moment meme, en
des mouvements de mes doigts qui tiennent la
plume. La succession de nos objets mentaux est, je
le crois fermement, expliquee par le fait physio-
logique q'un proces cerebral en 6veille un autre,
suivant des voies en partie organisers par une
formation interne, et en partie tracers par Pexperi-
ence organisee par une formation interne, et en
partie tracees par Pexperience externe ; — expliquee,
dis-je, en ce sens que nous ne pouvons avoir un objet,

307

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

duquel ces voies ne soient la condition de possi-
bilite. Mais cette dependance par rapport a des
voies materielles, pour la possibilite de nos objets,
n'implique pas necessairement que la succession
de ces derniers soit entierement determinee par des
lois materielles. On n'a simplement qu'a admettre
que la conscience qui accompagne les proces ma-
teriels peut reagir de telle maniere qu'elle ajoute
a volonte a 1'intensite ou a la duree de certains
proces particuliers; un champ de selection s'ouvre
aussitot, qui nous mene Men loin de la determina
tion mecanique. Un proces appuye et accentue par
la conscience eveillera ses propres associes et pro-
duira ses consequences, a 1'exclusion des autres, et
Penchainement des pensees prendra de la sorte une
forme entierement differente de celle qu'elle
aurait pu prendre si la conscience n'eut ete
la avec son efficacite. Soit qu'il existe ou non
une volonte-force, avec des variations indepen-
dantes, il me semble qu'un parfait theatre pour son
activite est f ourni par un systeme de voies dans les-
quelles des courants se meuvent et produisent des
tensions et des decharges. La force independante
n?a besoin que d'alte*rer par augmentation ou par
diminution la tension donnee en un point, pour
changer entierement la resultante en direction de
la decharge. Tout ce que notre libre vouloir peut
legitimement revendiquer, c'est de disposer de possi-
bilites qui nous sont offertes en maniere d'alterna-
tives par le flux mecanique des choses. J'esp£re
qu'en ce sens-la, vous ne verrez nulle objection a

308

[1888] KEMARQUES DE M. RENOUVIER

etendre la notion de Faction reflexe a notre vie sup6-
rieure. Si librement qu'un acte puisse se produire,
sa suggestion premiere est certainement due a des
courants reflexes, et des courants reflexes sont ce
qui le rend actuel. L'action regulatrice de tels cou
rants par la volonte ne peut etre autre chose qu'une
selection de certains d'entre eux, deja tout pres
d'etre un peu plus forts que les autres.

Croyez-moi, clier monsieur, etc.

WILLIAM JAMES.
Cambridge (Mass.) U. S. of A., 23 septembre 1888.

309

XIX

\

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF
EXTENSION x

[1889]

SINCE even the worm will "turn," the space-
theorist can hardly be expected to remain motion
less when his Editor stirs him up. Had I seen my
July Mind earlier than I did, these remarks would
have been in time for the October number. Ap
pearing in January, I can only hope that the reader
may not regard them as reviving an issue that is
stale. The Editor, in his observations on "The Psy
chological Theory of Extension" in No. 51, made,
as it seems to me, some admissions that ought to be
recorded, as well as some assumptions that ought
to be questioned, in the interests of clear thinking
in this dark field. One admission (if I rightly
understand page 420) amounts to nothing less than
giving up the whole positive and constructive part
of the Brown-Bain-Spencer-Mill theory of space-
perception, and confessing that the criticisms
usually made upon it are fatal. That theory con-

C1 Reprinted from Mind, 1889, 14, 107-109. Written in reply
to a criticism by G. C. Robertson, the Editor, in Mind, 1888, 13,
418-424, of James's articles on "The Perception of Space," ibid.,
1887. The present paper is a part of a general discussion pro
voked by Robertson's criticism, and participated in by James
Ward, among others. ED.]

310

[1889] THEORY OF EXTENSION

tends that a variety of intensive elements can, by
grouping [association] assume in consciousness the
appearance of an extended order. "How is the trans
formation to be effected? or rather, can it in any
way be effected ?" asks the Editor. "I do not know
that it can," he replies, "if sought for upon that
line." As the account of space-perception by these
authors is usually reckoned one of the greatest tri
umphs of the Analytic School of Psychology, this
defection, by a writer whose general tendencies are
loyal to the school, is worthy of emphatic notice. The
Editor's second admission is, that, if we could sup
pose ourselves reduced to the eye with its explora
tory movements as our sole and only means of con
structing a spatial order, such a construction might
come to pass (p. 424) — an admission quite at vari
ance with the widely prevalent notion that analytic
psychology has proved the space-perceptions of the
eye to be but reproduced experiences of touch and
locomotion. So many doctrines reign by the mere
inertia of supposed authority, that when, as in these
two points, the chain of authority gets broken,
public attention should be drawn to the fact.

The chief assumption of the Editor's which I wish
to question is his proposition that, although ex
periences of an intensive order will not by them
selves acquire the extensive character, they will yet,
if so experienced as to be referred to an object (in
the sense of "bare obstacle to muscular activity of a
touching organ"), begin to assume that character.
If we construe this view definitely, everything about

311

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

it seems to me questionable. Either the obstacle
feels big originally or it does not. If it have origi
nally no bigness, the same difficulty arises which the
Editor admits to be fatal to ordinary theory : how
can intensive elements be transformed into an ex
tensive result? If, on the contrary, the obstacle
have a sensible bigness, then, of course, that would
explain how the touch of it, the look of it, or any
other sensation which the mind incorporates in it,
should share the bigness and appear itself extended.
But then the question would arise — Why on earth
should this feeling of muscular resistance be the
only one which originally comes to us with a big
ness? What grounds a posteriori or a priori can we
show for assigning to it so pre-eminent an advan
tage, in the teeth of all the spontaneous appear
ances, which make us feel as if the blueness of the
sky were spread out in itself, and as if the rolling of
the thunder or the soreness of an abscess were intrin
sically great? But the Editor keeps his whole ac
count so studiously and cautiously vague that I
confess I find it hard to construe his obstacle-object
as definitely as this. It must, he says, not be treated
as external "at the outset/' for the mere experience
of resisted muscular activity is analysable into ele
ments "which are found to be merely intensive —
intensity of passive touch varying with intensity of
effort " (p. 421). Nevertheless touch and effort are
so related as to "suggest a cleft in conscious experi
ence, which has but to be widened and defined for
the opposition of self and not-self to be established."

312

[1889] THEOKY OF EXTENSION

It is when referred to the "not-self" of the experi
ence thus defined that the originally intensive quali
ties of touch, look, sound, etc., begin, according to
the Editor, to appear extended, and finally become
more definitely extended in proportion as the resist
ing body gets more definitely to seem external.

Such accounts, however vaguely expressed, are
indubitably true, if one goes far enough back in
time. Since things are perceived later which were
not perceived earlier, it is certain a priori that there
was a moment when the perception of them began ;
and we are, therefore, sure in advance, of being
right, if we say of any perception that first it didn't
exist, and that then there was a mere suggestion and
nascency of it, which grew more definite, until, at
last, the thing was fully established. The only merit
of such statements lies in getting them historically
exact, and in determining the very moment at which
each successive element of the final fact came in.
Science can never explain the qualities of the succes
sive elements, if they show new qualities, appearing
then for the first time. It can only name the mo
ment and conditions of their appearance, and its
whole problem is to name these aright. Now, we
probably all agree that the condition of our per
ceiving the quality of bigness, the extensive quality,
in any sensible thing is some peculiar process in
our brain at the moment. But whereas, in the arti
cles which the Editor criticises, I maintained that
the moment is the very first moment in which we get
a sensation of any sort whatever, the Editor con-

313

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS C1889]

tends possibly that it is the first time we have the
feeling of resisted muscular effort, but more prob
ably (as I read his text) that it is much later in the
day, after many sensations, all purely "intensive,"
have come and gone. In my articles I have given
(with probably far too great prolixity) the grounds
for the date which I assign, and criticised the
grounds given by Wundt and Helmholtz for the
later one which they prefer. I miss in the Editor's
remarks (as in all English writings upholding the
same view) any attempt at explicit proof that the
earlier date is impossible, and that sensations can
not come with any apparent bigness when they first
appear. May not the supposed impossibility be
rather an assumption and a prejudice, due to un-
criticised tradition? If there be definite reasons for
it in the Editor's mind, I hope sincerely that he will
publish them without delay. But if, on the con
trary, a mere dim bigness can appear in all our first
sensations, then the date of its appearance is most
probably then; for discriminations, associations,
and selections among the various bignesses, occur
ring later on, will perfectly explain (as I have tried
to show) how the definitive perception of real outer
space and of the bodies in it grows up in the mind.
Eye-experience, touch-experience, and muscular ex
perience go on abreast in this evolution, and their
several objects grow intimately identified with each
other. But I fail to see in this fact any reason for
that dependence of the visual space-feelings "on a
tactile base," such as my critic in his last paragraph

314

[1889] THEORY OF EXTENSION

seems to find. One who asks a blind person to com
pare pasteboard angles and the directions of their
sides with each other, and who observes the extraor
dinary inferiority of his tactile perceptions to our
visual ones, will be very loath to believe that the
latter have the former for their base.

I am at a loss to know who the Editor means by
the theorists ( "space- theorists generally," he calls
them) who commit the mistake of "seeking for an
extension that is extension of nothing at all." Cer
tainly this mistake cannot be imputed to anyone
who, like myself, holds extension to be coeval with
sensation. The matter of the sensation must always
be there to fill the extension felt. The extension is
of the warmth, the noise, the blue luminosity, the
contact, the muscular mass contracting, or what
ever else the phenomenon may be.

Still other points do I find obscure in the Edi
tor's remarks — obscure, I am sure, from no other
reason but the brevity to which he has confined
them. May he be enabled soon to set them forth at
fairer length !

315

XX

A PLEA FOB PSYCHOLOGY AS A
"NATUBAL SCIENCE"1

[1892]

IN the first number of this journal, Professor
Ladd takes my Principles of Psychology as a text
for certain critical reflections upon the cerebralistic
point of view which is becoming so popular in
psychology to-day. I appreciate fully the kind per
sonal tone of the article, and I admit that many of
the thrusts strike home, though it shocks me a bit,
I confess, to find that in some particulars my vol
umes have given my critic so false an impression of
my beliefs. I have never claimed, for instance, as
Professor Ladd seems to think I claim, that psy
chology as it stands to-day is a natural science, or
in an exact way a science at all. Psychology, in
deed, is to-day hardly more than what physics was
before Galileo, what chemistry was before Lavoisier.
It is a mass of phenomenal description, gossip, and
myth, including, however, real material enough to
justify one in the hope that with judgment and
good-will on the part of those interested, its study

E1 Reprinted from Philosophical Rcmew, 1892, 1, 146-153. Oc
casioned by an article by G. T. Ladd, entitled "Psychology as
so-called 'Natural Science,' " ibid., pp. 24-53, in which the writer
criticises James's Principles (1890). ED.]

316

[1892] PSYCHOLOGY AS NATURAL SCIENCE

may be so organized even now as to become worthy
of the name of natural science at no very distant
day. I hoped that my book would leave on my
readers an impression somewhat like this of my own
state of mind. I wished, by treating Psychology
like a natural science, to help her to become one.
But what one book may have said or not said is a
matter of small moment. My two volumes are
doubtless uncouth enough ; and since Professor
Ladd wrote his article my general position has
probably been made more clear in the abridgment
of them, which Messrs. Holt & Co. have recently
published under the name of "Psychology : Briefer
Course."1 Let us drop the wearisome book, there
fore, and turn to the question itself, for that is what
we all have most at heart. What may one lawfully
mean by saying that Psychology ought to be treated
after the fashion of a "natural science"? I think that
I can state what I mean ; and I even hope that I can
enlist the sympathy of men like Professor Ladd in
the cause, when once the argument is fairly set forth.
What is a natural science, to begin with? It is a
mere fragment of truth broken out from the whole
mass of it for the sake of practical effectiveness ex
clusively. Divide et impera. Every special science,
in order to get at its own particulars at all, must
make a number of convenient assumptions and de
cline to be responsible for questions which the
human mind will continue to ask about them. Thus

*See especially the chapters headed "Introductory" and

"Epilogue."

317

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

physics assumes a material world, but never tries to
show how our experience of such a world is "pos
sible." It assumes the inter-action of bodies, and the
completion by them of continuous changes, without
pretending to know how such results can be. Be
tween the things thus assumed, now, the various
sciences find definite "laws" of sequence ; and so are
enabled to furnish general Philosophy with mate
rials properly shaped and simplified for her ulterior
tasks. If, therefore, psychology is ever to conform
to the type of the other natural sciences, it must
also renounce certain ultimate solutions, and place
itself on the usual common-sense basis by uncriti
cally begging such data as the existence of a physi
cal world, of states of mind, and of the fact that
these latter take cognizance of other things. What
the "physical world" may be in itself, how "states of
mind" can exist at all, and exactly what "taking
cognizance" may imply, are inevitable further
questions; but they are questions of the kind for
which general philosophy, not natural science, is
held responsible.

Now if there is any natural science in possession
of a subject-matter well set off and contrasted with
all others, it is psychology. However much our self-
consciousness, our freedom, our ability to conceive
universals, or what not, may ally us with the In
finite and Absolute, there is yet an aspect of our
being, even of our mental being, which falls wholly
within the sphere of natural history. As constitut
ing the inner life of individual persons who are born

318

[1892] PSYCHOLOGY AS NATURAL SCIENCE

and die, our conscious states are temporal events
arising in the ordinary course of nature, — events,
moreover, the conditions of whose happening or
non-happening from one moment to another, lie cer
tainly in large part in the physical world. Not only
this; they are events of such tremendous practical
moment to us that the control of these conditions
on a large scale would be an achievement compared
with which the control of the rest of physical nature
would appear comparatively insignificant. All nat
ural sciences aim at practical prediction and con
trol, and in none of them is this more the case than
in psychology to-day. We live surrounded by an
enormous body of persons who are most definitely
interested in the control of states of mind, and in
cessantly craving for a sort of psychological science
which will teach them how to act. What every edu
cator, every jail-warden, every doctor, every clergy
man, every asylum-superintendent, asks of psychol
ogy is practical rules. StTch men care little or noth
ing about the ultimate philosophic grounds of men
tal phenomena, but they do care immensely about
improving the ideas, dispositions, and conduct of
the particular individuals in their charge.

Now out of what may be called the biological
study of human nature there has at last been pre
cipitated a very important mass of material strung
on a guiding conception which already to some de
gree meets these persons' needs. The brain-path
theory based on reflex action, the conception of the
human individual as an organized mass of tenden-

319

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

cies to react mentally and muscularly on his en
vironment in ways which may be either preserva
tive or destructive, not only helps them to analyze
their cases, but often leads them to the right remedy
when perversion has set in. How much more this
conception may yet help them these men do not
know, but they indulge great hopes. Together with
the physiologists and naturalists they already form
a band of workers, full of enthusiasm and confidence
in each other, and are pouring in materials about
human nature so copious that the entire working
life of a student may easily go to keeping abreast of
the tide. The "psychical researchers," though kept
at present somewhat out in the cold, will inevitably
conquer the recognition which their labors also
deserve, and will make, perhaps, the most impor
tant contributions of all to the pile. But, as I just
remarked, few of these persons have any aptitude or
fondness for general philosophy ; they have quite as
little as the pure-blooded philosophers have for dis
covering particular facts.

The actual existence of two utterly distinct types
of mind, with their distinct needs, both of them hav
ing legitimate business to transact with psychology,
must then be recognized; and the only question
there can be is the practical one of how to distribute
the labor so as to waste it least and get the most
efficient results. For my part, I yield to no man in
my expectations of what general philosophy will
some day do in helping us to rational conceptions
of the world. But when I look abroad and see how

320

[1892] PSYCHOLOGY AS NATURAL SCIENCE

almost all the fresh life that has come into psychol
ogy of recent years has come from the biologists,
doctors, and psychical researchers, I feel as if their
impulse to constitute the science in their own way,
as a branch of biology, were an unsafe one to
thwart; and that wisdom lies, not in forcing the
consideration of the more metaphysical aspects of
human consciousness upon them, but, on the con
trary, in carefully rescuing these aspects from their
hands, and handing them over to those of the spe
cialists in philosophy, where the metaphysical
aspects of physics are already allowed to belong.
If there could be, after sufficient ventilation of the
subject, a generally expressed consent as to the kind
of problems in psychology that were metaphysical
and the kind that were analogous to those of the
natural sciences, and if the word "psychology"
could then be restricted so as to cover as much as
possible the latter and not the former problems, a
psychology so understood might be safely handed
over to the keeping of the men of facts, of the lab
oratory workers and biologists. We certainly need
something more radical than the old division into
"rational" and "empirical" psychology, both to be
treated by the same writer between the covers of
the same book. We need a fair and square and
explicit abandonment of such questions as that of
the soul, the transcendental ego, the fusion of ideas
or particles of mind stuff, etc., by the practical
man; and a fair and square determination on the
part of the philosophers to keep such questions out

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS [1892]

of psychology and treat them only in their widest
possible connections, amongst the objects of an ulti
mate critical review of all the elements of the world.
Prof. Andrew Seth has put the thing excellently
in his late inaugural address at Edinburgh,
on the Present Position of the Philosophical
Sciences.1 "Psychology," he says, "has become more
scientific, and has thereby become more conscious
of her own aims, and at the same time, of her neces
sary limitations. Ceasing to put herself forward as
philosophy, she has entered upon a new period of
development as science; and, in doing so, she has
disarmed the jealousy, and is even fast conquering
the indifference, of the transcendental philosopher."
Why should not Professor Ladd, why should not
any "transcendental philosopher," be glad to help
confirm and develop so beneficial a tendency as this?
In Professor Ladd's own book on Physiological
Psychology, that "real being, proceeding to unfold
powers that are sui generis, according to laws of its
own," for whose recognition he contends, plays no
organic part in the work,2 and has proved a mere

1Blackwood, 1891.

* I mean that such a being is quite barren of particular con
sequences. Its character is only known by its reactions on the
signals which the nervous system gives, and these must be
gathered by observation after the fact. If only it were subject
to successive reincarnations, as the theosophists say it is, so
that we might guess what sort of a body it would unite with
next, or what sort of persons it had helped to constitute pre
viously, those would be great points gained. But even those
gains are denied us; and the real being is, for practical pur
poses, an entire superfluity, which a practical psychology can
perfectly well do without.

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[1892] PSYCHOLOGY AS NATURAL SCIENCE

stumbling-block to his biological reviewers. Why
force it on their attention, and perpetuate thereby a
force it on their attention, and perpetuate thereby a
sort of wrangle from which physics and chemistry
have long since emerged, and from which psychol
ogy, if left to the "facts of experience" alone, prom
ises so soon to escape?

Now the sort of "fact of experience" on which in
my book I have proposed to compromise, is the so-
called "mental state," in whose existence not only
common men but philosophers have uniformly be
lieved. Whatever conclusions an ultimate criticism
may come to about mental states, they form a prac
tically admitted sort of object whose habits of co
existence and succession and relations with organic
conditions form an entirely definite subject of re
search. Cannot philosophers and biologists both be
come "psychologists" on this common basis? Can
not both forego ulterior inquiries, and agree that,
provisionally at least, the mental state shall be the
ultimate datum so far as "psychology" cares to go?
If the "scientific monists" would only agree to say
nothing of the states being produced by the integra
tion and differentiation of "psychic units," and
the "transcendental metaphysicians" agree to say
nothing of their being acts of spiritual entities de
veloping according to laws of their own, peace
might long reign, and an enormous booty of natural
laws be harvested in with comparatively no time or
energy lost in recrimination and dispute about first
principles. My own volumes are indeed full of such
recrimination and dispute, but these unfortunate

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS [1892]

episodes are for the most part incidental to the at
tempt to get the undivided "mental state" once for
all accepted by my colleagues as the fundamental
datum for their science. To have proposed such a
useful basis for united action in psychology is in
my own eyes the chief originality and service of the
book ; and I cannot help hoping that Professor Ladd
may himself yet feel the force of the considerations
now urged. Not that to-day we have a "science" of
the correlation of mental states with brain states;
but that the ascertainment of the laws of such cor
relation forms the programme of a science well
limited and defined. Of course, when such a science
is formed, the whole body of its conclusions will fall
a prey to philosophical reflection, and then Profes
sor Ladd's "real being" will inevitably have the best
possible chance to come to its rights.

One great reason why Professor Ladd cares so1
little about setting up psychology as a natural
science of the correlations of mental with cerebral
events, is that brain states are such desperately in
accessible things. I fully admit that any exact
account of brain states is at present far beyond our
reach; and I am surprised that Professor Ladd
should have read into my pages the opinion that
psychology as a natural science must aim at an ac
count of brain states exclusively, as the correlates
of states of mind. Our mental states are correlated
immediately with brain states, it is true ; but, more
remotely, they are correlated with many other phys
ical events, peripheral nerve currents for example,

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[1892] PSYCHOLOGY AS NATURAL SCIENCE

and the physical stimuli which occasion these. Of
these latter correlations we have an extensive body
of rather orderly knowledge. And, after all, may
we not exaggerate the degree of our ignorance of
brain states themselves? We don't know exactly
what a nerve current is, it is true; but we know a
good deal about it. We know that it follows a path,
for instance, and consumes a fraction of a second
of time in doing so. We know that, physically con
sidered, our brain is only a mass of such paths,
which incoming currents must somehow make their
way through before they run out. We even know
something about the consciousness with which par
ticular paths are specially "correlated," those in the
occipital lobes, e.g., being connected with the con
sciousness of visible things. Now the provisional
value of such knowledge as this, however inexact it
be, is still immense. It sketches an entire pro
gramme of investigation, and defines already one
great kind of law which will be ascertained. The
order in time of the nerve currents, namely, is what
determines the order in time, the coexistences and
successions of the states of mind to which they are
related. Professor Ladd probably does not doubt
the nerve-current theory of motor habits; he prob
ably does not doubt that our ability to learn
things "by heart" is due to a capacity in the
cerebral cortex for organizing definitely succes
sive systems of paths of discharge. Does he
then see any radical reason why the special
time-order of the "ideas" in any case whatever of

325

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

"association" may not be analogously explained?
And if not, may he not go on to admit that the most
characteristic features of our faculty of memory,1
of our perception of outer things,2 of our liability to
illusion,3 etc., are most plausibly and naturally ex
plained by acquired organic habitudes, stamped by
the order of impressions on the plastic matter of the
brain? But if he will admit all this, then the dia
grams of association-paths of which he preserves so
low an opinion are not absolutely contemptible.
They do represent the sort of thing which deter
mines the order of our thoughts quite as well as
those diagrams which chemists make of organic
molecules represent the sort of thing which deter
mines the order of substitution when new com
pounds are made.

It seems to me, finally, that a critic of cerebralism
in psychology ought to do one of two things. He
ought either to reject it in principle and entirely,
but then be willing to throw over, for example, such
results as the entire modern doctrine of aphasia —
a very hard thing to do ; or else he ought to accept
it in principle, but then cordially admit that, in
spite of present shortcomings, we have here an im
mense opening upon which a stable phenomenal
science must some day appear. We needn't pretend

1 Such as the need of a "cue" ; the advantages, for recall, of
repetition and multiple association ; the fact of obliviscence, etc.

2 That the ideas of all the thing's attributes arise in the
imagination, even when only a few of them are felt, etc.

3 That, e.g., the most usual (and therefore probable) associ
ates of the present sensation are mentally imagined even when
not actually there.

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[1892] PSYCHOLOGY AS NATURAL SCIENCE

that we have the science already ; but we can cheer
those on who are working for its future, and clear
metaphysical entanglements from their path. In
short, we can aspire.

We never ought to doubt that Humanity will
continue to produce all the types of thinker which
she needs. I myself do not doubt of the "final per
severance" or success of the philosophers. Never
theless, if the hard alternative were to arise of a
choice between "theories" and "facts" in psychol
ogy, between a merely rational and a merely prac
tical science of the mind, I do not see how any man
could hesitate in his decision. The kind of psychol
ogy which could cure a case of melancholy, or charm
a chronic insane delusion away, ought certainly to
be preferred to the most seraphic insight into the
nature of the soul. And that is the sort of psy
chology which the men who care little or nothing
for ultimate rationality, the biologists, nerve-doc
tors, and psychical researchers, namely, are surely
tending, whether we help them or not, to bring
about.

327

XXI

THE OKIGINAL DATUM OF SPACE-
CONSCIOUSNESS x

[1893]

UNDER this title Mr. E. Ford, in the last Mind,
propounds to Mr. Ward and myself an alternative
which he considers fatal to our doctrines of space-
perception. May I make a reply to the criticism so
far as it concerns my own view?

Mr. Ford says that "local signs" are "utterly in
adequate to furnish a foundation for the perception
of position." If "to furnish a foundation" mean "to
explain^ I entirely agree with our critic. The [term] 2
"local sign" has perhaps come to be abused in recent
literature on the space-question. Lotze's original in
tent with it (if I am not mistaken) was rather
negative than positive. He needed a term which
would denote a numerically distinctive quality in
each point of our sensitive surfaces, and yet which
would not connote any positive explanation of the
relative positions in which the objects perceived
by the points appear arranged. But one now notices
a tendency to use the term "local sign" as if it were

C1 Reprinted from Mind, 1893, N.S. 2, 363-365. Written in
reply to "The Original Datum of Space-Consciousness," by E.
Ford, i&id., 217-218. ED.]

[a Substituted for "word." ED.]

328

[1893] DATUM OF SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS

meant to cover some mysterious explanation. I am
not sure that Mr. Ford does not take it in this way,
for he assumes that Mr. Ward and I "deduce" or
"develop" space from the local sign system. I, for
one, certainly disclaim anything of the kind. By
defending what I call a sensationalist theory of
space-perception, I mean Expressly to deny that we
can logically or rationally deduce the features of the
finished phenomenon. Its antecedents are physi
ological. Mr. Ford asks : "How much does the con
ception of extensity involve?" As a matter of fact,
extensity involves all that comes out of it in the way
of finished space-determinations. But as a mere
conception, I do not see that extensity necessarily
involves any exact system of points with their rela
tions or distances, for we may empirically be con
scious of spaces that are exceedingly confused and
vague as to their inner content. This is especially
marked in dozing and in recovery from syncope or
anaesthesia. Neither, on the other hand, do any
number of distinct feelings, susceptible of serial ar
rangement, such as "local signs" are assumed to
be, necessarily "involve" extensity, for we find in
every department of our sensibility feelings which,
when we arrange them serially, never appear spread
out before us in space. That certain organs give us
sensations of extensity, and that parts of these
organs contribute objects which when separately
attended to appear definitely placed within the ex-
tensity, are facts which seem to me insusceptible
of any logical explanation. All we can say is,

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

that these organs act in this way, and others
do not.

Take, to illustrate, the cases of the eye and the
ear. When we first hear a musical chord, it has
a certain richness and volume, but no distinct parts
are apprehended within it yet. By setting the at
tention in a certain way, however, we discern first
one and then another of the notes. There is a qual
ity in each note which identifies, individualises, and
distinguishes it from the rest. Moreover, if we
"compare" the notes, we feel a relation between
them, which Professor Stumpf has well called their
"distance." One pair have more distance between
them than another, so that we can arrange them
serially. In the case of the notes, however, no one
would seriously pretend that the distance was a
sound, like that of the notes themselves. Most
people would call it a relation intellectually and not
sensibly apprehended; and if asked why it is not
sensibly perceived, would simply say that we have
no sense-organ for such relations. Now the field of
vision is both like and unlike the chord. It is some
thing rich and voluminous, within which presently,
by setting the attention, we discern first one and
then another spot, and then, by comparing, define
the distance between them. Only here the distance
is a thing seen, and not a relation apprehended
merely intellectually; for in the eye we have, as in
the ear we have not, a sense-organ for such distances.
Simultaneously with the spots, their distance is
optically felt, the physiological condition of the feel-

330

[1893] DATUM OF SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS

ing being the excited retinal tract which stretches
between the retinal points on which the spots fall.

But, says Mr. Ford, if the seen distance, or line,
"is a feeling, what is the relation between this feel
ing and the two points which it connects? Our
reply of course would be: That of 'besideness,' of
local contact, which we consider must be postulated
as a primary datum. We do not see what answer
would be open to Mr. James."

To which I can only reply that the answer
"primary datum'' is as open to me as to Mr. Ford.
That two seen things, when distinguished, appear
"beside" each other, and that two heard things do
not, seem to me two inexplicable facts. The usual
explanation that we pass from the one seen thing to
the other by a muscular "sweep," the feeling of
which is absent in the case of the heard things, is
quite inadequate ; for (even if the facts were strictly
true, which they are not) one does not see why the
end of a muscular feeling should appear separated
in space from its beginning any more than one sees
why the beginning and end of a sound should not
so appear. Nor can [the]1 Mill's phrase of "mental
chemistry" or Wundt's of psychic "synthesis" be
held to have explanatory value. On the contrary,
they but rename the mystery. Whatever the in
trinsic character of the qualities known as local
signs may be, if they are susceptible of serial grada
tion, they must appear more or less "distant" from
each other, and some will appear next each other.

C1 Apparently a misprint. ED.]
331

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

But the distance will be space-distance, and the
nextness will be "besideness," only when the whole
system of qualities aroused together appears with
spread-outness or extent. Serial position then be
comes sensible and palpable as place. Behind this
"ultimate fact" we cannot go.

When then Mr. Ford offers his final dilemma:
"The local sign is either given as a relation or as a
quality ; if the former, the relation of position must
be original and the development-theory is super
fluous; if the latter, the theory fails," I can only
say that I know of no development-theory for which
I am responsible, for I never tried "to develop"
either extensity or position out of local signs. The
local sign is of course a quality, and one local sign
by itself cannot be given as a relation. But that,
when many local signs, or rather the sensitive
organic points which correspond to them, are excited
together, the objects tinged by the local signs appear
in relation, and eke in relations of position, is a fact
which no theory of mine ever attempted rationally
to explain.

332

XXII

ME. BKADLEY ON IMMEDIATE
KESEMBLANCE *

[1893]

MY agreement with Mr. Bradley that "the issue
involved is one of very great and wide-reaching
importance" must be my excuse for sending a word
of comment on his paper in the January Mind.
The text of his criticism is furnished by pp. 490-
494, and 532-533 of Vol. I. of my work The Prin
ciples of Psychology, and the exact question is this :
Is the "resemblance" which we predicate of two
objects due in the last resort always to the opera
tions on our mind of qualitatively identical elements
contained in each? Or, may we, on the other hand,
admit the existence, amongst our mind's objects, of
qualities or natures which have no definite "point"
in common, but which we perceive to be, although
numerically distinct, yet like each other in various
degrees and ways? We so often discover later the
exact point of resemblance in two composite objects
which first struck us by their likeness as vague

C1 Reprinted from Mind, 1893, N.S. 2, 208-210. Written in
reply to F. H. Bradley's "On Professor James's Doctrine of
Simple Resemblance," Hid., 83-88. This and the following dis
cussion are referred to in The Pluralistic Universe (1909), p.
335, note. ED.]

333

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

wholes, and we are so often able to name it as an
identical portion in both, that the temptation to
generalise lies very near ; and we then say that there
can nowhere be natures immediately like or unlike
each other, and that every case of so-called similar
ity, even the simplest, must constitute a problem in
analysis, which a higher discernment might solve.
But since the higher discernment, methodically
abandoned to this analytic quest, ought not to stop
at any elements of which resemblance is simply
affirmed (for the "point" of this resemblance must
then also be sought), it is obvious that the problem
can only lead to one of two conclusions, either to

(1) The postulation of point after point, encap
sulated within each other in infinitum, as the con
stitutive condition of the resemblance of any two
objects ; or to

(2) A last kind of element (if one could then say
"kind") of whose self-compoundings all the objects,
and of whose diverse numbers in the objects, all the
likeness and unlikeness in the world are made.

Of these two views of resemblance the former
leads to a sort of Leibnitzian metaphysics, and the
latter to what I call the Mind-dust theory.

My solution, or rather Stumpf s (for in my book
I am but the humble follower of the eminent Munich
psychologist), was to take neither of these objection
able alternatives, but (challenging the hasty hypoth
esis that composition must explain all) to admit

(3) That the last elements of things may differ
variously, and that their "kinds" and bare unmedi-

334

[1893] IMMEDIATE RESEMBLANCE

ated resemblances and contrasts may be ultimate
data of our world as well as provisional categories
of our perception.

Mr. Bradley is dissatisfied both with this thesis,1
and with the arguments given in my book to support
it. I care much more about the thesis than about
the arguments, so I will spare the reader all cavil at
my critic's treatment of the latter. In particular I
abandon the series-business to his mercy, as being
something inessential, for I am much more con
cerned with furthering understanding of the subject
than with defending my own text.2 As regards the
thesis itself, Mr. Bradley quarrels greatly with the
simplicity of the elements between which in the last
resort it contends that bare unmediated resemblance
may obtain. I did, it is true, assume in my text
that the elements were simple, and I called them
simple qualities, but I regard that as an entirely
inessential point. So far as my thesis stands up for
ultimate unmediated likeness as against likeness
dependent on partially identical content, it makes
no difference whether the last elements assumed to

1 Or have I made a gross blunder, and is lie dissatisfied really
not with "simple resemblance" but only with "resemblance
between simples," on which, as I presently explain, I do not
insist?

'One misapprehension, however, I may complain of. Mr.
Bradley seems to accuse me of believing that the "points of
resemblance" which form the ground of similarity must be
"separable" parts of the similar things. Discernible parts are
all that the argument requires ; and I surely never implied that
the "points" in question must be susceptible of physical isola
tion. The accusation is so absurd that I fear I have not under
stood Mr. P.radley's text.

335

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

be like, are simple or complex. They must only not
contain any identical point. In other words, com
plexes like abc and def might resemble each other
by principle (3) as well as simple elements like a
and 6.

This clears up one confusion. But dire confu
sion still remains in my mind as to the rest of what
Mr. Bradley may mean. He has a solution of his
own which is like neither (1), (2), nor (3) as pro
pounded above. He alludes to it abundantly, but
dispenses himself from stating it articulately, or
illustrating it by any example, because it proceeds
from a principle which he imagines to be the "com
mon property of philosophic students." Such or
acular expression of opinion might fairly exempt
one from the duty of nearer research, but the great
debt I owe to Mr. Bradley's Logic makes me strug
gle in the hope of yet finding valuable truth. Mr.
Bradley appears to hold that all likeness must be
"in and through a particular point" — at least he
says so on page 85. Now call the "point" m, and
the two like objects a and b. If the m in a were
simply like the m in b, that would be that simple
resemblance over again with which Mr. Bradley is
not content. But if we suppose the two m's to be
alike by virtue of another "point," finer still, that
leads to infinite regress; and that again I under
stand Mr. Bradley not to favour. It then would
remain open to say that the two w's in a and & are
identical in nature and only numerically distinct.
But here again pure identity displeases Mr. Brad-

336

[1893] IMMEDIATE RESEMBLANCE

ley, whose great principle is that "our one chance
lies in maintaining the vital, the inseparable con
nexion at every point between identity and differ
ence" (bottom of p. 88). Just how this principle
works in the matter in question, Mr. Bradley does
not divulge, and I wish that, instead of his pleasant
irony about my familiarity with the dialectical
method, he had himself given some exacter account.
I have laboured with the greatest good-will to recon
struct his thought, but feel wholly at sea with my
results. If he means simply the Hegelian common
place that whereas neither the abstract sameness
nor the abstract otherness of two objects can con
stitute likeness between them, the likeness must
seek in the "synthesis" of the sameness with the
otherness its only possible mode of realisation, that
seems to me but an excessively clumsy way of stat
ing in terms of a gwm-miracle the very truth which
Stumpf and I express by saying that likeness is an
immediately ascertained relation. You cannot for
ever analytically exhibit its ground^ but must some
where at last postulate it as there, as having already
effected itself, you know not how. Nothing is gained
for our understanding by presenting the process
as a sort of juggler's trick, that, namely, of the seem
ingly impossible coalescence, of two contradictory
terms; and therefore I cannot believe that the
subtle Mr. Bradley has anything as innocent as that
in his mind. Perhaps what I write may draw him
from his reserve!

Of course there is a familiar path open to those

337

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

who believe that likeness must be "in and through
a particular point," and who yet deny that the
"point" can be in two objects the same. They can
call likeness an "Antinomy"; saying that all like
ness of wholes is conditioned on that of their meta
physical parts, and that unconditionally like parts
are unattainable, however long one may seek. But
this leaves both immediate likeness and apparent
identity as ever-recurring categories in our think
ing, never to be expelled from our empirical world,
and I submit that Mr. Bradley has not yet shown
these categories to be absurd. "Antinomies" should
surely not be multiplied beyond necessity. The
qualities of the things of this world, the "terms"
between which likenesses and differences obtain,
are not supposed to be engendered by the summation
of a procession of still more inward qualities in
volved within each other in infinite regression, like
the whirls of an endlessly converging spiral that
never reaches its central point. Why need we in
sist that the "relations" between the terms, the like
nesses and differences themselves, must be engen
dered by such an impossible summation or synthe
sis? How quality logically makes itself, we do not
know ; and we know no more in the case of the qual
ity of a relation of likeness, than in that of the
quality of a sensational content.

338

XXIII

IMMEDIATE EESEMBLANCE *

[1893]

MAY another word be permitted in reply to Mr.
Bradley's second utterance on this subject, as pos
sibly helping to clear up the dispute? My point
of view was merely psychological in contending, as
I did in my book, for the admission of immediate
resemblance as an ultimate category of our percep
tion, and of comparison as an ultimate function of
our thought. The doctrine (made so plausible by
familiar examples) that all resemblances must be
analysable into identities concealed under non-iden
tities, I showed could not be extended to every imag
inable case. Mr. Bradley now says that immediate
resemblance without identity seems to him "sheer
nonsense," and that "to deny the principle of Iden
tity is to destroy the world," and he challenges me
again to "state the principle" on which I "object
to identity." To which challenge I can only reply
that to identity as such I have no objection in the
world, and am astonished that any one should sus-

[J Reprinted from Mind, 1893, N.S. 2, 509—510. Written in
reply to F. H. Bradley's "Professor James on Simple Re
semblance," Mind, 1893, N.S. 2, 366-369, in which Bradley de
fends the conception of itlentity-in-difference. A final reply
by Mr. Bradley appeared in ibid., p. 510. ED.]

339

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

pect me of such an irrational aversion. Every act
of reasoning, every bit of analysis, proves the prac
tical utility and the psychological necessity of the
assumption that identical characters may be "encap
sulated" in different things. But I say that there
must be some things whose resemblance is not based
on such discernible and abstractable identity. Now,
the identity on which Mr. Bradley himself thinks
that the resemblance between all things must be
based is no such abstractable identity. It is not
separable, it is not even discernible, he says, from
difference. It is only one aspect of an integral
whole on which you may lay stress for a moment,
but if you abstract it, or put it ideally in a box by
itself, you make it self -inconsistent, or reduce it to
nothing. But an "identity" thus conceived is so
different a thing from the stark self-sameness which
"identity" denotes in logic, that it seems unfortu
nate to describe it by the same name. The usual
English name for that sort of identity between two
things which you cannot abstract or distinguish
from their difference is their "resemblance." So
that Mr. Bradley now makes perfectly clear that in
seeming to attack Professor Stumpf s and my doc
trine he is but reaffirming it under a changed name.
When he insists that every resemblance must have
for its inner ground an "identity" thus complicat-
edly conceived, he is like a man who should say
"every resemblance must have for its inner ground
the resemblance itself." Why, such being the case,
he should quarrel with me I cannot fathom : for this

340

[1893] IMMEDIATE RESEMBLANCE

is exactly the opinion I have myself stood up for in
all simple cases. Can it be the word "simple" which
has caused all the trouble? — for I believe that in
my book I did heedlessly use the expression "simple
resemblance" in one place. But I never meant
thereby to imply that the simplest phenomenon of
resemblance might not seem, when contemplated
long enough, fairly to curdle and swim with inner
complexity, to embody inseparable oppositions, or
whatever more of vital mystery any one may find.
The simplest ideas, as I meant to use the word
simple, begin to look the queerest when gazed at in
this way. But such gazing is a "metaphysical" occu
pation, in which we shall all indulge, I am sure, with
the greatest profit, when Mr. Bradley's new book
comes out. / never meant to go beyond psychology ;
and on that relatively superficial plane I now con
fidently greet Mr. Bradley, no longer as the foe
which by a mere verbal ambiguity he has seemed,
but as a powerful and welcome ally.

341

XXIV

LADD'S "PSYCHOLOGY: DESCRIPTIVE
AND EXPLANATORY" x

[1894]

As regards the originality of this treatise, it is
strictly true that it is independent from beginning
to end. The period of assimilation is past for the
author; the raw materials have been brought into
solution, and have crystallized out again spontane
ously and naturally in the form that characterizes
his mind. In this sense his pages are mellow and
alive, and full of native observation and expression
of belief. But with all the concreteness, honesty,
veracity, and shrewd humor that I find, I can, with
the best will in the world, find no one idea or argu
ment that abides with me as an unforgetable addi
tion to the subject. What does strike me with the
force of freshness is the amazing thoroughness
with which Professor Ladd realizes the intricacy of
his facts. It seems to me little short of wonderful
that a man should be able to make so many subdi
visions, and find so many distinct things to say on
the descriptive level. In this sense he is original,

[lfrhe closing paragraphs of a review of G. T. Ladd's
Psychology: Descriptive and Explanatory. Reprinted from
Psychological Review, 1894, 1, 286-293. ED.]

342 *

[1894] LADD'S PSYCHOLOGY

for no one has yet attained to writing up the subject
in as fine-grained a way as this. But to be perfectly
frank — and here I fully realize that the critic writes
down his own shortcomings even more plainly than
those of the author on whom he presumes to ani
madvert with his subjective epithets — I find this
whole descriptive sort of treatment tedious as few
things can be tedious, tedious not as really hard
things, like physics and chemistry, are tedious, but
tedious as the throwing of feathers hour after hour
is tedious; and I confess that when I think of
the probable number of virgin-minded youths and
maidens, hungry for spiritual food, who, through
the length and breadth of this great land, will now
certainly be led over all these pages of fine print
merely to get back,

"Statt der lebendigen Natur
Da Gott den Menschen schuf hinein,"

all these terrific abstract words and sentences, I feel
a sort of shudder at the violence done to human
want. It is not that Ladd qua Ladd is a tedious
writer, — I could name many eminent psychologists
who are more tedious to me than he, — but that mere
description as such, mere translation into words of
what we already possess in living fulness in our
bosoms, is bound to be tedious under any circum
stances. To speak more soberly, could not the
words have been much fewer, and yet have con
tained all the abstract truth one needs to know?
These groans of mine no doubt proceed from the

343

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

same idiosyncrasy that makes me demand that psy
chology shall be a "science" in a sense different from
that by which Professor Ladd is satisfied. I desid
erate "conditions" ; for Ladd "analysis" and "trac
ing of genesis and growth" are enough (p. 8). I
cry for a "Galileo or a Lavoisier" to lift us from this
flat descriptive level, whilst my colleague says that
he does not sympathize in the least with such "a
confession of weakness — for example — because 'psy
chology is still in the condition of chemistry before
Lavoisier/ nor look forward with the expectation
that soon some Lavoisier will arise to rescue it from
its depressed condition" (659). He thinks that all
attempts to assimilate psychology to the other
natural sciences are "misleading" (ibid.). To me
this lack of craving for insight into causes is most
strange. Here is a flagrant mystery, that of the
union of mind with brain, and we are apparently
told that we must seek no reasons for it in a deeper
insight into either factor! — told, in other words,
that a mere narrative of the life of the spiritual
being with its "unique unity," developing according
to its equally unique laws, is the uttermost ideal
of research — for Professor Ladd's contention is
hardly distinguishable from this. To me, on the
other hand, it seems as if "methodologically" the
crudest cerebralistic theories, or the wildest theo-
sophic ones about the seven principles of human
nature, lead in a more healthy direction than this
contented resignation. And as the theories of in
heritance have killed the taxonomic and biographic

344

[1894] LADD'S PSYCHOLOGY

view of natural history by merely superseding it,
and reduced the older books of classification to
mere indexes, so will the descriptive psychologies
be similarly superseded the moment some genuinely
causal psycho-physic theory comes upon the stage.
Not that they will be judged false, but that they
will then seem insignificant. Alas that my learned
Yale co-editor will not join with me in saying :

"King out, ring out, our mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in'

*» t

345

XXV

THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION1

[1894]

IN the year 1884 Professor Lange of Copenhagen
and the present writer published, independently of
each other, the same theory of emotional conscious
ness. They affirmed it to be the effect of the organic
changes, muscular and visceral, of which the so-
called "expression" of the emotion consists. It is
thus not a primary feeling, directly aroused by the
exciting object or thought, but a secondary feeling
indirectly aroused; the primary effect being the
organic changes in question, which are immediate
reflexes following upon the presence of the object.

This idea has a paradoxical sound when first ap
prehended, and it has not awakened on the whole
the confidence of psychologists. It may interest
some readers if I give a sketch of a few of the more
recent comments on it.

Professor Wundt's criticism may be mentioned
first.2 He unqualifiedly condemns it, addressing
himself exclusively to Lange's version. He accuses
the latter of being one of those psychologischen
Scheinerkldrungen which assume that science is

['Reprinted from Psychological Review, 1894, 1, 516-529.
Cf. "What is an Emotion?" above, pp. 244-275, and p. 244,
note, ED.]

*Philosophische Studien, VI., 349 (1891).

346

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

satisfied when a psychic fact is once for all referred
to a physiological ground.

His own account of the matter is that the im
mediate and primary result of "the reaction of
Apperception1 on any conscious-content" or object
is a Gefiihl (364). Gcfuhl is an unanalyzable and
simple process corresponding in the sphere of
Gemuth to sensation in the sphere of intellection
(359) . But Gefuhle have the power of altering the
course of ideas — inhibiting some and attracting
others, according to their nature ; and these ideas in
turn produce both secondary Gefuhle and organic
changes. The organic changes in turn set up addi
tional sinnliche Gefuhle which fuse with the preced
ing ones and strengthen the volume of feeling
aroused. This whole complex process is what Wundt
calls an Affect or Emotion — a state of mind which,
as he rightly says, "has thus the power of intensify
ing itself" (358-363). I shall speak later of what
may be meant by the primary Gefuhl thus described.
Wundt in any case would seem to be certain both

*In this article, as in the 4th edition of his Psychology,
Wundt vaguely completes his volte-face concerning "Appercep
tion" and dimly describes the latter in associationist terms.
"Apperception is nothing really separable from the effects which
it produces in the content of representation. In fact it consists
of nothing but these concomitants and effects. [A thing that
"consists" of its concomitants!] ... In each single appercep-
tive act the entire prerious content of the conscious life oper
ates as a sort of integral total force" (364, 365), etc. The
whole account seems indistinguishable from pure Herbartism,
in which Apperception is only a name for the interaction of the
old and the new in consciousness, of which interaction feeling
may be one result.

347

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS [18943

that it is the essential part of the emotion, and that
currents from the periphery cannot be its organic
correlate. I should say, granting its existence, that
it falls short of the emotion proper, since it involves
no commotion, and that such currents are its cause.
But of these points later on. The rest of Wundt's
criticism is immaterial, dealing exclusively with cer
tain rash methodological remarks of Lange's; em
phasizing the "parallelism" of the psychical and the
physical ; and pointing out the vanity of seeking in
the latter a causal explanation of the former. As if
Lange ever pretended to do this in any intimate
sense ! Two of Wundt's remarks, however, are more
concrete.

How insufficient, he says, must Lange's explana
tion of emotions from vaso-motor effects be, when
it results in making him put joy and anger together
in one class ! To which I reply both that Lange has
laid far too great stress on the vaso-motor factor
in his explanations, and that he has been materially
wrong about congestion of the face being the es
sential feature in anger, for in the height of that
passion almost every one grows pale — a fact which
the expression "white with rage" commemorates.
Secondly, Wundt says, whence comes it that if a cer
tain stimulus be what causes emotional expression
by its mere reflex effects, another stimulus almost
identical with the first will fail to do so if its
mental effects are not the same? (355) . The mental
motivation is the essential thing in the production
of the emotion, let the "object" be what it may.

348

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

This objection, in one form or another, recurs in
all the published criticisms. "Not the mere object
as such is what determines the physical effects,"
writes Mr. D. Irons in a recent article1 which, if it
were more popularly written, would be undeniably
effective, "but the subjective feeling towards the ob
ject. . . . An emotional class is not something ob
jective; each subject to a great extent classifies in
this regard for itself, and even here time and cir
cumstance make alteration and render stability im
possible. .../// were not afraid, the object would
not be an object of terror" (p. 84). And Dr. W. L.
Worcester, in an article2 which is both popularly
written and effective, says: "Neither running nor
any other of the symptoms of fear which he [W. J.]
enumerates is the necessary result of seeing a bear.
A chained or caged bear may excite only feelings of
curiosity, and a well-armed hunter might experience
only pleasurable feelings at meeting one loose in the
woods. It is not, then, the perception of the bear
that excites the movements of fear. We do not run
from the bear unless we' suppose him capable of
doing us bodily injury. Why should the expecta
tion of being eaten, for instance, set the muscles of
our legs in motion? 'Common sense' would be likely
to say that it was because we object to being eaten;
but according to Professor James the reason we
dislike to be eaten is because we run away" (287).

1 Professor James's "Theory of Emotion," Mind, p. 78, 1894.

a "Observations on Some Points in James's Psychology. II.
Emotion," The Mortist, Vol. III., p. 285 (1893).

349

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

A reply to these objections is the easiest thing in
the world to make if one only remembers the force
of association in psychology. "Objects" are cer
tainly the primitive arousers of instinctive reflex
movements. But they take their place, as experi
ence goes on, as elements in total "situations,"1 the
other suggestions of which may prompt to move
ments of an entirely different sort. As soon as an
object has become thus familiar and suggestive, its
emotional consequences, on any theory of emotion,
must start rather from the total situation which it
suggests than from its own naked presence. But
whatever be our reaction on the situation, in the last
resort it is an instinctive reaction on that one of
its elements which strikes us for the time being as
most vitally important. The same bear may truly
enough excite us to either fight or flight, according
as he suggests an overpowering "idea" of his killing
us, or one of our killing him. But in either case the
question remains: Does the emotional excitement
which follows the idea follow it immediately, or sec
ondarily and as a consequence of the "diffusive
wave" of impulses aroused?

Dr. Worcester finds something absurd in the very
notion of acts constituting emotion by the conscious
ness which they arouse. How is it, he says, with vol
untary acts? "If I see a shower coming up and run
for a shelter, the emotion is evidently of the same
kind, though perhaps less in degree, as in the case of

*In my nomenclature it is the total situation which is the
"object" on which the reaction of the subject is made.

350

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

the man who runs from the bear. According to Pro
fessor James, I am afraid of getting wet because I
run. But suppose that instead of running I step
into a shop and buy an umbrella. The emotion is
still the same. I am afraid of getting wet. Con
sequently, so far as I can see, the fear in this case
consists in buying the umbrella. Fear of hunger,
in like manner, might consist in laying in a store of
provisions; fears of poverty in shovelling dirt at
a dollar a day, and so on indefinitely. Anger, again,
may be associated with many other actions than
striking. Shylock's anger at Antonio's insulte
induced him to lend him money. Did the anger
. . . consist in the act of lending the money?'7
(291). I think that all the force of such objections
lies in the slapdash brevity of the language used, of
which I admit that my own text set a bad example
when it said "we are frightened because we run."
Yet let the word "run" but stand for what it was
meant to stand for, namely, for many other move
ments in us, of which invisible visceral ones seem
by far the most essential ; discriminate also between
the various grades of emotion which we designate
by one name, and our theory holds up its head again.
"Fear" of getting wet is not the same fear as fear of
a bear. It may limit itself to a prevision of the un
pleasantness of a wet skin or of spoiled clothes, and
this may prompt either to deliberate running or to
buying an umbrella with a very minimum of prop
erly emotional excitement being aroused. What
ever the fear may be in such a case, it is not con-

351

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

stituted by the voluntary act.1 Only the details of
the concrete case can inform us whether it be, as
above suggested, a mere ideal vision of unpleasant
sensations, or whether it go farther and involve also
feelings of reflex organic change. But in either case
our theory will cover all the facts.

Both Dr. Worcester and Mr. Irons are struck by
this variability in the symptoms of any given emo
tion ; and holding the emotion itself to be constant,
they consider that such inconstant symptoms can
not be its cause. Dr. Worcester acutely remarks
that the actions accompanying all emotions tend to
become alike in proportion to their intensity.
People weep from excess of joy; pallor and trem
bling accompany extremes of hope as well as of fear,
etc. But, I answer, do not the subject's feelings also
then tend to become alike, if considered in them
selves apart from all their differing intellectual con
texts? My theory maintains that they should do
so; and such reminiscences of extreme emotion as
I possess rather seem to confirm than to invalidate
such a view.

In Dr. Lehmann's highly praiseworthy book, Die
Hauptgesetze des menschlichen Grefiihlslebens*
much is said of Lange's theory; and in particular
this same alleged identity of the emotion in the
midst of such shifting organic symptoms seems to
strike the critic as a fact irreconcilable with its be-

1When the running has actually commenced, it gives rise to
exhilaration by its effects on breathing and pulse, etc., in this
case, and not to fear.

3 Leipzig, 1892.

352

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

ing true. The emotion ought to be different when the
symptoms are different, if the latter make the emo
tion; whereas if we lay a primary mental feeling at
its core its constancy with shifting symptoms is no
such hard thing to understand (p. 120). Some in
constancy in the mental state itself, however, Dr.
Lehmann admits to follow from the shifting symp
toms ; but he contrasts the small degree of this in
constancy in the case of "motived" emotions where
we have a recognized mental cause for our mood,
with its great degree where the emotion is "un-
motived," as when it is produced by intoxicants
(alcohol, haschisch, opium) or by cerebral disease,
and changes to its opposite with every reversal of
the vaso-motor and other organic states. I must
say that I cannot regard this argument as fatal to
Lange's and my theory so long as we remain in such
real ignorance as to what the subjective variations
of our emotions actually are. Exacter observation,
both introspective and symptomatic, might well
show in "motived" emotions also just the amount
of inconstancy that the theory demands.

Mr. Irons actually accuses me of self-contradic
tion in admitting that the symptoms of the same
emotion vary from one man to another, and yet that
the emotion has them for its cause. How can any
definite emotion, he asks, exist under such circum
stances, and what is there then left to give unity to
such concepts as anger or fear at all (82)? The
natural reply is that the bodily variations are within
limits, and that the symptoms of the angers and of

353

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

the fears of different men still preserve enough func
tional resemblance, to say the very least, in the
midst of their diversity to lead us to call them by
identical names. Surely there is no definite affec
tion of "anger" in an "entitative" sense.

Mr. Irons finds great difficulty in believing that
both intellectual and emotional states of mind, both
the cognition of an object and the emotion which
it causes, contrasted as they are, can be due to such
similar neural processes, viz., currents from the
periphery, as my theory assumes. "How," he asks,
"can one perceptive process of itself suffuse with
emotional warmth the cold intellectuality of
another? ... If perceptions can have this warmth,
why is it the exclusive property of perception of
organic disturbance ( 85 ) ?" ^ I reply in the first
place that it is not such exclusive property, for all
the higher senses have warmth when "aesthetic"
objects excite them. And I reply in the second place
that even if secondarily aroused visceral thrills were
the only objects that had warmth, I should see no
difficulty in accepting the fact. This writer further
lays great stress on the vital difference between the
receptive and the reactive states of the mind, and
considers that the theory under discussion takes
away all ground for the distinction. His account
of the inner contrast in question is excellent. He
gives the name of "feeling-attitude" to the whole
class of reactions of the self, of which the experi
ences which we call emotions are one species. He
sharply distinguishes feeling-attitude from mere

354

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

pleasure and pain — a distinction in which I fully
agree. The line of direction in feeling-attitude is
from the self outward, he says, while that of mere
pleasure and pain (and of perception and ideation)
is from the object to the self. It is impossible to
feel pleasure or pain toivards an object ; and common
language makes a sharp distinction between being
pained and having bad feelings towards somebody
in consequence. These attitudes of feeling are al
most indefinitely numerous; some of them must
always intervene between cognition and action, and
when in them we feel our whole Being moved (93-
96). Of course one must admit that any account
of the physiology of emotion that should be incon
sistent with the possibility of this strong contrast
within consciousness would thereby stand con
demned. But on what ground have we the right
to affirm that visceral and muscular sensibility can
not give the direction from the self outwards, if
the higher senses (taken broadly, with their idea-
tional sequeke) give the direction from the object to
the self? We do, it is true, but follow a natural
analogy when we say (as Fouillee keeps saying in
his works on Idees-forces, and as Ladd would seem
to imply in his recent Psychology) that the former
direction in consciousness ought to be mediated by
outgoing nerve-currents, and the latter by currents
passing in. But is not this analogy a mere super
ficial fancy, which reflection shows to have no basis
in any existing knowledge of what such currents
can or cannot bring to pass? We surely know too

355

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS £1894]

little of the psycho-physic relation to warrant us in
insisting that the similarity of direction of two
physical currents makes it impossible that they
should bring a certain inner contrast about.

Both Dr. Worcester and Mr. Irons insist on the
fact that consciousness of bodily disturbance, taken
by itself, and apart from its combination with the
consciousness of an exciting object, is not emotional
at all. "Laughing and sobbing, for instance," writes
the former, "are spasmodic movements of the
muscles of respiration, not strikingly different from
hiccoughing; and there seems no good reason why
the consciousness of the former two should usually
be felt as strong emotional excitement while the lat
ter is not. . . .Shivering from cold, for instance, is
the same sort of a movement as may occur in vio
lent fright but it does not make us feel frightened.
The laughter excited in children and sensitive per
sons by tickling of the skin is not necessarily accom
panied by any mirthful feelings. The act of vomit
ing may be the accompaniment of the most extreme
disgust, or it may occur without a trace of such
emotion" (289). The facts must be admitted; but
in none of these cases where an organic change gives
rise to a mere local bodily perception is the repro
duction of an emotional diffusive wave complete.
Visceral factors, hard to localize, are left out ; and
these seem to be the most essential ones of all. I
have said that where they also from any inward
cause are added, we have the emotion ; and that then
the subject is seized with objectless or pathological

356

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

dread, grief, or rage, as the case may be. Mr. Irons
refuses to accept this interpretation. The bodily
symptoms do not here, he says, when felt, constitute
the emotion. In the case of fear they constitute
rather the object of which we are afraid. We fear
them, on account of their unknown or indefinite evil
consequences. In the case of morbid rage, he sug
gests, the movements are probably not the expres
sion of a genuine inner rage, but only frantic
attempts to relieve some inward pain, which out
wardly look like rage to the observer (80). These
interpretations are ingenious, and may be left to
the reader's judgment. I confess that they fail to
convert me from my own hypothesis.1

Messrs. Irons and Wundt (and possibly Baldwin
and Sully, neither of whom accept the theory in dis-

1 Mr. Irons elsewhere says that "an object on being presented
suddenly may cause intense fear. On being recognized as
familiar the terror may vanish instantly, and while the mental
mood has changed, for a measurable time at least, all the bodily
effects of the former state are present" (86). Their dying
phase certainly is present for a while; but has the emotion
then "vanished instantly"? I should rather say that there is
then a very mixed emotional state, in which something of the
departing terror still blends with the incoming joy of relief.
The case of waking from nightmare is for us civilizees prob
ably the most frequent experience in point. On such occasions
the horror with me is largely composed of an intensely strong
but indescribable feeling in my breast and in all my muscles,
especially those of the legs, which feel as if they were boiled
into shreds or otherwise inwardly decomposed. This feeling
fades out slowly and until it is gone the horror abides, in spite
of the fact that I am already enjoying the incomplete relief
which comes of knowing that the 'bad experience is a dream,
and that the horror is on the wane. It were much to be wished
that many persons should make observations of this sort, for
individual idiosyncrasy may be great.

357

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

pute, but to whose works I have not access where I
write, so that I cannot verify my impression) think
that the theory carries with it implications of an
objectionable sort philosophically. Irons, for ex
ample, says that it belongs to a psychology in which
feeling can have no place, because it ignores the self
and its unity, etc. (92) . In my own mind the theory
has no philosophic implications whatever of a gen
eral sort. It assumes (what probably every one
assumes) that there must be a process of some sort
in the nerve-centres for emotion, and it simply de
fines that process to consist of afferent currents. It
does this on no general theoretic grounds, but be
cause of the introspective appearances exclusively.
The objective qualities with which perception ac
quaints us are considered by psychologists to be re
sults of sensation. When these qualities affect us
with pleasure or displeasure, we say that the sensa
tions have a "tone of feeling." Whether this tone
be due to a mere form of the process in the nerve
of sense, as some authors (e.g., Mr. Marshall) think,
or to additional specific nerves, as others (e.g., Dr.
Nichols) opine, is immaterial. The pleasantness or
unpleasantness, once there, seems immediately to
inhere in the sensible quality itself. They are
beaten up together in our consciousness. But in
addition to this pleasantness or painfulness of the
content, which in any case seems due to afferent
currents, we may also feel a general seizure of ex
citement, which Wundt, Lehmann, and other Ger
man writers call an Affect, and which is what I have

358

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

all along meant by an emotion. Now whenever I my
self have sought to discover the mind-stuff of which
such seizures consist, it has always seemed to me to
be additional sensations often hard to describe, but
usually easy to identify, and localized in divers por
tions of my organism. In addition to these sensa
tions I can discern nothing but the "objective con
tent" (taking this broadly so as to include judgments
as well as elements judged), together with whatever
agreeableness or disagreeableness the content may
come tinged by.1 Such organic sensations being also

1 The disagreeableness, etc., is a very mild affection, not dras
tic or grasping in se in the case of any objective content except
localized bodily pain, properly so called. Here the feeling seems
in itself overpowering in intensity apart from all secondary
emotional excitement. But I think that even here a distinction
needs to be made between the primary consciousness of the
pain's intrinsic quality, and the consciousness of its degree of
intoleraMlity, which is a secondary affair, seeming connected
with reflex organic irradiations. I recently, while traversing a
little surgical experience, had occasion to verify once more the
fact that it is not the mere bigness of a pain that makes it most
unbearable. If a pain is honest and definite and well localized
it may be very heavy and strong without taxing the extreme of
our endurance. But there are pains which we feel to be faint
and small in their intrinsic amount, but which have something
so poisonous and non-natural about them that consent to their
continuance is impossible. Our whole being refuses to suffer
them. These pains produce involuntary shrinkings, writhings,
sickness, faintness, and dread. For such emotion superadded
to the pain itself there is no distinctive name in English. Pro
fessor Munsterberg has distinguished between Schmerz as an
original "content" of consciousness and Unlust as due to flexor
reactions provoked thereby; and before his Essay appeared, I
remember hearing Dr. D. S. Miller and Dr. Nichols maintain in
conversation that painfulness may be always a matter of "intol-
erability," due to the reflex irradiations which the painful ob
ject may arouse. Thus might even the mildest Qemiitsvorgdnge
be brought under the terms of my theory.

359

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

presumably due to incoming currents, the result is
that the whole of my consciousness (whatever its
inner contrasts be) seems to me to be outwardly
mediated by these. This is the length and breadth
of my "theory" — which, as I apprehend it, is a very
unpretending thing.

It may be, after all, that the difference between
the theory and the views of its critics is insignifi
cant. Wundt admits tertiary feelings, due to or
ganic disturbance, which must fuse with the pri
mary and secondary feelings before we can have an
"Affect"; Lehmann writes: "Constrained by the
facts, we are obliged to concede to the organic sensa
tions and tones of feeling connected with them an
essential participation in emotion (wesentliche Be-
deutung fur die Affecte)" (p. 115) ; and Professor
Ladd also admits that the "rank" quality of the
emotions comes from the organic repercussions
which they involve. So far, then, we are all agreed ;
and it may be admitted, in Dr. Worcester's words,
that the theory under attack "contains an important
truth," and even that its authors have "rendered a
real service to psychology" (p. 295). Why, then, is
there such strong opposition? When the critics say
that the theory still contradicts their consciousness
(Worcester, p. 288), do they mean that introspec
tion acquaints them with a part of the emotional
excitement which it is psycho-physically impossible
that incoming currents should cause? Or, do they
merely mean that the part which introspection can
localize in the body is so small that when abstracted

360

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

a large mass of unrealizable emotion remains? Al
though Mr. Irons professes the former of these two
meanings, the only prudent one to stand by is surely
the latter ; and here, of course, every man will hold
by his own consciousness. I for one shall never
deny that individuals may greatly differ in their
ability to localize the various elements of their or
ganic excitement when under emotion. I am even
willing to admit that the primary Gefuhlston may
vary enormously in distinctness in different men.
But speaking for myself, I am compelled to say
that the only feelings which I cannot more or less
well localize in my body are very mild and, so to
speak, platonic affairs. I allow them hypothetically
to exist, however, in the form of the "subtler" emo
tions, and in the mere intrinsic agreeableness and
disagreeableness of particular sensations, images,
and thought-processes, where no obvious organic ex
citement is aroused.1

This being the case, it seems almost as if the ques
tion had become a verbal one. For which sort of
feeling is the word "emotion" the more proper name
— for the organic feeling which gives the rank char
acter of commotion to the excitement, or for that

1 Mr. Irons contends that in admitting "subtler" forms of emo
tion, I throw away my whole case (88, 89) ; and Dr. Lehmann
enters into an elaborate argument to prove (as he alleges,
against Lange and me) that primary feeling, as a possible ac
companiment of any sensation whatever, must be admitted to
exist (§§ 157-164). Such objections are a complete ignoratio
elenchi, addressed to some imaginary theory with which my
own, as I myself understand it, has nothing whatever to do,
all that I have ever maintained being the dependence on in
coming currents of the emotional seizure or Affect.

361

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

more primary pleasure or displeasure in the object,
or in the thought of it, to which commotion and ex
citement do not belong? I myself took for granted
without discussion that the word "emotion" meant
the rank feeling of excitement, and that the special
emotions were names of special feelings of excite
ment, and not of mild feelings that might remain
when the excitement was removed. It appears, how
ever, that in this assumption I reckoned without
certain of my hosts.

Dr. Worcester's quarrel with me at the end of his
article becomes almost exclusively verbal. All
pleasure and pain, he says, whether primary and of
the higher senses and intellectual products, or sec
ondary and organic, should be called "emotion"
(296).1 Pleasure or pain revived in idea, as dis
tinguished from vivid sensuous pleasure and pain,
he suggests to be what is meant by emotion "in the
sense in which the word is commonly used" (297) ;
and he gives an array of cases in point :

"Suppose that I have taken a nauseous dose and
made a wry face over it. No one, I presume, would
question that the disagreeableness lay in the unpleasant
taste, and not in the distortion of the countenance.

1 "The essence of emotion is pleasure and pain," he adds. This
is a hackneyed psychological doctrine, but on any theory of the
seat of emotion it seems to me one of the most artificial and
scholastic of the untruths that disfigure our science. One
might as well say that the essence of prismatic color is pleas
ure and pain. There are infinite shades and tones in the vari
ous emotional excitements, which are as distinct as sensations
of color are, and of which one is quite at a loss to predicate
either pleasant or painful quality.

362

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

Now suppose I have to repeat the dose, and my face
takes on a similar expression, at the anticipation, to
that which it wore when I took it originally. How
does this come about ? If I can trust my own conscious
ness, it is because the vivid reproduction, in memory,
of the unpleasant taste is itself unpleasant. ... If
this be the fact, what can be more natural than that it
should excite the same sort of associated movements
that were excited by the original sensation? I cannot
make it seem any more credible that my repugnance to
a repetition of the dose is due to my involuntary move
ments than my discomfort in taking it originally was
due to the similar movements that occurred then. . . .
I hardly think that any one who will consult his own
consciousness will say that the reason he likes the taste
of an orange is that it makes him laugh or smile to
get it. He likes it because it tastes good, and is sorry
to lose it for the same reason." (Ibid.)

Now, accepting Dr. Worcester's description of the
facts, I remark immediately that the nauseousness
and pleasantness are due to incoming nerve-currents
— at any rate in the cases which he selects — and the
feeling of the involuntary movements as well; so
whatever name we give to the phenomena, so far
they fall comfortably under the terms of my theory.
The only question left over is what may be covered
by the words "repugnance" and "liking," which I
have italicized, but which Dr. Worcester does not
emphasize, as he describes his instances. Are these
a third sort of affection, not due to afferent currents,
and interpolated between the gustatory feelings and
reactions which are so due? Or are they a name for
what, when carefully considered, resolves itself into

363

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

more delicate reactions still? I privately incline to
the latter view, but the whole animus of my critic's
article obliges me to attribute to him the opinion,
not only that the like and dislike must be a third
sort of affection not grounded on incoming currents,
but that they form the distinctive elements of the
"emotional" state of mind.

The whole discussion sharpens itself here to a
point. We can leave the lexicographers to decide
which elements the word "emotional" belongs to;
for our concern is with the facts, and the question
of fact is now very plain. Must we (under any
name) admit as an important element in the emo
tional state of mind something which is distinct
both from the intrinsic feeling-tone of the object
and from that of the reactions aroused — an element
of which the "liking" and "repugnance" mentioned
above would be types, but for which other names
may in other cases be found? The belief that some
such element does exist, and exist in vital amount,
is undoubtedly present in the minds of all the re
jectors of the theory in dispute. Dr. Worcester
rightly regrets the deadlock when one man's intro
spection thus contradicts another's (288), and de
mands a more objective sort of umpire. Can such a
one be found? I shall try to show now that it pos
sibly has been found; and that Dr. Sollier's recent
observations on complete anaesthetics show that in
some persons at least the supposed third kind of
mental element may exist, if it exists at all, in al
together inappreciable amount.

364

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

In my original article I had invoked cases of
generalized anaesthesia, and admitted that if a
patient could be found who, in spite of being anaes
thetic inside and out, could still suffer emotion, my
case would be upset.1 I had quoted such cases as I
was aware of at the time of writing, admitting that
so far as appearances went they made against the
theory ; but I had tried to save the latter by distin
guishing between the objective reaction which the
patient makes and the subjective feeling which it
gives him. Since then a number of cases of general
ized anaesthesia have been published, but unfortu
nately the patients have not been interrogated from
the proper point of view. The famous "theory" has
been unknown to the reporting doctors. Two such
cases, however, described by Dr. Berkley of Balti
more,2 are cited by Dr. Worcester "for what they
are worth" in its refutation (294). The first pa
tient was an Englishwoman, with complete loss of
the senses of pain, heat and cold, pressure and
equilibrium, of smell, taste, and sight. The senses
of touch and of position were not completely gone,
but greatly impaired, and she could hear a little.
As for visceral sensations, she had had no hunger
or thirst for two years, but she was warned by feel
ing of the evacuative needs. She laughs at a joke,
shows definitely grief, shame, surprise, fear, and re
pulsion. Dr. Berkley writes to Dr. Worcester as fol
lows : "My own impression derived from observation
of the patient, is that all mental emotional sensi-
['See above, p. 271. ED.] * Brain, Part IV, 1891.

365

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

bilities are present, and only a little less vivid than
in the unansesthetic state; and that emotions are
approximately natural and not at all coldly dis
passionate."

The second case was that of a Kussian woman
with complete loss of cutaneous, and almost com
plete loss of muscular, sensibility. Sight, smell,
hearing preserved, and nothing said of visceral sen
sation (in Dr. Worcester's citation). She showed
anger and amusement, and not the slightest apathy.

This last case is obviously too incompletely re
ported to serve ; and in the preceding one it will be
noticed that certain degrees of visceral and of mus
cular sensibility remained. As these seem the im
portant sorts emotionally, she may well have felt
emotion. Dr. Berkley, however, writes of her
"apathy" ; and it will be noticed that he thinks her
emotions "less vivid than in the unansesthetic state."

In Dr. Sollier's patient the anaesthesia was far
more complete, and the patient was examined for
the express purpose of testing the dependence of
emotion on organic sensibility. Dr. Sollier, more
over, experimented on two other subjects in whom
the anaesthesia was artificially induced by hypnotic
suggestion. The spontaneous case was a man aged
forty-four; the hypnotic cases were females of
hysteric constitution.1 In the man the anaesthetic
condition extended so far that at present every sur
face, cutaneous and mucous, seems absolutely insen-

1 The paper, entitled "Recherches sur les Rapports de la Sen-
sibilite" et de 1'Emotion," will be found in the Revue Philoso-
phique for March of this year, Vol. XXXVII., p. 241.

366

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

sible. The muscular sense is wholly abolished ; the
feelings of hunger and satiety do not exist; the
needs of defecation and micturition are unfelt ; taste
and smell are gone; sight much enfeebled; hearing
alone is about normal. The cutaneous and tendi
nous reflexes are lacking. The physiognomy has no
expression; speech is difficult; the entire muscular
apparatus is half paralyzed, so that locomotion is al
most impossible.

" 'I know' this patient says, 'that I have a heart, but
I do not feel it beat, except sometimes very faintly.'
When an event happens which ought to affect it [the
heart, as I understand the text] , he fails equally to feel
it. He does not feel himself breathe, or know whether
he makes a strong or a weak inspiration. 'I do not
feel myself alive,' he says. Early in his illness he sev
eral times thought himself dead. He does not know
whether he is asleep or awake. . . . He often has no
thoughts. When he does think of anything it is of
his home or of the war of 1870, in which he took part.
The people whom he sees come and go about him are
absolutely indifferent to him. He does not notice what
they do. 'They do not appear/ he says, 'like natural
men to me, but more like mechanisms.' Similar per
turbations of perception occur also in hearing. 'I do
not hear in the old way; it is as if it sounded in my
ear, but did not enter into my head. It does not stay
there long.' His aprosexia is complete, and he is in
capable of interest in anything whatever. Nothing
gives him pleasure. 'I am insensible to everything;
nothing interests me. I love nobody; neither do I dis
like anybody.' He does not even know whether it would
give him pleasure to get well, and when I tell him that
his cure is possible it awakens no reaction — not even

3G7

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

one of surprise or doubt. The only thing that seems
to move him a little is the visit of his wife. When she
appears in the room 'it gives me a stroke in the
stomach/ he says; 'but as soon as she is there I wish
her away again.7 He often has a fear that his daugh
ter may be dead. 'If she should die I believe I should
not survive her, although if I never were to see her
again it would make no difference to me.' His visual
images are non-existent, and he has no representation
of his wife when she is gone. The weakness of the sen
sations remaining to him gives him a sense of uncer
tainty about all things : 'I am never sure of anything.'
Nothing surprises or astonishes him. His state of
apathy, of indifference, of extreme emotionlessness, has
developed slowly pari passu with the anaesthesia. His
case realizes, therefore, as completely as possible the
experiment desiderated by W. James."

In the hypnotic experiments, Dr. Sollier provoked
in his subjects sometimes visceral and sometimes
peripheral anaesthesia, and sometimes both at once.
He registered the organic reactions (by pneumo-
graph, etc.) as far as possible, and compared them
with those produced in the same subject when an
emotion-exciting idea was suggested, first in the
anaesthetic and then in the normal state. Finally,
he questioned the subject on the impressions she
had received. For the detailed results the reader
must consult the original paper. I will only men
tion those which seem most important, as follows :

(1) Complete peripheral anaesthesia abolishes
completely the power of movement. At the same
time the limbs grow cold and sometimes blue (247).

(2) When visceral anaesthesia is added, the

368

[1894] PHYSICAL BASIS OF EMOTION

patient says she feels as if she no longer were alive
(ibid.).

(3) When totally anaesthetic she feels no normal
emotion whatever at the suggestion of hallucina
tions and delusions which have the power of moving
her strongly when the sensibility is restored. When
the anaesthesia is less complete she may say that she
feels not the usual emotion, but a certain stroke in
the head or stomach at the reception of the moving
idea (250,254).

(4) When the anaesthesia is solely peripheral, the
emotion takes place with almost normal strength.

(5) When it is solely visceral, the emotion is
abolished almost as much as when it is total, so that
the emotion depends almost exclusively on visceral
sensations (258).

(6) There is sometimes a very slight motor re
action shown by the pneumograph in visceral anaes
thesia when an exciting idea is suggested (Figs. 2,
7 fcts), but M. Sollier thinks (for reasons of a highly
speculative kind) that in complete incmotivity the
visceral reactions themselves do not take place
(265).

The reader sees that M. Sollier's experimental re
sults go on the whole farther than "my theory" ever
required. With the visceral sensibility not only the
"coarser" but even the "subtler" forms of emotion
depart. Some people must then be admitted to
exist in whom the amount of supposed feeling that
is not due to incoming currents is a negligible quan
tity. Of course we must bear in mind the fallibility

369

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS ti894]

of experiments made by the method of "suggestion.'7
We must moreover remember that the male patient's
inemotivity may have been a co-ordinate result with
the anaesthesia, of his neural lesions, and not the
anaesthesia's mere effect. But nevertheless, if many
cases like those of M. Sollier should be found by
other observers, I think that Professor Lange's
theory and mine ought no longer to be treated as a
heresy, but might become the orthodox belief. That
part, if there be any, of emotional feeling which is
not of afferent origin should be admitted to be in
significant, and the name "emotion" should be suf
fered to connote organic excitement as the distinc
tive feature of the state.

370

XXVI

THE KNOWING OF THINGS
TOGETHEK *

[1895]

THE nature of the synthetic unity of consciousness
is one of those great underlying problems that di
vide the psychological schools. We know, say, a
dozen things singly through a dozen different men
tal states. But on another occasion we may know
the same dozen things together through a single
mental state. The problem is as to the relation of
the previous many states to the later one state.

1Read as the President's Address before the American Psy
chological Association at Princeton, December, 1894, and re
printed with some unimportant omissions, a few slight revisions,
and the addition of some explanatory notes. [Reprinted from
the Psychological Review, 1895, 2, 105-124. Pages 374-379, deal
ing with the distinction between representative and immediate
knowledge, were reprinted in The Meaning of Truth (1909),
pp. 43-50, under the title of "The Tigers in India." For a later
elaboration of this topic, cf. also Essays in Radical Empiricism
(1912), pp. 1-91. The remainder of the present article, dealing
with the problem of the unity of consciousness, should be read
in the light of the earlier view maintained in the Principles
(1890), Vol. I., pp. 177, 278, and passim, and the later view
adopted in The Pluralistic Univci-sc (1909), pp. 190, 205-212.
It was on this issue of "the compounding of consciousness" that
Juuies finally broke with "logic" and adopted Bergsonism
(ibid., '21-2, -Hi. Eu.J

371

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

In physical nature, it is universally agreed, a multi
tude of facts always remain the multitude they were
and appear as one fact only when a mind comes
upon the scene and so views them, as when H-O-H
appear as "water" to a human spectator. But when,
instead of extramental "things," the mind com
bines its own "contents" into a unity, what happens
is much less plain.

The matters of fact that give the trouble are
among our most familiar experiences. We know a
lot of friends and can think of each one singly.
But we can also think of them together, as compos
ing a "party" at our house. We can see single stars
appearing in succession between the clouds on a
stormy night, but we can also see whole constella
tions of those stars at once when the wind has
blown the clouds away. In a glass of lemonade we
can taste both the lemon and the sugar at once. In
a major chord our ear can single out the c, e, g, and
c', if it has once become acquainted with these notes
apart. And so on through the whole field of our ex
perience, whether conceptual or sensible. Neither
common sense nor commonplace psychology finds
anything special to explain in these facts. Common
sense simply says the mind "brings the things to
gether," and common psychology says the "ideas" of
the various things "combine," and at most will ad
mit that the occasions on which ideas combine may
be made the subject of inquiry. But to formulate
the phenomenon of knowing things together thus as
a combining of ideas, is already to foist in a theory

372

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

about the phenomenon simply. Not so should a
question be approached. The phenomenon offers
itself, in the first instance, as that of knowing things
together; and it is in those terms that its solution
must, in the first instance at least, be sought.

"Things/7 then; to "know" things; and to know
the "same" things "together" which elsewhere we
knew singly — here, indeed, are terms concerning
each of which we must put the question, "What do
we mean by it when we use it?" — that question that
Shadworth Hodgson lays so much stress on, and
that is so wrell taught to students, as the beginning
of all sound method, by our colleague Fullerton.
And in exactly ascertaining what we do mean by
such terms there might lie a lifetime of occupation.

For we do mean something; and we mean some
thing true. Our terms, whatever confusion they
may connote, denote at least a fundamental fact
of our experience, whose existence no one here
present will deny.

II

What, then, do we mean by "things"? To this
question I can only make the answer of the idealistic
philosophy.1 For the philosophy that began with
Berkeley, and has led up in our tongue to Shad-
worth Hodgson, things have no other nature than
thoughts have, and we know of no things that are

[* This view James later modifies. The "radical empiricism"
which he later formulates "has, in fact, more affinities with
natural realism than with the views of Berkeley or of Mill"
(Essays in Radical Empiricism, 1912, p. 76). ED.]

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

not given to somebody's experience. When I see
the thing white paper before my eyes, the nature of
the thing and the nature of my sensations are one.
Even if with science we supposed a molecular archi
tecture beneath the smooth whiteness of the paper,
that architecture itself could only be defined as the
stuff of a farther possible experience, a vision, say,
of certain vibrating particles with which our ac
quaintance with the paper would terminate if
it were prolonged by magnifying artifices not yet
known. A thing may be my phenomenon or some
one else's ; it may be frequently or infrequently ex
perienced ; it may be shared by all of us ; one of our
copies of it may be regarded as the original, and the
other copies as representatives of that original; it
may appear very differently at different times ; but
whatever it be, the stuff of which it is made is
thought-stuff, and whenever we speak of a thing
that is out of our own mind, we either mean noth
ing ; or we mean a thing that was or will be in our
own mind on another occasion ; or, finally, we mean
a thing in the mind of some other possible receiver
of experiences like ours.

Such being "things," what do we mean by saying
that we "know" them?

There are two ways of knowing things, knowing
them immediately or intuitively, and knowing them
conceptually or representatively. Although such
things as the white paper before our eyes can be
known intuitively, most of the things we know, the
tigers now in India, for example, or the scholastic

374

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

system of philosophy, are known only representa
tively or symbolically.

Suppose, to fix our ideas, that we take first a case
of conceptual knowledge; and let it be our knowl
edge of the tigers in India, as we sit here. Exactly
what do we mean by saying that we here know the
tigers? What is the precise fact that the cogni
tion so confidently claimed is known-as, to use
Shadworth Hodgson's inelegant but valuable form
of words?

Most men would answrer that what we mean by
knowing the tigers is having them, however absent in
body, become in some way present to our thought;
or that our knowledge of them is known as presence
of our thought to them. A great mystery is usually
made of this peculiar presence in absence ; and the
scholastic philosophy, which is only common sense
grown pedantic, would explain it as a peculiar kind
of existence, called intentional inexistence, of the
tigers in our mind. At the very least, people would
say that what we mean by knowing the tigers is
mentally pointing towards them as we sit here.

But now what do we mean by pointing, in such a
case as this? What is the pointing known-as,
here?

To this question I shall have to give a very
prosaic answer — one that traverses the preposses
sions not only of common sense and scholasticism,
but also those of nearly all the episteinological
writers whom I have ever read. The answer, made
brief, is this : The pointing of our thought to the

375

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS U895]

tigers is known simply and solely as a procession
of mental associates and motor consequences that
follow on the thought, and that would lead harmoni
ously, if followed out, into some ideal or real con
text, or even into the immediate presence, of the
tigers. It is known as our rejection of a jaguar,
if that beast were shown us as a tiger ; as our assent
to a genuine tiger if so shown. It is known as our
ability to utter all sorts of propositions which don't
contradict other propositions that are true of the
real tigers. It is even known, if we take the tigers
very seriously, as actions of ours which may termi
nate in directly intuited tigers, as they would if we
took a voyage to India for the purpose of tiger-
hunting and brought back a lot of skins of the
striped rascals which we had laid low. In all this
there is no self -transcendency in our mental images
taken by themselves. They are one physical fact;
the tigers are another; and their pointing to the
tigers is a perfectly commonplace physical rela
tion, if you once grant a connecting world to be
there. In short, the ideas and the tigers are in
themselves as loose and separate, to use Hume's
language, as any two things can be; and pointing
means here an operation as external and adventi
tious as any that nature yields.1

*A stone in one field may "fit," we say, a hole in another
field. But the relation of "fitting," so long as no one carries
the stone to the hole and drops it in, is only one name for the
fact that such an act may happen. Similarly with the know
ing of the tigers here and now. It is only an anticipatory name
for a further associative and terminative process that may
occur.

376

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

I hope you may agree with me now that in rep
resentative knowledge there is no special inner mys
tery, but only an outer chain of physical or mental
intermediaries connecting thought and thing. To
know an object is here to lead to it through a c
text which the world supplies. All this was mos
instructively set forth by our colleague Miller, of
Bryn Mawr, at our meeting in New York last
Christmas, and for re-confirming my sometime
wavering opinion, I owe him this acknowledg
ment.1

Let us next pass on to the case of immediate or
intuitive acquaintance with an object, and let the ob
ject be the white paper before our eyes. The thought-
stuff and the thing-stuff are here indistinguish-
ably the same in nature, as we saw a moment since,
and there is no context of intermediaries or associ
ates to stand between and separate the thought and
thing. There is no "presence in absence'5 here, and
no "pointing," but rather an all-round embracing of
the paper by the thought; and it is clear that the
knowing cannot now be explained exactly as it was
when the tigers were its object. Dotted all through
our experience are states of immediate acquaint
ance just like this. Somewhere our belief always
does rest on ultimate data like the whiteness,
smoothness, or squareness of this paper. Whether
such qualities be truly ultimate aspects of being or
only provisional suppositions of ours, held-to till

*See also Dr. Miller's article on "Truth and Error," in the
Philosophical Review, July, 1893.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

we get better informed, is quite immaterial for our
present inquiry. So long as it is believed in, we see
our object face to face. What now do we mean by
"knowing" such a sort of object as this? For this
is also the way in which we should know the tiger
if our conceptual idea of him were to terminate
by having led us to his lair.

This address must not become too long, so I must
give my answer in the fewest words. And let me
first say this : So far as the white paper or other
ultimate datum of our experience is considered to
enter also into some one else's experience, and we,
in knowing it, are held to know it there as well as
here; so far again as it is considered to be a mere
mask for hidden molecules that other now impos
sible experiences of our own might some day lay
bare to view; so far it is a case of tigers in India
again — the things known being absent experiences,
the knowing can only consist in passing smoothly
towards them through the intermediary context that
the world supplies. But if our own private vision
of the paper be considered in abstraction from every
other event, as if it constituted by itself the uni
verse (and it might perfectly well do so, for aught
we can understand to the contrary), then the paper
seen and the seeing of it are only two names for
one indivisible fact which, properly named, is the
datum, the phenomenon, or the experience. The
paper is in the mind and the mind is around the
paper, because paper and mind are only two names
that are given later to the one experience, when,

378

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

taken in a larger world of which it forms a part,
its connections are traced in different directions.1
To know immediately, then, or intuitively, is for
mental content and object to be identical. This
is a very different definition from that which we
gave of representative knowledge ; but neither defini
tion involves those mysterious notions of self-tran
scendency and presence in absence which are such
essential parts of the ideas of knowledge, both of
common men and of philosophers. Is there no ex
perience that can justify these notions, and show
us somewhere their original?

1 What is meant by this is that "the experience" can be re
ferred to either of two great associative systems, that of the
experiencer's mental history, or that of the experienced facts
of the world. Of both of these systems it forms part, and may
be regarded, indeed, as one of their points of intersection. One

o-

might let a vertical line stand for the mental history ; but the
same object, O, appears also in the mental history of different
persons, represented by the other vertical lines. It thus ceases
to be the private property of one experience, and becomes, so
to speak, a shared or public thing. We can track its outer
history in this way, and represent it by the horizontal line. [It
is also known representatively at other points of the vertical
lines, or intuitively there again, so that the line of its outer
history would have to be looped and wandering, but I make it
straight for simplicity's sake.] In any case, however, it is the
same stuff that figures in all the sets of lines.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

I think the mystery of presence in absence (though
we fail to find it between one experience and another
remote experience to which it points, or between the
"content" and "object" of any one experience falsely
rent asunder by the application to it of these two
separate names) may yet be found, and found be
tween the parts of a single experience. Let us
look for it, accordingly, in its simplest possible
form. What is the smallest experience in which
the mystery remains? If we seek, we find that there
is no datum so small as not to show the mystery.
The smallest effective pulse of consciousness, what
ever else it may be consciousness of, is also con
sciousness of passing time. The tiniest feeling that
we can possibly have involves for future reflection
two sub-feelings, one earlier and the other later, and
a sense of their continuous procession. All this has
been admirably set forth by Mr. Shadworth Hodg
son,1 who shows that there is literally no such datum
as that of the present moment, and no such content,
and no such object, except as an unreal postulate
of abstract thought. The passing moment is the
only thing that ever concretely was or is or shall
be ; and in the phenomenon of elementary memory,
whose function is to apprehend it, earlier and later
are present to each other in an experience that feels
either only on condition of feeling both together.

We have the same knowing together in the mat
ter that fills the time. The rush of our thought for
ward through its fringes is the everlasting peculiar-

1 Philosophy of Reflection, Vol. I., p. 248 ff.

380

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

ity of its life. We realize this life as something
always off its balance, something in transition,
something that shoots out of a darkness through n
dawn into a brightness that we know to be the dawn
fulfilled. In the very midst of the alteration our
experience comes as one continuous fact. ''Yes,"
we say at the moment of full brightness, this is
what I meant. No, we feel at the moment of the
dawning, this is not yet the meaning, there is more
to come. In every crescendo of sensation, in every
effort to recall, in every progress towards the satis
faction of desire, this succession of an emptiness and
fulness that have reference to each other and are one
flesh is the essence of the phenomenon. In every
hindrance of desire the sense of ideal presence of
what is absent in fact, of an absent, in a word, which
the only function of the present is to mean, is even
more notoriously there. And in the movement of
thoughts not ordinarily classed as involving desire,
we have the same phenomenon. When I say Soc
rates is mortal, the moment Socrates is incomplete;
it falls forward through the is which is pure move
ment, into the mortal, which is indeed bare mortal
on the tongue, but for the mind, is that mortal, the
mortal Socrates, at last satisfactorily disposed of
and told off.

Here, then, inside of the minimal pulse of ex
perience which, taken as object, is change of feel
ing, and, taken as content, is feeling of change, is
realized that absolute and essential self-transcend
ency which we swept away as an illusion when

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

we sought it between a content taken as a whole and
a supposed objective thing outside. Here in the
elementary datum of which both our physical and
our mental worlds are built, we find included both
the original of presence in absence and the proto
type of that operation of knowing many things to
gether which it is our business to discuss.* For
the fact that past and future are already parts of
the least experience that can really be, is just like
what we find in any other case of an experience
whose parts are many. Most of these experiences

1 It seems to me that we have here something like what comes
before us in the psychology of space and time. Our original
intuition of space is the single field of view ; our original indiii-
tion of time covers but a few seconds ; yet by an ideal piecing
together and construction we frame the notions of immensity
and eternity, and suppose dated events and located things
therein, of whose actual intervals we grasp no distinct idea.
So in the case before us. The way in which the constituents
of one undivided datum drag each other in and run into one,
saying this is what that means, gives us our original intuition
of what knowing is. That intuition we extend and construc
tively build up into the notion of a vast tissue of knowledge,
shed along from experience to experience until, dropping the
intermediary data from our thought, we assume that terms the
most remote still know each other, just after the fashion of
the parts of the prototypal fact. Cognition here is only con
structive, as we have already seen. But he who should say,
arguing from its nature here, that it nowhere is direct, and
seek to construct it without an originally given pattern, would
be like those psychologists who profess to develop our idea of
space out of the association of data that possess no original
extensity. Grant the sort of thing that is meant by presence
in absence, by self-transcendency, by reference to another, by
pointing forward or back, by knowledge in short, somewhere in
our experience, be it in ever so small a corner, and the con
struction of pseudo-cases elsewhere follows as a matter of
course. But to get along without the real thing anywhere seems
difficult indeed.

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[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

are of objects perceived to be simultaneous and not
to be immediately successive as in the heretofore
considered case. The field of view, the chord of
music, the glass of lemonade are examples. But
the gist of the matter is the same — it is always
knowing-together. You cannot separate the con
sciousness of one part from that of all the rest.
What is given is pooled and mutual; there is no
dark spot, no point of ignorance; no one fraction
is eclipsed from any other's point of view. Can
we account for such a being-known-together of
complex facts like these?

The general nature of it we can probably never
account for, or tell how such a unity in manyness
can be, for it seems to be the ultimate essence of
all experience, and anything less than it apparently
cannot be at all. But the particular conditions
whereby we know particular things together might
conceivably be traced, and to that humble task I beg
leave to devote the time that remains.

Ill

Let me say forthwith that I have no pretension
to give any positive solution. My sole ambition now
is, by a little classification, to smooth the ground
somewhat so that some of you, more able than I,
may be helped to advance, before our next meeting
perhaps, to results that I cannot obtain.

Now, the first thing that strikes us in these com
plex cases is that the condition by which one thing

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may come to be known together with other things
is an event. It is often an event of the purely physi
cal order. A man walks suddenly into my field of
view, and forthwith becomes part of it. I put a
drop of cologne-water on my tongue, and, holding
my nostrils, get the taste of it alone, but when I
open my nostrils I get the smell together with the
taste in mutual suffusion. Here it would seem as
if a sufficient condition of the knowing of (say)
three things together were the fact that the three
several physical conditions of the knowing of each
of them were realized at once. But in many other
cases we find on the contrary that the physical con
ditions are realized without the things being known
together at all. When absorbed in experiments
with the cologne-water, for example, the clock may
strike, and I not know that it has struck. But
again, some seconds after the striking has elapsed,
I may, by a certain shifting of what we call my
attention, hark back to it and resuscitate the sound,
and even count the strokes in memory. The condi
tion of knowing the clock's striking is here an event
of the mental order which must be added to the
physical event of the striking before I can know it
and the cologne-water at once. Just so in the field
of view I may entirely overlook and fail to notice
even so important an object as a man, until the
inward event of altering my attention makes me
suddenly see him with the other objects there. In
those curious phenomena of dissociation of con
sciousness with which recent studies of hypnotic,

384

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

hysteric and trance states have made us familiar
(phenomena which surely throw more new light
on human nature than the work of all the psycho-
physical laboratories put together), the event of
hearing a "suggestion," or the event of passing into
trance or out of it, is what decides whether a human
figure shall appear in the field of view or disappear,
and whether a whole set of memories shall come
before the mind together, along with its other ob
jects, or be excluded from their company. There
is in fact no possible object, however completely ful
filled may be the outer condition of its perception,
whose entrance into a given field of consciousness
does not depend on the additional inner event called
attention.

Now, it seems to me that this need of a final
inner event, over and above the mere sensorial con
ditions, quite refutes and disposes of the associa-
tionist theory of the unity of consciousness. By
associationist theory, I mean any theory that says,
either implicitly or explicitly, that for a lot of ob
jects to be known together, it suffices that a lot of
conscious states, each with one of them as its con
tent, should exist, as James Mill says, "synchron-
ically." Synchronical existence of the ideas does
not suffice, as the facts we now have abundantly
show. Gurney's, Binet's, and Janet's proofs of sev
eral dissociated consciousnesses existing synchroni-
cally, and dividing the subject's field of knowledge
between them, is the best possible refutation of any
such view.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

Union in consciousness must be made by some
thing, must be brought about ; and to have perceived
this truth is the great merit of the anti-association-
ist psychologists.1 The form of unity, they have ob
stinately said, must be specially accounted for ; and
the form of unity the radical associationists have as
obstinately shied away from and ignored, though
their accounts of those preliminary conditions that
supply the matters to be united have never been sur
passed. As far as these go, we are all, I trust, asso
ciationists, and reverers of the names of Hartley,
Mill, and Bain.

Let us now rapidly review the chief attempts of
the anti-associationists to fill the gap they discern
so well in the associationist tale.

1. Attention.— Attention, we say, by turning to
an object, includes it with the rest; and the nam
ing of this faculty in action has by some writers
been considered a sufficient account of the decisive
"event."2 But it is plain that the act of Attention

1 In this rapid paper I content myself with arguing from the
experimental fact that something happens over and above the
realization of sensorial conditions, wherever an object adds
itself to others already "before the mind." I say nothing of
the logical self-contradiction involved in the associationist doc
trine that the two facts, "A is known," and "B is known," are
the third fact, "A -f B are known together." Those whom the
criticisms already extant in print of this strange belief have
failed to convince, would not be persuaded, even though one
rose from the dead. The appeal to the actual facts of dissocia
tion may make impression, however, even on such hardened
hearts as theirs.

2 It might seem natural to mention Wundt's doctrine of "Ap
perception" here. But I must confess my inability to say any
thing about it that would not resolve itself into a tedious com-

386

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

itself needs a farther account to be given, and such
an account is what other theories of the event im
plicitly give.

We find four main types1 of other theory of how
particular things get known together, a physiologi
cal, a psychological, an animistic, and a transcend-
entalist type. Of the physiological or "psycho-
physical" type many varieties are possible, but it
must be observed that none of them pretends to as
sign anything more than an empirical law. A
psycho-physical theory can couple certain ante
cedent conditions with their result ; but an explana
tion, in the sense of an inner reason why the result
should have the nature of one content with many
parts instead of some entirely different nature, is
what a psycho-physical theory cannot give.2

parison of texts. Being alternately described as intellection,
will, feeling, synthesis, analysis, principle and result, it is too
"protean" a function to lend itself to any simplified account
at second hand.

1 It is only for the sake of completeness that we need men
tion such notions of a sort of mechanical and chemical activity
between the ideas as we find in Herbart, Steinthal, and others.
These authors see clearly that mere synchronical existence is
not combination, and attribute to the ideas of dynamic influ
ences upon each other; pressures and resistances. according to
Herbart, and according to Steinthal "psychic attractions."
But the philosophical foundations of such physical theories have
been so slightly discussed by their authors that it is better to
treat them only as rhetorical metaphors and pass on. Herbart,
moreover, must also be mentioned later, along with the animis
tic writers.

* We find this impotence already when we seek the conditions
of the passing pulse of consciousness, which, as we saw, always
involves time and change. We account for the passing pulse,
physiologically, by the overlapping of dying and dawning

387

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

2. Reminiscence. — Now, empirically, we have
learned that things must be known in succession
and singly before they can be known together.1 If
A, B, and C, for example, were outer things that
came for the first time and affected our senses all
at once, we should get one content from the lot of
them and make no discriminations. The content
would symbolically point to the objects A, B, C,
and eventually terminate there, but would contain
no parts that were immediately apprehended as
standing for A, B, and C severally. Let A, B, and C
stand for pigments, or for a tone and its overtones,
and you will see what I mean when I say that the
first result on consciousness of their falling together
on the eye or ear would be a single new kind of
feeling rather than a feeling with three kinds of
inner part. Such a result has been ascribed to a
"fusion" of the three feelings of A, B, and C; but
there seems no ground for supposing that, under the
conditions assumed, these distinct feelings have ever
been aroused at all. I should call the phenomenon
one of indiscriminate knowing together, for the most

brain-processes; and at first sight the elements time and
change, involved in tooth the brain-processes and their mental
result, give a similarity that, we feel, might be the real reason
for the psycho-physic coupling. But the moment we ask "meta
physical" questions — "Why not each brain-process felt apart?—
Why just this amount of time, neither more nor less?" etc.,
etc. — we find ourselves falling back on the empirical view as the
only safe one to defend.

1 The latest empirical contribution to this subject, with which
I am acquainted, is Dr. Herbert Nichols's excellent little mono
graph. Our Notions of Number and Space. Boston: Ginin &
Co., 1894.

388

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

we can say under the circumstances is that the con
sul resembles somewhat each of the objects A, B,
and C, and knows them each potentially, knows
them, that is, by possibly leading to each smoothly
hereafter, as we know Indian tigers even whilst sit
ting in this room.

But if our memory possess stored-up images of
former A-s, B-s, and C-s, experienced in isolation, we
get an altogether different content, namely, one
through which we know A, B, and C together, and
yet know each of them in discrimination through
one of the content's own parts. This has been
called a "colligation" or Verknupfung of the "ideas"
of A, B, and C, to distinguish it from the aforesaid
fusion. Whatever we may call it, we see that its
physiological condition is more complex than in the
previous case. In both cases the outer objects, A,
B, and C, exert their effects on the sensorium. But
in this case there is a co-operation of higher tracts of
memory which in the former case was absent. Dis\
criminative knouring -tog ether, in shorty involves]
higher processes of reminiscence. Do these give
the element of manyness, whilst the lower sensorial
processes that by themselves would result in mere
"fusion," give the unity to the experience? The
suggestion is one that might repay investigation,
although it has against it two pretty solid objec
tions : first, that in man the consciousness attached
to infra-cortical centres is altogether subliminal, if
it exist; and, second, that in the cortex itself we
have not yet discriminated sensorial from ideational

389

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS H895]

processes. Possibly the frontal lobes, in which
Wundt has supposed an Apperceptionsorgan, might
serve a turn here. In any case it is certain that,
into our present rough notions of the cortical func
tions, the future will have to weave distinctions at
present unknown.

3. Synergy. — The theory that, physiologically, the
oneness precedes the manyness, may be contrasted
with a theory that our colleagues Baldwin and
Mtinsterberg are at present working out, and which
places the condition of union of many data into
one datum, in the fact that the many pour them
selves into one motor discharge. The motor dis
charge being the last thing to happen, the condi
tion of manyness would physiologically here precede
and that of oneness follow. A printed word is ap
prehended as one object, at the same time that each
letter in it is apprehended as one of its parts. Our
secretary, Cattell, long ago discovered that we
recognize words of four or five letters by the eye as
quickly, or even more quickly, than we recognize
single letters. Recognition means here the motor
process of articulation; and the quickness comes
from the fact that all the letters in the particular
combination unhesitatingly co-operate in the one
articulatory act. I suppose such facts as these to
lie at the base of our colleagues' theories, which
probably differ in detail, and which it would be
manifestly unjust to discuss or guess about in ad
vance of their completer publication. Let me only
say that I hope the latter may not be long delayed.

390

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

These are the only types of physiological theory
worthy of mention. I may next pass to what, for
brevity's sake, may be called psychological accounts
of the event that lets an object into consciousness,
or, by not occurring, leaves it out. These accounts
start from the fact that what figures as part of
a larger object is often perceived to have relations
to the other parts. Accordingly the event in ques
tion is described as an act of relating thought. It
takes two forms.

4. Relating to Self. — Some authors say that noth
ing can enter consciousness except on condition that
it be related to the self. Not object, but object-
plus-me, is the minimum knowable.

5. Relating to other Objects. — Others think it
enough if the incoming object be related to the
other objects already there. To fail to appear re
lated is to fail to be known at all. To appear re
lated is to appear with other objects. If relations
were correlates of special cerebral processes, the
addition of these to the sensorial processes would be
the wished-for event. But brain physiology as yet
knows nothing of such special processes, so I have
called this explanation purely psychological. There
seem to be fatal objections to it as a universal state
ment, for the reference to self, if it exist, must in a
host of cases be altogether subconscious ; and intro
spection assures us that in many half-waking and
half-drunken states the relations between things
that we perceive together may be of the dimmest and
most indefinable kind.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

6. The Individual Soul. — So we next proceed to
the animistic account. By this term I mean to
cover every sort of individualistic soul-theory. I
will say nothing of older opinions; but in modern
times we have two views of the way in which the
union of a many by a soul occurs. For Herbart,
for example, it occurs because the soul itself is
unity, and all its Selbsterhaltungen are obliged to
necessarily share this form. For our colleague Ladd,
on the other hand, to take the best recent example,
it occurs because the soul, which is a real unity
indeed, furthermore performs a unifying act on the
naturally separate data of sense — an act, moreover,
for which no psycho-physical analogon can be found.
It must be admitted that much of the reigning bias
against the soul in so-called scientific circles is an
unintelligent prejudice, traceable far more to a
vague impression that it is a theological supersti
tion than to exact logical grounds. The soul is
an "entity," and, indeed, that worst sort of entity,
a "scholastic entity" ; and, moreover, it is something
to be damned or saved; so let's have no more of
it! I am free to confess that in my own case the
antipathy to the soul with which I find myself
burdened is an ancient hardness of heart of which
I can frame no fully satisfactory account even to
myself. I passively agree that if there were souls
that we could use as principles of explanation, the
formal settlement of the questions now before us
could run far more smoothly towards its end. I
admit that a soul is a medium of union, and that

392

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

brain-processes and ideas, be they never so usyn-
chronical," leave all mediating agency out. Yet,
in spite of these concessions, I never find myself
actively taking up the soul, so to speak, and mak
ing it to do work in my psychologizing. I speak of
myself here because I am one amongst many, and
probably few of us can give adequate reasons for
our dislike. The more honor to our colleague from
Yale, then, that he remains so unequivocally faith
ful to this unpopular principle! And let us hope
that his forthcoming book may sweep what is blind
in our hostility away.1

But all is not blind in our hostility. When, for
example, you say that A, B, and C, which are dis
tinct contents on other occasions, are now on this
occasion joined into the compound content ABC by
a unifying act of the soul, you say little more than
that now they are united, unless you give some hint
as to how the soul unites them. When, for example,

1 1 ought, perhaps, to apologize for not expunging from my
printed text these references to Professor Ladd, which were
based on the impression left on my mind by the termination of
his Physiological Psychology. It would now appear from the
paper read by him at the Princeton meeting, and his Philosophy
of Mind, just published, that he disbelieves in the soul of old-
fashioned ontology ; and on looking again at the P. P., I see
that I may well have misinterpreted his deeper meaning there.
I incline to suspect, however, that he had himself not fully
disentangled it when that work was written ; and that between
now and then his thought has been evolving somewhat, as
Lotze's did, between his Medical Psychology and his Meta-
physic. It is gratifying to note these converging tendencies in
different philosophers ; but I leave the text as I read it at
Princeton, as a mark of what one could say not so very un
naturally at that date.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

the hysteric women which Pierre Janet has studied
with such loving care, go to pieces mentally, and
their souls are unable any longer to connect the
data of their experience together, though these data
remain severally conscious in dissociation, what is
the condition on which this inability of the soul
depends? Is it an impotence in the soul itself? or
is it an impotence in the physiological conditions,
which fail to stimulate the soul sufficiently to its
synthetic task? The how supposes on the soul's part
a constitution adequate to the act. An hypothesis,
we are told in the logic-books, ought to propose a
being that has some other constitution and defini
tion than that of barely performing the phenome
non it is evoked to explain. When physicists pro
pose the "ether," for example, they propose it with
a lot of incidental properties. But the soul pro
posed to us has no special properties or constitu
tion of which we are informed. Nevertheless, since
particular conditions do determine its activity, it
must have a constitution of some sort. In either
case, we ought to know the facts. But the soul-
doctrine, as hitherto professed, not only doesn't
answer such questions, it doesn't even ask them;
and it must be radically rejuvenated if it expects to
be greeted again as a useful principle in psycho
logical philosophy. Here is work for our spiritual
ist colleagues, not only for the coming year, but for
the rest of their lives.1

1 The soul can be taken in three ways as a unifying principle.
An already existing lot of animated sensations (or other psychic

394

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

7. The World-soul. — The second spiritualist the
ory may be named as that of transcendentalism.
I take it typically and not as set forth by any single
author. Transcendentalism explains things by an
over-soul of which all separate souls, sensations,
thoughts, and data generally are parts. To be, as
it would be known together with everything else in
the world by this over-soul, is for transcendentalism
the true condition of each single thing, and to pass
into this condition is for things to fulfil their voca
tion. Such being known together, since it is the
innermost reality of life, cannot on transcendentalist
principles be explained or accounted for as a work
wrought on a previous sort of reality. The monadic
soul-theory starts with separate sensational data,
and must show how they are made one. The tran
scendentalist theory has rather for its task to show
how, being one, they can spuriously and illusorily
be made to appear separate. The problem for the

data) may be simply woven into one by it; in which case the
form of unity is the soul's only contribution, and the original
stuff of the Many remains in the One as its stuff also. Or,
secondly, the resultant synthetic One may toe regarded as an
immanent reaction of the Soul on the preexisting psychic
Many; and in this case the Soul, in addition to creating the
new form, reproduces in itself the old stuff of the Many, super
seding it for our use, and making it for us become subliminal,
but not suppressing its existence. Or, thirdly, the One may
again be the Soul's immanent reaction on a physiological, not
on a mental, Many. In this case preexisting sensations or ideas
would not be there at all, to be either woven together or super
seded. The synthetic One would be a primal psychic datum
with parts, either of which might know the same object that a
possible sensation, realized under other physiological conditions,
could also know.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

monadic soul, in short, is that of unification, and
the problem for the over-soul is that of insulation.
The removal of insulating obstructions would suffi
ciently account for things reverting to their natural
place in the over-soul and being known together.
The most natural insulating or individualizing prin
ciple to invoke is the bodily organism. As the pipes
of an organ let the pressing mass of air escape only
in single notes, so do our brains, the organ pipes
of the infinite, keep back everything but the slender
threads of truth to which they may be pervious.
As they obstruct more, the insulation increases, as
they obstruct less it disappears. Now transcen
dental philosophers have as a rule not done
much dabbling in psychology. But one sees no ab
stract reason why they might not go into psychology
as fully as any one, and erect a psycho-physical
science of the conditions of more separate and less
separate cognition wrhich would include all the
facts that psycho-physicists in general might dis
cover. And they would have the advantage over
other psycho-physicists of not needing to explain
the nature of the resultant knowing-together when
it should occur, for they could say that they simply
begged it as the ultimate nature of the world.

This is as broad a disjunction as I can make of
the different ways in which men have considered
the conditions of our knowing things together. You
will agree with me that I have brought no new in
sight to the subject, and that I have only gos
siped to while away this unlucky presidential

396

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

hour to which the constellations doomed me at my
birth. But since gossip we have had to have, let me
make the hour more gossipy still by saying a final
word about the position taken up in my own Prin
ciples of Psychology on the general question before
us, a position which, as you doubtless remember, was
so vigorously attacked by our colleague from the
University of Pennsylvania at our meeting in New
York a year ago.1 That position consisted in this,
that I proposed to simply eliminate from psychology
"considered as a natural science" the whole business
of ascertaining hoiv we come to know things together
or to know them at all. Such considerations, I said,
should fall to metaphysics. That we do know
things, sometimes singly and sometimes together, is
a fact. That states of consciousness are the vehicle
of the knowledge, and depend on brain states, are
two other facts. And I thought that a natural
science of psychology might legitimately confine
itself to tracing the functional variations of these
three sorts of fact, and ascertaining and tracing
what determinate bodily states are the condition
when the states of mind know determinate things
and groups of things. Most states of mind can be
designated only by naming what objects they are
"thoughts-of," i'.e.y what things they know.

Most of those which know compound tilings are
utterly unique and solitary mental entities demon-
printed as an article entitled "The Psychological Stand
point." in this [I'xjiL-hological] AYnVir,Vol.I.,p.ll3. (March,1894.)
[The author was (i. S. Fullerton. For James's own earlier views.
cf. the Principles (1890), especially Chaps. VI., IX. ED.]

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

strably different from any collection of simpler
states to which the same objects might be singly
known.1 Treat them all as unique in entity, I said

1When they know conceptually they don't even remotely re
semble the simpler states. When they know intuitively they
resemble, sometimes closely, sometimes distantly, the simpler
states. The sour and sweet in lemonade are extremely unlike
the sour and sweet of lemon juice and sugar, singly taken, yet
like enough for us to "recognize" these "objects" in the com
pound taste. The several objective "notes" recognized in the
chord sound differently and peculiarly there. In a motley field
of view successive and simultaneous contrast give to each sev
eral tint a different hue and luminosity from that of the "real"
color into which it turns when viewed without its neighbors
by a rested eye. The difference is sometimes so slight, however,
that we overlook the "representative" character of each of the
parts of a complex content, and speak as if the latter were a
cluster of the original "intuitive" states of mind that, occurring
singly, know the "object's" several parts in separation. Pro
fessor Meinong, for example, even after the true state of
things had been admirably set forth by Herr H. Cornelius (in
the Vierteljahrschrift f. wiss. Phil, XVI., 404; XVII., 30), re
turns to the defence of the radical associationist view (in the
Zeitschrift /. Psychologic, VI., 340, 417). According to him, the
single sensations of the several notes lie unaltered in the chord-
sensations ; but his analysis of the phenomenon is vitiated by
his non-recognition of the fact that the same objects (i.e., the
notes) can be known representatively through one compound
state of mind, and directly in several simple ones, without the
simple and the compound states having strictly anything in
common with each other. In Meinong's earlier work, Ueber
Begriff und Eigenschaftcn dcr Empfindung (Vierteljahr
schrift, Vol. XII.), he seems to me to have hit the truth much
better, when he says that the aspect color, e.g., in a concrete
sensation of red, is not an abstractable part of the sensation,
but an external relation of resemblance between that sensation
and other sensations to the whole lot of which we give the name1
of colors. Such, I should say, are the aspects of c, e, g and t-'
in the chord. We may call them parts of the chord if we like,
but they are not bits of it, identical with c's, e's, g's, and c"s
elsewhere. They simply resemble the c's, e's, #'s, and c"s else
where, and know these contents or objects representatively.

398

[1895] KNOWING OF THINGS TOGETHER

then; let their complexity reside in their plural
cognitive function; and you have a psychology
which, if it doesn't ultimately explain the facts,
also does not, in expressing them, make them self-
contradictory (as the associationist psychology does
when it calls them many ideas fused into one idea)
or pretend to explain them (as the soul-theory so
often does) by a barren verbal principle.

My intention was a good one, and a natural
science infinitely more complete than the psychol
ogies we now possess could be written without aban
doning its terms. Like all authors, I have, there
fore, been surprised that this child of my genius
should not be more admired by others — should, in
fact, have been generally either misunderstood or
despised. But do not fear that on this occasion I
am either going to defend or to re-explain the bant
ling. I am going to make things more harmonious
by simply giving it up.1 I have become convinced
since publishing that book that no conventional re
strictions can keep metaphysical and so-called epi-
stemological inquiries out of the psychology books.
I see, moreover, better now than then that my pro
posal to designate mental states merely by their
cognitive function leads to a somewhat strained way
of talking of dreams and reveries, and to quite an
unnatural way of talking of some emotional states.
I am willing, consequently, henceforward that men-

cf. Pluralistic Universe (1909), p. 338, note, where it
appears that he does UQt abandon his earlier view unquali
fiedly. ED.]

399

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

tal contents should be called complex, just as their
objects are, and this even in psychology. Not
because their parts are separable, as the parts of
objects are, not because they have an eternal or
quasi-eternal individual existence, like the parts of
objects; for the various "contents" of which they
are parts are integers, existentially, and their parts
only live as long as they live. Still, in them, we can
call parts, parts.— But when, without circumlocu
tion or disguise, I thus come over to your views, I
insist that those of you who applaud me (if any
such there be) should recognize the obligations
which the new agreement imposes on yourselves.
Not till you have dropped the old phrases, so absurd
or so empty, of ideas "self-compounding" or "united
by a spiritual principle" ; not till you have in your
turn succeeded in some such long inquiry into con
ditions as the one I have just failed in; not till you
have laid bare more of the nature of that altogether
unique kind of complexity in unity which mental
states involve ; not till then, I say, will psychology
reach any real benefit from the conciliatory spirit
of which I have done what I can to set an example.

400

XXVII

DEGENEKATION AND GENIUS *

[1895]

IF the reviewer might now say a word of the
result left on his own mind by reading the genius-
controversy, it would run something like this :
Moreau, Lombroso & Co. have done excellent ser
vice in destroying the classic view of genius as
something superhuman and flawless. By their fer
reting and prying and general devil's advocacy, they
have helped us to an acquaintance with human
nature in concrete, which from every point of view
is superior to our old-fashioned academic notions.
Lombroso in particular has put us in his debt by
his studies of individual fanatics and "mattoids."
But there the service stops, for (except in Nordau's
case) these authors are incapable of logical or
psychological analysis; and the only conclusion
that their facts make more clear than ever — the con
clusion, namely, that there are no incompatibles in
human nature, and that any random combination of

pThe concluding paragraphs of a series of notices and re
views of J. Dallemagne's Degeneres ct Desequilibres, C. Lom
broso' s Entartung und Genie, M. Nordau's Degeneration and
W. Hirsch's Genie und Entartung. Reprinted from Psychological
Review, 1895, 2, 292-294. ED.]

401

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

mental elements that can be conceived may also be
realized in some individual — is one that they do not
draw. If we are to make of genius a psychological
conception at all, it must be a property of intellect
rather than of will or feeling. Narrowed in this
way, Professor Bain's description of it, as an un
usual tendency to associate by similarity (a descrip
tion with which none of our authors seem ac
quainted), will stand firm. But it is one thing to
have this intellectual condition of genius and an
other to become effective in history as a genius, and
to figure in biographical dictionaries. We all know
intellects of first-rate original quality whose names
are written in water because of the inferiority of
the other elements of their nature, their lack of re
mote ideals and unifying aims, of passion and of
staying power. On the other hand we know moder
ate intellects who become effective and even famous
in the world's work because of their force of char
acter, their passionate interests and doggedness of
will. To do anything with one's genius requires
passion; to do much requires doggedness. Hence
it comes that the intense sensibility of the psycho
pathic temperament, when it adds itself to a first-
rate intellect, greatly increases the chances that the
latter will bear effective fruits. To be liable to ob
session by ideas, not to be able to rest till they are
"worked off," ought then to be, as they indeed are,
traits of character often found amongst the men
whose names figure as those of geniuses in the
cyclopedias. But these traits have no essential con-

402

[1895] DEGENERATION AND GENIUS

nection with the sort of intellect that makes the
men geniuses. We may find them combined with
any sort of intellect, as we find first-rate intellect
combined with any sort of character. The names
of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and
Holmes would probably be those first written by
any one who should be asked for a list of the
geniuses of the community in which I write. Al
though belonging to the class of poets (the species
of genius most akin to psychopathy by the sensibil
ity it demands), these men were all distinguished
for balance of character and common sense. So
Schiller, so Browning, so George Sand. In poets
like Shelley, Poe, de Musset, on the other hand, we
have the intellectual and passionate gifts without
the powers of inhibition. In the sphere of action
we have a similar diversity of mixture : we find the
all-round men like Washington, Cavour, and Glad
stone ; the great intellects and wills with no hearts,
like Frederick the Great; the intense hearts and
wills with narrow intellects, like Garibaldi and
John Brown; the stubborn wills with mediocre
hearts and intellects, like George III. or Philip II. ;
and, finally, the real cranks and half-insane fana
tics, often with much of the equipment of effective
genius except a normal set of "ideas." It all de
pends on the mixture ; only as the elements vary in
dependently, the chances that a freak of nature in
the line of human greatness will be as exceptionally
strong in all three elements of character as he is in
any one of them, are small. Hence some lop-sided-

403

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

ness in almost all distinguished personages, hence
the rarity of the Dantes, St. Bernards, and Goethes
among the children of men.

One more word : there is a strong tendency among
these pathological writers to represent the line of
mental health as a very narrow crack, which one
must tread with bated breath, between foul fiends on
the one side and gulfs of despond on the other. Now,
health is a term of subjective appreciation, not of
objective description, to borrow a nomenclature
from Professor Koyce :it is a teleological term. There
is no purely objective standard of sound health.
Any peculiarity that is of use to a man is a point
of soundness in him, and what makes a man sound
for one function may make him unsound for an
other. Moreover, we are all instruments for social
use; and if sensibilities, obsessions, and other psy
chopathic peculiarities can so combine with the rest
of our constitution as to make us the more useful to
our kind, why then we should not call them in that
context points of unhealthiness, but rather the
reverse.

The trouble is that such writers as Nordau use
the descriptive names of symptoms merely as an
artifice for giving objective authority to their per
sonal dislikes. The medical terms become mere
"appreciative" clubs to knock men down with. Call
a man a "cad" and you've settled his social status.
Call him a "degenerate," and you've grouped him
with the most loathsome specimens of the race, in
spite of the fact that he may be one of its most

404

[1895J DEGENERATION AND GENIUS

precious members. The only sort of being, in fact,
who can remain as the typical normal man, after all
the individuals with degenerative symptoms have
been rejected, must be a perfect nullity. He must,
it is true, be able to perform the necessities of na
ture and adapt himself to his environment so as to
come in when it rains; but being free from all the
excesses and superfluities that make Man's life in
teresting, without love, poetry, art, religion, or any
other ideal than pride in his non-neurotic constitu
tion, he is the human counterpart of that "temper
ance" hotel of which the traveller's handbook said,
"It possesses no other quality to recommend it."
We all remember the sort of school-boy who used to
ask us six times a day to feel of his biceps. The
sort of man who pounds his mental chest and says
to us, "See, there isn't a morbid fibre in my composi
tion !" is like unto him. Few more profitless mem
bers of the race can be found. The real lesson of
the genius-books is that we should welcome sensibil
ities, impulses, and obsessions if we have them, so
long as by their means the field of our experience
grows deeper and we contribute the better to the
race's stores ; that we should broaden our notion of
health instead of narrowing it; that we should re
gard no single element of weakness as fatal — in
short, that we should not be afraid of life.

405

XXVIII

PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS AND
PKACTICAL EESULTS x

[1898]

AN occasion like the present would seem to call
for an absolutely untechnical discourse. I ought to
speak of something connected with life rather than
with logic. I ought to give a message with a prac
tical outcome and an emotional musical accompani
ment, so to speak, fitted to interest men as men, and
yet also not altogether to disappoint philosophers—
since philosophers, let them be as queer as they will,

[* Reprinted from The University Chronicle (Berkeley. Cali
fornia) September, 1898. An address delivered before the
Philosophical Union of the University of California on August
26, 1898. It was reprinted with slight verbal revision, and with
omission of first three pages, and concluding paragraph, in
Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods,
1904, 1, 673-687, under the title of "The Pragmatic Method."
Afterwards most of pages 410-411 was used in the Varieties of
Religious Experience (1902), p. 444; and pp. 415-424 were re
printed with further slight revision in Pragmatism (1907), pp.
97-108. This article marks the beginning of the pragmatist
movement. Nine years later, speaking of the pragmatist principle
which he attributed to Charles Peirce, James wrote: "It laj
entirely unnoticed by any one for twenty years, until I, in an
address before Professor Howison's philosophical union at the
University of California, brought it forward again and made a
special application of it to religion. By that date (1898) the
times seemed ripe for its reception. The word 'pragmatism'
spread, and at present it fairly spots the pages of the philosophi
cal journals" (Pragmatism, 1907, p. 47. ED.]

406

[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

still are men in the secret recesses of their hearts,
even here at Berkeley. I ought, I say, to produce
something simple enough to catch and inspire the
rest of you, and yet with just enough of ingenuity
and oddity about it to keep the members of the
Philosophical Union from yawning and letting their
attention wander away.

I confess that I have something of this kind in my
mind, a perfectly ideal discourse for the present
occasion. Were I to set it down on paper, I verily
believe it would be regarded by everyone as the
final word of philosophy. It would bring theory
down to a single point, at which every human
being's practical life would begin. It would solve
all the antinomies and contradictions, it would let
loose all the right impulses and emotions ; and every
one, on hearing it, would say, "Why, that is the
truth ! — that is what I have been believing, that is
what I have really been living on all this time, but
I never could find the words for it before. All that
eludes, all that flickers and twinkles, all that in
vites and vanishes even whilst inviting, is here made
a solidity and a possession. Here is the end of un-
satisfactoriness, here the beginning of unimpeded
clearness, joy, and power." Yes, my friends, I have
such a discourse within me! But, do not judge me
harshly, I cannot produce it on the present occasion.
I humbly apologize; I have come across the conti
nent to this wondrous Pacific Coast — to this Eden,
not of the mythical antiquity, but of the solid future
of mankind — I ought to give you something worthy

407

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

of your hospitality, and not altogether unworthy of
your great destiny, to help cement our rugged East
and your wondrous West together in a spiritual
bond, — and yet, and yet, and yet, I simply cannot.
I have tried to articulate it, but it will not come.
Philosophers are after all like poets. They are path
finders. What every one can feel, what every one
can know in the bone and marrow of him, they
sometimes can find words for and express. The
words and thoughts of the philosophers are not ex
actly the words and thoughts of the poets — worse
luck. But both alike have the same function. They
are, if I may use a simile, so many spots, or blazes, —
blazes made by the axe of the human intellect on the
trees of the otherwise trackless forest of human ex
perience. They give you somewhere to go from.
They give you a direction and a place to reach.
They do not give you the integral forest with all its
sunlit glories and its moonlit witcheries and won
ders. Ferny dells, and mossy waterfalls, and secret
magic nooks escape you, owned only by the wild
things to whom the region is a home. Happy they
without the need of blazes! But to us the blazes
give a sort of ownership. We can now use the for
est, wend across it with companions, and enjoy its
quality. It is no longer a place merely to get lost
in and never return. The poet's words and the
philosopher's phrases thus are helps of the most
genuine sort, giving to all of us hereafter the free
dom of the trails they made. Though they create
nothing, yet for this marking and fixing function

408

[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

of theirs we bless their names and keep them on our
lips, even whilst the thin and spotty and half-
casual character of their operations is evident to
our eyes.

No one like the pathfinder himself feels the im
mensity of the forest, or knows the accidentality of
his own trails. Columbus, dreaming of the ancient
East, is stopped by poor pristine simple America,
and gets no farther on that day ; and the poets and
philosophers themselves know as no one else knows
that what their formulas express leaves unexpressed
almost everything that they organically divine and
feel. So I feel that there is a centre in truth's
forest where I have never been : to track it out and
get there is the secret spring of all my poor life's
philosophic efforts ; at moments I almost strike into
the final valley, there is a gleam of the end, a sense
of certainty, but always there comes still another
ridge, so my blazes merely circle towards the true
direction ; and although now, if ever, would be the
fit occasion, yet I cannot take you to the wondrous
hidden spot to-day. To-morrow it must be, or to
morrow, or to-morrow, and pretty surely death will
overtake me ere the promise is fulfilled.

Of such postponed achievements do the lives of all
philosophers consist. Truth's fulness is elusive;
ever not quite, not quite! So we fall back on the
preliminary blazes — a few formulas, a few technical
conceptions, a few verbal pointers — which at least
define the initial direction of the trail. And that,
to my sorrow, is all that I can do here at Berkeley

409

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

to-day. Inconclusive I must be, and merely sugges
tive, though I will try to be as little technical as I
can.

I will seek to define with you merely what seems
to be the most likely direction in which to start
upon the trail of truth. Years ago this direction
was given to me by an American philosopher whose
home is in the East, and whose published works,
few as they are and scattered in periodicals, are no
fit expression of his powers. I refer to Mr. Charles
S. Peirce, with whose very existence as a philos
opher I dare say many of you are unacquainted. He
is one of the most original of contemporary think
ers; and the principle of practicalism — or pragma
tism, as he called it, when I first heard him enunci
ate it at Cambridge in the early '70's — is the clue or
compass by following which I find myself more and
more confirmed in believing we may keep our feet
upon the proper trail.

Peirce's principle, as we may call it, may be ex
pressed in a variety of ways, all of them very simple.
In the Popular Science Monthly for January, 1878,
he introduces it as follows : The soul and meaning
of thought, he says, can never be made to direct
itself towards anything but the production of belief ,
belief being the demicadence which closes a musical
phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life.
Thought in movement has thus for its only possible
motive the attainment of thought at rest. But when
our thought about an object has found its rest in

belief, then our action on the subject can firmly and

-\

410

[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

in short, are really rules for
5 function of thinking is but
ction of habits of action. If

safely begin. Beliefs, in short, are really rules for
action; and the whole
one step in the production
there were any part of a thought that made no
difference in the thought's practical consequences,
then that part would be no proper element of the
thought's significance. Thus the same thought may
be clad in different words ; but if the different words
suggest no different conduct, they are mere outer
accretions, and have no part in the thought's mean
ing. If, however, they determine conduct differ
ently, they are essential elements of the significance.
"Please open the door," and, "Veuillez ouvrir la
portc," in French, mean just the same thing; but
"D — n you, open the door," although in English,
means something very different. Thus to develop a
thought's meaning we need only determine what
conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is for
us its sole significance. And the tangible fact at
the root of all our thought-distinctions, however
subtle, is that there is no one of them so fine as to
consist in anything but a possible difference of prac
tice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts
of an object, then, we need only consider what ef
fects of a conceivably practical kind the object may
involve — what sensations we are to expect from it.
and what reactions we must prepare. Our concep
tion of these effects, then, is for us the whole of our
conception of the object, so far as that conception
has positive significance at all.

This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of

411

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

pragmatism. I think myself that it should be ex
pressed more broadly than Mr. Peirce expresses it.
The ultimate test for us of what a truth means is
indeed the conduct it dictates or inspires. But it
inspires that conduct because it first foretells some
particular turn to our experience which shall call
for just that conduct from us. And I should prefer
for our purposes this evening to express Peirce's
principle by saying that the effective meaning of any
philosophic proposition can always be brought down
to some particular consequence, in our future prac
tical experience, whether active or passive; the
poimt lying rather in the fact that the experience
must be particular, than in the fact that it must be
active.

To take in the importance of this principle, one
must get accustomed to applying it to concrete
cases. Such use as I am able to make of it con
vinces me that to be mindful of it in philosophical
disputations tends wonderfully to smooth out mis
understandings and to bring in peace. If it did
nothing else, then, it would yield a sovereignly
valuable rule of method for discussion. So I shall
devote the rest of this precious hour with you to its
elucidation, because I sincerely think that if you
once grasp it, it will shut your steps out from many
an old false opening, and head you in the true
direction for the trail.

One of its first consequences is this. Suppose
there are two different philosophical definitions, or
propositions, or maxims, or what not, which seem

412

[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

to contradict each other, and about which men dis
pute. If, by supposing the truth of the one, you can
foresee no conceivable practical consequence to any
body at any time or place, which is different from
what you would foresee if you supposed the truth
of the other, why then the difference between the
two propositions is no difference, — it is only a
specious and verbal difference, unworthy of further
contention. Both formulas mean radically the
same thing, although they may say it in such dif
ferent words. It is astonishing to see how many
philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance
the moment you subject them to this simple test.
There can be no difference which doesn't make a dif
ference — no difference in abstract truth which does
not express itself in a difference of concrete fact,
and of conduct consequent upon the fact, imposed
on somebody, somehow, somewhere, and somewhen.
It is true that a certain shrinkage of values often
seems to occur in our general formulas when we
measure their meaning in this prosaic and practical
way. They diminish. But the vastness that is
merely based on vagueness is a false appearance of
importance, and not a vastness worth retaining.
The o?'s, t/'s, and SS-Q always do shrivel, as I have
heard a learned friend say, whenever at the end of
your algebraic computation they change into so
many plain a's, &'s, and c's ; but the whole function
of algebra is, after all, to get them into that more
definite shape ; and the whole function of philosophy
ought to be to find out what definite difference it

413

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

will make to you and me, at definite instants of our
life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be
the one which is true.

If we start off with an impossible case, we shall
perhaps all the more clearly see the use and scope
Of our principle. Let us, therefore, put ourselves,
in imagination, in a position from which no fore
casts of consequence, no dictates of conduct, can
possibly be made, so that the principle of pragma
tism finds no field of application. Let us, I mean,
assume that the present moment is the absolutely
last moment of the world, with bare nonentity be
yond it, and no hereafter for either experience or
conduct.

Now I say that in that case there would be no
sense whatever in some of our most urgent and en
venomed philosophical and religious debates. The
question is, "Is matter the producer of all things,
or is a God there too?" would, for example, offer a
perfectly idle and insignificant alternative if the
world were finished and no more of it to come.
Many of us, most of us, I think, now feel as if a ter
rible coldness and deadness would come over the
world were we forced to believe that no informing
spirit or purpose had to do with it, but it merely
accidentally had come. The actually experienced
details of fact might be the same on either hypoth
esis, some sad, some joyous; some rational, some
odd and grotesque ; but without a God behind them,
we think they would have something ghastly, they
would tell no genuine story, there would be no spec-

414

[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

ulation in those eyes that they do glare with. With
the God, on the other hand, they would grow solid,
warm, and altogether full of real significance.

But I say that such an alternation of feelings,
reasonable enough in a consciousness that is pro
spective, as ours now is, and whose world is partly
yet to come, would be absolutely senseless and irra
tional in a purely retrospective consciousness sum
ming up a world already past. For such a con
sciousness, no emotional interest could attach to the
alternative. The problem would be purely intel
lectual; and if unaided matter could, with any
scientific plausibility, be shown to cipher out the
actual facts, then not the faintest shadow ought to
cloud the mind, of regret for the God that by the
same ciphering would prove needless and disappear
from our belief.

For just consider the case sincerely, and say what
would be the worth of such a God if he were there,
with his work accomplished and his world run
down.1 He would be worth no more than just that
world was worth. To that amount of result, with
its mixed merits and defects, his creative power
could attain, but go no farther. And since there is

t1 Of this and the following passage James later wrote : "I
had no sooner given the address than I perceived a flaw in that
part of it ; but I have left the passage unaltered ever since, be
cause the flaw did not spoil its illustrative value. . . . Even if
matter could do every outward thing that God does, the idea
of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the chief call for
a God on modern men's part is for a being who will inwardly
recognize them and judge them sympathetically" (The Mcnnhuj
of Truth, 1909, pp. 189-190, note). ED.]

415

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

to be no future ; since the whole value and meaning
of the world has been already paid in and actualized
in the feelings that went with it in the passing, and
now go with it in the ending ; since it draws no sup
plemental significance (such as our real world
draws) from its function of preparing something
yet to come ; why then, by it we take God's measure,
as it were. He is the Being who could once for all
do that; and for that much we are thankful to him,
but for nothing more. But now, on the contrary
hypothesis, namely, that the bits of matter follow
ing their "laws" could make that world and do no
less, should we not be just as thankful to them?
Wherein should we suffer loss, then, if we dropped
God as an hypothesis and made the matter alone
responsible? Where would the special deadness,
"crassness," and ghastliness come in? And how,
experience being what it is once for all, would God's
presence in it make it any more "living," any richer
in our sight?

Candidly, it is impossible to give any answer to
this question. The actually experienced world is
supposed to be the same in its details on either
hypothesis, "the same, for our praise or blame," as
Browning says. It stands there indef easibly ; a gift
which can't be taken back. Calling matter the cause
of it retracts no single one of the items that have
made it up, nor does calling God the cause augment
them. They are the God or the atoms, respectively,
of just that and no other world. The God, if there,
has been doing just what atoms could do — appear-

416

[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

ing in the character of atoms, so to speak — and
earning such gratitude as is due to atoms, and no
more. If his presence lends no different turn or
issue to the performance, it surely can lend it no
increase of dignity. Nor would indignity come to
it were he absent, and did the atoms remain the only
actors on the stage. When a play is once over, and
the curtain down, you really make it no better by
claiming an illustrious genius for its author, just as
you make it no worse by calling him a common
hack.

Thus if no future detail of experience or conduct
is to be deduced from our hypothesis, the debate
between materialism and theism becomes quite idle
and insignificant. Matter and God in that event
mean exactly the same thing — the power, namely,
neither more nor less, that can make just this mixed,
imperfect, yet completed world — and the wise man
is he who in such a case would turn his back on such
a supererogatory discussion. Accordingly most men
instinctively — and a large class of men, the so-
called positivists or scientists, deliberately — do turn
their backs on philosophical disputes from which
nothing in the line of definite future consequences
can be seen to follow. The verbal and empty char
acter of our studies is surely a reproach with which
you of the Philosophical Union are but too sadly
familiar. An escaped Berkeley student said to me
at Harvard the other day, — he had never been
in the philosophical department here, — "Words,
words, words, are all that you philosophers care

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for." We philosophers think it all unjust; and yet,
if the principle of pragmatism be true, it is a per
fectly sound reproach unless the metaphysical alter
natives under investigation can be shown to have al
ternative practical outcomes, however delicate and
distant these may be. The common man and the
scientist can discover no such outcomes. And if the
metaphysician can discern none either, the common
man and scientist certainly are in the right of it, as
against him. His science is then but pompous
trifling; and the endowment of a professorship for
such a being would be something really absurd.

Accordingly, in every genuine metaphysical de
bate some practical issue, however remote, is really
involved. To realize this, revert with me to the
question of materialism or theism ; and place your
selves this time in the real world we live in, the
world that has a future, that is yet uncompleted
whilst we speak. In this unfinished world the al
ternative of "materialism or theism?" is intensely
practical ; and it is worth while for us to spend some
minutes of our hour in seeing how truly this is the
case.

How, indeed, does the programme differ for us,
according as we consider that the facts of experience
up to date are purposeless configurations of atoms
moving according to eternal elementary laws, or
that on the other hand they are due to the provi
dence of God? As far as the past facts go, indeed
there is no difference. These facts are in, are bagged,
are captured; and the good that's in them is gained,

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[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

be the atoms or be the God their cause. There are
accordingly many materialists about us to-day who,
ignoring altogether the future and practical aspects
of the question, seek to eliminate the odium attach
ing to the word materialism, and even to eliminate
the word itself, by showing that, if matter could
give birth to all these gains, why then matter, func
tionally considered, is just as divine an entity as
God, in fact coalesces with God, is what you mean
by God. Cease, these persons advise us, to use
either of these terms, with their outgrown opposi
tion. Use terms free of the clerical connotations on
the one hand; of the suggestion of grossness,
coarseness, ignobility, on the other. Talk of the
primal mystery, of the unknowable energy, of the
one and only power, instead of saying either God
or matter. This is the course to which Mr. Spencer
urges us at the end of the first volume of his
Psychology. In some well-written pages he there
shows us that a "matter" so infinitely subtile, and
performing motions as inconceivably quick and fine
as modern science postulates in her explanations,
has no trace of grossness left. He shows that the
conception of spirit, as we mortals hitherto have
framed it, is itself too gross to cover the exquisite
complexity of Nature's facts. Both terms, he says,
are but symbols, pointing to that one unknowable
reality in which their oppositions cease.

Throughout these remarks of Mr. Spencer, elo
quent, and even noble in a certain sense, as they are,
he seems to think that the dislike of the ordinary

419

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS £18981

man to materialism comes from a purely aesthetic
disdain of matter, as something gross in itself, and
vile and despicable. Undoubtedly such an aesthetic
disdain of matter has played a part in philosophic
history. But it forms no part whatever of an intel
ligent modern man's dislikes. Give him a matter
bound forever by its laws to lead our world nearer
and nearer to perfection, and any rational man will
worship that matter as readily as Mr. Spencer wor
ships his own so-called unknowable power. It not
only has made for righteousness up to date, but it
will make for righteousness forever ; and that is all
we need. Doing practically all that a God can do,
it is equivalent to God, its function is a God's func
tion, and in a world in which a God would be super
fluous; from such a world a God could never law
fully be missed.

But is the matter by which Mr. Spencer's process
of cosmic evolution is carried on any such principle
of never-ending perfection as this? Indeed it is not,
for the future end of every cosmically evolved thing
or system of things is tragedy ; and Mr. Spencer, in
confining himself to the aesthetic and ignoring the
practical side of the controversy, has really con
tributed nothing serious to its relief. But apply
now our principle of practical results, and see what
a vital significance the question of materialism or
theism immediately acquires.

Theism and materialism, so indifferent when
taken retrospectively, point when we take them
prospectively to wholly different practical conse-

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[1808] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

quences, to opposite outlooks of experience. For,
according to the theory of mechanical evolution, the
laws of redistribution of matter and motion, though
they are certainly to thank for all the good hours
which our organisms have ever yielded us and
for all the ideals which our minds now frame,
are yet fatally certain to undo their work
again, and to redissolve everything that they
have once evolved. You all know the picture
of the last foreseeable state of the dead uni
verse, as evolutionary science gives it forth. I
cannot state it better than in Mr. Balf our's words :
"The energies of our system will decay, the glory of
the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and
inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for
a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go
down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish.
The uneasy consciousness which in this obscure
corner has for a brief space broken the contented
silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will
know itself no longer. 'Imperishable monuments'
and 'immortal deeds/ death itself, and love stronger
than death, will be as if they had not been. Nor
will anything that is, be better or worse for all that
the labor, genius, devotion, and suffering of man
have striven through countless ages to effect."1

That is the sting of it, that in the vast driftings
of the cosmic weather, though many a jewelled
shore appears, and many an enchanted cloud-bank
floats away, long lingering ere it be dissolved — even

1 The Foundations of Belief, p. 30.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

as our world now lingers, for our joy — yet when
these transient products are gone, nothing, abso
lutely nothing remains, to represent those particu
lar qualities, those elements of preciousness which
they may have enshrined. Dead and gone are they,
gone utterly from the very sphere and room of being.
Without an echo; without a memory; without an
influence on aught that may come after, to make
it care for similar ideals. This utter final wreck
and tragedy is of the essence of scientific material
ism as at present understood. The lower and not
the higher forces are the eternal forces, or the last
surviving forces within the only cycle of evolution
which we can definitely see. Mr. Spencer believes
this as much as any one; so why should he argue
with us as if we were making silly sesthetic objec
tions to the "grossness" of "matter and motion," —
the principles of his philosophy, — when what really
dismays us in it is the disconsolateness of its ul
terior practical results?

No, the true objection to materialism is not posi
tive but negative. It would be farcical at this day
to make complaint of it for what it is, for "gross-
ness." Grossness is what grossness doos — we now
know that. We make complaint of it, on the con
trary, for what it is not — not a permanent warrant
for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller of our
remotest hopes.

The notion of God, on the other hand, however
inferior it may be in clearness to those mathematical
notions so current in mechanical philosophy, has at

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[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

least this practical superiority over them, that it
guarantees an ideal order that shall be permanently
preserved. A world with a God in it to say the last
word, may indeed burn up or freeze, but we then
think of Him as still mindful of the old ideals and
sure to bring them elsewhere to fruition; so that,
where He is, tragedy is only provisional and partial,
and shipwreck and dissolution not the absolutely
final things. This need of an eternal moral order is
one of the deepest needs of our breast. And those
poets, like Dante and Wordsworth, who live on the
conviction of such an order, owe to that fact the
extraordinary tonic and consoling power of their
verse. Here then, in these different emotional and
practical appeals, in these adjustments of our con
crete attitudes of hope and expectation, and all the
delicate consequences which their differences entail,
lie the real meanings of materialism and theism—
not in hair-splitting abstractions about matter's
inner essence, or about the metaphysical attributes
of God. Materialism means simply the denial that
the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ulti
mate hopes; theism means the affirmation of an
eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.
Surely here is an issue genuine enough, for any one
who feels it; and, as long as men are men, it will
yield matter for serious philosophic debate. Con
cerning this question, at any rate, the positivists
and pooh-pooh-ers of metaphysics are in the wrong.
But possibly some of you may still rally to their
defence. Even whilst admitting that theism and

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materialism make different prophecies of the world's
future, you may yourselves pooh-pooh the difference
as something so infinitely remote as to mean nothing
for a sane mind. The essence of a sane mind, you
may say, is to take shorter views, and to feel no
concern about such chimseras as the latter end of
the world. Well, I can only say that if you say
this, you do injustice to human nature. Keligious
melancholy is not disposed of by a simple flourish of
the word "insanity." The absolute things, the last
things, the overlapping things, are the truly philo
sophic concern; all superior minds feel seriously
about them, and the mind with the shortest views
is simply the mind of the more shallow man.

However, I am willing to pass over these very
distant outlooks on the ultimate, if any of you so
insist. The theistic controversy can still serve to
illustrate the principle of pragmatism for us well
enough, without driving us so far afield. If there
be a God, it is not likely that he is confined solely
to making differences in the world's latter end; he
probably makes differences all along its course.
Now the principle of practicalism says that the very
meaning of the conception of God lies in those dif
ferences which must be made in our experience if
the conception be true. God's famous inventory of
perfections, as elaborated by dogmatic theology,
either means nothing, says our principle, or it im
plies certain definite things that we can feel and do
at particular moments of our lives, things which we
could not feel and should not do were no God pres-

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[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

ent and were the business of the universe carried
on by material atoms instead. So far as our con
ceptions of the Deity involve no such experiences, so
far they are meaningless and verbal, — scholastic
entities and abstractions, as the positivists say, and
fit objects for their scorn. But so far as they do
involve such definite experiences, God means some
thing for us, and may be real.

Now if we look at the definitions of God made by
dogmatic theology, we see immediately that some
stand and some fall when treated by this test. God,
for example, as any orthodox text-book will tell us,
is a being existing not only per se, or by himself, as
created beings exist, but a se, or from himself ; and
out of this "aseity" flow most of his perfections. He
is, for example, necessary; absolute; infinite in all
respects ; and single. He is simple, not com
pounded of essence and existence, substance and
accident, actuality and potentiality, or subject and
attributes, as are other things. He belongs to no
genus ; he is inwardly and outwardly unalterable ; he
knows and wills all things, and first of all his own
infinite self, in one indivisible eternal act. And he
is absolutely self-sufficing, and infinitely happy.
Now in which one of us practical Americans here
assembled does this conglomeration of attributes
awaken any sense of reality? And if in no one, then
why not? Surely because such attributes awaken
no responsive active feelings and call for no par
ticular conduct of our own. How does God's
"aseity" conic home to yon* What specific thing

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can I do to adapt myself to his "simplicity"? Or
how determine our behavior henceforward if his
"felicity" is anyhow absolutely complete? In the
'50's and '60's Captain Mayne Reid was the great
writer of boys7 books of out-of-door adventure. He
was forever extolling the hunters and field-observers
of living animals' habits, and keeping up a fire of
invective against the "closet-naturalists," as he
called them, the collectors and classifiers, and han
dlers of skeletons and skins. When I was a boy I
used to think that a closet-naturalist must be the
vilest type of wretch under the sun. But surely the
systematic theologians are the closet-naturalists of
the Deity, even in Captain Mayne Reid's sense.
Their orthodox deduction of God's attributes is
nothing but a shuffling and matching of pedantic
dictionary-adjectives, aloof from morals, aloof from
human needs, something that might be worked out
from the mere word "God" by a logical machine of
wood and brass as well as by a man of flesh and
blood. The attributes which I have quoted have
absolutely nothing to do with religion, for religion
is a living practical affair. Other parts, indeed, of
God's traditional description do have practical con
nection with life, and have owed all their historic
importance to that fact. His omniscience, for
example, and his justice. With the one he sees us
in the dark, with the other he rewards and punishes
what he sees. So do his ubiquity and eternity and
unalterability appeal to our confidence, and his
goodness banish our fears. Even attributes of less

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meaning to this present audience have in past times
so appealed. One of the chief attributes of God,
according to the orthodox theology, is his infinite
love of himself, proved by asking the question, "By
what but an infinite object can an infinite affection
be appeased ?" An immediate consequence of this
primary self-love of God is the orthodox dogma that
the manifestation of his own glory is God's primal
purpose in creation; and that dogma has certainly
made very efficient practical connection with life.
It is true that we ourselves are tending to outgrow
this old monarchical conception of a Deity with his
"court" and pomp — "his state is kingly, thousands
at his bidding speed/7 etc. — but there is no denying
the enormous influence it has had over ecclesiastical
history, nor, by repercussion, over the history of
European states. And yet even these more real and
significant attributes have the trail of the serpent
over them as the books on theology have actually
worked them out. One feels that, in the theolo
gians' hands, they are only a set of dictionary-
adjectives, mechanically deduced ; logic has stepped
into the place of vision, professionalism into that of
life. Instead of bread we get a stone; instead of
a fish, a serpent. Did such a conglomeration of ab
stract general terms give really the gist of our r
knowledge of the Deity, divinity-schools might in
deed continue to flourish, but religion, vital religion,
would have taken its flight from this world. What
keeps religion going is something else than abstract
definitions and systems of logically concatenated

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adjectives, and something different from faculties
of theology and their professors. All these things
are after-effects, secondary accretions upon a mass
of concrete religious experiences, connecting them
selves with feeling and conduct that renew them
selves in scecula swculorum in the lives of humble
private men. If you ask what these experiences are,
they are conversations with the unseen, voices and
) visions, responses to prayer, changes of heart, deliv-
/ erances from fear, inflowings of help, assurances of
s support, whenever certain persons set their own
I internal attitude in certain appropriate ways. The
^ power comes and goes and is lost, and can be found
only in a certain definite direction, just as if it were
a concrete material thing. These direct experiences
of a wider spiritual life with which our superficial
consciousness is continuous, and with which it keeps
up an intense commerce, form the primary mass of
direct religious experience on which all hearsay
religion rests, and which furnishes that notion of
an ever-present God, out of which systematic theol
ogy thereupon proceeds to make capital in its own
unreal pedantic way. What the word "God"
means is just those passive and active experiences
of your life. Now, my friends, it is quite imma
terial to my purpose whether you yourselves enjoy
and venerate these experiences, or whether you
stand aloof and, viewing them in others, suspect
them of being illusory and vain. Like all other
human experiences, they too certainly share in the
general liability to illusion and mistake. They

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[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

need not be infallible. But they are certainly the
originals of the God-idea, and theology is the trans
lation ; and you remember that I am now using the
God-idea merely as an example, not to discuss as to
its truth or error, but only to show how well the
principle of pragmatism works. That the God of
systematic theology should exist or not exist is a
matter of small practical moment. At most it
means that you may continue uttering certain ab
stract words and that you must stop using others.
But if the God of these particular experiences be
false, it is an awful thing for you, if you are one of
those whose lives are stayed on such experiences.
The theistic controversy, trivial enough if we take
it merely academically and theologically, is of tre
mendous significance if we test it by its results for
actual life.

I can best continue to recommend the principle of
practicalism to you by keeping in the neighborhood
of this theological idea. I reminded you a few
minutes ago that the old monarchical notion of the
Deity as a sort of Louis the Fourteenth of the
Heavens is losing nowadays much of its ancient
prestige. Religious philosophy, like all philosophy,
is growing more and more idealistic. And in the
philosophy of the Absolute, so called, that post-
Kantian form of idealism which is carrying so many
of our higher minds before it, we have the triumph
of what in old times was summarily disposed of as
the pantheistic heresy, — I mean the conception of
God, not as the extraneous creator, but as the in-

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dwelling spirit and substance of the world. I know
not where one can find a more candid, more clear,
or, on the whole, more persuasive statement of this
theology of Absolute Idealism than in the addresses
made before this very Union three years ago by your
own great Calif ornian philosopher (whose colleague
at Harvard I am proud to be), Josiah Rp^^e. His
contributions to the resulting volume, The Concep
tion of God, form a very masterpiece of populariza
tion. Now you will remember, many of you, that
in the discussion that followed Professor Royce's
first address, the debate turned largely on the ideas
of unity and plurality, and on the question whether,
if God be One in All and All in All, "One with the
unity of a single instant," as Royce calls it, "form
ing in His wholeness one luminously transparent
moment," any room is left for real morality or free
dom. Professor Howison, in particular, was earnest
in urging that morality and freedom are relations
between a manifold of selves, and that under the
regime of Royce's monistic Absolute Thought "no
true manifold of selves is or can be provided for."
I will not go into any of the details of that particu
lar discussion, but just ask you to consider for a
moment whether, in general, any discussion about
monism or pluralism, any argument over the unity of
the universe, would not necessarily be brought into
a shape where it tends to straighten itself out, by
bringing our principle of practical results to bear.
The question whether the world is at bottom One
or Many is a typical metaphysical question. Long

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[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

has it raged ! In its crudest form it is an exquisite
example of the loggerheads of metaphysics. "I say
it is one great fact," Parmenides and Spinoza ex
claim. "I say it is many little facts," reply the
atomists and associationists. "I say it is both one
and many, many in one," say the Hegelians ; and in
the ordinary popular discussions we rarely get be
yond this barren reiteration by the disputants of
their pet adjectives of number. But is it not first
of all clear that when we take such an adjective as
"One" absolutely and abstractly, its meaning is so
vague and empty that it makes no difference whether
we affirm or deny it? Certainly this universe is
not the mere number One ; and yet you can number
it "one," if you like, in talking about it as contrasted
with other possible worlds numbered "two" and
"three" for the occasion. What exact thing do you
practically mean by "One," when you call the uni
verse One, is the first question you must ask. In
what ways does the oneness come home to your own
personal life? By what difference does it express
itself in your experience? How can you act dif
ferently towards a universe which is one? Inquired
into in this way, the unity might grow clear and be
affirmed in some ways and denied in others, and so
cleared up, even though a certain vague and wor
shipful portentousness might disappear from the
notion of it in the process.

For instance, one practical result that follows
when we have one thing to handle, is that we can
pass from one part of it to another without letting

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go of the thing. In this sense oneness must be
partly denied and partly affirmed of our universe.
Physically we can pass continuously in various man
ners from one part of it to another part. But log
ically and psychically the passage seems less easy,
for there is no obvious transition from one mind to
another, or from minds to physical things. You
have to step off and get on again; so that in these
ways the world is not one, as measured by that prac
tical test.

Another practical meaning of oneness is suscep
tibility of collection. A collection is one, though the
things that compose it be many. Now, can we
practically "collect" the universe? Physically, of
course we cannot. And mentally we cannot, if we
take it concretely in its details. But if we take it
summarily and abstractly, then we collect it men
tally whenever we refer to it, even as I do now when
I fling the term "universe" at it, and so seem to
leave a mental ring around it. It is plain, how
ever, that such abstract noetic unity (as one might
call it) is practically an extremely insignificant
thing.

Again, oneness may mean generic sameness, so
that you can treat all parts of the collection by one
rule and get the same results. It is evident that
in this sense the oneness of our world is incomplete,
for in spite of much generic sameness in its elements
and items, they still remain of many irreducible
kinds. You can't pass by mere logic all over the
field of it.

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[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

Its elements have, however, an affinity or com-
mensurability with cadi oilier, arc not wholly irrele
vant, but can be compared, and fit together after
certain fashions. This again might practically
mean that they were one in origin, and that, trac
ing them backwards, we should find them arising
in a single primal causal fact. Such unity of origin
would have definite practical consequences, would
have them for our scientific life at least.

I can give only these hasty superficial indications
of what I mean when I say that it tends to clear
up the quarrel between monism and pluralism to
subject the notion of unity to such practical tests.
On the other hand, it does but perpetuate strife and
misunderstanding to continue talking of it in an ab
solute and mystical way. I have little doubt my
self that this old quarrel might be completely
smoothed out to the satisfaction of all claimants,
if only the maxim of Peirce were methodically fol
lowed here. The current monism on the whole still
keeps talking in too abstract a way. It says the
world must be either pure disconnectedness, no
universe at all, or absolute unity. It insists that
there is no stopping-place half way. Any connec
tion whatever, says this monism, is only possible
if there be still more connection, until at last we are
driven to admit the absolutely total connection re
quired. But this absolutely total connection either
means nothing, is the mere word "one" spelt long ; or
else it means the sum of all the partial connections
that can possibly be conceived. I believe that when

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we thus attack the question, and set ourselves to
search for these possible connections, and conceive
each in a definite practical way, the dispute is
already in a fair way to be settled beyond the
chance of misunderstanding, by a compromise in
which the Many and the One both get their lawful
rights.

But I am in danger of becoming technical ; so I
must stop right here, and let you go.

I am happy to say that it is the English-speaking
philosophers who first introduced the custom of in
terpreting the meaning of conceptions by asking
what difference they make for life. Mr. Peirce has
only expressed in the form of an explicit maxim
what their sense for reality led them all instinc
tively to do. The great English way of investigat
ing a conception is to ask yourself right off, "What
is it known as? In what facts does it result?
What is its cash-value, in terms of particular ex
perience? and what special difference would come
into the world according as it were true or false?"
Thus does Locke treat the conception of personal
identity. What you mean by it is just your chain
of memories, says he. That is the only concretely
verifiable part of its significance. All further ideas
about it, such as the oneness or manyness of the
spiritual substance on which it is based, are there
fore void of intelligible meaning; and propositions
touching such ideas may be indifferently affirmed
or denied. So Berkeley with his "matter." The
cash-value of matter is our physical sensations.

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That is what it is known as, all that we concretely
verify of its conception. That therefore is the
whole meaning of the word "matter" — any other
pretended meaning is mere wind of words. Hume
does the same thing with causation. It is known
as habitual antecedence, and tendency on our part
to look for something definite to come. Apart from
this practical meaning it has no significance what
ever, and books about it may be committed to the
flames, says Hume. Stewart and Brown, James
Mill, John Mill, and Bain, have followed more or
less consistently the same method; and Shadworth
Hodgson has used it almost as explicitly as Mr.
Peirce. These writers have many of them no doubt
been too sweeping in their negations ; Hume, in par
ticular, and James Mill, and Bain. But when all is
said and done, it was they, not Kant, who intro
duced "the critical method" into philosophy, the
one method fitted to make philosophy a study
worthy of serious men. For what seriousness can
possibly remain in debating philosophic proposi
tions that will never make an appreciable difference
to us in action? And what matters it, when all
propositions are practically meaningless, which of
them be called true or false?

The shortcomings and the negations and bald
nesses of the English philosophers in question come,
not from their eye to merely practical results, but
solely from their failure to track the practical re
sults completely enough to see how far they extend.
Hume can be corrected and built out, and his beliefs

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enriched, by using Humian principles exclusively,
and without making any use of the circuitous and
ponderous artificialities of Kant. It is indeed a some
what pathetic matter, as it seems to me, that this is
not the course which the actual history of phil
osophy has followed. Hume had no English suc
cessors of adequate ability to complete him and cor
rect his negations; so it happened, as a matter of
fact, that the building out of critical philosophy has
mainly been left to thinkers who were under the
influence of Kant. Even in England and this coun
try it is with Kantian catch-words and categories
that the fuller view of life is pursued, and in our
universities it is the courses in transcendentalism
that kindle the enthusiasm of the more ardent
students, whilst the courses in English philosophy
are committed to a secondary place. I cannot think
that this is exactly as it should be. And I say this
not out of national jingoism, for jingoism has no
place in philosophy; or out of excitement over the
great Anglo-American alliance against the world,
of which we nowadays hear so much — though
heaven knows that to that alliance I wish a God
speed. I say it because I sincerely believe that the
English spirit in philosophy is intellectually, as
well as practically and morally, on the saner,
sounder, and truer path. Kant's mind is the rarest
and most intricate of all possible antique bric-a-brac
nHiseums, and connoisseurs and dilettanti will al
ways wish to visit it and see the wondrous and racy
contents. The temper of the dear old man about his

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[1898] PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

work is perfectly delectable. And yet he is really—
although I shrink with some terror from saying
such a thing before some of you here present — at
bottom a mere curio, a "specimen." I mean by this
a perfectly definite thing: I believe that Kant be
queaths to us not one single conception which is
both indispensable to philosophy and which phil
osophy either did not possess before him, or was not
destined inevitably to acquire after him through
the growth of men's reflection upon the hypotheses
by which science interprets nature. The true line
of philosophic progress lies, in short, it seems to me,
not so much through Kant as round him to the point
where now we stand. Philosophy can perfectly well
outflank him, and build herself up into adequate
fulness by prolonging more directly the older Eng
lish lines.

May I hope, as I now conclude, and release your
attention from the strain to which you have so
kindly put it on my behalf, that on this wonderful
Pacific Coast, of which our race is taking posses
sion, the principle of practicalism, in which I have
tried so hard to interest you, and with it the whole
English tradition in philosophy, will come to its
rights, and in your hands help the rest of us in our
struggle towards the light.

437

XXIX

HODGSON'S "OBSEBVATIONS OF
TKANCE"1

[1898]

IF I may be allowed a personal expression of
opinion at the end of this notice, I would say that
the Piper phenomena are the most absolutely baffling
thing I know. Of the various applicable hypotheses,
each seems more unnatural than the rest. Any
definitely known form of fraud seems out of the
question; yet undoubtedly, could it be made prob
able, fraud would be by far the most satisfying ex
planation, since it would leave no further problems
outstanding. The spirit-hypothesis exhibits a va
il1 Closing paragraphs reprinted from a review of R. Hodg
son's A Further Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of
Trance, Psychological Re-view, 1898, 5, 420-424. This selection and
the one reprinted below (p. 484) represent James's most mature
views of mediumistic phenomena, with special reference to the
case of Mrs. Piper. A popular presentation of these views may
be found in "Confidences of a Psychical Researcher," reprinted
in Memories and Studies (1911). The author's earlier views can
be traced through the following articles and reviews: (1) "Re
port of the Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena," Proceed
ings of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1886, 1,
102-106, containing a report on "Mrs. P.," and a statement of
the writer's belief that the general low level of mediumistic
evidence requires the very careful study of special test cases;
(2) "A Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of

438

[1898] HODGSON'S "OBSERVATIONS"

cancy, triviality and incoherence of mind painful to
think of as the state of the departed; and coupled
therewithal a pretension to impress one, a disposi
tion to "fish" and face round, and disguise the es
sential hollowness, which are, if anything, more
painful still. Mr. Hodgson has to resort to the
theory that, although the communicants probably
are spirits, they are in a semi-comatose or sleeping
state while communicating, and only half aware of
what is going on, while the habits of Mrs. Piper's
neural organism largely supply the definite form of
words, etc., in which the phenomenon is clothed.
Then there is the theory that the "subliminal" ex
tension of Mrs. Piper's own mind masquerades in
this way, and plays these fantastic tricks before
high heaven, using its preternatural powers of cog
nition and memory for the basest of deceits. Many
details make for this view, which also falls well into
line with what we know of automatic writing and

Trance," Part III., Proceedings of the [English] Society for
Psychical Research, 1890, 6, 651-659, containing story of the
author's experiences with Mrs. Piper since his first acquain
tance with her in 1885, expressing belief that her trance knowl
edge exceeds her waking knowledge, but offering no explana
tion ; (3) "Address of the President," Proceedings of the [Eng
lish] Society for Psychical Research, 1896, 12, 2-10, reprinted in
part in Will to Believe (1907), pp. 317-320, 323-327, asserting
author's belief that the Piper case is decisive against the ortho
dox psychology; (4) "Psychical Research," Psychological Re
view, 1896, 3, 649-652; (5) "Mrs. Piper 'The Medium,' " Science,
1898, N.S. 7, 640-641, containing controversy with Prof. J. McK.
Cattell on the evidential value of the Piper case. For the many
additional titles relating to psychical research in the broad
sense, the reader should consult The Annotated Bibliography
of the Writings of William James (1920). ED.]

439

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

similar subliminal performances in the public at
large. But what a ghastly and grotesque sort of
appendage to one's personality is this, from any
point of view : the humbugging and masquerading
extra-marginal self is as great a paradox for psy
chology as the comatose spirits are for pneumatol-
ogy. Finally, we may fall back on the notion of a
sort of floating mind-stuff in the world, infrahuman,
yet possessed of fragmentary gleams of superhuman
cognition, unable to gather itself together except by
taking advantage of the trance states of some exist
ing human organism, and there enjoying a parasitic
existence which it prolongs by making itself accept
able and plausible under the improvised name of
"spirit control." On any of these theories our
"classic" human life, as we may call it, seems to con
nect itself with an environment so "romantic" as
to baffle all one's habitual sense of teleology and
moral meaning. And yet there seems no refuge for
one really familiar with the Piper phenomenon (or,
doubtless, with others that are similar) from admit
ting one or other, perhaps even all of these fantastic
prolongations of mental life into the unknown.

The world is evidently more complex than we are
accustomed to think it, the "absolute world-ground,"
in particular, being farther off (as Mr. F. C. S.
Schiller has well pointed out) than it is the wont
either of the usual empiricisms or of the usual ideal
isms to think it. This being, the case, the "scien
tific" sort of procedure is evidently Mr. Hodgson's,
with his dogged and candid exploration of all the

440

[1898] HODGSON'S "OBSERVATIONS"

details of so exceptional a concrete instance; and
not that of the critics who, refusing to come to any
close quarters with the facts, survey them at long
range and summarily dispose of them at a conven
ient distance by the abstract name of fraud.

441

xxx :

"PERSONAL IDEALISM" x

[1903]

... I CALL [this] book refreshing, first, because
"band-work," always a cheerful sight, is peculiarly
so in a field like that of philosophy where men are
usually more given to stickling for their differences
than for their points of union; second, because the
style of most of the essayists is unconventional and
enthusiastic — sometimes frolicsome even ; and finally
because the philosophy which the writers profess is
a sort of breaking of the ice, and seems to promise a
new channel where formerly the only pathways
were Naturalism's desert on the one hand, and the
barren summits of the Absolute on the other. Here
we have Naturalism's concreteness without its low-
ness, and Absolutism's elevation without its ab-
stractness, for human purposes, of result. The
human person, according to these writers, shows
itself, if we take it completely and empirically
enough, to be a force irreducible to lower terms, and

E1 Reprinted with omissions from Mind, 1903, N.S. 12, 93-97.
Review of Personal Idealism: Philosophical Essays by Eight
Members of the University of Oxford, edited by Henry Sturt,
1902. The authors were F. C. S. Schiller, G. F. Stout, W. R.
Boyce Gibson, G. E. Underbill, R. R. Marett, H. Sturt, F. W.
Bussell, and Hastings Rashdall. On same topic see below, p.
450. ED.]

442

[1903] "PERSONAL IDEALISM''

an origin both of theoretic perspectives and of con
sequences in the way of outward fact.

A re-anthropomorphised Universe is the general
outcome of this philosophy, which on the whole
continues Lotze, Sigwart, and Renouvier's line of
thinking, although it is so much more radically ex
periential in tone. Being so experiential, it has to
be unacademic, informal, and fragmentary ; and
this, from the point of view of making converts, is a
bad practical defect. What we need now in Eng
lish, it seems to me, is a more commanding and all-
round statement in classic style and generalised
terms of the personal idealism which these authors
represent. Mr. Schiller might compass it, if he
would tone down a little the exuberance of his
polemic wit — meanwhile we have these trial bricks,
set in at separate points.

I add no criticism — although I think that every
essay calls for some objection of detail — because I
think that the important thing to recognise is that
we have here a distinct new departure in contem
porary thought, the combination, namely, of a teleo-
logical and spiritual inspiration with the same kind
of conviction that the particulars of experience con
stitute the stronghold of reality as has usually
characterised the materialistic type of mind. If
empiricism is to be radical it must indeed admit
the concrete data of experience in their full com
pleteness. The only fully complete concrete data

443

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS [19°3]

are, however, the successive moments of our own
several histories, taken with their subjective per
sonal aspect, as well as with their "objective" deliv
erance or "content." After the analogy of these
moments of experiences must all complete reality
be conceived. Eadical empiricism thus leads to the
assumption of a collectivism of personal lives
(which may be of any grade of complication, and
superhuman or infrahuman as well as human), vari
ously cognitive of each other, variously conative and
impulsive, genuinely evolving and changing by
effort and trial, and by their interaction and cumu
lative achievements making up the world. Be
ginnings of a sincere Empirical Evolutionism like
this have been made already — I need only point to
Fechner, Lotze, Paulsen, C. S. Peirce (in the
Honist], and to a certain extent to Wundt and
Eoyce. But most of these authors spoil the scheme
entirely by the arbitrary way in which they clap
on to it an absolute monism with which it has noth
ing to do. Mr. Schiller, in his Riddles of the
Sphinx, and more acutely still in various essays, has
given to it a more consistent form. It is to be hoped
that the publication of the present volume will
give it a more mature self-consciousness, and that
a systematic all-round statement of it may erelong
appear. I know of no more urgent philosophic
desideratum at the present day.

444

XXXI

THE CHICAGO SCHOOL1

[1904]

THE rest of the world lias made merry over the Chi
cago man's legendary saying that "Chicago hasn't
had time to get round to culture yet, but when she
does strike her, she'll make her hum." Already the
prophecy is fulfilling itself in a dazzling manner.
Chicago has a School of Thought! — a school of
thought which, it is safe to predict, will figure in
literature as the School of Chicago for twenty-five
years to come. Some universities have plenty of
thought to show, but no school; others plenty of
school, but no thought. The University of Chicago,
by its Decennial Publications, shows real thought
and a real school. Prof. John Dewey, and at least
ten of his disciples, have collectively put into the
world a statement, homogeneous in spite of so many

1l. Studies in Logical Theory, John Dewey, with the co
operation of members nnd fellows of the Department of Philos
ophy. The Decennial Publications, Second Series, Volume XI.,
Chicago. The University of Chicago Press, 1903. 2. The Defi
nition of the Psychical, George H. Mead. 3. Existence, Meaning
and Reality, A. W. Moore. 4. Logical Conditions of a Scientific
Treatment of Morality, John Dewey. 5. The Relations of
Structural and Functional Psychology to Philosophy, James
Rowland Angell. Reprints from Volume III. of the first series
of Decennial Publications, ibid., 1903. [Review reprinted with
omissions from Psychological Bulletin, 1904, 1, 1-5. ED.]

445

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

co-operating minds, of a view of the world, both
theoretical and practical, which is so simple, mas
sive, and positive that, in spite of the fact that many
parts of it yet need to be worked out, it deserves
the title of a new system of philosophy. If it be as
true as it is original, its publication must be reck
oned an important event. The present reviewer,
for one, strongly suspects it of being true.

There are two great gaps in the system, which
none of the Chicago writers have done anything to
fill, and until they are filled, the system, as a sys
tem, will appear defective. There is no cosmology,
no positive account of the order of physical fact,
as contrasted with mental fact, and no account of
the fact (which I assume the writers to believe in)
that different subjects share a common object-world.
These lacunae can hardly be inadvertent — we shall
doubtless soon see them filled in some way by one
or another member of the school.

I might go into much greater technical detail, and
I might in particular make many a striking quota
tion. But I prefer to be exceedingly summary, and
merely to call the reader's attention to the impor
tance of this output of Chicago University. Tak
ing it en gros, what strikes me most in it is the
great sense of concrete reality with which it is filled.
It seems a promising via media between the empiri
cist and transcendentalist tendencies of our time.
Like empiricism, it is individualistic and phenome-
nalistic ; it places truth in rebus, and not ante rem.

446

[1904] THE CHICAGO SCHOOL

It resembles transcendentalism, on the other hand,
in making value and fact inseparable, and in stand
ing for continuities and purposes in things. It em
ploys the genetic method to which both schools are
now accustomed. It coincides remarkably with the
simultaneous movement in favor of "pragmatism"
or "humanism" set up quite independently at Ox
ford by Messrs. Schiller and Sturt. It probably has
a great future, and is certainly something of which
Americans may be proud. Professor Dewey ought
to gather into another volume his scattered essays
and addresses on psychological and ethical topics,
for now that his philosophy is systematically formu
lated, these throw a needed light.

447

XXXII

HUMANISM !

[1904]

QUITE recently the word "pragmatism," first used
thirty years ago by our American philosopher C. S.
Peirce, has become fashionable as the designation o'f
a novel way of looking at the mind's relations to
reality. Throughout almost the entire past both
Science and Philosophy have been accustomed to
suppose that "Truth" must needs consist of a hard-
and-fast system of propositions, valid in themselves
and eternally, which our minds have only to copy
literally. Logic and mathematics had always
seemed to constitute such systems, and the entities
and laws of physics and chemistry, just as our text
books formulated them, were supposed to be equally
"objective."

But three influences have at last conspired to dis
solve away this appearance of absoluteness in such
facts and truths as we can formulate. First, philo
sophic criticisms like those of Mill, Lotze, and Sig-
wart have emphasized the incongruence of the
forms of our thinking with the "things" which the

C1 Reprinted with omissions from Nation, 1904, 78, 175-176.
Review of Humanism: Philosophical Essays^ by F. C. S. Schiller,
1903. Cf. also above, pp. 442-444. ED.]

448

[1904] HUMANISM

thinking nevertheless successfully handles, i Predi
cates and subjects, for example, do not live sepa
rately in the things, as they do in our judgments of
them.) Second, not only has the doctrine of Evo
lution weaned us from fixities and inflexibilities in
general, and given us a world all plastic, but it has
made us ready to imagine almost all our functions,
even the intellectual ones, as "adaptations/' and
possibly transient adaptations, to practical hum an
needs. Lastly, the enormous growth of the sciences
in the past fifty years has reconciled us to the idea
that "Not quite true" is as near as we can ever get.
For investigating minds there is no sanctity in any
theory, and "laws of nature" absolutely expressible
by us are idols of the popular-science level of educa
tion exclusively. Up-to-date logicians, mathemati
cians, physicists, and chemists vie with one another
as to who will break down most barriers, efface most
outlines, supersede most current definitions and
conceptions, and show most skill in playing about
the old material in new ways, limited only by the
one rule of the game, that the new thoughts must
dip into and coalesce with the material at more than
one point of sensible experience.

Thus has arisen the pragmatism of Pearson in
England, of Mach in Austria, and of the somewhat
more reluctant Poincare* in France, all of whom say
that our sciences are but Dcnkmittel — "true" in no
other sense than that of yielding a conceptual short
hand, economical for our descriptions. Thus does
Simmel in Berlin suggest that no human conception

449

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

whatever is more than an instrument of biological
utility ; and that if it be successfully that, we may
call it true, whatever it resembles or fails to re
semble. Bergson, and more particularly his dis
ciples Wilbois, Le Roy, and others in France, have
defended a very similar doctrine. Ostwald in Leip
zig, with his Energetics, belongs to the same school,
which has received the most thoroughgoingly phil
osophical of its expressions here in America, in the
publications of Professor Dewey and his pupils in
Chicago University, publications of which the vol
ume Studies in Logical Theory (1903) forms only
the most systematized instalment.1

Last year the volume Personal Idealism* a collec
tion of essays by Messrs. Sturt, Schiller, and other
Oxford teachers, announced the pragmatist doctrine
radically to English academic circles ; and now Mr.
Schiller publishes his own scattered essays to the
same effect, dropping the term "pragmatism" al
together, and boldly describing as "Humanism" the
philosophy of which he is so far the most vivacious
and pugnacious champion. No one can ever foresee
what terms will succeed in the struggle to gain cur
rency. "Pragmatism" (i.e., practicalism) is cer
tainly somewhat blind. "Humanism" is perhaps
too "whole-hearted" for the use of philosophers, who
are a bloodless breed; but, save for that objection,
one might back it, for it expresses the essence of the
new way of thought, which is, that it is impossible

I1 Of. also above, pp. 445-447. ED.]
[2 Cf. above, pp. 442-444. ED.]

450

[1904] HUMANISM

to strip the human element out from even our most
abstract theorizing. All our mental categories
without exception have been evolved because of
their fruitfulness for life, and owe their being to
historic circumstances, just as much as do the nouns
and verbs and adjectives in which our languages
clothe them.

But humanistic empiricism will have many other
steps forward to make before it conquers all antago
nisms. Grant, for example, that our human sub
jectivity determines what we shall say things are;
grant that it gives the "predicates" to all the "sub
jects" of our conversation. Still the fact remains
that some subjects are there for us to talk about,
and others not there ; and the farther fact that, in
spite of so many different ways in which we may
perform the talking, there still is a grain in the
subjects which we can't well go against, a cleavage-
structure which resists certain of our predicates
and makes others slide in more easily. Does not
this stubborn that of some things and not of others ;
does not this imperfect plasticity of them to our
conceptual manipulation, oppose a positive limit to
the sphere of influence of humanistic explanations?
Does not the fact that so many of our thoughts are
retroactive in their application point to a similar
limit? "Radium," for example; humanistically,
both the that and the what of it are creations of
yesterday. But we believe that ultra-humanistically
they existed ages before their gifted discoverers

451

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

were born. In what shape? There's the rub ! for we
have no non-humanistic categories to think in. But
the that of things, and their affinity with some of
our whats and not with others, and the retroactive
force of our conceptions, are so many problems for
Humanism over which battle is sure to rage for a
long time to come.

Mr. Schiller has but skirted some of these prob
lems without entering into them deeply. But he has
gone profoundly into others, and his style is as clean
and clear and lively English, as his thought is
strong and original. His ideas are sure to form the
storm-centre for the philosophy of at least the next
decade.

452

XXXIII
LAUKA BKIDGMAN1

--

[1904]

THE world changes, and the minds of men. Helen
Keller outstrips Laura Bridgman, as Rudyard Kip
ling outstrips Maria Edgeworth. Will Helen her
self appear quaint and old-fashioned fifty years
hence, to a generation spoiled by some still more
daring recipient of its sympathy and wonder? We
can answer such a question as little as Dr. Howe
could have answered it fifty years ago; for the
high-water mark of one age in every line of its
prowess always seems "the limit," — at any rate the
only limit positively imaginable to those who are
living, — and just what form and what direction
Evolution will strike into when she takes her next
step into novelty is ever a secret till the step is
made.

Laura was the limit in her day. The child of
seven was dumb and blind and almost without the
sense of smell, with no plaything but an old boot
which served for a doll, and with so little education
in affection that she had never been taught to kiss.

1 Laura Bridgman. Dr. Howe's Famous Pupil and what He
tauf/ht Her. By Maud Howe and Florence Howe Hall. Boston:
Little, Brown & Co. 1903. [Reprinted with omissions from
Atlantic Monthly, January, 1904, 93, 95-98. ED.]

453

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS £1904]

She was sternly handled at home, and was irascible
and an object of fear and pity to all but one of the
village neighbors, and that one was half-witted.
The way in which she became in a few years,
through Dr. Howe's devotion, an educated girl,
delicate-mannered, spiritual-minded, and sweet-
tempered, seemed such a miracle of philanthropic
achievement that the fame of it spread not only over
our country, but throughout Europe. It was re
garded as a work of edification, a missionary feat.
The Sunday-schools all heard of Laura as a soul
buried alive but disentombed and brought into
God's sunlight by science and religion working hand
in hand. The few other blind deaf-mutes on whom
attempts at rescue had been made — Oliver Caswell,
Julia Brace, and others — were so inferior that
Laura's decidedly attenuated personality stood for
the extreme of richness attainable by humanity
when its experience was limited to the sense of
touch alone. Of such all-sided ambitions and curi
osities, of such untrammelled soarings and skim
mings over the fields of language, of such complete
ness of memory and easy mastery of realities as
Helen Keller has shown us, no one then had a
dream.

It is now indeed the age of Kipling versus that
of Edgeworth. Laura was primarily regarded as a
phenomenon of conscience, almost a theological
phenomenon. Helen is primarily a phenomenon of
vital exuberance. Life for her is a series of ad
ventures, rushed at with enthusiasm and fun. For

454

[1904] LAURA BRIDGMAN

Laura it was more like a series of such careful in
door steps as a convalescent makes when the bed
days are over. Helen's age is that of the scarehead
and portrait bespattered newspaper. In Laura's
time the papers were featureless, and the public
found as much zest in exhibitions at institutions for
the deaf and dumb as it now finds in football games.
In contrast with the recklessly sensational terms
in which everything nowadays expresses itself, there
seems a sort of white veil of primness spread over
this whole biography of Laura. All those who
figure in it bear the stamp of conscience. Dr. Howe
himself took his educative task religiously. It was
his idea, as it was that of all the American liberals
of his generation, that the soul has intuitive re
ligious faculties which life will awaken, indepen
dently of revelation. Laura's nature was intensely
moral, — almost morbidly so, in fact, — and assimi
lated the conception of a Divine Ruler with great
facility; but it does not appear certain that such
an idea would have come to her spontaneously.
She was easily converted into revivalistic evangeli-
cism at the age of thirty-three, through communica
tions which her biographers deplore as having per
verted her originally optimistic faith. Her spir
itual accomplishments seem to have been regarded
rather as matters for wonder by the public of her
day. But, granted a nature with a bent in the spir
itual direction, it is hard to imagine conditions more
favorable to its development than Laura's. Her im
mediate life, once it was redeemed (as Dr. Howe re-

455

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

deemed it) from quasi-animality, was almost wholly
one of conduct toward other people. Her relations
to "things," only tactile at best, were for the most
part remote and hearsay and symbolic. Personal
relations had to be her foreground, — she had to
think in terms almost exclusively social and spir
itual.

There are endless interesting traits, some of them
humanly touching, some of them priceless to the psy
chologist, scattered through this life of Laura. The
question immediately suggests itself, Why was
Laura so superior to other deaf-mutes, and why is
Helen Keller so superior to Laura? Since Gal ton
first drew attention to the subject, every one knows
that in some of us the material of thought is mainly
optical, in others auditory, etc., and the classifica
tion of human beings into the eye-minded, the
ear-minded, and the motor-minded, is familiar.
Of course if a person is born to be eye-minded,
blindness will maim his life far more than if
he is ear-minded originally. If ear-minded, deaf
ness will maim him most. If he be natively con
structed on a touch-minded or motor-minded plan,
he will lose less than the others from either blind
ness or deafness. Touch-images and motor-images
are the only terms that subjects "congenitally"
blind and deaf can think in. It may be that Laura
and Helen were originally meant to be more "tac
tile" and "motile" than their less successful rivals
in the race for education, and that Helen, being

456

[1904] LAURA BRIDGMAN

more exclusively motor-minded than any subject yet
met with, is the one least crippled by the loss of
her other senses.

But such comparisons are vague conjectures.
What is not conjecture, but fact, is the philosophical
conclusion which we are forced to draw from the
cases both of Laura and of Helen. Their entire
thinking goes on in tactile and motor symbols. Of
the glories of the world of light and sound they have
no inkling. Their thought is confined to the pallid-
est verbal substitutes for the realities which are its
object. The mental material of which it consists
would be considered by the rest of us to be of the
deadliest insipidity. Nevertheless, life is full of
absorbing interest to each of them, and in Helen's
case thought is free and abundant in quite excep
tional measure. What clearer proof could we ask
of the fact that the relations among things, far more
than the things themselves, are what is intellectu
ally interesting, and that it makes little difference
what terms we think in, so long as the relations
maintain their character. All sorts of terms can
transport the mind with equal delight, provided
they be woven into equally massive and far-reaching
schemes and systems of relationship. They are then
equivalent for intellectual purposes, and for yield
ing intellectual pleasure, for the schemes and sys
tems are what the mind finds interesting.

Laura's life should find a place in every library.
Dr. Howe's daughters have executed it with tact
and feeling. No reader can fail to catch some-

457

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

thing of Laura's own touching reverence for the
noble figure of "the Doctor." And if the ruddier
pages which record Helen's exploits make the good
Laura's image seem just a little anaemic by contrast,
we cannot forget that there never could have been
a Helen Keller if there had not been a Laura
Bridgman.

458

XXXIV

G. PAPINI AND THE PEAGMATIST
MOVEMENT IN ITALY *

[1906]

AMERICAN students have so long had the habit of
turning to Germany for their philosophic inspira
tion, that they are only beginning to recognize the
splendid psychological and philosophical activity
with which France to-day is animated; and as for
poor little Italy, few of them think it necessary
even to learn to read her language. Meanwhile
Italy is engaged in the throes of an intellectual
rinascimento quite as vigorous as her political one.
Her sons still class the things of thought somewhat
too politically, making partizan capital, clerical or
positivist, of every conquest or concession, but that
is only the slow dying of a habit born in darker
times. The ancient genius of her people is evidently
unweakened, and the tendency to individualism
that has always marked her is beginning to mark
her again as strongly as ever, and nowhere more
notably than in philosophy.

As an illustration, let me give a brief account of
the aggressive movement in favor of "pragmatism"

[a Reprinted from Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and
Scientific Methods, 1906, 3, 337^341. ED.]

459

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS t1906]

which the monthly journal Leonardo (published at
Florence, and now in its fourth year) is carrying
on, with the youthful Giovanni Papini tipping the
wedge of it as editor, and the scarcely less youthful
names of Prezzolini, Vailati, Calderoni, Amendola,
and others, signing the more conspicuous articles.
To one accustomed to the style of article that has
usually discussed pragmatism, Deweyism, or radi
cal empiricism, in this country, and more particu
larly in this Journal, the Italian literature of the
subject is a surprising, and to the present writer a
refreshing, novelty. Our university seminaries
(where so many bald-headed and bald-hearted young
aspirants for the Ph.D. have all these years been
accustomed to bore one another with the pedantry
and technicality, formless, uncircumcised, un
abashed, and unrebuked, of their "papers" and "re
ports") are bearing at last the fruit that was to be
expected, in an almost complete blunting of the
literary sense in the more youthful philosophers of
our land. Surely no other country could utter in
the same number of months as badly written a phil
osophic mass as ours has published since Dewey's
Studies in Logical Theory came out, Germany is
not "in it" with us, in my estimation, for uncouth-
ness of form.

In this Florentine band of Leonardists, on the
other hand, we find, instead of heaviness, length,
and obscurity, lightness, clearness, and brevity, with
no lack of profundity or learning (quite the reverse,
indeed), and a frolicsomeness and impertinence that

460

[1900] PRAGMATISM IN ITALY

wear the charm of youth and freedom. Signer
Papini in particular has a real genius for cutting
and untechnical phraseology. He can write descrip
tive literature, polychromatic with adjectives, like
a decadent, and clear up a subject by drawing cold
distinctions, like a scholastic. As he is the most
enthusiastic pragmatist of them all (some of his
colleagues make decided reservations) I will speak
of him exclusively. He advertises a general work on
the pragmatist movement as in press; but the Feb
ruary number of Leonardo and the last chapter of
his just published volume, II Crepuscolo del Filo-
sofi,1 give his programme, and announce him as the
most radical conceiver of pragmatism to be found
anywhere.

The Crepuscolo book calls itself in the preface a
work of "passion/' being a settling of the author's
private accounts with several philosophers (Kant,
Hegel, Schopenhauer, Comte, Spencer, Nietzsche)
and a clearing of his mental tables from their im
peding rubbish, so as to leave him the freer for con
structive business. I will only say of the critical
chapters that they are strongly thought and pun-
gently written. The author hits essentials, but he
doesn't always cover everything, and more than he
has said, either for or against, remains to be said
about both Kant and Hegel. It is the preface and
the final chapter of the book that contain the pas
sion. The "good riddance," which is Papini's cry
of farewell to the past of philosophy, seems most of

1Milano: SociotA Edit rice Lombarda.
461

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS [1906]

all to signify for him a good-by to its exaggerated
respect for universals and abstractions. Eeality
for him exists only distributively , in the particular
concretes of experience. Abstracts and universals
are only instruments by which we meet and handle
these latter.

In an article in Leonardo last year,1 he states the
whole pragmatic scope and programme very neatly.
Fundamentally, he says, it means an unstiffening of
all our theories and beliefs by attending to their
instrumental value. It incorporates and harmonizes
various ancient tendencies, as

1. Nominalism, by which he means the appeal to
the particular. Pragmatism is nominalistic not
only in regard to words, but in regard to phrases
and to theories.

2. Utilitarianism, or the emphasizing of practical
aspects and problems.

3. Positivism, or the disdain of verbal and use
less questions.

4. Kantism, in so far as Kant affirms the primacy
of practical reason.

5. Voluntarism, in the psychological sense, of the
intellect's secondary position.

6. Fideism, in its attitude towards religious ques
tions.

Pragmatism, according to Papini, is thus only a
collection of attitudes and methods, and its chief
characteristic is its armed neutrality in the midst
of doctrines. It is like a corridor in a hotel, from

1 April, 1905, p. 45.
462

[1906] PRAGMATISM IN ITALY

which a hundred doors open into a hundred cham
bers. In one you may see a man on his knees pray
ing to regain his faith ; in another a desk at which
sits some one eager to destroy all metaphysics ; in a
third a laboratory with an investigator looking for
new footholds by which to advance upon the future.
But the corridor belongs to all, and all must pass
there. Pragmatism, in short, is a great corridor-
theory.

In the Crepuscolo Signor Papini says that what
pragmatism has always meant for him is the neces
sity of enlarging our means of action, the vanity of
the universal as such, the bringing of our spiritual
powers into use, and the need of making the world
over instead of merely standing by and contemplat
ing it. It inspires human activity, in short, differ
ently from other philosophies.

"The common denominator to which all the forms
of human life can be reduced is this: the quest of
instruments to act with, or, in other words, the
quest of power."

By "action" Signor Papini means any change into
which man enters as a conscious cause, whether it
be to add to existing reality or to subtract from it.
Art, science, religion, and philosophy all are but so
>many instruments of change. Art changes things
'for our vision ; religion for our vital tone and hope ;
science tells us how to change the course of nature
and our conduct towards it; philosophy is only a
more penetrating science. Tristan and Isolde, Para
dise, Atoms, Substance, neither of them copies any-

463

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

thing real; all are creations placed above reality,
to transform, build out, and interpret it in the in
terests of human need or passion. Instead of affirm
ing with the positivists that we must render the
ideal world as similar as possible to the actual, Sig-
nor Papini emphasizes our duty of turning the ac
tual world into as close a copy of the ideal as it will
let us. The various ideal worlds are here because
the real world fails to satisfy us. They are more
adapted to us, realize more potently our desires.
We should treat them as ideal limits towards which
reality must evermore be approximated.

All our ideal instruments are as yet imperfect.
Arts, religions, sciences, philosophies, have their
vices and defects, and the worst of all are those of
the philosophies. But philosophy can be regener
ated. Since change and action are the most general
ideals possible, philosophy can become a "prag
matic" in the strict sense of the word, meaning a
general theory of human action. Ends and means
can here be studied together, in the abstractest and
most inclusive way, so that philosophy can resolve
itself into a comparative discussion of all the pos
sible programs for man's life when man is once for
all regarded as a creative being.

As such, man becomes a kind of god, and where
are we to draw his limits? In an article called
"From Man to God" in the Leonardo for last Febru
ary Signor Papini lets his imagination work at
stretching the limits. His attempt will be called
Promethean or bullfroggian, according to the tem-

464

[1906] PRAGMATISM IN ITALY

per of the reader. It has decidedly an element of
literary swagger and conscious impertinence, but I
confess that I am unable to treat it otherwise than
respectfully. Why should not the divine attributes
of omniscience and omnipotence be used by man as
the pole-stars by which he may methodically lay his
own course? Why should not divine rest be his own
ultimate goal, rest attained by an activity in the end
so immense that all desires are satisfied, and no
more action necessary? The unexplored powers and
relations of man, both physical and mental, are cer
tainly enormous; why should we impose limits on
them a priori? And, if not, why are the most Uto
pian programmes not in order?

The programme of a Man-God is surely one of the
possible great type-programmes of philosophy. I
myself have been slow in coming into the full in
wardness of pragmatism. Schiller's writings and
those of Dewey and his school have taught me some
of its wider reaches; and in the writings of this
youthful Italian, clear in spite of all their brevity
and audacity, I find not only a way in which our
English views might be developed farther with con
sistency — at least so it appears to me — but also a
tone of feeling well fitted to rally devotees and to
make of pragmatism a new militant form of re
ligious or quasi-religious philosophy.

The supreme merit of it in these adventurous re
gions is that it can never grow doctrinarian in ad
vance of verification, or make dogmatic pretensions.

When, as one looks back from the actual world

465

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

that one believes and lives and moves in, and tries
to understand how the knowledge of its content and
structure ever grew up step by step in our minds,
one has to confess that objective and subjective in
fluences have so mingled in the process that it is
impossible now to disentangle their contributions or
to give to either the primacy. When a man has
walked a mile, who can say whether his right or his
left leg is the more responsible? and who can say
whether the water or the clay is most to be thanked
for the evolution of the bed of an existing river?
Something like this I understand to be Messrs.
Dewey's and Schiller's contention about "truth."
The subjective and objective factors of any pres
ently functioning body of it are lost in the night of
time and indistinguishable. Only the way in which
we see a new truth develop shows us that, by an
alogy, subjective factors must always have been ac
tive. Subjective factors thus are potent, and their
effects remain. They are in some degree creative,
then ; and this carries with it, it seems to me, the
admissibility of the entire Italian pragmatistic pro
gramme. But, be the God-Man part of it sound or
foolish, the Italian pragmatists are an extraordi
narily well-informed and gifted, and above all an
extraordinarily free and spirited and unpedantic,
group of writers.

466

XXXV

THE MAD ABSOLUTE *

[1906]

MR. GORE, in this Journal for October 11, tries
very neatly to turn Mr. Schiller's joke on the abso
lute against the joker, and I suppose that those
whom the latter gentleman's jokes vex are corre
spondingly content.

But are the tables turned?

It is we in our dissociated, finite shapes who are
made, says Mr. Gore, and not the absolute. The
absolute in its integrated shape is the very beau
ideal of sanity, and in our own successful quest of
it, he adds, lies our only hope of cure. Get con
fluent with one another, restore the original un-
brokenness of our infinitely inclusive real self, and
the universe will wake up well.

But in the name of all that's absolute how did it
ever get so sick? That we finite subjects are sick
we know well enough, and no philosophy beyond the
plainest lessons of our finite experience is needed to
teach us that more union among ourselves would
be remedial. But if all these distracted persons of

[* Reprinted from Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and
ftcii-Htifir Mcthntlx, !!)()<;, 3, 656-057. It was written in reply to
W. C. Gore's "The Mad Absolute of a Pluralist," ibid., 575-^577 ;
and in support of F. C. S. Schiller's "Idealism and the Dissocia
tion of Personality," ibid., 477-182. ED.]

467

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS £19061

ours really signify the absolute in a state of mad
ness, why, how or when did it get mad? If it was
ever sane, its friends ought surely to explain. More
over, in that case must it be supposed that we have
once for all superseded and abolished its primal
wholeness, or does the wholeness still obtain entire
behind the scenes, coexisting with our fragmentary
persons, and, like another Sally Beauchamp, know
ing about us all the while we know so little about
it?

If the former alternative be the true one, we are
back in the time-process and the mystery of a fall,
re-edited in these days by Messrs. Kenouvier and
Prat. Mr. Gore's monist puts the case in time-form,
as a dramatic event, and seems to adopt this horn
of the dilemma. But another monist might con
sider this unorthodox, and insist that the absolute
is "timeless" and that it lives, Sally-like, alongside
of our split-off selves.

But in this latter case what would be the sig
nificance of that reunion of these selves, from which,
according to the absolutist philosophy, we are to
hope for a cure? Is it to produce a second absolute,
duplicating the first one? Or is it to be imagined
as a reabsorption rather, with only the one indivis
ible primary absolute left? How ought we to con
ceive it at all? Keabsorption would seem inadmis
sible on absolutist principles. It would hardly go
without the time-process; and would moreover be
strongly suggestive of the cure of a disease upon the
eternal absolute subject, much as an eruption may

4G8

[1906] THE MAD ABSOLUTE

break out and be "resolved" again upon one's skin.
But the absolute can have no skin, no outside.

I doubt, therefore, whether Mr. Gore's monist has
greatly helped his client's plight. Nor would it es
sentially mend matters for him simply to declare
that the absolute is eternally three things — its pure
identical self, the finite emanation or eruption and
the reabsorption, all in one. And yet I believe that
the path that Mr. Schiller and he have struck into is
likely to prove a most important lead. The abso
lute is surely one of the great hypotheses of philos
ophy; it must be thoroughly discussed. Its advo
cates have usually treated it only as a logical neces
sity ; and very bad logic, as it seems to me, have they
invariably used. It is high time that the hypothesis
of a world-consciousness should be discussed seri
ously, as we discuss any other question of fact ; and
that means inductively and in the light of all the
natural analogies that can be brought to bear. No
philosophy can ever do more than interpret the
whole, which is unknown, after the analogy of some
particular part which we know. So far, Fechner
is the only thinker who has done any elaborate work
of this kind on the world-soul question, although
Royce deserves praise for having used arguments
for analogy along with his logical proofs. I cannot
help thinking that Fechner's successors, if he ever
have any, must make great use of just such cases as
the one so admirably analyzed and told by Dr.
Prince.1

1 Morton Prince, The Dissociation of a rcntonnlity.

469

XXXVI

CONTROVERSY ABOUT TEUTH '

[1907]

To THE EDITORS OF THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS:

The pragmatistic conception of truth is so impor
tant that no amount of printer's ink spent upon it
ought to be considered wasted. My exposition of it
in No. 6 of this year's Journal was sent back to me
with copious critical annotations on its margins by
Prof. John E. Russell. This led to an exchange of
letters between us, in which one issue, at least, got
sharpened; and as that issue is probably the most
prevalent stumbling-block, I ask you, in the inter
est of clarifying the question, to print the corre
spondence as it was written. I subjoin our letters.

Sincerely yours,

WILLIAM JAMES.

DEAR RUSSELL: Your notes bring out the exact
point of misunderstanding, and the exact difficulty
with which pragmatism has to cope in making con
verts.

[* A series of letters exchanged with Prof. John E. Russell of
Williams College. Reprinted from Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 1907, 4, 289-296. ED.]

470

[1907] CONTROVERSY ABOUT TRUTH

You say : "Events in tlic. -way of verification do not
make an idea true, they only prove that it is trnr or
was true" — there is the whole difference between us
in a nutshell.

The statement seems to mean that truth is a qual
ity of the idea numcricully distinct from the events
which are its proof; but don't you then think that
the said quality ought to be somehow definable as it
is in and per se? I hoped for the definition as I read
your comments; but in the end I found no new
definition, only the old ones of "agreement with
reality" and of "thinking the reality as it is."

Now what does agreement mean? Does it mean
anything different from (or prior to) the copyings
and leadings by which pragmatism explicates the
word? These are perfectly well-defined relations of
the idea to the reality or to the reality's associates
and surroundings.

And what does "thinking the reality as it is"
mean unless it be either copying it, or leading
straight up to it, or thinking it in its right sur
roundings — which last notion means terminating at
places to which it, the reality, also leads?

You speak of Leverrier's idea of Neptune being
true before it had led him to verify it. Doubtless !
but pray define its truth apart from those leadings
and guidings. The word truth means just such
leadings and guidings. Had his idea led him to
point his telescope to a vacant part of the sky, it
would have been untrue — is untruth, then, also a
resident and previous quality in ideas? Leading to

471

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS ti907]

that point, Leverrier's idea certainly was true — I
can conceive no other kind of truth — and, of course,
quite as true when only verifiable as it was after
the verification. Even so the star was Neptune
both before and after its baptism, for in the star
universe that star is all that Neptune ever can
mean.

In the case of Neptune you don't separate the
name from the fact found, and make it a cause
thereof; you don't say the star was found at that
point because it was Neptune ; but in the case of the
idea you say it led to that point because it was true.
But just as Neptune means nothing but the star
which at a certain moment is at that point, so true
means nothing but the idea which, instead of lead
ing you elsewhere, leads you thither. Otherwise it's
like raising a dispute about whether blood is red
because it looks so, or looks so because it's red. You
ought to insist on the latter formula; I call them
equally correct. You may say either that the lead
ing makes the idea true or that it proves it true, for
you are only talking of the same thing in different
words: The leading both makes you call the idea
true, and proves that you have called it so justly.

Take another illustration. Does bread nourish
us because it is food? Or is it food because it nour
ishes? Or, finally, are being food and nourishing
only two ways of naming the same physiological
events? And if this last view be correct here, why
isn't it just as correct in the case of truth?

The concrete facts denoted by the word truth are

472

[1907] CONTROVERSY ABOUT TRUTH

ideas that guide us towards certain termini. Other
connotations of the word than these same guidings
it is for you to show. If you can't, then we may
say either that t lie ideas are true because they guide,
or that they guide because they are true : To be true
and to guide are precisely equipollent terms of
which you may make either you like the more pri
mordial in significance.

Otherwise (and this is the point which I empha
size, and on which I insist) you must point out some
substantive connotation in the word truth over and
above such guiding processes. If you can do this,
I surrender ; but I don't see how you can do it.

It seems to me that there is no other connotation,
any more than there is in the case of Neptune. Nep
tune means the star that gets there, and true means
the idea that "gets there." Agreement, correspond
ence, thinking the object as it is, all resolve them
selves into guidings, into "getting there" somehow.
You argue as if, in spite of its getting there, an
idea might still be false, unless the intrinsic epi-
stemological virtue of being true were superadded.
I wish you'd explain how. To me it couldn't be
false under those circumstances.

Revert to food. In this case we do have some ad
ditional connotations — a certain chemical structure,
gay — that explain the physiological events in ad
vance. (We know nothing of such connotations as
yet, but we suppose they may some day be known. )
If the word food should connote primarily such
chemical structure, and only secondarily digestions,

473

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

absorptions, etc., then yon might contend that bread
nourishes because it is food, and isn't food because
it nourishes. But you would still be on purely
verbal ground; and even then you would have to
define positively these new-fangled connotations.

Meanwhile please observe that the word true has
absolutely no such further connotations; it has no
more of them than Neptune has. It denotes certain
ideas, and it connotes their "getting there."

Here I must leave the matter. As a pragmatist,
I can defy you to find any other practical meaning to
the word truth than that it guides and gets us there.
If, failing to do that, you nevertheless call our ac
count an inadequate account of what you mean by
truth, why then, again as a pragmatist, I can wash
my hands of the whole controversy. It is trivial.
It has no meaning.

Yours, etc.,

WILLIAM JAMES.

II

DEAR JAMES: I think the issue between the in-
tellectualist and the pragmatist narrows itself
down to the question of the validity and value of
two distinctions. The first is the distinction be
tween the idea's being true and the proof that the
idea is true. The second distinction is that between
a true idea and its instrumental function in leading,
guiding behavior to desirable issues in experience.

The intellectualist insists that these distinctions

474

[1907] CONTROVERSY ABOUT TRUTH

are valid and important to a right conception of
knowledge. The pragmatist denies this; he con
tends that the terms "true," "truth," "leading,"
"guiding," "getting there," etc., are different names
for the same thing; that the term "truth" applied
to an idea has the same function that the name
"Neptune," for instance, has when applied to a
particular planetary body in the heavens. The
pragmatist, after having made "agreeing with
reality," "being as it is thought," etc., mean lead
ing, guiding, coming into practical relations with,
getting there, etc., challenges the intellectualist to
point out any other significant connection which his
terms "true," "truth," etc., can have. The prag
matist says to the intellectualist, "I pray you to
define the truth of an idea apart from its leadings
and guidings. I defy you to supply other mean
ings to the word 'truth' than that of guiding and
getting us there. Does 'agreement' mean anything
different from that copying and leading by which
pragmatism explicates this word?"

Now this puts the intellectualist in a hard situa
tion. If he answers, "I mean by a true idea, an idea
that agrees with, that copies or corresponds to
reality," the pragmatist replies, "But what is it to
agree with, to copy, etc., reality, if it be not just to
lead, to guide, to get there?" Now what can the
intellectualist say in reply ? Suppose he undertakes
to define his meaning of truth in different terms,
these terms would suffer the same fate; the prag
matist would explicate them in his terms, of lead-

475

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

ing, guiding, getting there, etc., and then ask the
naked intellectualist to put on different garments.

I can see no other way by which the intellectualist
can escape this dilemma than simply to abide ~by
the terms ~by which he has defined a true idea, and
insist that it is the pragmatist who has forced upon
these terms a meaning they can not take without
involving one in intellectual confusion. The in
tellectualist should, therefore, maintain that the
terms in which he explicates the meaning of a true
idea give a perfectly defined relation of the idea to
reality. What more definite relation can legiti
mately be demanded? How can the intellectualist
in fairness be asked to define in other terms what
he means by "agreement with/' by "copying," by
"thinking reality as it is"? May he not with more
propriety ask the pragmatist by what right he
makes these terms mean leading, guiding, getting
there, etc.?

This leads me to the real issue between the intel
lectualist and the pragmatist, and first to that dis
tinction between an idea's being true and the proof
that it is or was true. Let us take the case of Lever-
rier and the discovery of the planet Neptune. We
have the following things: —

1. Certain perturbations in the motions of the
planet Uranus which could not be explained by
the influence of the known bodies of the solar
system.

2. We have Leverrier's idea of a planetary body
of a certain mass and position in the heavens.

476

[1907] CONTROVERSY ABOUT TRUTH

3. We have the agreement between the calculated
perturbations which this hypothetical body should
produce in the motions of Uranus, and the actual
perturbations observed.

4. We have the discovery of this planet, after
wards named Neptune, by a German astronomer
who, following the suggestion of Leverrier, pointed
his telescope to that exact spot in the heavens where
this planet was.

Now the intellectualist contends that Leverrier's
hypothetical conception was true the instant it
existed in his mind, and that the trueness of his
idea consisted in its agreement with a fact, a piece
of reality, an object at that time existing, viz., that
planet occupying a particular place in the physical
universe. It was the existence of Neptune then and
there which made it possible for him to have a true
idea at that time. Had he thought differently about
this planet, this same body would have made his
thought untrue. His idea was true for no other
reason, and true in no other meaning of the terms,
than that it agreed with its object. Furthermore,
the contention of the intellectualist is, that had
Leverrier gone no farther in his undertaking, had no
telescope ever discovered that planet, his idea
would have been as true as it was after the discovery
which completed the verification of his hypothesis.
His idea did not get its quality of truth by the
process of verification — this only produced the cer
tainty in his and in other minds that this idea was
true. It is one thing for an idea to be true— it is

477

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

quite a different thing to prove that this idea is true.
It is one thing to hit a mark ; to know that you have
hit the mark is a different thing. A bell may ring
to let you know that you have made a bulPs-eye ; the
ringing of the bell is the sign, the criterion, of the
correctness of your aim, but it hardly constitutes
the trueness of your aim, or your making the bulFs-
eye. Leverrier's idea hit its mark; what was sub
sequently done made that fact known. Truth and
verification are therefore different things, and to
make the truth or the verity of an idea consist in its
verification is to introduce mental confusion, and
to make unintelligible such a procedure as Lever-
rier's in the discovery of Neptune. It is true to say
that a true idea is one that can be verified, and that
only true ideas can be verified, but, then, these ideas
are not true became they are verified; they are
verifiable because they are already true.

This brings the intellectualist to the second dis
tinction upon which he insists, viz., the distinction
between truth and its valuation in terms of desir
able experience. To say that truth should have
good practical consequences, that those ideas are
true which work well in practice, that every true
idea leads into satisfying experiences of some sort,
is to say what no intellectualist need deny. But to
say that an idea is true because it has this prac
tically good issue, or because it works well, is to
say quite a different thing, and something which no
intellectualist can accept. "There are," so con
tends the intellectualist, "conditions on which our

478

[1907] CONTROVERSY ABOUT TRUTH

human action or the course of experience depends,
and to which our actions, our experiences, must con
form if they are to have successful and satisfying
issues. Only as a particular experience is in agree
ment with conditions of experience ubcrhaupt can it
lead to beneficial or desirable experiences. Ideas,
therefore, can work well, can lead successfully,
only if they first agree with reality, with the ob
jective and determining conditions of our experi
ence." This is just the fact that the pragmatist
overlooks when lie identifies the truth of an idea
with its practically good leadings and consequences.
He insists that truth shall be practical, but he fails
to answer the question, How can an idea, or a course
of experience, have a practically good leading or
result?

To take your illustration of bread as food : you
ask : "Does bread nourish because it is 'f ood/ or is it
food because it nourishes? Or are being food and
nourishing only two ways of meaning the same
physiological events?" The intellectualist answers :
"Bread nourishes us because it contains those
chemical elements which are nutritive. A particu
lar substance is not bread because it nourishes—
it nourishes because it is bread. Being food and
nourishing are two ways of meaning the same phys
iological events; but being bread and nourishing
are not two ways of meaning the same physiologi
cal events."

The intellectualist need not deny that a true idea
has an instrumental function in relation to our

479

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS [1907]

various needs ; that a true idea is a tool to be used
in the service of the will or our practical nature;
but he contends that the efficiency of the instru
ment, the serviceableness of the tool, depends upon
the construction of the instrument, upon the quality
of the tool. That a knife cuts well, proves, indeed,
that it is a good knife ; but that which enables the
knife to cut well is the quality of the steel and the
fashion of the instrument — in other words, the knife
cuts well because it was rightly made. Its cutting
well merely proves that the knife was rightly made.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating; but it
will hardly do to say, therefore the good eating is
the pudding, or is that in the pudding which gives
us that satisfying experience of eating this pudding.

Yours, etc.,

JOHN E. RUSSELL.

Ill

DEAR RUSSELL : Your letter is so ultraclear and
brings the question down to where the wool is so
short, that I can't help dashing off one more word,
though I know I can't convert you.

First, I note with extreme pleasure your explicit
confession that "truth" in the intellectualist sense
cannot be further defined. It means "agreement,"
and agreement means "truth." That is one point
clearly gained.

My second remark is simply this: If "true" be
not an abstract name for the property of verifiabil-

480

[1907] CONTROVERSY ABOUT TRUTH

ity in an idea, then an idea might conceivably be
true though absolutely un verifiable. There might be
no empirical mediation between it and its object,
no leading either to the object, or towards it, or into
its associates, and yet it might still be true as
"agreeing" with the object.

But then you are met by Royce's old argument :
How do you know it means to be true of that object?
It might "agree" perfectly in the sense of copying,
yet not be true, unless it meant to copy, nnd zwar
that particular original. An egg isn't true of an
other egg, because it is not supposed to aim at the
other egg at all, or to intend it. Neither is my tooth
ache true of your toothache. Royce makes the ab
solute do the aiming and intending. I make the
chain of empirical intermediaries do it. What does
it in your philosophy?

Yours, etc.,

WILLIAM JAMES.

IV

DEAR JAMES : According to the meaning of a true
idea I have been maintaining, it does follow not
only that an idea is true prior to its verification,
but also that an idea may remain unverified in our
human experience. I would not, however, say that
an idea can be true and be absolutely unverifiable ;
for there may be such a being as Royce's absolute,
and if so, no true idea can remain unverified. In
the experience of the Roycean absolute, truth and

481

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

verification do not fall apart as they do in our
human experience. The Roycean question with
which you confront me, I must confess, has never
given me a pause or seemed a serious one at all.
"How do you know that your idea means to be true
of its object?" I answer: "When I think, I know
what I am thinking about, just as I know what mark
I am aiming at when I am engaged in target-shoot
ing. My thinking as such is selective of its object,
and knows its own intent, viz., to think that object
as that object is. My thought picks out this par
ticular piece of the real world, and means to agree
with it, just as I pick out my target and intend to
hit it. For instance, I am now thinking of you,
among your books, in your study at Cambridge; I
mean to think of you and your immediate surround
ings, your present doings, as you and they are now
at this hour, — ten o'clock in the morning. In so
doing, I know what object I mean to agree with in
my present thinkings."

Now the Koycean absolute may exist, and if it
does, he of course knows whether or not my present
thought of you is now true ; but the knowing of that
being is no more necessary to constitute the truth
of my idea or to explain the fact that I aim at you
in my idea, than is the presence of an onlooker when
I am shooting at a mark essential to my aiming
at and hitting or missing that mark. Nor does it
seem to me that your chain of intermediaries is in
any manner essential to the meaning, the intent, or
the truth of my present thought of you, which is

482

[1907] CONTROVERSY ABOUT TRUTH

sufficient unto itself both to select its object and to
determine its truth or untruth.

Yours, etc.,

JOHN E. RUSSELL.

DEAR RUSSELL: We seem now to have laid bare
our exact difference. According to me "meaning"
a certain object and "agreeing" with it are abstract
notitms of both of which definite concrete accounts
can be given.

According to you, they shine by their own inner
light and no further account can be given. They
may even "obtain" (in cases where human verifica
tion is impossible) and make no empirical differ
ence to us. To me, using the pragmatic method of
testing concepts, this would mean that the word
"truth" might on certain occasions have no mean
ing whatever. I still must hold to its having
always a meaning, and continue to contend for that
meaning being unfoldable and representable in ex
periential terms.

Yours, etc.,

WILLIAM JAMES.

483

XXXVII

KEPOKT ON MKS. PIPEK'S HODGSON-
CONTKOL x

[1909]

. . . THAT a "will-to-personate" is a factor in the
Piper-phenomenon, I fully believe, and I believe
with unshakable firmness that this will is able to
draw on supernormal sources of information. It
can "tap/' possibly the sitter's memories, possibly
those of distant human beings, possibly some cosmic
reservoir in which the memories of earth are stored,
whether in the shape of "spirits" or not. If this
were the only will concerned in the performance,
the phenomenon would be humbug pure and simple,
and the minds tapped telepathically in it would
play an entirely passive role — that is, the tele
pathic data would be fished out by the personat
ing will, not forced upon it by desires to communi
cate, acting externally to itself.

But it is possible to complicate the hypothesis.
Extraneous "wills to communicate" may contribute
to the results as well as a "will to personate," and
the two kinds of will may be distinct in entity,

[* Selection reprinted from Proceedings of the American So
ciety for Psychical Research, 1909, 3, 583-589. The report also
appeared in the Proceedings of the [English] Society for Psy
chical Research. 1909, 28, 1-121. This selection consists of gen
eral conclusions appended to a report of sittings with Mrs.
Piper in which alleged messages from the late Richard Hodgson
are recorded and tested. See note above, p. 438. ED.]

484

[1909] REPORT ON HODGSON-CONTROL

though capable of helping each other out. The will
to communicate, in our present instance, would be,
on the prima facie view of it, the will of Hodgson's
surviving spirit ; and a natural way of representing
the process would be to suppose the spirit to have
found that by pressing, so to speak, against "the
light," it can make fragmentary gleams and flashes
of what it wishes to say mix with the rubbish of
the trance-talk on this side. The two wills might
thus strike up a sort of partnership and stir each
other up. It might even be that the "will to
personate" would be inert unless it were aroused to
activity by the other will. We might imagine the
relation to be analogous to that of two physical
bodies, from neither of which, when alone, mechani
cal, thermal, or electrical effects can proceed, but if
the other body be present, and show a difference
of "potential," action starts up and goes on apace.
Conceptions such as these seem to connect in
schematic form the various elements in the case.
Its essential factors are done justice to; and, by
changing the relative amounts in which the rubbish-
making and the truth-telling wills contribute to the
resultant, we can draw up a table in which every
type of manifestation, from silly planchette-writing
up to Rector's best utterances, finds its proper
place. Personally, I must say that, although I have
to confess that no crucial proof of the presence of
the "will to communicate" seems to me yielded by
the Hodgson-control taken alone, and in the sittings
to which I have had access, yet the total effect in the

485

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

way of dramatic probability of the whole mass of
similar phenomena on my mind, is to make me
believe that a "will to communicate" is in some
shape there. I cannot demonstrate it, but prac
tically I am inclined to "go in" for it, to bet on it
and take the risks.

The question then presents itself : In what shape
is it most reasonable to suppose that the will thus
postulated is actually there? And here again there
are various pneumatological possibilities, which
must be considered first in abstract form. Thus the
will to communicate may come either from per
manent entities, or from an entity that arises for the
occasion. E. H.'s spirit would be a permanent
entity; and inferior parasitic spirits ("daimons,"
elementals, or whatever their traditional names
might be) would be permanent entities. An im
provised entity might be a limited process of con
sciousness arising in the cosmic reservoir of earth's
memories, when certain conditions favoring sys
tematized activity in particular tracts thereof were
fulfilled. The conditions in that case might be
conceived after the analogy of what happens when
two poles of different potential are created in a
mass of matter, and cause a current of electricity,
or what not, to pass through an intervening tract of
space until then the seat of rest.

To consider the case of permanent entities first,
there is no a priori reason why human spirits and
other spiritual beings might not either co-operate
at the same time in the same phenomenon, or alter-

486

[1909] REPORT ON HODGSON-CONTROL

nately produce difl'ercnt manifestations. Prima
facie, and as a matter of "dramatic" probability,
other intelligences than our own appear on an enor
mous scale in the historic mass of material which
Myers first brought together under the title of Auto
matisms. The refusal of modern "enlightenment"
to treat "possession" as an hypothesis to be spoken
of as even possible, in spite of the massive human
tradition based on concrete experience in its favor,
has always seemed to me a curious example of the
power of fashion in things scientific. That the
demon-theory will have its innings again is to my
mind absolutely certain. One has to be "scientific"
indeed, to be blind and ignorant enough to suspect
no such possibility. But if the liability to have
one's somnambulistic or automatic processes parti
cipated in and interfered with by spiritual entities
of a different order ever turn out to be a probable
fact, then not only what I have called the will to
communicate, but also the will to personate may
fall outside of the medium's own dream-life. The
humbugging may not be chargeable to her all alone,
centres of consciousness lower than hers may take
part in it, just as higher ones may occasion some
of the more inexplicable items of the veridical cur
rent in the stream.

The plot of possibilities thus thickens; and it
thickens still more when we ask how a will which
is dormant or relatively dormant during the inter
vals may become consciously reanimated as a spirit-
personality by the occurrence of the medium's

487

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

trance. A certain theory of Fechner's helps my
own imagination here, so I will state it briefly for
my reader's benefit.

Fechner in his Zend-Avesta and elsewhere1 as
sumes that mental and physical life run parallel, all
memory-processes being, according to him, co-ordi
nated with material processes. If an act of yours
is to be consciously remembered hereafter, it must
leave traces on the material universe such that
when the traced parts of the said universe sys
tematically enter into activity together the act is
consciously recalled. During your life the traces
are mainly in your brain; but after your death,
since your brain is gone, they exist in the shape of
all the records of your actions which the outer
world stores up as tfre effects, immediate or remote,
thereof, the cosmos being in some degree, however
slight, made structurally different by every act of
ours that takes place in it.2 Now, just as the air of

1 Zend-Avesta, second edition, 1901, Sec. XXI., and following.
Compare also Elwood Worcester : The Living Word, New York,
Moffatt, Yard & Co., 1908, Part II., in which a more popular
account of Fechner's theory of immortality is given. And Will
iam James, A Pluralistic Universe, Longmans, Green and Co.
1909, Lecture IV.

1"It is Handel's work, not the body with which he did the
work, that pulls us half over London. There is not an action of
a muscle in a horse's leg upon a winter's night as it drags a
carriage to the Albert Hall but what is in connection with, and
part outcome of, the force generated when Handel sat in his
room at Gopsall and wrote the Messiah. . . . This is the true
Handel, who is more a living power among us one hundred and
twenty-two years after his death than during the time he was
amongst us in the body." — Samuel Butler, in the New Quarterly,
I., 303, March, 1908.

488

[1909] REPORT ON HODGSON-gONTBOL

the same room can be simultaneously used by many
different voices for communicating with different
pairs of ears, or as the ether of space can carry
many simultaneous messages to and from mutually
attuned Marconi-stations, so the great continuum
of material nature can have certain tracts within
it thrown into emphasized activity whenever activ
ity begins in any part or parts of a tract in which
the potentiality of such systematic activity inheres.
The bodies (including, naturally, the brains) of
Hodgson's friends who come as sitters, are of course
parts of the material universe which carry some of
the traces of his ancient acts. They function as re
ceiving stations. Hodgson (at one time of his life
at any rate) was inclined to suspect that the sitter
himself acts "psychometrically," or by his body
being what, in the trance-jargon, is called an "in
fluence," in attracting the right spirits and eliciting
the right communications from the other side. If,
now, the rest of the system of physical traces left
behind by Hodgson's acts were by some sort of
mutual induction throughout its extent, thrown into
gear and made to vibrate all at once, by the pres
ence of such human bodies to the medium, we should
have a Hodgson-system active .in the cosmos again,
and the "conscious aspect" of this vibrating system
might be Hodgson's spirit redivivus, and recollect
ing and willing in a certain momentary way. There
seems fair evidence of the reality of psychometry;
so that this scheme covers the main phenomena in a
vague general way. In particular, it would account

489

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS [1909]

for the "confusion" and "weakness" that are such
prevalent features : the "system" of physical traces
corresponding to the given spirit would then be
only imperfectly aroused. It tallies vaguely with
the analogy of energy finding its way from higher
to lower levels. The sitter, with his desire to re
ceive, forms, so to speak, a drainage-opening or
sink; the medium, with her desire to personate,
yields the nearest lying material to be drained off,
while the spirit desiring to communicate is drawn
in by the current set up and swells the latter by its
own contributions.

It is enough to indicate these various possibilities,
which a serious student of this part of nature has
to weigh together, and between 'which his decision
must fall. His vote will always be cast (if it ever
be cast) by the sense of the dramatic probabilities
of nature which the sum total of his experience has
begotten in him. / myself feel as if an external will
to communicate were probably there, that is, I find
myself doubting, in consequence of my whole ac
quaintance wkh that sphere of phenomena, that
Mrs. Piper's dream-life, even equipped with "tele
pathic" powers, accounts for all the results found.
But if asked whether the will to communicate be
Hodgson's, or be some mere spirit-counterfeit of
Hodgson, I remain uncertain and await more facts,
facts which may not point clearly to a conclusion
for fifty or a hundred years. . . .

490

XXXVIII
BRADLEY OK BEKGSON? l

VMHBMtf

[1910]

DR. BRADLEY has summed up his Weltanschauung
in last October's Mind,2 in an article which for sin
cerity and brevity leaves nothing to be desired.
His thought and Bergson's run parallel for such
a distance, yet diverge so utterly at last that a com
parison seems to me instructive. The watershed
is such a knife-edge that no reader who leans to
one side or the other can after this plead ignorance
of the motives of his choice.

Bradley's first great act of candor in philosophy
was his breaking loose from the Kantian tradition
that immediate feeling is all disconnectedness. In
his Logic as well as in his Appearance he insisted
that in the flux of feeling we directly encounter
reality, and that its form, as thus encountered, is
the continuity and wholeness of a transparent
much-at-once. This is identically Bergson's doc
trine. In affirming the "endosmosis" of adjacent
parts of "living" experience, the Frencli writer

f1 Reprinted from Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and
Scientific Methods. 1910, 7, 29-33. ED.]

[2 F. H. Bradley, "Coherence and Contradiction," Mind, 1909,
N.S. 18, 489-508. ED.]

491

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS t191°l

treats the minimum of feeling as an immediately
intuited much-at-once.

The idealist tradition is that feelings, aborig
inally discontinuous, are woven into continuity by
the various synthetic concepts which the intellect
applies. Both Bradley and Bergson contradict this
flatly; and although their tactics are so different,
their battle is the same. They destroy the notion
that conception is essentially a unifying process.
For Bergson all concepts are discrete; and though
you can get the discrete out of the continuous, out
of the discrete you can never construct the continu
ous again. Concepts, moreover, are static, and can
never be adequate substitutes for a perceptual flux
of which activity and change are inalienable fea
tures. Concepts, says Bergson, make things less,
not more, intelligible, when we use them seriously
and radically. They serve us practically more than
theoretically. Throwing their map of abstract
terms and relations round our present experience,
they show its bearings and let us plan our way.

Bradley is just as independent of rationalist tra
dition, and is more thoroughgoing still in his criti
cism of the conceptual function. When we handle
felt realities by our intellect they grow, according
to him, less and less comprehensible; activity be
comes inconstruable, relation contradictory, change
inadmissible, personality unintelligible, time, space,
and causation impossible — nothing survives the
Bradleyan wreck.

The breach which the two authors make with

492

[1910] BRADLEY OK IJKKGSON?

previous rationalist opinion is complete, and they ,
keep step with each other perfectly up to the point
where they diverge. Sense-perception first develops
into conception; and then conception, developing
its subtler and more contradictory implications,
comes to an end of its usefulness for both authors,
and runs itself into the ground. Arrived at this
conviction, Bergson drops conception — which ap
parently has done us all the good it can do; and,
turning back towards perception with its trans
parent multiplicity-in-union, he takes its data in
tegrally up into philosophy, as a kind of material
which nothing else can replace. The fault of our
perceptual data, he tells us, is not of nature, but
only of extent; and the way to know reality inti
mately is, according to this philosopher, to sink into
those data and get our sympathetic imagination
to enlarge their bounds. Deep knowledge is not
of the conceptually mediated, but of the immediate
type. Bergson thus allies himself with old-fash
ioned empiricism, on the one hand, and with mys
ticism, on the other. His breach with rationalism
could not possibly be more thorough than it is.

Bradley's breach is just as thorough in its first
two steps. The form of oneness in the flow of feel
ing is an attribute of reality which even the abso
lute must preserve. Concepts are an organ of mis
understanding rather than of understanding ; they
turn the "reality" which we "encounter" into an
"appearance" which we "think." But with all this
anti-rationalist matter, Bradley is faithful to his

493

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

anti-empiricist manner to the end. Crude unmedi-
ated feelings shall never form a part of "truth."
"Judgment, on our view," he writes, "transcends
and must transcend the immediate unity of feeling
upon which it can not cease to depend. Judg
ment has to qualify the real ideally. . . . This is
the fundamental inconsistency of judgment, . . .
for ideas can not qualify reality as reality is quali
fied immediately in feeling. . . . The reality as
conditioned in feeling has been in principle aban
doned, while other conditions have not been
found."1

Abandoned in "principle," Mr. Bradley says ; and,
in sooth, nothing but a sort of religious principle
against admitting "untransformed" feeling into
philosophy would seem to explain his procedure
from here onwards. "At the entrance of philos
ophy," he says, "there appears to be a point at
which the roads divide. By the one way you set
out to seek truth in ideas. ... On this road what
is sought is ideas, and nothing else is current. . . .
If you enter here you are committed to this prin
ciple. . . . [This] whole way doubtless may be de
lusion; but, if you choose to take this way ... no
possible appeal to designation [i.e., to feeling] in
the end is permitted. . . . This I take to be the
way of philosophy. ... It is not the way of life
or of common knowledge, and to commit oneself
to such a principle may be said to depend upon
choice. The way of life starts from and in the

1 Mind, October, 1909, p. 498.

494

[1910] BRADLEY OR BERGSON?

end it rests on dependence upon feeling. . . . Out
side of philosophy there is no consistent course but
to accept the unintelligible. For worse or for bet
ter the man who stands on particular feeling must
remain outside of philosophy. ... I recognize that
in life and in ordinary knowledge one can never
wholly cease to rest on this ground. But how to
take over into ultimate theory and to use there
this certainty of feeling, while still leaving that
untrans formed, I myself do not know. I admit that
philosophy, as I conceive it, is one-sided. I under
stand the dislike of it and the despair of it while
this its defect is not remedied. But to remedy the
defect by importing bodily into philosophy the
'this' and 'thine,' as they are felt, to my mind
brings destruction on the spot."1

Mr. Bradley's "principle" seems to be only that
of doggedly following a line once entered on to the
bitterest of ends. We encounter reality in feeling,
and find that when we develop it into ideas it be
comes more intelligible in certain definite respects.
We then have "truth" instead of reality; which
truth, however, pursued beyond a certain practical
point, develops into the whole bog of unintelligibili-
ties through which the critical part of Appearance
and Reality wades. The wise and natural course
at this point would seem to be to drop the notion
that truth is a thoroughgoing improvement on re
ality, to confess that its value is limited, and to
hark back. But there is nothing that Mr. Bradley,
1 Mind, October, 1909, pp. 500-502.

495

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS t191°l

religiously loyal to the direction of development
once entered upon, will not do sooner than this.
Forward, forward, let us range! He makes the
desperate transconceptual leap, assumes beyond
the whole ideal perspective an ultimate "supra-
relational" and transconceptual reality in which
somehow the wholeness and certainty and unity of
feeling, which we turned our backs on forever when
we committed ourselves to the leading of ideas,
are supposed to be resurgent in transfigured form ;
and shows us as the only authentic object of phil
osophy, with its "way of ideas," an absolute which
"can be" and "must be" and therefore "is." "It
shall be" is the only candid way of stating its re
lation to belief ; and Mr. Bradley's statement comes
very near to that.

How could the elements of a situation be made
more obvious? Or what could bring to a sharper
focus the factor of personal choice involved?

The way of philosophy is not the way of life, Mr.
Bradley admits, but for the philosopher, he con
tinues, it seems to be all there is — which is like

>

saying that the way of starvation is not the way
of life, but to the starveling it is all there is. Be
it so! Though what obliges one to become either
such a philosopher or such a starveling does not
clearly appear. The only motive I can possibly
think of for choosing to be a philosopher on these
painful terms is the old and obstinate intellectual-
ist prejudice in favor of universals. They are
loftier, nobler, more rational objects than the par-

496

BRADLEY OR BKIU1SON?

ticulars of sense. In their direction, then, and
away from feeling, should a mind conscious of its
high vocation always turn its face. Not to enter
life is a higher vocation than to enter it, on this
view.

The motive is pathetically simple, and any one
can take it in. On the thin watershed between
life and philosophy, Mr. Bradley tumbles to phil
osophy's call. Down he slides, to the dry valley of
"absolute'' mare's nests and abstractions, the habi
tation of the fictitious suprarelational being which
his will prefers. Never was there such a case of
will-to-believe; for Mr. Bradley, unlike other anti-
empiricists, deludes himself neither as to feeling
nor as to thought : the one reveals for him the inner
nature of reality perfectly, the other falsifies it
utterly as soon as you carry it beyond the first few
steps. Yet once committed to the conceptual direc
tion, Mr. Bradley thinks we can't reverse, we can
save ourselves only by hoping that the absolute
will re-realize unintelligibly and "somehow," the
unity, wholeness, certainty, etc., which feeling so
immediately and transparently made us acquainted
with at first.

Bergson and the empiricists, on the other hand,
tumble to life's call, and turn into the valley where
the green pastures and the clear waters always
were. If in sensible particulars reality reveals the
manyness-in-oneness of its constitution in so con
vincing a way, why then withhold, if you will, the
name of "philosophy" from perceptual knowledge,

497

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

but recognize that perceptual knowledge is at any
rate the only complete kind of knowledge, and let
"philosophy" in Bradley's sense pass for the one
sided affair which he candidly confesses that it is.
When the alternative lies between knowing life
in its full thickness and activity, as one acquainted
with its me's and thee's and now's and here's, on
the one hand, and knowing a transconceptual evap
oration like the absolute, on the other, it seems to
me that to choose the latter knowledge merely be
cause it has been named "philosophy" is to be super-
stitiously loyal to a name. But if names are to be
used eulogistically, rather let us give that of phil
osophy to the fuller kind of knowledge, the kind
in which perception and conception mix their lights.
As one who calls himself a radical empiricist,
I can find no possible excuse for not inclining
towards Bergson's side. He and Bradley together
have confirmed my confidence in non-"transmuted"
percepts, and have broken my confidence in con
cepts down. It seems to me that their parallel lines
of work have converged to a sharp alternative which
now confronts everybody, and in which the rea
sons for one's choice must plainly appear and be
told. Be an empiricist or be a transconceptualist,
whichever you please, but at least say why ! I sin
cerely believe that nothing but inveterate anti-
empiricist prejudice accounts for Mr. Bradley's
chqice; for at the point where he stands in the
article I have quoted, I can discover no sensible
reason why he should prefer the way he takes. If

498

[1910] BRADLEY OK UKKCJSON?

he should ever take it into his head to revoke, and
drop into the other valley, it would be a great day
for English thought. As Kant is supposed to have
extinguished all previous forms of rationalism, so
Bergson and Bradley, between them, might lay post-
Kantian rationalism permanently underground.

499

XXXIX

A SUGGESTION ABOUT MYSTICISM x

[1910]

MUCH interest in the subject of religious mysti
cism has been shown in philosophic circles of late
years. Most of the writings I have seen have
treated the subject from the outside, for I know of
no one who has spoken as having the direct author
ity of experience in favor of his views. I also am
an outsider, and very likely what I say will prove
the fact loudly enough to readers who possibly may
stand within the pale. Nevertheless, since between
outsiders one is as good as another, I will not leave
my suggestion unexpressed.

The suggestion, stated very briefly, is that states
of mystical intuition may be only very sudden and
great extensions of the ordinary "field of conscious
ness." Concerning the causes of such extensions I
have no suggestion to make ; but the extension itself
would, if my view be correct, consist in an immense
spreading of the margin of the field, so that knowl
edge ordinarily transmarginal would become in
cluded, and the ordinary margin would grow more
central. Fechner's "wave-scheme" will diagram-

[* Reprinted from Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and
Scientific Methods, 1910, 7, 85-92. This article was written
about six months before James's death. ED.]

500

[1910] SUGGESTION ABOUT MYSTICISM

matize the alteration, as I conceive it, if we sup
pose that the wave of present awareneM, steep
above the horizontal line that represents the plane
of the usual "threshold," slopes away below it v< ,y
gradually in all directions. A fall of the threshold,
however caused, would, under these circumsumces,
produce the state of things which we see on an un
usually flat shore at the ebb of a spring-tide. Vast
tracts usually covered arc then revealed to view, but
nothing rises more than a few inches above the
water's bed, and great parts of the scene are sub
merged again, whenever a wave washes over them.
Some persons have naturally a very wide, others a
very narrow, field of consciousness. The narrow
field may be represented by an unusually steep form
of the wave. When by any accident the threshold
lowers, in persons of this type— I speak here from
direct personal experience— so that the field widens
and the relations of its centre to matters usually
subliminal come into view, the larger panorama
perceived fills the mind with exhilaration and sense
of mental power. It is a refreshing experience;
and — such is now my hypothesis — we only have to
suppose it to occur in an exceptionally extensive
form, to give us a mystical paroxysm, if such a term
be allowed.

A few remarks about the field of consciousness
may be needed to give more definiteness to my
hypothesis. The field is composed at all times of a
mass of present sensation, in a cloud of memories,
emotions, concepts, etc. Yet these ingredients,

501

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

which have to be named separately, are not sepa
rate, as the conscious field contains them. Its form
is that of a much-at-once, in the unity of which
the sensations, memories, concepts, impulses, etc.,
coalesce and are dissolved. The present field as a
whole came continuously out of its predecessor and
will melt into its successor as continuously again,
one sensation-mass passing into another sensation-
mass and giving the character of a gradually chang
ing present to the experience, while the memories
and concepts carry time-coefficients which place
whatever is present in a temporal perspective more
or less vast.

When, now, the threshold falls, what comes into
view is not the next mass of sensation; for sensa
tion requires new physical stimulations to produce
it, and no alteration of a purely mental threshold
can create these. Only in case the physical stim
uli were already at work subliminally, preparing
the next sensation, would whatever sub-sensation
was already prepared reveal itself when the thresh
old fell. But with the memories, concepts, and
conational states, the case is different. Nobody
knows exactly how far we are "marginally" con
scious of these at ordinary times, or how far beyond
the "margin" of our present thought transmarginal
consciousness of them may exist.1 There is at any

1 Transmarginal or subliminal, the terms are synonymous.
Some psychologists deny the existence of such consciousness al
together (A. H. Pierce, for example, and Miinsterberg appar
ently). Others, e.g., Bergson, make it exist and carry the whole
freight of our past. Others again (as Myers) would have it

502

[1910] SUGGESTION ABOUT MYSTICISM

rate no definite bound set between what is central
and what is marginal in consciousness, and the mar
gin itself has no definite bound a parte foris. It is
like the field of vision, which the slightest move
ment of the eye will extend, revealing objects that
always stood there to be known. My hypothesis is
that a movement of the threshold downwards will
similarly bring a mass of subconscious memories,
conceptions, emotional feelings, and perceptions of
relation, etc., into view all at once ; and that if this
enlargement of the nimbus that surrounds the sen
sational present is vast enough, while no one of the
items it 'contains attracts our attention singly, we
shall have the conditions fulfilled for a kind of
consciousness in all essential respects like that
termed mystical. It will be transient, if the change
of threshold is transient. It will be of reality, en
largement, and illumination, possibly rapturously
so. It will be of unification, for the present coalesces
in it with ranges of the remote quite out of its reach
under ordinary circumstances; and the sense of
relation will be greatly enhanced. Its form will be
intuitive or perceptual, not conceptual, for the re
membered or conceived objects in the enlarged field
are supposed not to attract the attention singly,
but only to give the sense of a tremendous much
ness suddenly revealed. If they attracted attention
separately, we should have the ordinary steep-waved

extend (in the "telepathic" mode of communication) from one
person's mind into another's. For the purposes of my hypothesis
I have to postulate its existence; and once postulating it, I
prefer not to set any definite bounds to its extent.

503

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS

consciousness, and the mystical character would
depart.

Such is my suggestion. Persons who know some
thing of mystical experience will no doubt find in it
much to criticize. If any such shall do so with
definiteness, it will have amply served its purpose of
helping our understanding of mystical states to be
come more precise.

The notion I have tried (at such expense of meta
phor) to set forth was originally suggested to me by
certain experiences of my own, which could only
be described as very sudden and incomprehensible
enlargements of the conscious field, bringing with
them a curious sense of cognition of real fact. All
have occurred within the past five years; three of
them were similar in type ; the fourth was unique.

In each of the three like cases, the experience
broke in abruptly upon a perfectly commonplace
situation and lasted perhaps less than two minutes.
In one instance I was engaged in conversation, but
I doubt whether the interlocutor noticed my abstrac
tion. What happened each time was that I seemed
all at once to be reminded of a past experience ; and
this reminiscence, ere I could conceive or name
it distinctly, developed into something further that
belonged with it, this in turn into something further
still, and so on, until the process faded out, leaving
me amazed at the sudden vision of increasing ranges
of distant fact of which I could give no articulate
account. The mode of consciousness was percep
tual, not conceptual — the field expanding so fast

504

[1910] SUGGESTION ABOUT MYSTICISM

that there seemed no time for conception or identi
fication to get in its work. There was a strongly
exciting sense that my knowledge of past (or pres
ent?) reality was enlarging pulse by pulse, but so
rapidly that my intellectual processes could not
keep up the pace. The content was thus entirely
lost to retrospection — it sank into the limbo into
which dreams vanish as we gradually awake. The
feeling — I won't call it belief — that I had had a sud
den opening, had seen through a window, as it were,
distant realities that incomprehensibly belonged
with my own life, was so acute that I cannot shake
it off to-day.

This conviction of fact-revealed, together with the
perceptual form of the experience and the inability
to make articulate report, are all characters of mys
tical states. The point of difference is that in my
case certain special directions only, in the field of
reality, seemed to get suddenly uncovered, whereas
in classical mystical experiences it appears rather
as if the whole of reality were uncovered at once.
Uncovering of some sort is the essence of the phe
nomenon, at any rate, and is what, in the language
of the Fechnerian wave-metaphor, I have used the
expression "fall of the threshold" to denote.

My fourth experience of uncovering had to do
with dreams. I was suddenly intromitted into the
cognizance of a pair of dreams that I could not re
member myself to have had, yet they seemed some
how to connect with me. I despair of giving the
reader any just idea of the bewildering confusion

505

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

of mind into which I was thrown by this, the most
intensely peculiar experience of my whole life. I
wrote a full memorandum of it a couple of days
after it happened, and appended some reflections.
Even though it should cast no light on the condi
tions of mysticism, it seems as if this record might
be worthy of publication, simply as a contribution
to the descriptive literature of pathological mental
states. I let it follow, therefore, as originally writ
ten, with only a few words altered to make the
account more clear.

"San Francisco, Feb. 14th 1906.— The night be
fore last, in my bed at Stanford University, I woke
at about 7.30 A.M., from a quiet dream of some sort,
and whilst gathering my waking wits, seemed sud
denly to get mixed up with reminiscences of a dream
of an entirely different sort, which seemed to tele
scope, as it were, into the first one, a dream very
elaborate, of lions, and tragic. I concluded this to
have been a previous dream of the same sleep ; but
the apparent mingling of two dreams was something
very queer, which I had never before experienced.

"On the following night (Feb. 12-13) I awoke
suddenly from my first sleep, which appeared to
have been very heavy, in the middle of a dream, in
thinking of which I became suddenly confused by
the contents of two other dreams that shuffled them
selves abruptly in between the parts of the first
dream, and of which I couldn't grasp the origin.
Whence come these dreams? I asked. They were
close to me, and fresh, as if I had just dreamed

506

[1910] SUGGESTION ABOUT MYSTICISM

them; and yet they were far away from the first
dream. The contents of the three had absolutely no
connection. One had a cockney atmosphere, it had
happened to some one in London. The other two
were American. One involved the trying on of a
coat (was this the dream I seemed to wake from?)
the other was a sort of nightmare and had to do
with soldiers. Each had a wholly distinct emo
tional atmosphere that made its individuality dis
continuous with that of the others. And yet, in a
moment, as these three dreams alternately tele
scoped into and out of each other, and I seemed to
myself to have been their common dreamer, they
seemed quite as distinctly not to have been dreamed
in succession, in that one sleep. When, then? Not
on a previous night, either. When, then, and which
was the one out of which I had just awakened? /
could no longer tell: one was as close to me as the
others, and yet they entirely repelled each other,
and I seemed thus to belong to three different
dream-systems at once, no one of which would con
nect itself either with the others or with my waking
life. I began to feel curiously confused and scared,
and tried to wake myself up wider, but I seemed
already wide-awake. Presently cold shivers of
dread ran over me : am I getting into other people's
dreams? Is this a 'telepathic' experience? Or an
invasion of double (or treble) personality? Or is it
a thrombus in a cortical artery? and the beginning
of a general mental 'confusion' and disorientation
which is going on to develop who knows how far?

507

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS

"Decidedly I was losing hold of my 'self/ and
making acquaintance with a quality of mental dis
tress that I had never known before, its nearest
analogue being the sinking, giddying anxiety that
one may have when, in the woods, one discovers that
one is really 'lost.' Most human troubles look to
wards a terminus. Most fears point in a direction,
and concentrate towards a climax. Most assaults
of the evil one may be met by bracing oneself against
something, one's principles, one's courage, one's
will, one's pride. But in this experience all was
diffusion from a centre, and foothold swept away,
the brace itself disintegrating all the faster as one
needed its support more direly. Meanwhile vivid
perception (or remembrance) of the various dreams
kept coming over me in alternation. Whose?
whose f WHOSE? Unless I can attach them, I am
swept out to sea with no horizon and no bond, get
ting lost . The idea aroused the 'creeps' again, and
with it the fear of again falling asleep and renewing
the process. It had begun the previous night, but
then the confusion had only gone one step, and had
seemed simply curious. This was the second step —
where might I be after a third step had been taken?
My teeth chattered at the thought.

"At the same time I found myself filled with a
new pity towards persons passing into dementia
with Verwirrtheit, or into invasions of secondary
personality. We regard them as simply curious;
but what they want in the awful drift of their being
out of its customary self, is any principle of steadi-

508

£1910] SUGGESTION ABOUT MYSTICISM

ness to hold on to. We ought (o assure them and
reassure them that we will stand by them, and
recognize ,the true self in them to the end. We
ought to let them know that we are with them
and not (as too often we must seem to them) a part
of the world that but confirms and publishes their
deliquescence.

"Evidently I was in full possession of my reflec
tive wits; and whenever I thus objectively thought
of the situation in which I was, my anxieties ceased.
But there was a tendency to relapse into the dreams
and reminiscences, and to relapse vividly ; and then
the confusion recommenced, along with the emotion
of dread lest it should develop farther.

"Then I looked at my watch. Half-past twelve !
Midnight, therefore. And this gave me another
reflective idea. Habitually, on going to bed, I fall
into a very deep slumber from which I never natu
rally awaken until after two. I never awaken,
therefore, from a midnight dream, as I did to-night,
so of midnight dreams my ordinary consciousness
retains no recollection. My sleep seemed terribly
heavy as I woke to-night. Dream states carry dream
memories — why may not the two succedaneous
dreams (whichever two of the three were succeda
neous) be memories of twelve o'clock dreams of pre
vious nights, swept in, along with the just-fading
dream, into the just-waking system of memory?
Why, in short, may I not be tapping, in a way pre
cluded by my ordinary habit of life, the midnight
stratum of my past experiences?

509

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

"This idea gave great relief — I felt now as if I
were in full possession of my anima rationalis. I
turned on iny light, resolving to read myself to
sleep. But I didn't read, I felt drowsy instead, and,
putting out the light, soon was in the arms of
Morpheus.

"I woke again two or three times before day
break with no dream-experiences, and finally, with
a curious, but not alarming, confusion between two
dreams, similar to that which I had had the previ
ous morning, I awoke to the new day at seven.

"Nothing peculiar happened the following night,
so the thing seems destined not to develop any
further."1

1 1 print the rest of my memorandum in the shape of a note : —

"Several ideas suggest themselves that make the observation
instructive.

"First, the general notion, now gaining ground in mental
medicine, that certain mental maladies may be foreshadowed in
dream-life, and that therefore the study of the latter may be
profitable.

"Then the specific suggestion, that states of 'confusion,' loss
of personality, apraxia, etc., so often taken to indicate cortical
lesion or degeneration of dementic type, may be very superficial
functional affections. In my own case the confusion was fou-
droyante — a state of consciousness unique and unparalleled in
my sixty-four years of the world's experience ; yet it alternated
quickly with perfectly rational states, as this record shows. It
seems, therefore, merely as if the threshold between the ra
tional and the morbid state had, in my case, been temporarily
lowered, and as if similar confusions might be very near the
line of possibility in all of us.

"There are also the suggestions of a telepathic entrance into
some one else's dreams, and of a doubling up of personality.
In point of fact I don't know now 'who' had those three dreams,
or which one T first woke up from, so quickly did they substi
tute themselves back and forth for each other, discontinuously.

510

[1910] SUGGESTION ABOUT MYSTICISM

The distressing confusion of mind in this experi
ence was the exact opposite of mystical illumination,
and equally unmystical was the definiteness of what
was perceived. But the exaltation of the sense of
relation was mystical (the perplexity all revolved
about the fact that the three dreams both did and
did not belong in the most intimate way together) ;
and the sense that reality was being uncovered was
mystical in the highest degree. To this day I feel
that those extra dreams were dreamed in reality,
but when, where, and by whom, I can not guess.

In the Open Court for December, 1909, Mr. Fred
erick Hall narrates a fit of ether-mysticism which
agrees with my formula very well. When one of his
doctors made a remark to the other, he chuckled,
for he realized that these friends "believed they saw
real things and causes, but they didn't, and I
did. ... I was where the causes were and to see
them required no more mental ability than to recog
nize a color as blue. . . . The knowledge of how
little [the doctors] actually did see, coupled with
their evident feeling that they saw all there was,
was funny to the last degree. . . . [They] knew as
little of the real causes as does the child who, view
ing a passing train and noting its revolving wheels,
supposes that they, turning of themselves, give to
coaches and locomotive their momentum. Or im-

Their discontinuity was the pivot of the situation. My sense
of it was as 'vivid' and 'original' an experience as anything
Hume could ask for. And yet they kept telescoping !

"Then there is the notion that by waking at certain hours we
may tap distinct strata of ancient dream-memory."

511

COLLECTED ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

agine a man seated in a boat, surrounded by dense
fog, and out of the fog seeing a flat stone leap from
the crest of one wave to another. // he had always
sat thus, his explanations must be very crude as
compared with those of a man whose eyes could
pierce fog, and who saw upon the shore the boy
skipping stones. In some such way the remarks
of the two physicians seemed to me like the last two
'skips' of a stone thrown from my side. ... All
that was essential in the remark I knew before it
was made. Thus to discover convincingly and for
myself, that the things which are unseen are those
of real importance, this was sufficiently stimulat
ing."

It is evident that Mr. Hall's marginal field got
enormously enlarged by the ether, yet so little de
fined as to its particulars that what he perceived
wTas mainly the thoroughgoing causal integration
of its whole content. That this perception brought
with it a tremendous feeling of importance and
superiority is a matter of course.

I have treated the phenomenon under discussion
as if it consisted in the uncovering of tracts of con
sciousness. Is the consciousness already there wait
ing to be uncovered? and is it a veridical revelation
of reality? These are questions on which I do not
touch. In the subjects of the experience the "emo
tion of conviction" is always strong, and sometimes
absolute. The ordinary psychologist disposes of
the phenomenon under the conveniently "scientific"
head of petit mal, if not of "bosh" or "rubbish."

512

[1910] SUGGESTION ABOUT MYSTICISM

But we know so little of the noetic value of ab
normal mental states of any kind that in my opinion
we had better keep an open mind and collect facts
sympathetically for a long time to come. We shall
not understand these alterations of consciousness
either in this generation or in the next.

513

INDEX

ABSOLUTE, THE: 467-469.
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL AS
SOCIATION : 371.
ANESTHESIA: 365-370.

BAIN, A.: 26-29, 93, 102, 125,

127, 130, 183, 260.
BALDWIN, J. M. : 390.
BASTIAN, H. C. : 164.
BEARD, G. M. : 241-242.
BELIEF : 205-206.
BERGSON, H. : 491-499.
BERNHARDT: 186.
BERKLEY : 365.
BERKELEY: 434.
BIRAN, MAINE DE : 181.
BLOOD, B. P.: 134-135.
BRACKET: 265.
BRADLEY, F. H. : 333-341, 491-

499.
BRIDGMAN, LAURA : 453-458.

CARLYLE: 132.
CARPENTER, W. B. : 183.
CATTELL, J. McK. : 390.
CLIFFORD, W. K. : 66, 118, 137-

146.

COGNITION. See KNOWLEDGE.
CONSCIOUSNESS. See MIND.

D'ALEMBERT: 90, 127.
DARWIN : 21, 63.
DEGENERATION : 401-405.
DEWEY, J. : 445, 447, 450.
DIZZINESS: 220-243.
DUHRING, E. : 132.

EMERSON : 62.

EMOTION : 187-189, 244-275,

346-370.

EMPIRICISM : 4-11, 28.
ETHICS: 147-150.
EVOLUTION : 147.

FAITH: 69-82, 140.
FECHNER, G. T. : 118, 500.
FEELING: 347, :;<;».
FERRIER, D. : 164-167, 187.
FORD, E. : 328-332.
FREEDOM : 208.
FULLERTON, G. S. : 397.

GENIUS: 401-405.

GERMAN TRAITS: 12-13.

GOD, CONCEPTION OF : 414-429,

464-465.

GORE, W. C. : 467-469.
GRAEFE, A. : 171, 174.

HALL, F. : 511.
HARTMANN : 13-17, 87, 99.
HEGEL: 127, 282-283.
HELMHOLTZ: 31, 169-170, 174,

231.

HERBART : 209, 392.
HERING, E. : 174, 177.
HODGSON, R. : 438-441, 484-

490.
HODGSON, S. : 133, 373-375,

380.

HOWISON, G. : 430.
HUMANISM : 447, 448-452.
HUME: 22, 99, 100, 209, 435.
HUXLEY, T. H. : 66, 72, 100,

108.

IDEALISM : 276-284, 373, 492.
IDENTITY: 339-341.
IDEO-MOTOR ACTION : 180-187.
ILLUSION : 285-302.
INSTINCT : 248-250.
IRONS, D. : 349, 362.

JACKSON, H. : 153.

KANT : 93, 131, 436, 499.
KELLER, HELEN : 453-458.
KNOWLEDGE : 278-282, 371-400,
470-483, 491-499, 505.

515

INDEX

LADD, G. T. : 316-327, 342-345,

392-393.

LANGE, C. : 244, 346, 348.
LEWES, G. H. : 4-11, 40-42, 91,

107, 110, 155.
LOMBEOSO, C. : 401-405.
LOTZE : 99, 154, 182, 304.

MACH, E. : 179.

MEINONG, A. : 398.

MILL, JAMES : 111.

MILL, J. S. : 8, 9, 29-30, 61, 93,

100, 113.

MILLER, D. S. : 359, 377.
MIND: 40-42, 43-68, 144, 371-

400.

MITCHELL, WEIE : 285, 291, 294.
MiJLLER, J. : 152.
MUNK, H.: 184-185.
MUNSTERBERG, H. : 359, 390.
MYSTICISM: 500-513.

NICHOLS, H. : 358-359, 388.

PAPINI, G. : 459-466.

PEIRCE, C. S. : 20, 406, 410 ff.,

448.
PERSONAL IDEALISM : 442-444,

450.

PESSIMISM : 12-19.
PFLEIDERER, E. : 12-19.
PIPER, MRS. : 438-441, 484-490.
POSITIVISM: 10, 28, 129, 276.
PRAGMATISM : 406-437, 448,

450, 459, 466.
PSYCHICAL RESEARCH : 1-3,

438-441, 484-490.
PSYCHOLOGY, METHOD OF : 97,

155, 316-327, 342-345.
PUTNAM, J. J. : 164-165.

RATIONALITY : 69-82, 83-136.
RELIGION : 276-284.
RENAN : 36-39.

RENOUVIER, C. : 26, 29-35, 69,
81-82, 83, 98, 121, 131, 133,
151, 193-194, 303-409.

RESEMBLANCE, RELATION OF :
333-341.

ROBERTSON, G. C. : 310-315.

ROYCE, J. : 276-284, 430, 481,
482.

RUSKIN : 269.

RUSSELL, J. E. : 470-483.

SARGENT, E. : 1.

SCHILLER, F. C. S. : 443, 444,

448-452.
SCHOPENHAUER : 14, 15, 17, 23,

88, 99.

SETH, A. : 322.

SIMILARITY. See RESEMBLANCE.
SOLLIER, P. : 366-370.
SOUL. See MIND.
SPACE, PERCEPTION OF: 310-

315, 328-332.
SPENCER : 30, 33, 43-68, 90, 91,

99, 107, 114, 118, 147-150.
STRUMPELL, L. : 272-275.
STUMPF, K. : 330, 334, 340.
STURT, H. : 442-444.

TAINE: 112, 118.

TRUTH : 406-437, 448, 449, 466,

470-483.
TYNDALL: 107.

UEBERWEG, F. : 87.
VOLTAIRE : 43.

WATSON, J. : 116.

WILL : 33-35, 50, 143, 151-219,

303-309.

WORCESTER, W. L. : 349-366.
WRIGHT, CHAUNCEY : 20-25,

107.
WUNDT, W. : 153, 346-348, 386.

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