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EATIVE INTELLIGENCE

;SSAYS IN THE PRAGMATIC ATTITUDE

BY

JOHN DEWEY

ADDISON W. MOORE

HAROLD CHAPMAN BROWN

GEORGE H. MEAD

BOYD H. BODE

HENRY WALDGRAVE STUART

JAMES HAYDEN TUFTS

HORACE M. KALLEN

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

COPTBISHT, 1917,
BT

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

Pnbliahed January, 1917

THE QUINN 4 BODEN CO. ntiS
RAHWAY, H. I.

f

PREFATORY NOTE

The Essays which follow represent an attempt at
intellectual cooperation. No effort has been made,
however, to attain unanimity of belief nor to proffer a
platform of " planks " on which there is agreement. The
consensus represented lies primarily in outlook, in con-
viction of what is most likely to be fruitful in method
of approach. As the title page suggests, the volume
presents a unity in attitude rather than a uniformity
in results. Consequently each writer is definitively
responsible only for his own essay. The reader will
note that the Essays endeavor to embody the common
attitude in application to specific fields of inquiry
which have been historically associated with philosophy
rather than as a thing by itself. Beginning with philos-
ophy itself, subsequent contributions discuss its appli-
cation to logic, to mathematics, to physical science, to
psychology, to ethics, to economics, and then again to
philosophy itself in conjunction with esthetics and re-
ligion. The reader will probably find that the signifi-
cant points of agreement have to do with the ideas of the
genuineness of the future, of intelligence as the organ
for determining the quality of that future so far as it
can come within human control, and of a courageously
inventive individual as the bearer of a creatively em-
ployed mind. While all the essays are new in the form
in which they are now published, various contributors

ili

?an

iv PREFATORY NOTE

make their acknowledgments to the editors of the
Philosophical Review, the Psychological Review, and
the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific
Methods for use of material which first made its appear-
ance in the pages of these journals.

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Need foe a Recovery of Philosophy . 3

John Dewey, Columbia University.

Reformation of Logic ..... . .., 70

Addison W. Moore, University of Chicago.

Intelligence and Mathematics . . . 118
Harold Chapman Brown, Leland Stanford,
Jr., University.

Scientific Method and Individual Thinker . 176
George H. Mead, University of Chicago.

Consciousness and Psychology . . . 228
Boyd H. Bode, University of Illinois.

The Phases of the Economic Interest . . 282
Henry Waldgrave Stuart, Leland Stanford,
Jr., University.

The Moral Life and the Construction of / >

Values and Standards 354

James Hayden Tufts, University of Chicago.V

Value and Existence in Philosophy, Art, and

Religion 409

Horace M. Kallen, University of Wisconsin.

CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

THE NEED FOR A RECOVERY OF
PHILOSOPHY

JOHN DEWEY

Intellectual advance occurs in two ways. At
times increase of knowledge is organized about old
conceptions, while these are expanded, elaborated
and refined, but not seriously revised, much less aban-
doned. At other times, the increase of knowledge de-
mands qualitative rather than quantitative change;
alteration, not addition. Men's minds grow cold to
their former intellectual concerns ; ideas that were
burning fade; interests that were urgent seem remote.
Men face in another direction; their older perplexities
are unreal; considerations passed over as negligible
loom up. Former problems may not have been solved,
but they no longer press for solution.

Philosophy is no exception to the rule. But it is
unusually conservative — not, necessarily, in proffering
solutions, but in clinging to problems. It has been so
allied with theology and theological morals as repre-
sentatives of men's chief interests, that radical altera-
tion has been shocking. Men's activities took a de-
cidedly new turn, for example, in the seventeenth cen-
tury, andhit seemed as if philosophy, under the lead of
thinkers like Bacon and Descartes, was to execute an
about-face. But, in spite of the ferment, it turned out

3

4 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

that many of the older problems were but translated
from Latin into the vernacular or into the new termi-
nology furnished by science.

The association of philosophy with academic teach-
ing has reinforced this intrinsic conservatism. Scho-
lastic philosophy persisted in universities after men's
thoughts outside of the walls of colleges had moved
in other directions. In the last hundred j^ears intel-
lectual advances of science and politics have in like
fashion been crystallized into material of instruction
and now resist further change. I would not say that
the spirit of teaching is hostile to that of liberal in-
quiry, but a philosophy which exists largely as some-
thing to be taught rather than wholly as something
to be reflected upon is conducive to discussion of views
held by others rather than to immediate response. Phi-
losophy when taught inevitably magnifies the history
of past thought, and leads professional philosophers to
approach their subject-matter through its formulation
in received systems. It tends, also, to emphasize points
upon which men have divided into schools, for these
lend themselves to retrospective definition and elabora-
tion. Consequently, philosophical discussion is likely
to be a dressing out of antithetical traditions, where
criticism of one view is thought to afford proof of the
truth of its opposite (as if formulation of views guar-
anteed logical exclusives). Direct preoccupation with
contemporary difficulties is left to literature and poli-
tics.

If changing conduct and expanding knowledge ever
required a willingness to surrender not merely old solu-

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 5

tions but old problems it is now. I do not mean that
we can turn abruptly away from all traditional issues.
This is impossible ; it would be the undoing of the one
who attempted it. Irrespective of the professionalizing
of philosophy, the ideas philosophers discuss are still
those in which Western civilization has been bred. They
are in the backs of the heads of educated people. But
what serious-minded men not engaged in the profes-
sional business of philosophy most want to know is
what modifications and abandonments of intellectual in-
heritance are required by the newer industrial, politi-
cal, and scientific movements. They want to know
what these newer movements mean when translated into
general ideas. Unless professional philosophy can
mobilize itself sufficiently to assist in this clarification
and redirection of men's thoughts, it is likely to get
more and more sidetracked from the main currents of
contemporary life. ;^

This essay may, then, be looked upon as an attemlpt
to forward the emancipation of philosophy from too
intimate and exclusive attachment to traditional prob-
lems. It is not in intent a criticism of various solu-
tions that have been offered, but raises a question as to
the genuineness, under the present conditions of science
and social life, of the problems.

The limited object of my discussion will, doubtless,
give an exaggerated impression of my conviction as
to the artificiality of much recent philosophizing. Not
that I have wilfully exaggerated in what I have said,
but that the limitations of my purpose have led me not
to say many things pertinent to a broader purpose. A

6 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

discussion less restricted would strive to enforce the
genuineness, in their o\\ti context, of questions now dis-
cussed mainly because they have been discussed rather
than because contemporary conditions of life suggest
them. It would also be a grateful task to dwell upon
the precious contributions made by philosophic systems
which as a whole are impossible. In the course of the
development of unreal premises and the discussion of
artificial problems, points of view have emerged which
are indispensable possessions of culture. The horizon
has been widened ; ideas of great fecundity struck out ;
imagination quickened ; a sense of the meaning of things
created. It may even be asked whether these accompani-
ments of classic systems have not often been treated as
a kind of guarantee of the systems themselves. But
while it is a sign of an illiberal mind to throw away the
fertile and ample ideas of a Spinoza, a Kant, or a
Hegel, because their setting is not logically adequate,
it is surely a sign of an undisciplined one to treat their
contributions to culture as confirmations of premises
with which they have no necessary connection.

A criticism of current philosophizing from the stand-
point of the traditional quality of its problems must
begin somewhere, and the choice of a beginning is arbi-
trary. It has appeared to me that the notion of experi-
ence implied in the questions most actively discussed
gives a natural point of departure. For, if I mistake
not, it is just the inherited view of experience common
to the empirical school and its opponents which keeps

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 7

alive many discussions even of matters that on their
face are quite remote from it, while it is also this view
which is most untenable in the light of existing science
and social practice. Accordingly I set out with a brief
statement of some of the chief contrasts between the
orthodox description of experience and that congenial
to present conditions.

(i) In the orthodox view, experience is regarded
primarily as a knowledge-aif air. But to eyes not look-
ing through ancient spectacles, it assuredly appears
as an affair of the intercourse of a living being with
its physical and social environment, (ii) According
to tradition experience is (at least primarily) a psy-
chical thing, infected throughout by " subjectivity."
What experience suggests about itself is a genuinely
objective world which enters into the actions and suf-
ferings of men and undergoes modiifications through
their responses, (iii) So far as anything beyond a
bare present is recognized by the established doctrine,
the past exclusively counts. Registration of what has
taken place, reference to precedent, is believed to be
the essence of experience. Empiricism is conceived of
as tied up to what has been, or is, " given." But ex-
perience in its vital form is experimental, an effort to
change the given; it is characterized by projection, by
reaching forward into the unknown; connexion with
a future is its salient trait, (iv) The empirical tradi-
tion is committed to particularism. Connexions and
continuities^ are supposed to be foreign to experience,
to be by-products of dubious validity. An experience
that is an undergoing of an environment and a striv-

8 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ing for its control in new directions is pregnant with
connexions, (v) In the traditional notion experience
i^nd thought are antithetical terms. Inference, so far
as it is other than a revival of what has been given in
the past, goes beyond experience; hence it is either in-
valid, or else a measure of desperation by which, using
experience as a springboard, we jump out to a world
of stable things and other selves. But experience, taken
free of the restrictions imposed by the older concept,
is full of inference. There is, apparently, no conscious
experience without inference ; reflection is native and
constant.

These contrasts, with a consideration of the effect
of substituting the account of experience relevant to
modern life for the inherited account, afford the sub-
ject-matter of the following discussion.

Suppose we take seriously the contribution made to
our idea of experience by biology, — not that recent
biological science discovered the facts, but that it has
so €mphasized them that there is no longer an excuse
for ignoring them or treating them as negligible. Any
account of experience must now fit into the considera-
tion that experiencing means living; and that living
goes on in and because of an environing medium, not
in a vacuum. Where there is experience, there is a
living being. Where there is life, there is a double con-
nexion maintained with the environment. In part, en-
vironmental energies constitute organic functions ; they
enter into them. Life is not possible without such
direct support by the environment. But while all
organic changes depend upon the natural energies of

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 9

the environment for their origination and occurrence,
the natural energies sometimes carry the organic func-
tions prosperously forward, and sometimes act counter
to their continuance. Growth and decay, health and
disease, are alike continuous with activities of the nat-
ural surroundings. The difference lies in the bearing
of what happens upon future life-activity. From the
standpoint of this future reference environmental inci-
dents fall into groups : those favorable to life-activities,
and those hostile.

The successful activities of the organism, those
within which environmental assistance is incorporated,
react upon the environment to bring about modifications
favorable to their own future. The human being has
upon his hands the problem of responding to what is
going on around him so that these changes will take one
turn rather than another, namely, that required by its
own further functioning. While backed in part by the
environment, its life is anything but a peaceful ex-
halation of environment. It is obliged to struggle —
that is to say, to employ the direct support given by
the environment in order indirectly to effect changes
that would not otherwise occur. In this sense, life goes
on by means of controlling the environment. Its activi-
ties must change the changes going on around it; they
must neutralize hostile occurrences; they must trans-
form neutral events into cooperative factors or into an
efflorescence of new features.

Dialectic developments of the notion of self-preser-
vation, of the conatus essendi, often ignore all the im-
portant facts of the actual process. They argue as if

10 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

self-control, self-development, went on directlj^ as a
sort of unrolling push from within. But life endures
only in virtue of the support of the environment. And
since the environment is only incompletely enlisted in
our behalf, self-preservation — or self-realization or
whatever — is always indirect — always an affair of the
way in which our present activities affect the direction
taken by independent changes in the surroundings.
Hindrances must be turned into means.

We are also given to playing loose with the concep-
tion of adjustment, as if that meant something fixed —
a kind of accommodation once for all (ideally at least)
of the organism to an environment. But as life re-
quires the fitness of the environment to the organic
functions, adjustment to the environment means not
passive acceptance of the latter, but acting so that
the environing changes take a certain turn. The
*' higher " the type of life, the more adjustment takes
the form of an adjusting of the factors of the environ-
ment to one another in the interest of life; the less the
significance of living, the more it becomes an adjust-
ment to a given environment till at the lower end of
the scale the differences between living and the non-
living disappear.

These statements are of an external kind. They
are about the conditions of experience, rather than
about experiencing itself. But assuredly experience as
it concretely takes place bears out the statements.
Experience is primarily a process of undergoing: a
process of standing something; of suffering and pas-
sion, of affection, in the literal sense of these words.

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 11

The organism has to endure, to undergo, the conse-
quences of its own actions. Experience is no slipping
along in a path fixed by inner consciousness. Private
consciousness is an incidental outcome of experience of
a vital objective sort ; it is not its source. Undergoing, ^^
however, is never mere passivity. The most patient
patient is more than a receptor. He is also an agent —
a reactor, one trying experiments, one concerned with
undergoing in a way which may influence what is still
to happen. Sheer endurance, side-stepping evasions,
are, after all, ways of treating the environment with a
view to what such treatment will accomplish. Even if
we shut ourselves up in the most clam-like fashion, we
are doing something; our passivity is an active atti-
tude, not an extinction of response. Just as there is
no assertive action, no aggressive attack upon things as
they are, which is all action, so there is no undergoing
which is not on our part also a going on and a going
through.

Experience, in other words, is a matter of simultane-
ous doings and sufferings. Our undergoings are experi-
ments in varying the course of events ; our active try-
ings are trials and tests of ourselves. This duplicity
of experience shows itself in our happiness and misery,
our successes and failures. Triumphs are dangerous
when dwelt upon or lived off from ; successes use them-
selves up. Any achieved equilibrium of adjustment
with the environment is precarious because we cannot
evenly keep pace with changes in the environment.
These are so opposed in direction that we must choose.
We must take the risk of casting in our lot with one

12 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

movement or the other. Nothing can eliminate all risk,
all adventure ; the one thing doomed to failure is to
try to keep even with the whole environment at once —
that is to say, to maintain the happy moment when
all things go our way.

The obstacles which confront us are stimuli to varia-
tion, to novel response, and hence are occasions of
progress. If a favor done us by the environment con-
ceals a threat, so its disfavor is a potential means of
hitherto unexperienced modes of success. To treat
misery as anything but misery, as for example a bless-
ing in disguise or a necessary factor in good, is disin-
genuous apologetics. But to say that the progress of
the race has been stimulated by ills undergone, and that
men have been moved by what they suffer to search
out new and better courses of action is to speak
veraciously.

The preoccupation of experience with things which
are coming (are now coming, not just to come) is ob-
'"^3 vious to any one whose interest in experience is em-
pirical. Since we live forward: since we live in a world
where changes are going on whose issue means our
weal or woe; since every act of _Qiirs modifies these
changes and hence is fraught with promise, or charged
with hostile energies — what should experience be but
a future implicated in a present! Adjustment is no
timeless state; it is a continuing process. To say that
a change takes time may be to say something about the
event which is external and uninstructive. But adjust-
ment of organism to environment takes time in the
pregnant sense ; every step in theprocess is conditioned

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 13

by reference to further changes which it effects. What
is going on in the environment is the concern of the
organism ; not what is already " there " in accomplished
and finished form. In so far as the issue of what is
going on may be affected by intervention of the or-
ganism, the moving event is a challenge which stretches
the agent-patient to meet what is coming. Experi-
encing exhibits things in their unterminated aspect
moving toward detexminate conclusions. The finished
and done with is of import as affecting the future, not
on its own account: in short, because it is not, really,
done with.

Anticipation is therefore more primary than recol-
lection ; projection than summoning of the past ; the
prospective than the retrospective. Given a world like
that in which we live, a world in which environing
changes are partly favorable and partly callously
indifferent, and experience is bound to be prospective
in import; for any control attainable by the living
creature depends upon what is done to alter the state ' >
of things. Success and failure are the primary "cate- i y/
gories " of life ; achieving of good and averting of ill 7
are its supreme interests ; hope and anxiety (which are
not self-enclosed states of feeling, but active attitudes
of welcome and wariness) are dominant qualities of
experience. Imaginatiyje.iQrccast of the future is this
forerunning quality of behavior rendered available for
guidance in the present. Day-dreaming and castle-
building and esthetic realization of what is not practi-
cally achieved are offshoots of this practical trait, or
else practical intelligence is a chastened fantasy. It

14 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

makes little difference. Imaginative recovery of the
bygone is indispensable to successful invasion of the
future, but its status is that of an instrument. To
ignore its import is the sign of an undisciplined agent ;
but to isolate the past, dwelling upon it for its own
sake and giving it the eulogistic name of knowledge, is
o substitute the reminiscence of old-age for effective
ntelligence. The movement of the agent-patient to
meet the future is partial and passionate ; yet detached
and impartial study of the past is the only alternative
to luck in assuring success to passion.

n

This description of experience would be but a rhap-
sodic celebration of the commonplace were it not in
marked contract to orthodox philosophical accounts.
The contrast indicates that traditional accounts have
not been empirical, but have been deductions, from
unnamed premises, of what experience must be. His-
toric empiricism has been empirical in a technical and
controversial sense. It has said, Lord, Lord, Experi-
ence, Experience; but in practice it has served ideas
forced into experience, not gathered from it.

The confusion and artificiality thereby introduced
into philosophical thought is nowhere more evident than
in the empirical treatment of relations or dynamic con-
tinuities. The experience of a living being struggling
to hold its own and make its way in an environment,
physical and social, partlj" facilitating and partly ob-
structing its actions, is of necessity' a matter of ties
and connexions, of bearings and uses. The very point

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 15

of experience, so to say, is that it doesn't occur in a
vacuum; its agent-patient instead of being insulated
and disconnected is bound up with the movement of
things by most intimate and pervasive bonds. Only
because the organism is in and of the world, and its
activities correlated with those of other things in mul-
tiple ways, is it susceptible to undergoing things and
capable of trying to reduce objects to means of secur-
ing its good fortune. That these connexions are of
diverse kinds is irresistibly proved by the fluctuations
which occur in its career. Help and hindrance, stimu-
lation and inhibition, success and failure mean spe-
cifically different modes of correlation. Although the
actions of things in the world are taking place in one
continuous stretch of existence, there are all kinds of
specific afllnities, repulsions, and relative indifferencies.

Dynamic connexions are qualitatively diverse, just| » i
as are the centers of action. In this sense, pluralism, I | |
not monism, is an established empirical fact. The at-
tempt to establish monism from consideration of the
very nature of a relation is a mere piece of dialectics.
Equally dialectical is the eJffort to establish by a con-
sideration of the nature of relations an ontological
Pluralism of Ultimates : simple and independent beings.
To attempt to get results from a consideration of the
" external " nature of relations is of a piece with the
attempt to deduce results from their " internal " char-
acter. Some things are relatively insulated from the
influence of other things ; some things are easily in-
vaded by others ; some things are fiercely attracted to
conjoin their activities with those of others. Experi-

W

16 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ence exhibits every kind of connexion* from the most
.^ intimate to mere external juxtaposition.
- ' Empirically, then, active bonds or continuities of all
kinds, together with static discontinuities, characterize
existence. To deny this qualitative heterogeneity is to
reduce the struggles and difficulties of life, its comedies
and tragedies to illusion : to the non-being of the Greeks
or to its modern counterpart, the " subjective." Expe-
rience is an affair of facilitations and checks, of being
sustained and disrupted, being let alone, being helped
and troubled, of good fortune and defeat in all the
countless qualitative modes which these words pallidly
suggest. The existence of genuine connexions of all
manner of heterogeneity cannot be doubted. Such
words as conjoining, disjoining, resisting, modifying,
saltatory, and ambulatory (to use James' picturesque
term) only hint at their actual heterogeneity.
1 Among the revisions and surrenders of historic prob-
lems demanded by this feature of empirical situations,
those centering in the rationalistic-empirical contro-
versy may be selected for attention. The implications
of this controversy are twofold: First, that connex-
ions are as homogeneous in fact as in name ; and, sec-
ondly, if genuine, are all due to thought, or, if era-

* The word relation suffers from ambiguity. I am speaking
here of connexion, dynamic and functional interaction. " Rela-
tion" is a term used also to express logical reference. I suspect
that much of the controversy about internal and external relations
is due to this ambiguity. One passes at will from existential
connexions of things to logical relationship of terms. Such an
identification of existences with terms is congenial to idealism, but
is paradoxical in a professed realism.

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 17

pirical, are arbitrary by-products of past particulars.
The stubborn particularism of orthodox empiricism is
its outstanding trait ; consequently the opposed ration-
alism found no justification of bearings, continuities,
and ties save to refer them in gross to the work of a
hyper-empirical Reason.

Of course, not all empiricism prior to Hume and
Kant was sensationalistic, pulverizing " experience "
into isolated sensory qualities or simple ideas. It did
not all follow Locke's lead in regarding the entire con-
tent of generalization as the " workmanship of the un-
derstanding." On the Continent, prior to Kant, philoso-
phers were content to draw a line between empirical
generalizations regarding matters of fact and neces-
sary universals applying to truths of reason. But
logical atomism was implicit even in this theory. State-
ments referring to empirical fact were mere quantita-
tive summaries of particular instances. In the sensa-
tionalism which sprang from Hume ( and which was left
unquestioned by Kant as far as any strictly empirical
element was concerned) the implicit particularism was
made explicit. But the doctrine that sensations and
ideas are so many separate existences was not derived
from observation nor from experiment. It was a logi-
cal deduction from a prior unexamined concept of_tIie
nature of experience. From the same concept it fol-
lowed that the appearance of stable objects and of
general principles of connexion was but an appear-
ance.*

* There is some gain in substituting a doctrine of flux and
interpenetration of psychical states, d la Bergson, for that of

18 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Kantianism, then, naturally invoked universal bonds
to restore objectivity. But, in so doing, it accepted
the particularism of experience and proceeded to sup-
plement it from non-empirical sources. A sensory
manifold being all which is really empirical in experi-
ence, a reason which transcends experience must provide
synthesis. The net outcome might have suggested a
correct account of experience. For we have only to
forget the apparatus by which the net outcome is ar-
rived at, to have before us the experience of the plain
man — a diversity of ceaseless changes connected in all
kinds of ways, static and dynamic. This conclusion
would deal a deathblow to both empiricism and ration-
alism. For, making clear the non-empirical character
of the alleged manifold of unconnected particulars, it
would render unnecessary the appeal to functions of
the understanding in order to connect them. With the
downfall of the traditional notion of experience, the
appeal to reason to supplement its defects becomes
superfluous.

The tradition was, however, too strongly entrenched ;
especially as it furnished the subject-matter of an al-
leged science of states of mind which were directly
known in their very presence. The historic outcome
was a new crop of artificial puzzles about relations ;
it fastened upon philosophy for a long time the quar-
rel about the a priori and the a posteriori as its chief
issue. The controversy is to-day quiescent. Yet it is

rigid discontinuity. But the substitution leaves untouched the
fundamental misstatement of experience, the conception of expe-
rience as directly and primarily " inner " and psychical.

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 19

not at all uncommon to find thinkers modern in tone
and intent who regard any philosophy of experience as
necessarily committed to denial of the existence of
genuinely general propositions, and who take empiri-
cism to be inherently averse to the recognition of the
importance of an organizing and constructive intelli-
gence.

The quiescence alluded to is in part due, I think, to
sheer weariness. But it is also due to a change of
standpoint introduced by biological conceptions ; and
particiilarly the discovery of biological continuity from
the lower organisms to man. For a short period, Spen-
cerians might connect the doctrine of evolution with
the old problem, and use the long temporal accumula-
tion of " experiences " to generate something which,
for human experience, is a priori. But the tendency
of the biological way of thinking is neither to con-
firm or negate the Spencerian doctrine, but to shift the
issue. In the orthodox position a posteriori and a
priori j^re affairs of knowledge. But it soon becomes
obvious that wliile^tnere is assuredly soifietlTing a priori
— tliatrfe To say, narive^ unlearned, original — in^u^
man experience, that sometTimg is not knowledge, but is
aclivlLlW macle possible by means of established con-
nexions oi neurones. This empirical fact does not solve
the orthodox problem ; it dissolves it. It shows that
the problem was misconceived, and solution sought by
both parties in the wrong direction.

Organic instincts and organic retention, or habit-
forming, are undeniable factors in actual experience.
They are factors which effect organization and secure

20 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

continuity. They arc among the specific facts which
a description of experience cognizant of the correla-
tion of organic action with the action of other natural
objects will include. But while fortunately the con-
tribution of biological science to a truly empirical de-
scription of experiencing has outlawed the discussion
of the a priori and a posteriori, the transforming effect
of the same contributions upon other issues has gone
unnoticed, save as pragmatism has made an effort to
bring them to recognition.

m

The point seriously at issue in the notion of experi-
ence common to both sides in the older controversy
thus turns out to be the place of thought or intelli-
gence in experience. Does reason have a distinctive
office? Is there a characteristic order of relations con-
tributed by it?

Experience, to return to our positive conception, is
primarily what is undergone in connexion with activi-
ties whose import lies in their objective consequences —
their bearing upon future experiences. Organic func-
tions deal with things as things in course, in operation,
in a state of affairs not yet given or completed. ^Vhat
is done with, what is just " there," is of concern only
in the potentialities which it may indicate. As ended,
as wholly given, it is of no account. But as a sign
of what may come, it becomes an indispensable factor
in behavior dealing with changes, the outcome of which
is not yet determined.

The only power the organism possesses to control its

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 21

own future depends upon the way its present responses
modify changes which are taking place in its medium.
A living being may be comparatively impotent, or com-
paratively free. It is all a matter of the way in which
its present reactions to things influence the future re-
actions of things upon it. Without regard to its wish
or intent every act it performs makes some difference
in the environment. The change may be trivial as re-
spects its own career and fortune. But it may also
be of incalculable importance; it may import harm,
destruction, or it may procure well-being.

Is it possible for a living being to increase its con-
trol of welfare and success.'' Can it manage, in any
degree, to assure its future.'' Or does the amount of
security depend wholly upon the accidents of the sit-
uation.'' Can it learn.? Can it gain ability to assure
its future in the present.? These questions center at-
tention upon the significance of reflective intelligence
in the process of experience. The extent of an agent's
capacity for inference, its power to use a given fact
as a sign of something not yet given, measures the ex-
tent of its ability systematically to enlarge its control
of the future.

A being which can use given and finished facts as
signs of things to come ; which can take given things
as evidences of absent things, can, in that degree, fore-
cast the future; it can form reasonable expectations.
It is capable of achieving ideas ; it is possessed of in-
telligence. For use of the given or finished to anticipate
the consequence, of processes going on is^ precisely
what is meant by " ideas," by" intelligence." ^

i\/

0^

22 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

As we have already noted, the environment is rarely
all of a kind in its bearing upon organic welfare ; its
most whole-hearted support of life-activities is precari-
ous and temporary. Some environmental changes are
auspicious ; others are menacing. The secret of suc-
cess— that is, of the greatest attainable success — is for
the organic response to cast in its lot with present aus-
picious changes to strengthen them and thus to avert
the consequences flowing from occurrences of ill-omen.
Any reaction is a venture ; it involves risk. We always
build better or worse than we can foretell. But the
organism's fateful intervention in the course of events
is blind, its choice is random, except as it can employ
what happens to it as a basis of inferring what is
likely to happen later. In the degree in which it can
read future results in present on-goings, its responsive
choice, its partiality to this condition or that, become
intelligent. Its bias grows reasonable. It can delib-
erately, intentionally, participate in the direction of
the course of affairs. Its foresight of different futures
which result according as this or that present factor
predominates in the shaping of affairs permits it to
partake intelligently instead of blindly and fatally in
the consequences its reactions give rise to. Participate
it must, and to its own weal or woe. Inference, the
use of what happens, to anticipate what will — or at
least may — happen, makes the difference between
directed and undirected participation. And this
capacity for inferring is precisely the same as
that use of natural occurrences for the discovery
and determination of consequences — the formation

^ -=y wa^^^^^L-^ », *. - - ^Cw-tC-

— i^A^Ly'^-^^^-i^ L^ AtJl-^J

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 23

of new dynamic connexions — which constitutes knowl-
edge.

The fact that thought is an intrinsic feature of expe-
rience is fatal to the traditional empiricism which makes
it an artificial by-product. But for that same reason
it is fatal to the historic rationalisms whose justification
was the secondary and retrospective position assigned
to thought by empirical philosophy. According to the
particularism of the latter, thought was inevitably only
a bunching together of hard-and-fast separate items ;
thinking was but the gathering together and tying of
items already completely given, or else an equally arti-
ficial untying — a mechanical adding and subtracting of
the given. It was but a cumulative registration, a
consolidated merger ; generality was a matter of bulk,
not of quality. Thinking was therefore treated as lack-
ing constructive power; even its organizing capacity
was but simulated, being in truth but arbitrary pigeon-
holing. Genuine projection of the novel, deliberate
variation and invention, are idle fictions in such a ver-
sion of experience. If there ever was creation, it all
took place at a remote period. Since then the world
has only recited lessons.

The value of inventive construction is too precious
to be disposed of in this cavalier way. Its uncere-
monious denial afforded an opportunity to assert that
in addition to experience the subject has a ready-made
faculty of thought or reason which transcends experi-
ence. Rationalism thus accepted the account of experi-
ence given by traditional empiricism, and introduced
reason as extra-empirical. There are still thinkers who

24 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

regard any empiricism as necessarily committed to a
belief in a cut-and-dried reliance upon disconnected
precedents, and who hold that all systematic organiza-
tion of past experiences for new and constructive pur-
poses is alien to strict empiricism.

Rationalism never explained, however, how a reason
extraneous to experience could enter into helpful rela-
tion with concrete experiences. By definition, reason
and experience were antithetical, so that the concern of
reason was not the fruitful expansion and guidance of
the course of experience, but a realm of considerations
too sublime to touch, or be touched by, experience.
Discreet rationalists confined themselves to theology
and allied branches of abtruse science, and to mathe-
matics. Rationalism would have been a doctrine re-
served for academic specialists and abstract formalists
had it not assumed the task of providing an apolo-
getics for traditional morals and theology, thereby get-
ting into touch with actual human beliefs and concerns.
It is notorious that historic empiricism was strong in
criticism and in demolition of outworn beliefs, but weak
for purposes of constructive social direction. But we
frequently overlook the fact that whenever rationalism
cut free from conservative apologetics, it was also sim-
ply an instrumentality for pointing out inconsistencies
and absurdities in existing beliefs — a sphere in which
it was immensely useful, as the Enlightenment shows.
Leibniz and Voltaire were contemporary rationalists
in more senses than one.*

* Mathematical science in its formal aspects, or as a branch of
formal logic, has been the empirical stronghold of rationalism. But

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 25

The recognition that reflection is a genuine factor
within experience and an indispensable factor in that
control of the world which secures a prosperous and
significant expansion of experience undermines historic
rationalism as assuredly as it abolishes the foundations
of historic empiricism. The bearing of a correct idea
of the place and office of reflectiop upon modern ideal-
isms is less obvious, but no less certain.

One of the curiosities of orthodox empiricism is that
its outstanding speculative problem is the existence
of an " external worldJ' For in accordance with the
notion that experience is attached to a private subject
as its exclusive possession, a world like the one in which
we appear to live must be " external " to experience
instead of being its subject-matter.^ I call it a curiosity,
for if anything seems adequately grounded empirically
it is the existence of a world which resists the charac-
teristic functions of the subject of experience; which
goes its way, in some respects, independently of these
functions, and which frustrates our hopes and inten-
tions. Ignorance which is fatal ; disappointment ;
the need of adjusting means and ends to the course
of nature, would seem to be facts sufficiently charac-
terizing empirical situations as to render the existence
of an external world indubitable.

That the description oi experience was arrived at
by forcing actual empirical facts into conformity with
dialectic developments from a concept of a knower out-

an empirical empiricism, in contrast with orthodox deductive
empiricism, has no difficulty in establishing its jurisdiction as to
deductive functions.

26 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

side of the real world of nature is testified to by the his-
toric aUiance of emiDiricism and idealism.* According
to the most logically consistent editions of orthodox
empiricism, all that can be experienced is the fleeting,
the momentary, mental state. That alone is abso-
lutely and indubitably present; therefore, it alone is
cognitively certain. It alone is knowledge. The ex-
istence of the past (and of the future), of a decently
stable world and of other selves — indeed, of one's own
self — falls outside this datum of experience. These can
be arrived at only by inference which is " ejective " —
a name given to an alleged type of inference that jumps
from experience, as from a springboard, to something
beyond experience.

I should not anticipate diflBculty in showing that this
doctrine is, dialectically, a mass of inconsistencies.
Avowedly it is a doctrine of desperation, and as such
it is cited here to show the desperate straits to which
ignoring empirical facts has reduced a doctrine of ex-
perience. More positively instructive are the objective
idealisms which have been the offspring of the marm^
between the "reason" of historic rationalism and the
^leged immediate psychical stuff of historic empiricism.
^ * ft These idealisms have recognized the genuineness of con-
, nexions and the impotency of " feeling." They have

then identified connexions with logical or rational
^-V^connexions, and thus treated " the real World " as a

* It is a shame to devote the word idealism, with its latent

connotations, to a doctrine whose tenets are the

existence of a physical world, and the psychical

character of aU objects — at least as far as they are knowable.

But I am following usage, not attempting to make it.

[

I * It is a shame

y yj^oral, practical cc

^ 'denial of the exis

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 27

synthesis of sentient consciousness by means of a ra-
tional self-consciousness introducing objectivity: sta-
bility and universality of reference.

Here again, for present purposes, criticism is unnec-
essary. It suffices to point out that the value of this
theory is bound up with the genuineness of the problem
of which it purports to be a solution. If the basic con-
cept is a fiction, there is no call for the solution. The
more important point is to perceive how far the
" thought " which figures in objective idealism comes
from meeting the empirical demands made upon actual
thought. Idealism is much less formal than historic
rationalism. It treats thought, or reason, as constitu-
tive of experience by means of uniting and constructive
functions, not as just concerned with a realm of eternal,
truths apart from experience. On such a view thought
certainly loses its abstractness and remoteness. But,
unfortunately, in thus gaining the whole world it loses
its own self. A world already, in its intrinsic structure,
dominated by thought is not a world in which, save by
contradiction of premises, thinking has anything to do.

That the doctrine logically results in making change
unreal and error unaccountable are consequences of im-
portance in the technique of professional philosophy;
in the denial of empirical fact which they imply they
seem to many a reductio ad absurdum of the premises
from which they proceed. But, after all, such conse-
quences are of only professional import. What is seri-
ous, even sinister, is the implied sophistication regard-
ing the place and office of reflection in the scheme of
thmgs. A doctrine which exalts thought in name while

\N

/

28 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ifflioring its efficacy infact ( that is, its use in bettering
life) is a^odiiiine.jwhich cannot be entertained and
fqn^TvF^TyJtboni- gprmi]c; p^ri'l Those wlio are not con-
ccrned with professional philosophy but who are solici-
tous for intelligence as a factor in the ameli(^r.aiiQji of
actual conditions can but look askance at any doctrine
^* which holds that the entire scheme of things is already,
• if we but acquire the knack of looking at it aright, fix-
edly anj.jcggflplet.ely.j:atiQnaL It is a striking manifes-
tation of the extent in which philosophies have been
compensatory in quality.* But the matter cannot be
passed over as if it were simply a question of not grudg-
ing a certain amount of consolation to one amid the
irretrievable evils of life. For as to these evils no
one knows how many are retrievable ; and a philosophy
which proclaims the ability of a dialectic theory of
knowledge to reveal the world as already and eternally
a self-luminous rational whole, contaminates the scope
and use of thought at its very spring. To substitute
the otiose insight gained by manipulation of a formula
for the slow cooperative work of a humanity guided by
reflective intelligence is more than a technical blunder
of speculative philosophers.

A practical crisis may throw the relationship of ideas
to life into an exaggerated Brocken-like spectral relief,
where exaggeration renders perceptible features not
ordinarily noted. The use of force to secure narrow
because exclusive aims is no novelty in human affairs.
The deploying of all the intelligence at command in
order to increase the effectiveness of the force used is
* See Dr. Kallen's essay, below.

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 29

not so common, yet presents nothing intrinsically re-
markable. The identification of force — military, eco-
nomic, and administrative — with moral necessity and
moral culture is, however, a phenomenon not likely to
exhibit itself on a wide scale except where intelligence
has already been suborned by an idealism which iden-
tifies " the actual with the rational," and thus finds
the measure of reason in the brute event determined by
superior force. If we are to have a philosophy which
will intervene between attachment to rule of thumb
muddling and devotion to a systematized subordination
of intelligence to preexistent ends, it can be found only
in a philosophy which finds the ultimate measure of
intelligence in consideration of a desirable future and
in search for the means of bringing it progressively
into existence. When professed idealism turns out to
be a narrow pragmatism — narrow because taking for
granted the finality of ends determined by historic
conditions — the time has arrived for a pragmatism
which shall be empirically idealistic, proclaiming
the essential connexion of intelligence with the un-
achieved future — with possibilities involving a trans-
figuration.

Why has the description of experience been so re-
mote from the facts of empirical situations.? To an-
swer this question throws light upon the submergence
of recent philosophizing in epistemology — that is, in
discussions of the nature, possibility, and limits of
knowledge in general, and in the attempt to reach con-

so CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

elusions regarding the ultimate nature of reality from
the answers given to such questions.

The reply to the query regarding the currency of a
non-empirical doctrine of experience (even among pro-
fessed empiricists) is that the traditional account is
derived from a conception once universally entertained
regarding the subject or bearer or center of experi-
ence. The description of experience has been forced
into conformity with this prior conception ; it has been
primarily a deduction from it, actual empirical facts
being poured into the moulds of the deductions. The
characteristic feature of this prior notion is the as-
sumption that experience centers in, or gathers about,
or proceeds from a center or subject which is outside
the course of natural existence, and set over against
it: — it being of no importance, for presan-: purposes,
whether this antithetical subject is termed soul, or
spirit, or mind, or ego, or consciousness, or just knower
or knowing subject.

There are plausible grounds for thinking that the
currency of the idea in question lies in the form which
men's religious preoccupations took for many centuries.
These were deliberately and systematically other-
worldly. They centered about a Fall which was not an
event in nature, but an aboriginal catastrophe that
corrupted Nature ; about a redemption made possible
by supernatural means ; about a life in another world —
essentially, not merely spatially, Other. The supreme
drama of destiny took place in a soul or spirit which,
under the circumstances, could not be conceived other
than as non-natural — extra-natural, if not, strictly

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY SI

speaking, supernatural. When Descartes and others
broke away from medieval interests, they retained as
commonplaces its intellectual apparatus: Such as,
knowledge is exercised by a power that is extra-natural
and set over against the world to be known. Even if
they had wished to make a complete break, they had
nothing to put as knower in the place of the soul. It
may be doubted whether there was any available em-
pirical substitute until science worked out the fact that
physical changes are functional correlations of ener-
gies, and that man is continuous with other forms of
life, and until social life had developed an intellectually j
free and responsible individual as its agent. '

But my main point is not dependent upon any partic-
ular theory as to the historic origin of the notion about
the bearer of experience. The point is there on its
own account. The essential thing is that the beaj:er_,
was conceived as outside of the world ; so that_experi-
ence consisted in the bearer's being affected through a
type of operations not found anywhere in the world,
while knowledge consTsfsIn suryeymg^the'wbrrd, look-
ing a_rit, geTtlng tKe^Iew of^ spectator. '

The theological problem of attaining^ knowledge of
God as ultimate reality was transformed in effect into
the philosophical problem of the possibility of attain-
ing knowledge of reality. For how is one to get beyond
the hmits of the subject and subjective occurrences.'*
Familiarity breeds credulity oftener than contempt
How can a problem be artificial when men have been
busy discussing it almost for three hundred years?
But if the assumption that experience is something set

it

32 CREATIVE INTELLIGEN'CE

over against the world is contrary to fact, then the
problem of how self or mind or subjective experience
or consciousness can reach knowledge of an external
world is assuredly a meaningless problem. "V^Tiatever
questions there may be about knowledge, they will not
be the kind of problems which have formed episte-
mology.

The problem of knowledge as conceived in the indus-
try of epistemology is the problem of knowledge in
general — of the possibility, extent, and validity of
knowledge in general. What does this " in general "
mean.? In ordinary life there are problems a-plenty of
knowledge in particular; every conclusion we try to
reach, theoretical or practical, affords such a problem.
But there is no problem of knowledge in general. I do
not mean, of course, that general statements cannot
be made about knowledge, or that the problem of at-
taining these general statements is not a genuine one.
On the contrary, specific instances of success and fail-
ure in inquiry exist, and are of such a character that
one can discover the conditions conducing to success
and failure. Statement of these conditions constitutes
logic, and is capable of being an important aid in
proper guidance of further attempts at knowing. But
this logical problem of knowledge is at the opposite
pole from the epistemological. Specific problems are
about right conclusions to be reached — which means,
in eflTect, right ways of going about the business
of inquir3\ They imply a difference between knowl-
edge and error consequent upon right and wrong
methods of inquiry and testing ; not a difference between

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY S3

experience and the world. The problem of knowledge
iiberhaupt exists because it is assumed that there is a
knower in general, who is outside of the world to be
known, and who is defined in terms antithetical to
the traits of the world. With analogous assumptions,
we could invent and discuss a problem of digestion in
general. All that would be required would be to con-
ceive the stomach and food-material as inhabiting dif-
ferent worlds. Such an assumption would leave on our
hands the question of the possibility, extent, nature,
and genuineness of any transaction between stomach
and food.

But because the stomach and food inhabit a con-
tinuous stretch of existence, because digestion is but
a correlation of diverse activities in one world, the
problems of digestion are specific and plural: ^Tiat
are the particular correlations which constitute it?
How does it proceed in different situations? What is
favorable and what unfavorable to its best perform-
ance?— and so on. Can one deny that if we were to
take our clue from the present empirical situation, in-
cluding the scientific notion of evolution (biological
continuity) and the existing arts of control of nature,
subject and object wyuld be treated as occupying the
samenatural world as unhesitatingry as we~assume the

»^ ^ '"■ ■■ ■! ^ -..^.y.- ^ - — "•

naiurai conjunction of an animal and its food? Would
it n6r lollow tnat knowledge is one way in which nat-
ural energies cooperate? Would there be any problem
save discovery of the peculiar structure of this coopera-
tion, the conditions under which it occurs to best effect,
and the consequences which issue from its occurrence?

34 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

It Is a commonplace that the chief divisions of mod-
ern philosophy, idealism in its different kinds, realisms
of various brands, so-called common-sense dualism, ag-
nosticism, relativism, phenomenalism, have grown up
around the epistemological problem of the general re-
lation of subject and object. Problems not openly
epistemological, such as whether the relation of changes
in consciousness to physical changes is one of inter-
action, parallelism, or automatism have the same origin.
What becomes of philosophy, consisting largely as
It does of different answers to these questions, in case
the assumptions which generate the questions have no
empirical standing? Is it not time that philosophers
turned from the attempt to determine the comparative
merits of various replies to the questions to a consid-
eration of the claims of the questions?

When dominating religious Ideas were built up about
the Idea that the self is a stranger and pilgrim In this
world; when morals, falling In line, found true good
only in inner states of a self Inaccessible to anything
but its own private Introspection ; when political theory
assumed the finality of disconnected and mutually ex-
clusive personalities, the notion that the bearer of ex-
perience Is antithetical to the world instead of being
in and of it was congenial. It at least had the wai'rant
of other beliefs and aspirations. But the doctrine of
biological continuity or organic evolution has de-
stroyed the scientific basis of the conception. Morally,
men are now concerned with the amelioration of the
conditions of the common lot in this world. Social
sciences recognize that associated life is not a matter

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 35

of physical juxtaposition, but of genuine intercourse —
of community of experience in a non-metaphorical sense
of community. Why should we longer try to patch
up and refine and stretch the old solutions till they
seem to cover the change of thought and practice?
Why not recognize that the trouble is with the prob-
lem?

A belief in organic evolution which does not extend
unreservedly to the way in which the subject of expe-
rience is thought of, and which does not strive to bring
the entire_ theorvof experience and knowing into line^
with biological and social facts, is hardly more than
Pickwickian. There are many, for example, who hold
that dreams, hallucinations, and errors cannot be ac-
counted for at all except on the theory that a self (or
" consciousness ") exercises a modifying influence upon
the " real object." The logical assumption is that
consciousness is outside of the real object; that it is
something different in kind, and therefore has the power
of changing " reality " into appearance, of introducing
" relativities " into things as they are in themselves —
in short, of infecting real things with subjectivity.
Such writers seem unaware of the fact that this as-
sumption makes consciousness supernatural in the lit-
eral sense of the word ; and that, to say the least,
the conception can be accepted by one who accepts
the doctrine of biological continuity only after every
other way of dealing with the facts has been ex-
hausted.

Realists, of course (at least some of the Neo-
realists), deny any such miraculous intervention of

36 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

consciousness. But they * admit the reality of the
problem; denying only this particular solution, they
try to find some other way out, which will still pre-
serve intact the notion of knowledge as a relationship
of a general sort between subject and object.

Now dreams and hallucinations, errors, pleasures,
and pains, possibly " secondary " qualities, do not oc-
cur save where there are organic centers of experience.
They cluster about a subject. But to treat them as
things which inhere exclusively in the subject; or as
posing the problem of a distortion of the real object
by a knower set over against the world, or as presenting
facts to be explained primarily as cases of contempla-
tive knowledge, is to testify that one has still to learn
the lesson of evolution in its application to the affairs
in hand.

If biological development be accepted, the subject
of experience is at least an animal, continuous with
other organic forms in a process of more complex
organization. An animal in turn is at least con-
tinuous with chemico-physical processes which, in liv-
ing things, are so organized as really to constitute the
activities of life with all their defining traits. And
experience is not identical with brain action ; it is
the entire organic agent-patient in all its inter-
action with the environment, natural and social. The
brain is primarily an organ of a certain kind of be-
havior, not of knowing the world. And to repeat

* The " they " means the " some " of the prior sentence — those
whose realism is epistemological, instead of being a plea for
taking the facts of experience as we find them without refraction
through epistemological apparatus.

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 37

what has already been said, experiencing is just
certain modes of interaction, of correlation, of natural
objects among which the organism happens, so to say,
to be one. It follows with equal force that experience
means primarily not knowledge, but ways of doing and
suffering. KpiME^^ must be described by discovering^
what particular mode — qualitatively unique — of doing
and suffering it is. As it is, we find experience assimi-
lated to a non-empirical concept of knowledge, derived
from an antecedent notion of a spectator outside of
the world.*

In short, the epistemological fashion of conceiving
dreams, errors, " relativities," etc., depends upon the
isolation of mind from intimate participation with other
changes in the same continuous nexus. Thus it is like
contending that when a bottle bursts, the bottle is, in
some self-contained miraculous way, exclusively re-
sponsible. Since it is the nature of a bottle to be
whole so as to retain fluids, bursting is an abnormal
event — comparable to an hallucination. Hence it con-
not belong to the "real" bottle; the "subjectivity"

* It is interesting to note that some of the realists who have
assimilated the cognitive relation to other existential relations
in the world (instead of treating it as an unique or epistemo-
logical relation) have been forced in support of their conception
of knowledge as a " presentative " or spectatorial affair to ex-
tend the defining features of the latter to all relations among
things, and hence to make all the " real " things in the world
pure " simples," wholly independent of one another. So con-
ceived the doctrine of external relations appears to be rather the
doctrine of complete externality of things. Aside from this
point, the doctrine is interesting for its dialectical ingenuity and
for the elegant development of assumed premises, rather than
ccnvincing on account of empirical evidence supporting it.

i(

S8 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

of glass is the cause. It is obvious that since the break-
ing of glass is a case of specific correlation of natural
energies, its accidental and abnormal character has
to do with consequences, not with causation. Accident
is interference with the consequences for which the bot-
tle is intended. The bursting considered apart from
its bearing on these consequences is on a plane with any
other occurrence in the wide world. But from the
standpoint of a desired future, bursting is an anomaly,
an interruption of the course of events.

The analogy with the occurrence of dreams, hallu-
cinations, etc., seems to me exact. Dreams are not
something outside of the regular course of events ; they
are in and of it. They are not cognitive distortions
of real things ; they are more real things. There is
nothing abnormal in their existence, any more than
there is in the bursting of a bottle.* But they may
be abnormal, from the standpoint of their influence, of
their operation as stimuli in calling out responses to
modify the future. Dreams have often been taken as
prognostics of what is to happen ; they have modified
conduct. A hallucination may lead a man to consult
a doctor ; such a consequence is right and proper. But
the consultation indicates that the subject regarded
it as an indication of consequences which he feared:
as a symptom of a disturbed life. Or the hallucination
may lead him to anticipate consequences which in fact
flow only from the possession of great wealth. Then

* In other words, there is a general " problem of error " only
because there is a general problem of evil, concerning which see
Dr. Kallen's essay, below.

-/

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 39

the hallucination is a disturbance of the normal course
of events ; the occurrence is wrongly used with refer-
ence to eventualities.

To regard reference to use and to desired and
intended consequences as involving a " subjective "
factor is to miss the point, for this has regard to
the future. The uses to which a bottle are put are
not mental; they do not consist of physical states;
they are further correlations of natural existences.
Consequences in use are genuine natural events ;
but they do not occur without the intervention of
behavior involving anticipation of a future. The
case is not otherwise with an hallucination. The dif-
ferences it makes are in any case differences in the
course of the one continuous world. The important
point is whether they are good^or^^bad^^ifferences. ' J ^
To use the hallucination as a sign of organic lesions ^ <j
that menace health means the beneficial result of see-
ing a physician ; to respond to it as a sign of con-
sequences such as actually follow only from being
persecuted is to fall into error — to be abnormal. The
persecutors are " unreal " ; that is, there are no things
which act as persecutors act; but the hallucination
exists. Given its conditions it is as natural as any
other event, and poses only the same kind of problem
as is put by the occurrence of, say, a thunderstorm.
The " unreality " of persecution is not, however, a
subjective matter; it means that conditions do not exist
for producing the future consequences which are now
anticipated and reacted to. Ability to anticipate fu-
ture consequences and to respond to them as stimuli to

w

40 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

present behavior may well define what is meant by a
mind or by " consciousness." * But this is only a way
of saying just what kind of a real or natural existence
the subject is; it is not to fall back on a preconception
about an unnatural subject in order to characterize
the occurrence of error.

Although the discussion may be already labored, let
us take another example — the occurrence of disease.
By definition it is pathological, abnormal. At one time
in human history this abnormality was taken to be
something dwelling in the intrinsic nature of the event —
in its existence irrespective of future consequences.
Disease was literally extra-natural and to be referred
to demons or to magic. No one to-day questions its
naturalness — its place in the order of natural events.
Yet it is abnormal — for it operates to effect results
different from those which follow from health. The
difference is a genuine empirical difference, not a mere
mental distinction. From the standpoint of bearing
on a subsequent course of events disease is unnatural,
in spite of the naturalness of its occurrence and origin.

The habit of ignoring reference to the future is
responsible for the assumption that to admit human par-
ticipation in any form is to admit the " subjective " in
a sense which alters the objective into the phenomenal.
There have been those who, like Spinoza, regarded
health and disease, good and ill, as equally real and
equally unreal. However, only a few consistent mate-
rialists have included truth along with error as merely
phenomenal and subjective. But if one does not re-
* Compare the paper by Professor Bode.

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 41

gard movement toward possible consequences as gen-
uine, wholesale denial of existential validity to all these
distinctions is the only logical course. To select truth
as objective and error as " subjective " is, on this
basis, an unjustifiably partial procedure. Take every-
thing as fixedly given, and both truth and error are
arbitrary insertions into fact. Admit the genuineness
of changes going on, and capacity for its direction
through organic action based on foresight, and both
truth and falsity are alike existential. It is human to
regard the course of events which is in line with our
own efforts as the regular course of events, and inter-
ruptions as abnormal, but this partiality of human
desire is itself a part of what actually takes place.

It is now proposed to take a particular case of the
alleged epistemological predicament for discussion, since
the entire ground cannot be covered. I think, however,
the instance chosen is typical, so that the conclusion
reached may be generalized.

The instance is that of so-called relativity in per-
ception. There are almost endless instances ; the stick
bent m water; the whistle changing pitch with change
of distance from the ear; objects doubled when the
eye is pushed; the destroyed star still visible, etc., etc.
For our consideration we may take the case of a
spherical object that presents itself to one observer as
a flat circle, to another as a somewhat distorted ellip-
tical surface. This situation gives empirical proof, so
it is argued, of the difference between a real object and
mere appearance. Since there is but one object, the
existence of two subjects is the sole differentiating fac-

42 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

tor. Hence the two appearances of the one real object
is proof of the intervening distorting action of the
subject. And many of the Neo-realists who deny the
difference in question, admit the case to be one of
knowledge and accordingly to constitute an epistemo-
logical problem. They have in consequence developed
wonderfully elaborate schemes of sundry kinds to main-
tain " epistemological monism " intact.

Let us try to keep close to empirical facts. In the
first place the two unlike appearances of the one sphere
are physically necessary because of the laws of reac-
tion of light. If the one sphere did not assume these
two appearances under given conditions, we should be
confronted with a hopelessly irreconcilable discrepancy
in the behavior of natural energy. That the result is
natural is evidenced by the fact that two cameras — or
other arrangements of apparatus for reflecting light —
yield precisely the same results. Photographs are as
genuinely physical existences as the original sphere;
and they exhibit the two geometrical forms.

The statement of these facts makes no impression
upon the confirmed epistemologist ; he merely retorts
that as long as it is admitted that the organism is the
cause of a sphere being seen, from different points, as
a circular and as an elliptical surface, the essence of
his contention — the modification of the real object by
the subject — is admitted. To the question why the
same logic does not apply to photographic records he
makes, as far as I know, no reply at all.

The source of the difficulty is not hard to see. The
objection assumes that the alleged modifications of the

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 43

real object are cases of knowing and hence attributa-
ble to the influence of a knower. Statements which set
forth the doctrine will always be found to refer to the
organic factor, to the eye, as an observer or a per-
cipient. Even when reference is made to a lens or a
mirror, language is sometimes used which suggests that
the writer's naivete is sufficiently gross to treat these
physical factors as if they were engaged in perceiving
the sphere. But as it is evident that the lens operates
as a physical factor in correlation with other physical
factors — notably light — so it ought to be evident that
the intervention of the optical apparatus of the eye
is a purely non-cognitive matter. The relation in ques-
tion is not one between a sphere and a would-be knower
of it, unfortunately condemned by the nature of the
knowing apparatus to alter the thing he would know;
itjs an affair^of thedynamir intpra(;;t^Tf>n of two physi-
cal agents in producing a third tiding, an effect ; —
an anair of precisely the same kind as in any physical
conjoint action, say the operation of hydrogen and
oxygen in producing water. To regard the eye as pri-
marily a knower, an observer, of things, is as crass
as to assign that function to a camera. But unless the
eye (or optical apparatus, or brain, or organism) be
so regarded, there is absolutely no problem of observa-
tion or of knowledge in the case of the occurreri&e of
elliptical and circular surfaces. Knowledge does not
enter into the affair at all till after these forms of
refracted light have been produced. About them there
is nothing unreal. Light is really, physically, existen-
tially, refracted into these forms. If the same spheri-

44 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

cal form upon refracting light to physical objects in
two quite different positions produced the same geomet-
ric forms, there would, indeed, be something to mar-
vel at — as there would be if wax produced the same
results in contact simultaneously with a cold body and
with a warm one. Why talk about the real object in
relation to a knower when what is given is one real thing
in d^mamic connection with another real thing?

The way of dealing with the case will probably meet
with a retort; at least, it has done so before. It has
been said that the account given above and the ac-
count of traditional subjectivism differ only verbally.
The essential thing in both, so it is said, is the ad-
mission that an activity of a self or subject or organism
makes a difference in the real object. Whether the sub-
ject makes this difference in the very process of know-
ing or makes it prior to the act of knowing is a minor
matter ; what is important is that the known thing has,
by the time it is known, been " subjectified."

The objection gives a convenient occasion for sum-
marizing the main points of the argument. On the
one hand, the retort of the objector depends upon talk-
ing about the real object. Employ the term " a real
object," and the change produced by the activity char-
acteristic of the optical apparatus is of just the same
kind as that of the camera lens or that of any other
physical agency. Every event in the world marks a
difference made to one existence in active conjunction
with some other existence. And, as for the alleged
subjectivity, if subjective is used merely as an adjec-
tive to designate the specific activity of a particular

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 45

existence, comparable, say, to the term feral, applied
to tiger, or metallic, applied to iron, then of course
reference to subjective is legitimate. But it is also tau-
tological. It is like saying that flesh eaters are car-
nivorous. But the term " subjective " is so consecrated
to other uses, usually implying invidious contrast with
objectivity (while subjective in the sense just sug-
gested means specific mode oj objectivity), that it is
difficult to maintain this innocent sense. Its use in any
disparaging way in the situation before us — any sense
implicating contrast with a real object — assumes that
the organism ought not to make any difference when
it operates in conjunction with other things. Thus
we run to earth that assumption that the subject is
heterogeneous from every other natural existence; it
is to be the one otiose, inoperative thing in a moving
world — our old assumption of the self as outside of
things.*

What and where is knowledge in the case we have
been considering.? Not, as we have already seen, in the
production of forms of light having a circular and ellip-
tical surface. These forms are natural happenings.
They may enter into knowledge or they may not, ac-
cording to circumstances. Countless such refractive

* As the attempt to retain the episteraological problem and
yet to reject idealistic and relativistic solutions has forced some
Neo-realists into the doctrine of isolated and independent sim-
ples, so it has also led to a doctrine of Eleatic pluralism. In order
to maintain the doctrine the subject makes no difference to any-
thing else, it is held that no ultimate real makes any difference
to anything else — all this rather than surrender once for all the
genuineness of the problem and to follow the lead of empirical
subject-matter.

46 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

changes take place without being noted.* When they
become subject-matter for knowledge, the inquiry they
set on foot may take on an indefinite variety of forms.
One may be interested in ascertaining more about the
structural peculiarities of the forms themselves; one
may be interested in the mechanism of their produc-
tion; one may find problems in projective geometry,
or in drawing and painting — all depending upon the
specific matter-of-fact context. The forms may be
objectives of knowledge — of reflective examination — or
they may be means of knowing something else. It may
happen — under some circumstances it does happen —
that the objective of inquiry is the nature of the geo-
metric form which, when refracting light, gives rise to
these other forms. In this case the sphere is the thing
known, and in this case, the forms of light are signs
or evidence of the conclusion to be drawn. There is no
more reason for supposing that they are (mis) knowl-
edges of the sphere — that the sphere is necessarily
and from the start what one is trying to know — than
for supposing that the position of the mercury in the
thermometer tube is a cognitive distortion of atmos-
jApheric pressure. In each case (that of the mercury
/ »and that of, say, a circular surface) the primary djium
1/ is^ a physical happening. In each case it may be used,
V) upon occasion, as a sign or evidence of the nature of

^ yr* There is almost no end to the various dialectic developments
Q^ ofMhe epistemological situation. When it is held that all the
relations of the type in question are cognitive, and vet it is recog-
nized (as it must be) that many such " transformations " go
unremarked, the theory is supplemented by introducing "uncon-
scious" psychical modifications.

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 47

the causes which brought It about. Given the position
in question, the circular form would be an intrinsically
unreliable evidence of the nature and position of the
spherical body only in case it, as the direct datum of
perception, were not what it is — a circular form.

I confess that all this seems so obvious that the
reader is entitled to inquire into the motive for reciting
such plain facts. Were it not for the persistence of
the epistemological problem it would be an affront to
the reader's intelligence to dwell upon them. But as
long as such facts as we have been discussing furnish
the subject-matter with which philosophizing is pecu-
liarly concerned, these commonplaces must be urged and
reiterated. They bear out two contentions which are
important at the juncture, although they will lose spe-
cial significance as soon as these are habitually recog-
nized: Negatively, a prior and non-empirical notion
of the self is the source of the prevailing belief that ex-
perience as such is primarily cognitional — a knowledge
aifair; positively, knowledge is always a matter of the j
use that is made of experienced natural events, a use//
in which given things are treated as indications/ /
of what will be experienced under different condi-
tions.

Let us make one effort more to clear up these points.
Suppose it is a question of knowledge of water. The
thing to be known does not present itself primarily as
a matter of knowledge-and-ignorance at all. It oc-
curs as a stimulus to action and as the source of certain
undergoings. It is something to react to: — to drink,
to wash with, to put out fire with, and also something

48 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

that reacts unexpectedly to our reactions, that makes
us undergo disease, suffocation, drowning. In this two-
fold way, water or anything else entersinto experience.
Such presence in experience has of itself nothing to do
with knowledge or consciousness ; nothing that is in the
sense of depending upon them, though it has everything
to do with knowledge and consciousness in the sense
that the latter depends upon prior experience of this

(non-cognitive sort. Man's experience is what it is be-
cause his response to things (even successful response)
and the reactions of things to his life, are so radically
different from knowledge. The difficulties and trage-
dies of life, . the stimuli to acquiring knowledge, lie
in the radical disparity of presence-in-experience and
i ;gresence-in-knowing. Yet the immense importance of
knowledge experience, the fact that turning presence-
in-experience over into presence-in-a-knowledge-experi-
ence is the sole mode of control of nature, has syste-
matically hypnotized European philosophy since the
time of Socrates into thinking that all experiencing is
a mode of knowing, if not good knowledge, then a low-
grade or confused or implicit knowledge.

When water is an adequate stimulus to action or
when its reactions oppress and overwhelm us, it re-
mains outside the scope of knowledge. When, however,
the bare presence of the thing (say, as optical stimulus)
ceases to operate directly as stimulus to response and
begins to operate in connection with a forecast of the
consequences it will effect when responded to, it begins
to acquire meaning — to be known, to be an object. It
is noted as something which is wet, fluid, satisfies thirst.

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 49

allays uneasiness, etc. The conception that we begin
with a known visual quality which is thereafter en-
larged by adding on qualities apprehended by the other
senses does not rest upon experience; it rests upon
making experience conform to the notion that every
experience must be a cognitive noting. As long as the
visual stimulus operates as a stimulus on its own ac-
count, there is no apprehension, no noting, of color or
light at all. To much the greater portion of sensory
stimuli we react in precisely this wholly non-cognitive
way. In the attitude of suspended response in which
consequences are anticipated, the direct stimulus be-
comes a sign or index of something else — and thus mat-
ter of noting or apprehension or acquaintance, or
whatever term may be employed. This .difference (to-
gether, of course, with the consequences which go with
it) is the difference which the natural event of
knowing makes to the natural event of direct organic
stimulation. It is no change of a reality into an
unreality, of an object into something subjective; it
is no secret, illicit, or epistemological transformation;
it is a genuine acquisition of new and distinctive fea-
tures through entering into relations with things with
which it was not formerly connected — namely, possible
and future things.

But, replies some one so obsessed with the epistemo-
logical point of view that he assumes that the prior
account is a rival epistemology in disguise, all this in-
volves no change in Reality, no difference made to]
Reality. Water was all the time all the things it is
ever found out to be. Its real nature has not been al-

50 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

tered by knowing it ; any such alteration means a mis-
knowing.

In reply let it be said, — once more and finally, —
there is no assertion or implication about the real
object or the real world or the reality. Such an as-
sumption goes with that epistemological universe of
discourse which has to be abandoned in an empirical
universe of discourse. The change is of a real object.
An incident of the world operating as a physiologically
direct stimulus is assuredly a reality. Responded to,
it produces specific consequences in virtue of the re-
sponse. Water is not drunk unless somebody drinks it ;
it does not quench thirst unless a thirsty person drinks
it — and so on. Consequences occur whether one is
aware of theij or not ; they are integral facts in experi-
ence. But let one of these consequences be anticipated
and let it, as anticipated, become an indispensable
element in the stimulus, and then there is a known
object. It is not that knowing produces a change,
but that it is a change of the specific kind described.
A serial process, the successive portions of which are
as such incapable of simultaneous occurrence, is tele-
scoped and condensed into an object, a unified inter-
reference of contemporaneous properties, most o^
which express potentialities rather than completed
data.

Because of this change, an object possesses truth or
error (which the physical occurrence as such never
has) ; it is classifiable as fact or fantasy; it is of a sort
or kind, expresses an essence or nature, possesses im-
plications, etc., etc. That is to say, it is marked by

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 51'

specifiable logical traits not found in physical occur-
rences as such. Because objective idealisms have seized
upon these traits as constituting the very essence of
Reality is no reason for proclaiming that they are
ready-made features of physical happenings, and
hence for maintaining that knowing is nothing but an
appearance of things on a stage for which " conscious-
ness " supplies the footlights. For only the episte-
mological predicament leads to " presentations " be-
ing regarded as cognitions of things which were
previously unpresented. In any empirical situation of
everyday life or of science, knowledge signifies some-
thing stated or inferred of another thing. Visible water
is not a more less erroneous presentation of HoO, but
H2O is a knowledge about the thing we see, drink, wash
with, saU on, and use for power.

A further point and the present phase of discussion
terminates. Treating knowledge as a presentative rela-
tion between the knower and object makes it necessary
to regard the mechanism of presentation as constitut-
ing the act of knowing. Since things may be presented
in sense-perception, in recollection, in imagination
and in conception, and since the mechanism in every
one of these four styles of presentation is sensory-
cerebral the problem of knowing becomes a mind-body
problem.* The psychological, or physiological, mech-
anism of presentation involved in seeing a chair,

* Conception-presentation has, of course, been made by many
in the history of speculation an exception to this statement;
" pure " memory is also made an exception by Bergson. To take
cognizance of this matter would, of course, accentuate, not re-
lieve, the difficulty remarked upon in tlie text.

52 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

remembering what I ate yesterday for luncheon, imag-
ining the moon the size of a cart wheel, conceiving a
mathematical continuum is identified with the operation
of knowing. The evil consequences are twofold. The
problem of the relation of mind and body has become
a part of the problem of the possibility of knowledge
in general, to the further complication of a matter
already hopelessly constrained. Meantime the actual
process of knowing, namely, operations of controlled
observation, inference, reasoning, and testing, the only
process with intellectual import, is dismissed as irrele-
vant to the theory of knowing. The methods of
knowing practised in daily life and science are ex-
cluded from consideration in the philosophical theory
of knowing. Hence the constructions of the latter
become more and more elaborately artificial because
there is no definite check upon them. It would be
easy to quote from epistemological ^rriters statements
to the effect that these processes (which supply the
only empirically verifiable facts of knowing) are
merely inductive in character, or even that they
are of purely psychological significance. It would
be diificiilt to find a more complete inversion of the
facts than in the latter statement, since presen-
tation constitutes in fact the psychological affair. A
confusion of logic with physiological physiology has
bred hybrid epistemology, with the amazing result that
the technique of effective inquiry is rendered irrelevant
to the theory of knowing, and those physical events in-
volved in the occurrence of data for knowing are
treated as if they constituted the act of knowing.

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 53

What are the bearings of our discussion upon the
conception of the present scope and office of philoso-
phy? What do our conclusions indicate and demand
with reference to philosophy itself? For the philosophy
which reaches such conclusions regarding knowledge and
mind must apply them, sincerely and whole-heart-
edly, to its idea of its own nature. For philosophy
claims to be one form or mode of knowing. If, then, the
conclusion is reached that knowing is a wa^^ of em-
ploying empirical occurrences with respect to increas-
ing power to direct the consequences which flow from
things, the application of the conclusion must be made
to philosophy itself. It, too, becomes not a contempla-
tive survey of existence nor an analysis of what is past
and done with, but an outlook upon future possibilities
with reference to attaining the better and averting the
worse. Philosophy must take, with good grace, its own
medicine.

It is easier to state the negative results of the changed
idea of philosophy than the positive ones. The poiirt
that occurs to mind most readily is that philosophy
will have to surrender all pretension to be peculiarly
concerned with ultimate reality, or with reality as a
complete (i.e., completed) whole: with the real object.
The surrender is not easy of achievement. The philo-
sophic tradition that comes to us from classic Greek
thought and that was reinforced by Christian philoso-
phy in the Middle Ages discriminates philosophical
knowing from other modes of knowing by means of an

54 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

alleged peculiarly intimate concern with supreme, ulti-
mate, true realit3\ To deny this trait to philosophy
seems to many to be the suicide of philosophy; to be a
systematic adoption of skepticism or agnostic posi-
tivism.

The pervasiveness of the tradition is shown in the
fact that so \dtally a contemporary thinker as Berg-
son, who finds a philosophic revolution involved in
abandonment of the traditional identification of the
truly real with the fixed (an identification inherited
from Greek thought), does not find it in his heart to
abandon the counterpart identification of philosophy
with search for the truly Real ; and hence finds it nec-
essary to substitute an ultimate and absolute flux for
an ultimate and absolute permanence. Thus his great
empirical services in calling attention to the funda-
mental importance of considerations of time for
problems of life and mind get compromised with a
mystic, non-empirical " Intuition " ; and we find him pre-
occupied with solving, by means of his new idea of
ultimate reality, the traditional problems of realities-
in-themselves and phenomena, matter and mind, free-will
and determinism, God and the world. Is not that an-
other evidence of the influence of the classic idea about
philosophy ?

Even the new realists are not content to take their
realism as a plea for approaching subject-matter di-
rectly instead of through the intervention of epis-
temological apparatus; they find it necessary first to
determine the status of the real object. Thus they
too become entangled in the problem of the possibility

^

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 55

of error, dreams, hallucinations, etc., in short, the prob-
lem of evil. For I take it that an uncorrupted realism
would accept such things as real events, and find in
them no other problems than those attending the con-
sideration of any real occurrence — namely, problems
of structure, origin, and operation.

It is often said that pragmatism, unless it is con- ^ ^
tent to be a contribution to mere methodology, must /
develop a theory of Reality. But the chief character-
istic trait of the pragmatic notion of reality is pre-
cisely that no theory of Reality in general, iiberhaupt,
is possible or needed. It occupies the position of an
emancipated empiricism or a thoroughgoing naive
realism. It finds that " reality " is a denotative term,
a word used to designate indifferently everything that
happens. Lies, dreams, insanities, deceptions, myths,
theories are all of them just the events which they spe- ii
cifically are. Pragmatism is content to take its stand
with science ; for science finds all such events to be
subject-matter of description and inquiry — just like
stars and fossils, mosquitoes and malaria, circulation
and vision. It also takes its stand with daily life, which
finds that such things really have to be reckoned with
as they occur interwoven in the texture of events.

The only way in which the term reality can ever
become more than a blanket denotative term is through
recourse to specific events in all their diversity and
thatness. Speaking summarily, I find that the reten-
tion by philosophy of the notion of a Reality feudally
superior to the events of everyday occurrence is the
chief source of the increasing isolation of philosophy

56 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

from common sense and science. For the latter do
not operate in an}' such region. As with them of old,
phUosoph}^ in dealing with real difficulties finds itself
still hampered by reference to realities more real, more
ultimate, than those which directly happen.

I have said that identifying the cause of philosophy
with the notion of superior reality' is the cause of an
^' increasing isolation from science and practical life. The
phrase reminds us that there was a time when the en-
terprise of science and the moral interests of men both
moved in a universe invidiously distinguished from that
of ordinary occurrence. While all that happens is
equally real — since it really happens — ^happenings are
not of equal worth. Their respective consequences,
their import, varies tremendously. Counterfeit money,
although real (or rather because real), is really differ-
ent from valid circulatory medium, just as disease is
really different from health ; different in specific struc-
ture and so different in consequences. In occidental
thought, the Greeks were the first to draw the distinc-
tion between the genuine and the spurious in a general-
ized fashion and to formulate and enforce its tremen-
dous significance for the conduct of life. But since they
had at command no technique of experimental analysis
and no adequate technique of mathematical analysis,
they were compelled to treat the difference of the true
and the false, the dependable and the deceptive, as
signifying two kinds of existence, the truly real and
the apparently real.

Two points can hardly be asserted with too much
emphasis. The Greeks were wholly right in the feeling

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 57

that questions of good and ill, as far as they fall within
human control, are bound up with discrimination of
the genuine from the spurious, of " being " from what
only pretends to be. But because they lacked adequate
instrumentalities for coping with this difference in spe-
cific situations, they were forced to treat the difference
as a wholesale and rigid one. Science was concerned
with vision of ultimate and true reality; opinion was
concerned with getting along with apparent realities.
Each had its appropriate region permanently marked
off. Matters of opinion could never become matters
of science; their intrinsic nature forbade. When the
practice of science went on under such conditions,
science and philosophy were one and the same thing.
Both had to do with ultimate reality in its rigid and
insuperable difference from ordinary occurrences.

We have only to refer to the way in which medieval
life wrought the philosophy of an ultimate and supreme
reality into the context of practical life to realize that
for centuries political and moral interests were bound
up with the distinction between the absolutely real and
the relatively real. The difference was no matter of a
remote technical philosophy, but one which controlled
life from the cradle to the grave, from the grave to the
endless life after death. By means of a vast institu-
tion, which in effect was state as well as church, the
claims of ultimate reality were enforced ; means of ac-
cess to it were provided. Acknowledgment of The
Reality brought security in this world and salvation
in the next. It is not necessary to report the story
of the change which has since taken place. It is enough

58 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

for our purposes to note that none of the modern
philosophies of a superior reality, or the real object,
idealistic or realistic, holds that its insight makes a
difference like that between sin and holiness, eternal
condemnation and eternal bliss. While in its own con-
text the philosophy of ultimate reality entered into the
vital concerns of men, it now tends to be an ingenious
dialectic exercised in professorial corners by a few who
have retained ancient premises while rejecting their
application to the conduct of life.

The increased isolation from science of any philoso-
phy identified with the problem of the real is equally
marked. For the growth of science has consisted pre-
cisely in the invention of an equipment, a technique of
appliances and procedures, which, accepting all occur-
rences as homogeneously real, proceeds to distinguish
the authenticated from the spurious, the true from the
false, by specific modes of treatment in specific situa-
tions. The procedures of the trained engineer, of the
competent physician, of the laboratory expert, have
turned out to be the only ways of discriminating the
counterfeit from the valid. And they have revealed
that the difference is not one of antecedent fixity of
existence, but one of mode of treatment and of the
consequences thereon attendant. After mankind has
learned to put its trust in specific procedures in order
to make its discriminations between the false and the
true, philosophy arrogates to itself the enforcement
of the distinction at its own cost.

More than once, this essay has intimated that the
counterpart of the idea of invidiously real reality is

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 59

the spectator notion of knowledge. If the knower, how-
ever defined, is set over against the world to be known,
knowing consists in possessing a transcript, more or less
accurate but otiose, of real things. Whether this tran-
script is presentative in character (as realists say) or
whether it is by means of states of consciousness which
represent things (as subjectivists say), is a matter of
great importance in its own context. But, in another
regard, this difference is negligible in comparison with
the point in which both agree. Knowing is viewing
from outside. But if it be true that the self or subject
of experience is part and parcel of the course of events,
it follows that the self becomes a knower. It becomes
a mind in virtue of a distinctive way of partaking in
the course of events. The significant distinction is m
longer between the knower and the world ; it is between

different ways oi ISeing in and of the movement of
things; between a brjite physical way and a purposive,!
inte^feent way.

There is no call to repeat In detail the statements
which have been advanced. Their net purport is that
the directive presence of future possibilities in dealing
with existent conditions is what is meant by knowing;
that the self becomes a knower or mind when anticipa-
tion of future consequences operates as its stimulus.
What we are now concerned with is the effect of this
conception upon the nature of philosophic knowing.

As far as I can judge, popular re&ponse to pragmatic
philosophy was moved by two quite different considera-
tions. By some it was thought to provide a new species
of sanctions, a new mode of apologetics, for certain

60 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

religious ideas whose standing had been threatened.
By others, it was welcomed because it was taken as a
sign that philosophy was about to surrender its otiose
and speculative remoteness ; that philosophers were be-
ginning to recognize that philosophy is of account only
if, like everyday knowing and like science, it affords
I i H guidance to^ action and thereby makes a difference in
the event. It was welcomed as a sign that philoso-
phers were willing to have the worth of their philo-
sophizing measured by responsible tests.

I have not seen this point of view emphasized, or
hardly recognized, by professional critics. The differ-
ence of attitude can probably be easily explained. The
epistemological universe of discourse is so highly tech-
nical that only those who have been trained in the his-
tory of thought think in terms of it. It did not occur,
accordingly, to non-technical readers to interpret the
doctrine that the meaning and validity of thought are
fixed by differences made in consequences and in satis-
factoriness, to mean consequences^ in personal feelings.
Those w^ho were professionally trained, however, took
the statement to mean that consciousness or mind in
the mere act of looking at things modifies them. It un-
derstood the doctrine of test of validity by consequences
to mean that apprehensions and conceptions are true
if the modifications affected by them were of an emo-
tionally desirable tone.

Prior discussion should have made it reasonably clear
that the source of this misunderstanding lies in the
neglect of temporal considerations. The change made
in things by the self in knowing is not immediate and,

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 61

so to say, cross-sectional. It is longitudinal — in the
redirection given to changes already going on. Its ana-
logue is found in the changes which take place in the
development of, say, iron ore into a watch-spring, not
in those of the miracle of transubstantiation. For the
static, cross-sectional, non-temporal relation of sub-
ject and object, the pragmatic hypothesis substitutes
apprehension of a thing in terms of the results in other
things which it is tending to effect. For the unique
epistemological relation, it substitutes a practical rela-
tion of a familiar tjpe: — responsive behavior which

changes__inj:ime the subject-matter to which^it^applies.
The unique thing about the responsive behavior whi^h_
constitutes knowing is tEe specific difference^ which
marks it off from other modes of response, namely, the^
part played in it Sy anticipation arid prediction. Know-
J2g.isL tlig^act, stimulated by thife Toresi^t, of securing
and averting jcpnsequences. The success of the achieve-
ment measures the standing of the foresight by which re-
sponse is directed. The popular impression that prag-
matic philosophy means that philosophy shall develop
ideas relevant to the actual crises of life, ideas influ-
ential in dealing with them and tested by the assist-
ance they afford, is correct.

Reference to practical response suggests, however,
another misapprehension. Many critics have jumped
at the obvious association of the word pragmatic with
practical. They have assumed that the intent is to
limit all knowledge, philosophic included, to promoting
" action," understanding by action either just any
bodily movement, or those bodily movements which con-

62 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

duce to the preservation and grosser well-being of the
body. James* statement that general conceptions
must " cash in " has been taken (especially by Euro-
pean critics) to mean that the end and measure of in-
telligence lies in the narrow and coarse utilities which
it produces. Even an acute American thinker, after
first criticizing pragmatism as a kind of idealistic episte-
mology, goes on to treat it as a doctrine which regards
intelligence as a lubricating oil facilitating the workings
of the body.

One source of the misunderstanding is suggested by
the fact that " cashing in " to James meant that a
general idea must always be capable of verification in
specific existential cases. The notion of " cashing in "
says nothing about the breadth or depth of the specific
consequences. As an empirical doctrine, it could not
say anything about them in general; the specific cases
must speak for themselves. If one conception is veri-
fied in terms of eating beefsteak, and another
in terms of a favorable credit balance in the
bank, that is not because of anything in the
theory, but because of the specific nature of the
conceptions in question, and because there exist par-
ticular events like hunger and trade. If there are
also existences in which the most liberal esthetic
ideas and the most generous moral conceptions can be
verified by specific embodiment, assuredly so much the
better. The fact that a strictly empirical philosophy
was taken by so many critics to imply an a priori dogma
about the kind of consequences capable of existence is
evidence, I think, of the inability of many philosophers

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 63

to think in concretely empirical terms. Since the critics
were themselves accustomed to get results by manipu-
lating the concepts of " consequences " and of " prac-
tice," they assumed that even a would-be empiricist
must be doing the same sort of thing. It will, I sup-
pose, remain for a long time incredible to some that a
philosopher should really intend to go to specific experi-
ences to determine of what scope and depth practice
admits, and what sort of consequences the world permits
to come into being. Concepts are so clear ; it takes so
little time to develop their implications ; experiences
are so confused, and it requires so much time and energy
to lay hold of them. And yet these same critics charge
pragmatism with adopting subjective and emotional
standards !

As a matter of fact, the pragmatic theory of intelli-
gence means that the function of mind is to project new
and more complex ends — ^to free experience From rou-
tine and from caprice. Not the use of thougKtto ac-^
complish purposes already given either in the mechan-
ism of the body or in that of the existent state of
society, but the use of intelligence to liberate and
liberalize action, is the pragmatic lesson. Action re-
stricted to given and fixed ends may attain great
technical efficiency ; but efficiency is the only quality to
which it can lay claim. Such action is mechanical (or
becomes so), no matter what the scope of the pre-
formed end, be it the Will of God or Kultur. But the
doctrine that intelligence develops within the sphere of
action for the sake of possibilities not yet given is the
opposite of a doctrine of mechanical efficiency. Intel-

64 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ligence as intelligence is inherently forward-looking :
only by ignoring its primary function does it become a
mere means for an end already given. The latter is
servile, even when the end is labeled moral, religious, or
esthetic. But action directed to ends to which the agent
has not previously been attached inevitably carries with
it a quickened and enlarged spirit. A pragmatic in-
telligence is a creative intelligence, not a routine me-
chanic.

All this may read like a defense of pragmatism by
one concerned to make out for it the best case possible.
Such is not, however, the intention. The purpose is
to indicate the extent to which intelli^encefrees action
from a mechanically instrumental character. Intelli-
gence is, indeed, instrumental through action to the de-
termination of the qualities of future experience. But
the very fact that the concern of intelligence is with
the future, with the as-yet-unrealized (and with the
given and the established only as conditions of the
realization of possibilities), makes the action in which
it takes effect generous and liberal ; free of spirit. Just
that action which extends and approves intelligence
has an intrinsic value of its own in being instrumental:
— the intrinsic value of being informed with intelligence
in behalf of the enrichment of life. By the same stroke,
intelligence becomes truly liberal: knowing is a human
undertaking, not an esthetic appreciation carried on
by a refined class or a capitalistic possession of a few
learned specialists, whether men of science or of philoso-
phy-

More emphasis has been put upon what philosophy

^:<

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 65

is not than upon what It may become. But it is not
necessary, it is not even desirable, to set forth philoso-
phy as a scheduled program. There are human diffi-
culties of an urgent, deep-seated kind which may be
clarified by trained reflection, and whose solution may
be forwarded by the careful development of hypotheses.
When it is understood that philosophic thinking is
caught up in the actual course of events, having the
office of guiding them towards a prosperous issue, prob-
lems will abundantly present themselves. Philosophy
will not solve these problems ; philosophy is vision, im-
agination, reflection- — and these functions, apart from
action, modify nothing and hence resolve nothing. But
in a complicated and perverse world, action which is )

not informed with vision^ imagination, and reflection, ' —
is more likely to increase confusion and conflict than to /

straighten things out. It is not easy for generous and ^
sustained reflection to become a guiding and illuminat- ^^C-
ing method in action. Until it frees itself from identi- \^
fication with problems which are supposed to depend I • <|
upon Reality as such, or its distinction from a world »^JN
of Appearance, or its relation to a Knower as such, ^

the hands of philosophy are tied. Having no chance to
link its fortunes with a responsible career by suggesting
things to be tried, it cannot identify itself with ques-
tions which actually arise in the vicissitudes of life.
Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device
for dealing with the problems of philosophers and be-
comes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing
with the problems of men.

Emphasis must vary with the stress and special im-

/

66 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

pact of the troubles which perplex men. Each age
knows its own ills, and seeks its own remedies. One does
not have to forecast a particular program to note that
the central need of any program at the present day
is an adequate conception of tlie nature of intelligence
and its placein action._^ Philosophy cannot disavow
responsibility for many misconceptions of the nature
of intelligence which now hamper its efficacious opera-
tion. It has at least a negative task imposed upon it.
It must take away the burdens which it has laid upon
the intelligence of the common man in struggling with
his difficulties. It must deny and eject that intelli-
gence which is naught but a distant eye, registering in
a remote and alien medium the spectacle of nature and
life. To enforce the fact that the emergence of imagi-
nation and thought is relative to the connexion of the
sufferings of men with their doings is of itself to illu-
minate those sufferings and to instruct those doings.
To catch mind in its connexion with the entrance of the
novel into the course of the world is to be on the road
to see that intelligence is itself the most promising of
all novelties, the revelation of the meaning of that trans-
formation of past into future which is the reality of
every present. To reveal intelligence as the organ for
the guidance of this transformation, the sole director of
its quality, is to make a declaration of present untold
significance for action. To elaborate these convictions
of the connexion of intelligence with what men undergo
because of their doings and with the emergence and
direction of the creative, the novel, in the world is of
itself a program which will keep philosophers busy

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 67

until something more worth while is forced upon them.
For the elaboration has to be made through application
to all the disciplines which have an intimate connexion
with human conduct: — to logic, ethics, esthetics, eco-
nomics, and the procedure of the sciences formal and
natural.

I also believe that there is a genuine sense in which
the enforcement of the pivotal position of intelligence
in the world and thereby in control of human fortunes
(so far as they are manageable) is the peculiar problem
in the problems of life which come home most closely
to ourselves — to ourselves living not merely in the
early twentieth century but in the United States. It
is easy to be foolish about the connexion of thought
with national life. But I do not see how any one can
question the distinctively national color of English, or
French, or German philosophies. And if of late the
history of thought has come under the domination of
the German dogma of an inner evolution of ideas, it
requires but a little inquiry to convince oneself that
that dogma itself testifies to a particularly nationalistic
need and origin. I believe that philosophy in America
will be lost between chewing a historic cud long since re-
duced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes
(lost to natural science), or a scholastic, schematic
formalism, unless it can somehow bring to conscious-
ness America's own needs and its own implicit principle
of successful action.

This need and principle, I am convinced, is the neces-
sity of a deliberate control of policies by the method
of intelligence, an intelligence which is not the faculty

68 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

of ii^t^(,'llg^ honored in text-books and neglected else-
where, but which is the sum-total of impulses, habits,
emotions, records, and discoveries which forecast what
is desirable and undesirable^m future possibilities, and
which contrive ingeniously in behalf of imagined good.
Our life has no background of sanctified categories
upon which we may fall back ; we rely upon precedent
as authority only to our own undoing — for with us
there is such a continuously novel situation that final
reliance upon precedent entails some class interest
guiding us by the nose whither it wall. British empiri-
cism, with its appeal to what has been in the past, is,
after all, only a kind of a priorism. For it lays down
a fixed rule for future intelligence to follow; and only
the immersion of philosophy in technical learning pre-
vents our seeing that this is the essence of a priorism.
We pride ourselves upon being realistjg, desiring a
hardheaded cognizance of facts, and devoted to mas-
tering the means of life. We pride ourselves upon a
practical idealism, a lively and easily moved faith in
possibilities as yet unrealized, in willingness to make
sacrifice for their realization. Idealism easily becomes
a sanction of waste and carefulness, and realism a
sanction of legal formalism in behalf of things as they
are — the rights of the possessor. We thus tend to
combine a loose and ineffective optimism with assent
to the doctrine of take who take can: a deification of
power. All peoples at all times have been narrowly
realistic in practice and have then employed idealiza-
tion to cover up in sentiment and theory their brutali-
ties. But never, perhaps, has the tendency been so

A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY 69

dangerous and so tempting as with ourselves. Faith
in the power of intelligence to imagine a future which
is the projection of the desirable in the present, and to
invent the instrumentalities of its realization, is our
salvation. And it is a faith which must be nurtured
and made ajticulfi{;e : surely a sufficiently large task
for our philosophy.

.^.-^-A

REFORMATION OF LOGIC
ADDISON W. MOORB

In a general survey of the development of logical
theory one is struck by the similarity, not to say iden-
tity, of the indictments which reformers, since the days
of Aristotle, have brought against it. The most funda-
mental of these charges are: first, that the theory of
logic has left it formal and with little significance for
the advancement of science and the conduct of society ;
second, that it has great difficulty in avoiding the
predicament of logical operations that are merely la-
bored reproductions of non-logical activities and there-
fore tautologous and trifling, or of logical operations
that are so far removed from immediate, non-logical ex-
perience that they are irrelevant; third, that logical
theory has had trouble in finding room in its own
household for both truth and error; each crowds out
the other.

The identity of these indictments regardless of the
general philosophical faith, empiricism, or rationalism,
realism, or idealism to which the reformer or the
logic to be reformed has belonged, suggests that
whatever the differences in the doctrines of these vari-
ous philosophic traditions, they possess a common
ground from which these common difficulties spring.

It is the conviction of a number who are at present

70

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 71

attempting to rid logic of these ancient disabilities
that their common source is to be found in a lack of
continuity between the acts of intelligence (or to avoid
the dangers of hypostasis, intelligent acts) and other
acts ; between logical conduct and other conduct. So
wide, indeed, is this breach, that often little remains of
the act of knowing but the name. It may still be
called an act, but it has no describable instruments nor
technique of operation. It is an indefinable and often
mystical performance of which only the results can be
stated. In recent logical discussion this techniqueless
act of knowing has been properly enough transformed
into an indefinable " external relation " in which an
entity called a knower stands to another entity called
the known.

For many centuries this breach between the opera-
tions of intelligence and other operations has been
closed by various metaphysical devices with the result
that logic has been a hybrid science, — half logic, half
metaphysics and epistemology. So great has been
the momentum of the metaphysical tradition that long
after we have begun to discover the connection between
logical and non-logical operations its methods remain
to plague us. Efforts to heal the breach without a
direct appeal to metaphysical agencies have been made
by attempting a complete logicizing of all operations.
But besides requiring additional metaphysics to effect
it, the procedure is as fatal to continuity as is an im-
passable disjunction. Continuity demands distinction
as well as connection. It requires the development, the
growth of old material and functions into new forms.

72 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Driven by the difficulties of this complete logiciza-
tion, which are as serious as those of isolation, logical
theory was obliged to reinstate some sort of distinc-
tion. This it did by resorting to the categories of
*' explicit " and " implicit." All so-called non-logical
operations were regarded as " implicitly " logical.
And, paradoxically, logical operations had for their
task the transformation of the implicit into the explicit.

An adequate account of the origin and con-
tinuance of this isolation of the conduct of intelli-
gence from other conduct is too long a story to be
told here. Suffice it to recall that in the society in
which the distinction between immediate and reflective
experience, between opinion and science, between per-
cepts and universals was first made, intelligence was
largely the possession of a special and privileged class
removed in great measure from hand-to-hand contact
with nature and with much of society. Because it did
not fully participate in the operations of nature and
society intelligence could not become fully domesticated,
i.e., fully naturalized and socialized in its world. It
was a charmed spectator of the cosmic and social drama.
Doubtless when Greek intelligence discovered the dis-
tinction between immediate and reflective experience —
possibly the most momentous discovery in history —
" the world," as Kant says of the speculations of
Thales, " must suddenly have appeared in a new light."
But not recognizing the full significance of this dis-
covery, ideas, universals, became but a wondrous specta-
cle for the eye of reason. They brought, to be sure,
blessed relief from the bewildering and baffling flux of

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 7S

perception. But it was the relief of sanctuary, not of
victory.

That the brilliant speculations of Greek intelligence
were barren because there was no technique for testing
and applying them in detail is an old story. But it
is merely a restatement, not a solution, of the perti-
nent question. This is : why did not Greek intelli-
gence develop such a technique? The answer lies in
the fact that the technique of intelligence is to be found
precisely in the details of the operations of nature and of
human conduct from which an aristocratic intelligence
is always in large measure shut off. Intelligence cannot
operate fruitfully in a vacuum. It must be incarnate.
It must, as Hegel said, have " hands and feet."
When we turn to the history of modern science the one
thing that stands out is that it was not until the point
was reached where intelligence , was ready (continuing
the Hegelian figure) to thrust its hands into the vitals
of nature and society that it began to acquire a real
control over its operations.

In default of such controlling technique there was
nothing to be done with this newly found instrument of
intelligence — the universal — but to retain it as an ob-
ject of contemplation and of worshipful adoration.
This involved, of course, its hypostasis as the meta-
physical reality of supreme importance. With this, the
only difference between " opinion " and " science " be-
came one of the kind of objects known. That univer-
sals were known by reason and particulars by sense
was of little more logical significance than that sounds
are known by the ear and smells by the nose. Partieu-

74 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

lars and universals were equally given. If the latter re-
quired some abstraction this was regarded as merely
auxiliary to the immediate vision, as sniffing is to the
perception of odor. That universals should or could
be conceived as experimental, as hypotheses, was, when
translated into later theology, the sin against the Holy
Ghost.

However, the fact that the particulars in the world
of opinion were the stimuli to the " recollection " of
universals and that the latter in turn were the patterns,
the forms, for the particulars, opened the wa}' in actual
practice for the exercise of a great deal of the control-
ling function of the universals. But the failure to
recognize this control value of the universal as funda-
mental, made it necessary for the universal to exercise
its function surreptitiously, in the disguise of a pattern
and in the clumsy garb of imitation and participation.

With perceptions, desires, and impulses relegated to
the world of opinion and shadows, and with the newly
discovered instrument of knowledge turned into an ob-
ject, the knower was stripped of all his knowing appara-
tus and was left an empty, scuttled entity definable
and describable only as " a knower." The knower
must know, even if he had nothing to know with.
Hence the mystical almost indefinable character of the
knowing act or relation. I say " almost indefinable " ;
for as an act it had, of course, to have some sort of
conceptualized form. And this form vision naturally
furnished. " Naturally," because intelligence was so
largely contemplative, and vision so largely immediate,
unanalyzed, and diaphanous. There was, to be sure, the

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 75

concept of effluxes. But this was a statement of the
fact of vision in terms of its results, not of the process
itself. Thus it was that the whole terminology of
knowing which we still use was moulded and fixed upon
a very crude conception of one of the constituents of
its process. There can be no doubt that this termi-
nology has added much to the inertia against which
the advance of logical theory has worked. It would
be interesting to see what would be the effect upon
logical theory of the substitution of an auditory or
olfactory terminology for visual ; or of a visual termi-
nology revised to agree with modern scientific analysis
of the act of vision as determined by its connections
with other functions.

With the act of knowing stripped of its technique
and left a bare, unique, indescribable act or relation, the
foundations for epistemological and metaphysical logic
were laid. That Greek logic escaped the ravages of
epistemology was due to the saving materialism in its
metaphysical conception of mind and to the steadfast-
ness of the aristocratic regime. But when medieval
theology and Cartesian metaphysics had destroyed the
last remnant of metaphysical connection between the
knowing mind and nature, and when revolutions had
torn the individual from his social moorings, the stage
for epistemological logic was fully set. I do not mean
to identify the epistemological situation with the Carte-
sian disjunction. That disjunction was but the meta-
physical expression of the one which constitutes the
real foundation of epistemology — the disjunction,
namely, between the act of knowing and other acts.

76 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

From this point logic has followed one of two
general courses. It has sought continuity by attempt-
ing to reduce non-logical things and operations to terms
of logical operations, i.e., to sensations or universals
or both ; or it has attempted to exclude entirely the act
of knowing from logic and to transfer logical distinc-
tions and operations, and even the attributes of truth
and error to objects which, significantl}' enough, are
still composed of these same hypostatized logical proc-
esses. The first course results in an epistemological
logic of some form of the idealistic tradition, rational-
ism, sensationalism, or transcendentalism, depending
upon whether universals, or sensations, or a combina-
tion of both, is made fundamental in the constitution of
the object. The second course yields an epistemological
logic of the realistic type, — again, sensational or ra-
tionalistic (mathematical), or a combination of the
two — a sort of realistic transcendentalism. Each type
has essentially the same difficulties with the processes
of inference, with the problem of change, with truth
and error, and, on the ethical side, with good and evil.

With the processes of knowing converted into ob-
jects, and with the act of knowing reduced to a unique
and external relation between the despoiled knower and
the objects made from its own hypostatized processes,
all knowing becomes in the end immediate. All attempts
at an inference that is anything more than an elabo-
rated and often confused restatement of non-logical
operations break down. The associational inference
of empiricism, the subsumptive inference of rationalism,
the transcendental inference of objective idealism, the

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 77

analytical inference of neo-realism — all alike face
the dilemma of an inference that is trifling or
miraculous, tautoLogous or false. Where the knowcr
and its object are so constituted that the only relation
in which the latter can stand to the former is that of
presence or absence, and if to be present is to be known,
how, as Plato asked, can there be any false knowing?

For those who accept the foregoing general diagnosis
the prescription is obvious. The present task of logical
theory is the restoration of the continuity of the act
and agent of knowing with other acts and agents. But
this is not to be done by merely furnishing the act of
knowing with a body and a nervous system. If the
nervous system be regarded as only an onlooking, be-
holding nervous system, if no connection be made be-
tween the logical operations of a nervous system and
its other operations a nervous system has no logical
advantage over a purely psychical mind.

It was to be expected that this movement toward
restoration of continuity made in the name of " instru-
mental " or " experimental " logic would be regarded,
alike, by the logics of rationalism and empiricism, of
idealism and of realism, as an attempt to rob intelli-
gence of its own unique and proper character ; to reduce
it to a merely " psychological " and " existential " af-
fair; to leave no place for genuine intellectual interest
and activity; and to make science a series of more or
less respectable adventures. The counter thesis is, that
this restoration is truly a restoration — not a despolia-
tion of the character and rights of intelligence; that
only such a restoration can preserve the unique func-

78 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

tion of intelligence, can prevent it from becoming merely
" existential," and can provide a distinct place for in-
tellectual and scientific interest and activity. It does
not, however, promise to remove the stigma of " ad-
venture " from science. Every experiment is an ad-
venture ; and it is precisely the experimental character
of scientific logic that distinguishes it from scholas-
ticism, medieval or modern.

n

First it is clear that a reform of logic based upon the
restoration of knowing to its connections with other
acts wDl begin with a chapter containing an account
of these other operations and the general character of
this connection.* Logical theory has been truncated.
It has tried to begin and end in the middle, with the
result that it has ended in the air. Logic presents the
curious anachronism of a science which attempts to
deal with its subject-matter apart from what it comes
from and what comes from it.

The objection that such a chapter on the conditions
and genesis of the operations of knowing belongs to
psychology, only shows how firmly fixed is the discon-
tinuity we are trying to escape. As we have seen, the
original motive for leaving this account of genesis to
psychology was that the act of knowing was supposed
to originate in a purely psychical mind. Such an origin

*Cf. Studies in Logical Theory, Chs. I and II, by Dewey; also
" Epistemology and Mental States," Tufts, Phil. Rev., Vol. VI,
which deserves to rank as one of the early documents of the "ex-
perimental " movement.

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 79

was of course embarrassing to logic, which aimed to be
scientific. The old opposition between origin and
validity was due to the kind of origin assumed and the
kind of validity necessitated by the origin. One may
well be excused for evading the question of how ideas,
originated in a purely psychical mind, can, in Kant's
phrase, " have objective validity," by throwing out the
question of origin altogether. Whatever difficulties re-
main for validity after this expulsion could not be
greater than those of the task of combining the objec-
tive validity of ideas with their subjective origin.

The whole of this chapter on the connection between
logical and non-logical operations cannot be written
here. But its central point would be that these other
acts with which the act of knowing must have contin-
uity are just the operations of our unreflective conduct.
Note that it is " unreflective," not " unconscious," nor
yet merely " instinctive " conduct. It is our percep-
tive, remembering, imagining, desiring, loving, hating
conduct. Note also that we do not say " psychical " or
" physical," nor " psycho-physical " conduct. These
terms stand for certain distinctions in logical conduct,*
and we are here concerned with the character of non-
logical conduct which is to be distinguished from, and
yet kept in closest continuity with, logical conduct.

If, here, the metaphysical logician should ask : " Are
you not in this assumption of a world of reflective and
unreflective conduct and aff^ection, and of a world of
beings in interaction, begging a whole system of meta-

* Cf. " The Definition of the Psychical," G. H. Mead, Decennial
Publications of the University of Chicago.

80 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

pln'sics ? " the reply is that if it is a metaphysics bad
for logic, it will keep turning up in the course of logi-
cal theory as a constant source of trouble. On the
other hand, if logic encounters grave difficulties
when it attempts to get on without it, its assumption,
for the purposes of logic, has all the justification pos-
sible.

Again it will be urged that this alleged non-logical
conduct, in so far as it involves perception, memory,
and anticipation, is already cognitive and logical ; or if
the act of knowing is to be entirely excluded from logic,
then, in so far as what is left involves objective " terms
and relations," it, also, is already logical. And it may
be thought strange that a logic based upon the restora-
tion of continuity between the act of knowing and other
acts should here be insisting on distinction and separa-
tion. The point is fundamental ; and must be disposed
of before we go on. First, we must observe that the
unity secured by making all conscious conduct logical
turns out, on examination, to be more nominal than
real. As we have already seen, this attempt at a com-
plete logicizing of all conduct is forced at once to intro-
duce the distinction of " explicit " and " implicit," of
" conscious and unconscious " or " subconscious " logic.
Some cynics have found that this suggests dividing
triangles into explicit and implicit triangles, or into
triangles and sub-triangles.

Doubtless the attempt to make all perceptions, mem-
ories, and anticipations, and even instincts and habits,
into implicit or subconscious inference is an awkward
effort to restore the continuity of logical and non-logi-

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 81

cal conduct. Its awkwardness consists in attempting
to secure this continuity by the method of subsumptive
identity, instead of finding it in a transitive continuity
of function; — instead of seeing that perception, mem-
ory, and anticipation become logical processes when
they are employed in a process of inquiry, whose pur-
pose is to relieve the difficulties into which these opera-
tions in their function as direct stimuli have fallen.
Logical conduct is constituted by the cooperation of
these processes for the improvement of their further
operation. To regard perception, memory, and imagi-
nation as implicit forms or as sub-species of logical
operation is much like conceiving the movements of our
fingers and arms as implicit or imperfect species of
painting, or swimming.

Moreover, this doctrine of universal logicism teaches
that when that which is perfect is come, imperfection
shall be done away. This should mean that when paint-
ing becomes completely " explicit " and perfect, fingers
and hands shall disappear. Perfect painting will be
the pure essence of painting. And this interpretation
is not strained ; for this logic expressly teaches that in
the perfected real system all temporal elements are
unessential to logical operations. They are, of course,
'psychologically necessary for finite beings, who can
never have perfectly logical experiences. But, from
the standpoint of a completely logicizcd experience, all
finite, temporal processes arc accidents, not essentials,
of logical operations.

The fact that the processes of perception,
memory, and anticipation are transformed in their

82 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

logical operation into sensations and universals, terms,
and relations, and, as such, become the subject-matter
of logical theory, does not mean that they have
lost their mediating character, and have become merely
objects of logical contemplation at large. Sensations
or sense-data, and ideas, terms and relations, are
the subject-matter of logical theory for the reason that
they sometimes succeed and sometimes fail in their
logical operations. And it is the business of logical
theory to diagnose the conditions of this success and
failure. If, in writing, my pen becomes defective and
is made an object of inquiry, it does not therefore lose
all its character as a pen and become merely an object
at large. It is as an instrument of writing that it is
investigated. So, sense-data, universals, terms, and
relations as subject-matter of logic are investigated in
their character as mediators of the ambiguities and
conflicts, of non-logical experience.

If the operations of habit, instinct, perceptions,
memory, and anticipation become logical, when, instead
of operating as direct stimuli, they are employed in a
process of inquiry, we must next ask: (1) under
what conditions do they pass over into this process of
inquiry? (2) what modifications of operation do they
undergo, what new forms do they take, and what new
results do they produce in their logical operations.''

If the act of inquiry be not superimposed, it must
arise out of some specific condition in the course of non-
logical conduct. Once more, if the alarm be sounded
at this proposal to find the origin of logical in non-
logical operations it must be summarily answered by

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 83

asking if the one who raises the cry finds it impossible
to imagine that one who is not hungry, or angry, or
patriotic, or wise may become so. Non-logical conduct
is not the abstract formal contradictory of logical con-
duct any more than present satiety or foolishness is
the contradictory of later hunger or wisdom, or than
anger at one person contradicts cordiality to another,
or to the same person, later. The old bogie of the
logical irrelevance of origin was due to the inability to
conceive continuity except in the form of identity in
which there was no place for the notion of growth.

The conditions under which non-logical conduct he-
comes logical are familiar to those who have followed
the doctrines of experimental logic as expounded in the
discussions of the past few years. The transformation
begins at the point where non-logical processes instead
of operating as direct unambiguous stimuli and response
become ambiguous with consequent inhibition of con-
duct. But again this does not mean that at this junc-
ture the non-logical processes quit the field and give
place to a totally new faculty and process called rea-
son. They stay on the job. But there is a change in
the job, which now is to get rid of this ambiguity.
This modification of the task requires, of course, cor-
responding modification and adaptation of these
operations. They take on the form of sensations and
universals, terms and relations, data and hypotheses.
This modification of function and form constitutes
" reason " or, better, reasonmgr.

Here some one will ask, " Whence comes this ambi-
guity? How can a mere perception or memory as

84 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

such be ambiguous? Must it not be ambiguous to, or
for, something, or some one? " The point is well taken.
But it should not be taken to imply that the ambiguity
is for a merely onlooking, beholding psychical mind —
especially when the perception is itself regarded as an
act of beholding. Nor are we any better off if we sup-
pose the beholding mind to be equipped with a faculty
of reason in the form of the principle of " contradic-
tion." For this throws no light on the origin and
meaning of ambiguity. And if we seek to make all per-
ceptions as such ambiguous and contradictory, in order
to make room for, and justify, the operations of reason,
other difficulties at once beset us. When we attempt
to remove this specific ambiguity of perceptive conduct
we shall be forced, before we are through, to appeal
back to perception, which we have condemned as in-
herently contradictory, both for data and for verifica-
tion.

However, the insistence that perception must be am-
biguous to, or for, something beyond itself is well
grounded. And this was recognized in the statement
that it is equivocal as a stimulus in conduct. There
need be no mystery as to how such equivocation arises.
That there is such a thing as a conduct at all means
that there are certain beings who have acquired definite
ways of responding to one another. It is important
to observe that these forms of interaction — instinct
and habit, perception, memory, etc. — are not to be
located in either of the interacting beings but are func-
tions of both. The conception of these operations as
the private functions of an organism is the forerunner

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 85

of the epistemological predicament. It results in a
conception of knowing as wholly the act of a knower
apart from the known. This is the beginning of episte-
mology.

But to whatever extent interacting beings have ac-
quired definite and specific ways of behavior toward one
another it is equally plain — the theory of external re-
lations notwithstanding — that in this process of inter-
action these ways of behavior, of stimulus and response,
undergo modification. If the world consisted of
two interacting beings, it is conceivable that
the modifications of behavior might occur in
such close continuity of relation to each of
the interacting beings that the adjustment would
be very continuous, and there might be little or no
ambiguity and conflict. But in a world where any two
interacting beings have innumerable interactions with
innumerable other beings and in all these interactions
modifications are effected, it is to be expected that
changes in the behavior of each or both will occur, so
marked that they are bound to result in breaks in the
continuity of stimulus and response — even to the point
of tragedy. However, the tragedy is seldom so great
that the ambiguity extends to the whole field of con-
duct. Except in extreme pathological cases (and in
epistemology), complete skepticism and aboulia do not
occur. Ambiguity always falls within a field or direc-
tion of conduct, and though it may extend much further,
and must extend some further than the point at which
equivocation occurs, yet it is never ubiquitous. An
ambiguity concerning the action of gravitation is no

86 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

less specific than one regarding color or sound ; indeed,
the one may be found to involve the other.

Logical conduct is, then, conduct which aims to
remove ambiguity and inhibition in unreflective
conduct. The instruments of its operation are forged
from the processes of unreflective conduct by such
modification and adaptation as is required to enable
them to accomplish this end. Since these logical oper-
ations sometimes fail and sometimes succeed they be-
come the subject-matter of logical theory. But the
technique of this second involution of reflection is not
supplied by some new and unique entity. It also is
derived from modifications of previous operations of
both reflective and non-reflective conduct.

While emphasizing the continuity between non-logi-
cal and logical operations, we must keep in mind that
their distinction is of equal importance. Confusion at
this point is fatal. A case in point is the confusion
between non-logical and logical observation. The re-
sults of non-logical observation, e.g., looking and listen-
ing, are direct stimuli to further conduct. But the
purpose and result of logical observation are to secure
data, not as direct stimuli to immediate conduct but as
stimuli to the construction or verification of hypotheses
which are the responses of the logical operation of im-
agination to the data. Hypotheses are anticipatory.
But they differ from non-logical anticipation in that
they are tentatively, experimentally, i.e., logically an-
ticipatory. The non-logical operations of memory and
anticipation lack just this tentative, experimental char-
acter. When we confuse the logical and non-logical

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 87

operations of these processes the result Is either that
logical processes will merely repeat non-logical opera-
tions in which case we have inference that is tautolo-
gous and trifling; or the non-logical will attempt to
perform logical operations, and our inference is
miraculous. If we seek to escape by an appeal to habit,
as in empiricism, or to an objective universal, as in
idealism and neo-realism, we are merely disguising, not
removing the miracle.

It may be thought that this confusion would be most
likely to occur in a theory which teaches that non-logical
processes are carried over into logical operations. But
this overlooks the fact that the theory recognizes at
the same time that these non-logical operations undergo
modification and adaptation to the demands of the logi-
cal enterprise. On the other hand, those who make all
perceptions, memory, and anticipation, not to speak of
habit and instinct, logical, have no basis for the distinc-
tion between logical and non-logical results ; while those
who refuse to give the operations of perception, mem-
ory, etc., any place in logic can make no connections
between logical and non-logical conduct. Nor are they
able to distinguish in a specific case truth from error.

In all logics that fail to make this connection and
distinction between logical and non-logical operations
there is no criterion for data. If ultimate sim-
plicity is demanded of the data, there is no standard
for simplicity except the minimum sensibile or the
minimum intelligibile which have recently been
resurrected. On the other hand, where simplicity is
waived, as in the logic of objective idealism, there is

88 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

still no criterion of logical adequacy. But if we under-
stand by logical data not anything that happens to be
given, but something sought as material for an hy-
pothesis, i.e., a proposed solution (proposition) of an
ambiguous object of conduct and affection, then what-
ever results of observation meet this requirement are
logical data. And whenever data are found from which
an hypothesis is constructed that succeeds in abolishing
the ambiguity, they are simple, adequate, and true
data.

No scientist, not even the mathematician, in the
specific investigations of his field, seeks for ultimate
and irreducible data at large. And if he found them he
could not use them. It is only in his metaphysical per-
sonality that he longs for such data. The data which
the scientist in any specific inquiry seeks are the data
which suggest a solution of the question in which the
investigation starts. When these data are found they
are the " irreducibles " of that problem. But they are
relative to the question and answer of the investigation.
Their simplicity consists in the fact that they are the
data from which a conclusion can be made. The term
" simple data " is tautologous. That one is in need
of data more " simple " means that one is in need of
new data from which an hypothesis can be formed.

It is true that the actual working elements with which
the scientist operates are always complex in the sense
that they are always something more than elements in
any specific investigation. They have other connec-
tions and alliances. And this complexity is at once the
despair and the hope of the scientist ; his despair, be-

REFOJIMATION OF LOGIC 89

cause he cannot be sure when these other connections
will interfere with the allegiance of his elements to his
particular undertaking; his hope, because when these
alliances are revealed they often make the elements more
efficient or exhibit capacities which will make them
elements in some other undertaking for which elements
have not been found. A general resolves his army into
so many marching, eating, shooting units ; but these
elements are something more than marching, shooting
units. They are husbands and fathers, brothers and
lovers, protestants and catholics, artists and artisans,
etc. And the militarist can never be sure at what point
these other activities — I do not say merely external
relationships — may upset his calculations. If he could
find units whose whole and sole nature is to march and
shoot, his problem would be, in some respects, simpler,
though in others more complex. As it is, he is con-
stantly required to ask how far these other functions
will support and at what point they will rebel at the
marching and shooting.

Such, in principle, is the situation in every scientific
inquiry. When the failure of the old elements occurs
it is common to say that " simpler " elements are
needed. And doubtless in his perplexity the scientist
may long for elements which have no entangling alli-
ances, whose sole nature and character is to be
elements. But what in fact he actually seeks in every
specific investigation are elements whose nature and
functions will not interfere with their serving as units
in the enterprise in hand. But from some other stand-
point these new elements may be vastly more complex

90 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

than the old, as is the case with the modern as com-
pared with the ancient atom. When the elements arc
secured which operate successfully, the non-interfering
connections can be ignored and the elements can be
treated as if they did not have them, — as if they were
metaphysically simple. But there is no criterion for
metaphysical simplicity except operative simplicity.
To be simple is to serve as an element, and to serve
as an element is to be simple.

It is scarcely necessary in view of the foregoing to
add that the data of science are not " sense-data," if
by sense-data be meant data which are the result of the
operations of sense organs alone. Data are as much
or more the result of operations, first, of the motor
system of the scientist's own organism, and second, of
all of the machinery of his laboratory which he calls
to his aid. Whether named after the way they are ob-
tained, or after the way they are used, data are quite
as much " motor " as " sense." Nor, on the other hand,
are there any purely intellectual data — not even for the
mathematician. Some mathematicians may insist that
their symbols and diagrams are merely stimuli to the
platonic operation of pure and given universals. But
until mathematics can get on without these symbols or
any substitutes the intuitionist in mathematics wiH
continue to have his say.

Wherever the discontinuity between logical operations
and their acts persists, all the difficulties with data have
their correlative difficulties with hypotheses. In Mill's
logic the account of the origin of hypotheses oscillates
between the view that they are happy guesses of

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 91

a mind composed of states of consciousness, and
the view that they are " found in the facts " or
are "impressed on the mind by the facts." The
miracle of relevancy required in the first position
drives the theory to the second. And the tautolo-
gous, useless nature of the hypothesis in the second
forces the theory back to the first view. In this
predicament, little wonder Mill finds that the easiest
way out is to make hypotheses " auxiliary " and not in-
digenous to inference. But this exclusion of hypotheses
as essential leaves his account of inference to oscillate
between the association of particulars of nominalism
and scholastic formalism, from both of which Mill, with
the dignified zeal of a prophet, set out to rescue
logic.

Mill's rejection of hypotheses formed by a mind
whose operations have no discoverable continuity with
the operations of things, or by things whose actions
are independent of the operations of ideas, is forever
sound. But his acceptance of the discontinuity be-
tween the acts of knowing and the operation of things,
and the conclusion that these two conceptions of the
origin and nature of hypotheses are the only alterna-
tives, were the source of most of his difficulties.

Ill

The efforts of classic empiricism at the reform of
logic have long been an easy mark for idealistic reform-
ers. But it is interesting to observe that the idealistic
logic from the beginning finds itself in precisely the
same predicament regarding hypotheses; — they are

92 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

trifling or false. And in the end they are made, as
in Mill, " accidents " of inference.

The part played by Kant's sense-material and the
categories is almost the reverse of those of data and
hypothesis in science. Sense material and the cate-
gories are the given elements from which objects are
somehow made ; in scientific procedure data and hy-
pothesis are derived through logical observation and im-
agination from the content and operations of immediate
experience. In Kant's account of the process by which
objects are constructed we are nowhere in sight of any
experimental procedure. Indeed, the real act of know-
ing, the selection and application of the category to
the sense matter, is, as Kant in the end had to confess,
" hidden away in the depths of the soul." Made in
the presence of the elaborate machinery of knowing
which Kant had constructed, this confession is almost
tragic ; and the tragic aspect grows when we find that
the result of the " hidden " operation is merely a phe-
nomenal object. That this should be the case, however,
is not strange. A phenomenal object is the inevitable
correlate of the " hidden " act of knowing whether in
a " transcendental " or in an " empirical " logic. In
vain do we call the act of knowing " constructive "
and " synthetic " if its method of synthesis is hidden.
A transcendental unity whose method is indefinable has
no advantage over empirical association.

It was the dream of Kant as of Mill to replace the
logics of sensationalism and rationalism with a " logic
of things " and of " truth." But as Mill's things turned
to states of consciousness, so Kant's are phenomenaL

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 93

Their common fate proclaims their common failure —
the failure to reestablish continuity between the con-
duct of intelligence and other conduct.

One of the chief counts in Hegel's indictment of
Kant's logic is that " it had no influence on the methods
of science." * Hegel's explanation is that Kant's cate-
gories have no genesis ; they are not constructed in
and as part of logical operations. As given, ready-
made, their relevance is a miracle. But if categories
be " generated " in the process of knowing, says Hegel,
they are indigenous, and their fitness is inevitable.
In such statements Hegel raises expectations that we
are at last to have a logic which squares with the pro-
cedure of science. But when we discover that instead
of being " generated " out of all the material involved
in the scientific problem Hegel's categories are derived
from each other, misgivings arise. And when we further
learn that this " genesis " is timeless, which means that,
after all, the categories stand related to each other in
a closed, eternal system of implication, we abandon
hope of a scientific — i.e., experimental — logic.

Hegel also says it is the business of philosophy " to
substitute categories or in more precise language ade-
quate notions for the several modes of feeling, percep-
tion, desire, and will." The word " substitute " re-
veals the point at issue. If " to substitute " means that
philosophy is a complete exchange of the modes of
feeling, perception, desire, and will for a world of cate-
gories or notions, then, saying nothing of the range of
values in such a world, the problem of the meaning
* Cf. The Logic of Hegel-Wallace, p. 117.

94 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

of " adequate " is on our hands. "What is the
notion to be adequate to? But if "to substitute"
means that the modes of feehng, perception, desire, and
will, when in a specific situation of ambiguity and in-
hibition, go over into, take on, the modes of data and
hypothesis in the effort to get rid of inhibiting con-
flict that is quite another matter. Here the " notion,"
as the scientific hypothesis, has a criterion for its ade-
quacy. But if the notion usurps the place of feeling,
perception, desire, and will, as many find, in the end,
it does in Hegel's logic, it thereby loses all tests
for the adequacy of its function and character as a
notion.

In the development of the logical doctrines of Kant
and Hegel by Lotze, Green, Sigwart, Bradley, Bosan-
quet, Royce, and others, there are indeed differences.
But these differences only throw their common ground
into bolder relief. This common ground is that, pro-
cedure by hypotheses, by induction, is, in the language
of Professor Bosanquet, " a transient and external
characteristic of inference." * And the ground of this
verdict is essentially the same as Mill's, when he rejects
hypotheses " made by the mind," namely, that such
hypotheses are too subjective in their origin and nature
to have objective validity. " Objective " idealism is
trying, like Mill, to escape the subjectivism of the
purely individual and " psychical " knower. But, be-
ing unable to reconstruct the finite knower, and being
too sophisticated to make what it regards as Mill's

* Bosanquet's Logic, 2nd Ed., p. 171. The identification of
induction and procedure by hypothesis occurs on p. 156.

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 95

naive appeal to " hypotheses found in things," it trans-
fers the real process of inference to the " objective
universal," and the process of all thought, including
inference, is now defined as " the reproduction, by a
universal presented in a content, of contents distin-
guished from the presented content which also are
differences of the same universal.'" *

It need scarcely be said that in inference thus de-
fined there is scant room for hypotheses. There is
nothing " hypothetical," " experimental," or " tenta-
tive " in this process of reproduction by the objective
universal as such. As little is there any possibility of
error. If there is anything hypothetical, or any possi-
bilit}'^ of error, in inference, it is due to the temporal,
finite human being in which, paradoxically enough, this
process of " reproduction " goes |On and to whom, at
times, is given an " infinitesimal " part in the opera-
tion, while at other times he is said merely to " witness "
it. But the real inference does not " proceed by hy-
potheses " ; it is only the finite mind in witnessing the
real logical spectacle or in its " infinitesimal " contri-
bution to it that lamely proceeds in this manner.

Here, again, we have the same break in continuity be-
tween the finite, human act of knowing and the operations
that constitute the real world. When the logic of the
objective universal rejects imputations of harboring a
despoiled psychical knower it has in mind, of course, the
objective universal as knower, not the finite, human act.
But, if the participations of the latter are all accidents
of inference, as they are said to be, its advantage
* Ibid., p. 14 (italics mine).

96 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

over a purely psychical knower, or " states
of consciousness," is difficult to see. The rejection
of metaphysical dualism is of no consequence if the
logical operations of the finite, human being are only
" accidents " of the real logical process. As already
remarked, the metaphysical disjunction is merely a
schematism of the more fundamental, logical disjunc-
tion.

As for tautology and miracle, the follower of Mill
might well ask: how an association of particulars,
whether mental states or things, could be more tauto-
logous than a universal reproducing its own differences?
And if the transition from particular to particular is
a miracle in which the grace of God is disguised as
" habit," why is not habit as good a disguise for Provi-
dence as universals .f* Moreover, by what miracle
does the one all-inclusive universal become a universal?
And since perception always presents a number of uni-
versals, what determines which one shall perform the
reproduction? Finally, since there are infinite differ-
ences of the universal that might be reproduced, what
determines just which differences shall be reproduced?
In this wise the controversy has gone on ever since the
challenge of the old rationalistic logic by the nominalists
launched the issue of empiricism and rationalism. All
the charges which each makes against the other are
easily retorted upon itself. Each side is resistless in
attack, but helpless in defense.

In a conception of inference in which both data and
hypothesis are regarded as the tentative, experimental
results of the processes of perception, memory, and

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 97

constructive imagination engaged in the special task
of removing conflict, ambiguity, and inhibition, and in
which these processes are not conceived as the func-
tions of a private mind nor of an equally private brain
and nervous system, but as functions of interacting
beings, — in such a conception there is no ground for
anxiety concerning the simplicity of data, nor the ob-
jectivity of hypotheses. Simplicity and objectivity
do not have to be secured through elaborate and
labored metaphysical construction. The data are
simple and the hypothesis objective in so far as they
accomplish the work whereunto they are called — the
removal of conflict, ambiguity, and inhibition in con-
duct and affection.

In the experimental conception of inference it is clear
that the principles of formal logic must play their role
wholly inside the course of logical operations. They
do not apply to relations between these operations and
" reality " ; nor to " reality " itself. Formal identity
and non-contradiction signify, in experimental logic,
the complete correlativity of data and hypothesis. They
mean that in the logical procedure data must not be
shifted without a corresponding change in the hypoth-
esis and conversely. The doctrine that " theoreti-
cally " there may be any number of hypotheses for
" the same facts " is, when these multiple hypotheses
are anything more than different names or symbols,
nothing less than the very essence of formal contra-
diction. It doubtless makes little difference whether a
disease be attributed to big or little, black or red, de-
mons or whether the cause be represented by a, b, or c,

98 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

etc. But where data and liypotheses are such as are
capable of verification, i.e., of mutually checking up
each other, a change in one without a corresponding
modification of the other is the principle of all for-
mal fallacies.*

With this conception of the origin, nature, and func-
tions of logical operations little remains to be said of
their truth and falsity. If the whole enterprise of logi-
cal operation, of the construction and verification of
h^'pothesis, is in the interest of the removal of am-
biguity, and inhibition in conduct, the only relevant
truth or falsity they can possess must be determined
by their success or failure in that undertaking. The
acceptance of this view of truth and error, be it said
again, depends on holding steadfastly to the conception
of the operations of knowing as real acts, which, though
having a distinct character and function, are yet in
closest continuity with other acts of which indeed they
are but modifications and adaptations in order to meet
the logical demand.

Here, perhaps, is the place for a word on truth and
satisfaction. The satisfaction which marks the truth
of logical operations — " intellectual satisfaction " — is
the satisfaction which attends the accomplishment of
their task, viz., the removal of ambiguity in conduct,
i.e., in our interaction with other beings. It does not
mean that this satisfaction is bound to be followed by

* Perhaps the most complete exhibition of the breakdown of
formal logic considered as an account of the operation of thought
apart from its subject-matter is to be found in Schiller's Formal
Logic.

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 99

wholly blissful consequences. All our troubles are not
over when the distress of ambiguity is removed. It
may be indeed that the verdict of the logical operation
is that we must face certain death. Very well, we must
have felt it to be " good to know the worst," or no
inquiry would have been started. We should have
deemed ignorance bliss and sat with closed eyes waiting
for fate to overtake us instead of going forward to
meet it and in some measure determine it. Death an-
ticipated and accepted is realiter very different from
death that falls upon us unawares, however we may
estimate that difference. If this distinction in the foci
of satisfaction is kept clear it must do away with a
large amount of the hedonistic interpretations of satis-
faction in which many critics have indulged.

But hereupon some one may e:|iclaim, as did a col-
league recently : " Welcome to the ranks of the intel-
lectualists ! " If so, the experimentalist is bound to
repl}"- that he is as willing, and as unwilling, to be wel-
comed to the ranks of intellectualism as to those of
anti-intellectualism. He wonders, however, how long
the welcome would last in either. Among the intellec-
tualists the welcome would begin to cool as soon as it
should be discovered that the ambiguity to which logical
operations are the response is not regarded by the ex-
perimentalist as a purely intellectual affair. It is an
ambiguity in conduct with all the attendant affectional
values that may be at stake.* It is, to be sure, the
fact of ambiguity, and the effort to resolve it, that adds

* Cf . Stuart on " Valuation as a Logical Process " in Studies in
Logical Theory.

100 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

tlic intellectual, logical character to conduct and to
affectional values. But if the logical interest attempts
entirely to detach itself it will soon be without either
subject-matter or criterion. And if it sets itself up as
supreme, we shall be forced to say that our quandaries
of affection, our problems of life and death are merely
to furnish occasions and material for logical operations.

On the other hand, the welcome of the anti-intellec-
tualists is equally sure to wane when the experimental-
ist asserts that the doctrine that logical operations
mutilate the wholeness of immediate experience over-
looks the palpable fact that it is precisely these imme-
diate experiences — the experiences of intuition and in-
stinct— that get into conflict and inhibit and mutilate
one another, and as a consequence are obliged to go
into logical session to patch up the mutilation and
provide new and better methods of cooperation.

At this point the weakness in Bergson's view of logi-
cal operations appears. Bergson, too, is impressed by
the break in continuity between logical operations and
the rest of experience. But with Mr. Bradley he be-
lieves this breach to be essentially incurable, because
the mutilations and disjunctions are due to and intro-
duced by logical operations. Just why the latter are
introduced remains in the end a mystery. Both, to be
sure, believe that logical operations are valuable for
" practical " purposes, — for action. But, aside from
the question of liow operations essentially mutilative can
be valuable for action, immediate intuitional experience
being already in unity with Reality, why should there
be any practical need for logical operations — ^least

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 101

of all such as introduce disjunction and mutilation?

The admission of a demand for logical operations,
whether charged to matter, the devil, or any other
metaphysical adversary, is, of course, a confession that
conflict and ambiguity are as fundamental in experience
as unity and immediacy and that logical operations
are therefore no less indigenous. The failure to see
this implication is responsible for the paradox that in
the logic of Creative Evolution the operations of in-
telligence are neither creative nor evolutional. They
not only have no constructive part but are positively
destructive and devolutional.

Since, moreover, these logical operations, like those
of the objective universal, and like Mill's association
of particulars, can only reproduce in fragmentary
form what has already been done, it is difficult to see
how they can meet the demands of action. For here
no more than in Mill, or in the logic of idealism, is
there any place for constructive hypotheses or any
technique by which they can become effective. What-
ever " Creative Evolution " may be, there is no place
in its logic for " Creative Intelligence."

IV

The prominence in current discussion of the logical
reforms proposed by the " analytic logic " of the neo-
realistic movement and the enthusiastic optimism of its
representatives over the prospective results of these
reforms for logic, science, and practical life arc the war-
rant for devoting a special section to their discussion.

There are indeed some marked differences of opinion

102 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

among the expounders of the " new logic " concerning
the results which it is expected to achieve. Some find
that it clears away incredible accumulations of meta-
physical lumber; others rejoice that it is to restore
metaphysics, " once the queen of the sciences, to her
ancient throne."

But whatever the difference among the representa-
tives of analytical logic all seem agreed at the outset
on two fundamental reforms which the " new logic "
makes. These are: first, that analytic logic gets rid
entirely of the act of knowing, the retention of which
has been the bane of all other logics ; second, in its dis-
covery of " terms and relations," " sense-data and
universals " as the simple elements not only of logic
but of the world, it furnishes science at last with
the simple neutral elements at large which it is supposed
science so long has sought, and " mourned because it
found them not."

Taking these in order, we are told that " realism frees
logic as a study of objective fact from all accounts of
the states and operations of mind." ..." Logic and
mathematics are sciences which can be pursued quite
independently of the study of knowing." * " The new
logic believes that it deals with no such entities as
thoughts, ideas, or minds, but with entities that merely
are." *

The motive for the banishment of the act of knowing
from logic is that as an act knowing is " mental,"
*' psychological," and " subjective." f All other logics

* The New Realism, pp. 40-41.

t Cf. Montague, pp. 256-57; also Russell, The Problems of

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 103

have indeed realized this subjective character of the act
of knowing, but have neither dared completely to dis-
card it nor been able sufficiently to counteract its ef-
fects even with such agencies as the objective universal
to prevent it from infecting logic with its subjectivity.
Because logic has tolerated and attempted to compro-
mise with this subjective act of knowing, say these
reformers, it has been forced constantly into episte-
mology and has become a hybrid science. Had logic
possessed the courage long ago to throw overboard this
subjective Jonah it would have been spared the storms
of epistemology and the reefs of metaphysics.

Analytic logic is the first attempt in the history of
modern logical theory at a deliberate, sophisticated ex-
clusion of the act of knowing from logic. Other logics,
to be sure, have tried to neutralize the effects of its
presence, but none has had the temerity to cast it bodily
overboard. The experiment, therefore, is highly inter-
esting.

We should note at the outset that in regarding the
act of knowing as incurably " psychical " and " sub-
jective " analytic logic accepts a fundamental premise
of the logics of rationalism, empiricism, and idealism
which it seeks to reform. It is true that it is the
bold proposal of analytic logic to keep logic out
of the pit of epistemology by excluding the
act of knowing from logic. Nevertheless analytic
logic still accepts the subjective character of this
act; and if it excludes it from its logic it welcomes it

Philosophy, pp. 27-65-66, et passim; and Holt's Concept of Con-
sciousness, pp. liff., discussed below.

104 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

in its psychology. This is a dangerous situation. Can
the anal3'tic logician prevent all osmosis between his
logic and hi^ psychology.'* * If not, and if the psy-
chological act is subjective, woe then to his logic.
Had the new logic begun with a bold challenge of the
psychical character of the act of knowing, the prospect
of a logic free from epistemology would have been
much brighter.

With the desire to rid logic of the epistemological
taint the " experimental logic " of the pragmatic move-
ment has the strongest sympathy. But the proposal to
effect this by the excision of the act of knowing appears
to experimental logic to be a case of heroic but fatal
surgery. Prima facie a logic with no act of knowing
presents an uncanny appearance. What sort of logi-
cal operations are possible in such a logic and of what
kind of truth and falsity are they capable?

Before taking up these questions in detail it is worth
while to note the character of the entities that " merely
are " with which analytic logic proposes exclusively to
deal. In their general form they are " terms " and
" propositions," " sense-data " and universals. We are
struck at once by the fact that these entities bear the
names of logical operations. They are, to be sure, dis-
guised as entities and have been baptised in a highly
dilute solution of objectivity called " subsistence."
But this does not conceal their origin, nor does it ob-

* Cf. Angell, " Relations of Psychology to Philosophy," De-
cennial Publications of University of Chicago, Vol. Ill; also
Castro, " The Respective Standpoints of Psychology and Logic,"
Philosophic Studies, University of Chicago, No. 4.

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 105

scure the fact that if it is possible for any entities
that " merely are " to have logical character those
made from hypostatized processes of logical opera-
tions should be the most promising. They might
be expected to retain some vestiges of logical char-
acter even after they have been torn from the process
of inquiry and converted into " entities that merely
are." Also it is not surprising that having stripped
the act of knowing of its constituent operations
analytic logic should feel that it can well dispense
with the empty shell called " mind " and, as Professor
Dewey says, " wish it on psychology." But if the
analytic logician be also a philosopher and perchance
a lover of his fellow-man, it is hard to see how he can
have a good conscience over this disposition of the
case.

Turning now to the character of inference and of
truth and falsity which are possible in a logic which
excludes the operation of knowing and deals only with
" entities that are," all the expounders seem to agree
that in such a logic inference must be purely deductive.
All alleged induction is either disguised deduction or
a lucky guess. This raises apprehension at the
start concerning the value of analytic logic for other
sciences. But let us observe what deduction in analytic
logic is.

We begin at once with a distinction which involves
the whole issue.* We are asked to carefully distin-

* I am here following, in the main, Professor Holt because he
alone appears to have had the courage to develop the full con-
sequences of the premises of analytic logic.

106 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

guish " logical " deduction from " psychological " de-
duction. The latter is the vulgar meaning of the term,
and is " the thinker's name for his own act of conform-
ing his thought " to the objective and independent proc-
esses that constitute the real logical process. This act
of conforming the mind is a purely " psychological "
affair. It has no logical function whatever. In what
the " conforming " consists is not clear. It seems to be
merely the act of turning the " psychological " eye on
the objective logical process. "One beholds it (the
logical process) as one beholds a star, a river, a charac-
ter in a play. . . . The novelist and the dramatist,
like the mathematician and logician, are onlookers at
the logical spectacle." * On the other hand, the term
" conforming " suggests a task, with the possibilities
of success and failure. Have we, then, two wholly in-
dependent possibilities of error — one merely " psycho-
logical," the other " logical ".? The same point may be
made even more obviously with reference to the term
" beholding." The term is used as if beholding were a per-
fectly simple act, having no problems and no possibili-
ties of mistakes — as if there could be no mis-beholding.f
But fixing our psychological eye on the " logical

* The Concept of Consciousness, pp. 14-15.

t It is interesting to compare this onlooking act with the ac-
count of consciousness further on. As "psychological" this act
of onlooking must be an act of consciousness. But consciousness
is a cross-section or a projection of things made by their inter-
action with a nervous system. Here consciousness is a function
of all the interacting factors. It is in the play. It is the play.
It is not in a spectator's box. How can consciousness be a func-
tion of all the things put into the cross-section and yet be a
mere beholder of the process? Moreover, what is it that makes

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 107

spectacle," what does it behold? A universal generat-
ing an infinite series of identical instances of itself — i.e.,
instances which differ only in " logical position." If in
a world of entities that " merely are " the term " gen-
eration " causes perplexit3^,the tension is soon relieved;
for this turns out to be a merely subsistential non-
temporal generation which, like Hegel's generation of
the categories, in no way compromises a world of enti-
ties that " merely are."

Steering clear of the thicket of metaphysical prob-
lems that we here encounter, let us keep to the logical
trail. First it is clear that logical operations
are of the same reproductive repetitive type that we
have found in the associational logic of empiricism, and
in the logic of the objective universal. Indeed, after
objective idealism has conceded that the finite mind
merely " witnesses " or at most contributes only in an
" infinitesimal " degree to the logical activity of the
objective universal, what remains of the supposed gulf
between absolute idealism and analytic realism?

It follows, of course, that there can be no place in
analytic logic for " procedure by hypotheses." How-
ever, it is to the credit of some analytic logicians that
they see this and frankly accept the situation instead
of attempting to retain hypotheses by making them " ac-
cidents " or mere " auxiliaries " of inference. On the
other hand, others find that the chief glory of analytic
logic is precisely that it " gives thought wings "* for

any particular, spectacle, or cross-section "logical"? If it be
said all are "logical" what significance lias the terra?
* Cf. Russell's Scientific Methods in Philosophy, p. 59.

108 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

the free construction of hypotheses. In his lectures on
" Scientific Methods in Philosophy " Mr. Russell calls
some of the most elemental and sacred entities of analytic
logic " convenient fictions." This retention of hypothe-
ses at the cost of cogency is of course in order to avoid
a break with science. Those who see that there is no
place in analytic logic for h3^potheses are equally anx-
ious to preserve their connections with science. Hence
they boldly challenge the " superstition " that science
has anything to do with hypotheses. Newton's " Hy-
potheses non jingo " should be the motto of every con-
scientious scientist who dares " trust his own percep-
tions and disregard the ukase of idealism." " The
theory of mental construction is the child of idealism,
now put out to service for the support of its parents."
" Theory is no longer regarded in science as an hy-
pothesis added to the observed facts," but a law which
is " found in the facts." * The identity of this with
Mill's doctrine of hypotheses as " found in things "
is obvious.

As against the conception of hypotheses as " free,"
" winged," constructions of a psychical, beholding, gos-
siping mind we may well take our stand with those who
would exclude such hypotheses from science. And this
doubtless was the sort of mind and sort of hypotheses
Newton meant when he said " Hypotheses non jingo.'" f
But had Newton's mind really been of the character
which he, as a physicist, had learned from philosophers

* Holt, op. cit., pp. 128-30.

t In fact, Newion, in all probability, had the Cartesian pure
notions in mind.

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 109

to suppose it to be, and had he really waited to find his
hypotheses ready-made in the facts, there never would
have been any dispute about who discovered the calcu-
lus, and we should never have been interested in what
Newton said about hypotheses or anything else. What
Newton did is a much better source of information on
the part hypotheses play in scientific method than
what he said about them. The former speaks for itself;
the latter is the pious repetition of a metaphysical creed
made necessary by the very separation of mind from
things expressed in the statement quoted.

Logically there is little to choose between hypothe-
ses found ready-made in the facts and those which are
the " winged " constructions of a purely psychical mind.
Both are equally useless in logic and in science. One
makes logic and science " trifling," the other makes
them " miraculous." But if hypotheses be conceived
not as the output of a cloistered psychical entity but as
the joint product of all the beings and operations
involved in the specific situation in which logical
inquiry originates, and more particularly in all those
involved in the operations of the inquiry itself (includ-
ing all the experimental material and apparatus which
the inquiry may require), we shall have sufficient con-
tinuity between hypotheses and things to do away with
miracle, and sufficient reconstruction to avoid inference
that is trifling. ^

It is, however, the second contribution of analytic
logic that is the basis of the enthusiasm over its pro-
spective value for other sciences. This is the discovery
that terms and propositions, sense-data, and univer-

no CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

sals, are not only elements of logical operation but are
the simple, neutral elements at large which science is
supposed to have been seeking. " As the botanist an-
alyzes the structures of the vegetable organism and
finds chemical compounds of which they are built so
the ordinary chemist analyzes these compounds into
their elements, but does not analyze these. The ph^'si-
cal chemist analyzes these elemental atoms, as now ap-
pears, into minuter components which he in turn must
leave to the mathematicians and logicians further to
analyze." *

Again it is worth noting that this mutation of
logical into ontological elements seems to differ
only " in position " from the universal logicism of
absolute idealism.

What are these simple elements into which the
mathematician and logician are to analyze the crude
elements of the laboratory.'' And how are these ele-
ments to be put into operation in the laboratory.'' Let
us picture an anal3'tic logician meeting a physical
scientist at a moment when the latter is distressed over
the unmanageable complexity of his elements. Will
the logician say to the scientist : " Your difficulty is
that you are trusting too much to your mundane ap-
paratus. The kingdom of truth cometh not with such
things. Forsake your microscopes, test tubes, refrac-
tors and resonators, and follow me, and you shall behold
the truly simple elements of which you have dreamed." ?
And when the moment of revelation arrives and the

*Holt, op. at., p. 118 (italics mine). Cf. also Perry's Present
Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 108 and 311.

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 111

expectant scientist is solemnly told that the " simple
elements " which he has sought so long are " terms and
propositions," sense-data and universals, is it surpris-
ing that he does not seem impressed? Will he not ask:
" What am I to do with these in the specific difficulties
of my laboratory? Shall I say to the crude and com-
plex elements of my laboratory operations : ' Be ye re-
solved into terms and propositions, sense-data and
universals ' ; and will they forthwith obey this incanta-
tion and fall apart so that I may locate and remove
the hidden source of my difficulty? Are you not mock-
ing me and deceiving yourself with the old ontological
argument ? Your ' simple ' elements — are they anything
but the hypostatized process by which elements may
be found? "*

The expounders as well as the critics of analytic
logic have agreed that it reaches its most critical junc-
tion when it faces the problem of truth and error.
There is no doubt that the logic of objective idealism, in
other respects so similar to analj'tic logic, has at this
point an advantage; for it retains just enough of the
finite operation of knowing — an " infinitesimal " part
will answer — to furnish the culture germs of error.
But analytic logic having completely sterilized itself
against this source of infection is in serious difficulty.

Here again it is Professor Holt who has the cour-
age to follow — or shall we say "behold"? — his theory
as it " generates " the doctrine that error is a given
objective opposition of forces entirely independent of

* The character of elements and the nature of simplicity have
been discussed In the preceding section.

112 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

any such thing as a process of inquiry and all that such
a process presupposes. " All collisions between bodies,
all inference between energies, all process of warming
and cooling, of starting and stopping, of combining
and separating, all counterbalancings, as in canti-
levers and gothic vaultings, are contradictor}' forces
which can be stated only in propositions that mani-
festly contradict each other." * But the argument
proves too much. For in the world of forces
to which we have here appealed there is no
force which is not opposed by others and no
particle which is not the center of opposing forces.
Hence error is ubiquitous. In making error objective
we have made all objectivity erroneous. We find our-
selves obliged to say that the choir of Westminster
Abbey, the Brooklyn bridge, the heads on our shoul-
ders are all supported by logical errors !

Following these illustrations of ontological contra-
dictions there is indeed this interesting statement:
" Nature is so full of these mutually negative processes
that we are moved to admiration when a few forces co-
operate long enough to form what we call an organ-
ism."f The implication is, apparently, that as an
" opposition " of forces is error, " cooperation " of
forces is truth. But what is to distinguish " opposi-
tion " from "cooperation".'' In the illustration it is
clear that opposing forces — error — do not interfere
with cooperative forces — truth. \^niere should we find
more counterbalancing, more starting and stopping,
warming and cooling, combining and separating
* Ibid., p. 275. t Ibid., p. 275.

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 113

than in an organism? And if these processes
can be stated only in propositions that are
" manifestly contradictory," are we to under-
stand that truth has errors for its constituent
elements? Such paradoxes have always delighted the
soul of absolute idealism. But, as we have seen, only
the veil of an infinitesimal finitude intervenes between the
logic of the objective universal of absolute idealism
and the objective logic of analytic realism.

It is, of course, this predicament regarding
objective truth and error that has driven most
analytic logicians to recall the exiled ps^'cho-
logical, " mental " act of knowing. It had to be
recalled to provide some basis of distinction
between truth and error, but, this act having already
been conceived as incurably " subjective," the result
is only an exchange of dilemmas. For the reinstatement
of this act ipso facto reinstates the epistemological
predicament to get rid of which it was first banished
from logic.

Earnest efforts to escape this outcome have been
made by attaching the act of knowing to the nervous
system, and this is a move in the right direction. But
so far the effort has been fruitless because no connec-
tion has been made between the knowing function of
the nervous system and its other functions. The result
is that the cognitive operation of the nervous system,
as of the " psychical " mind, is that of a mere spec-
tator ; and the epistemological problem abides. An
onlooking nervous system has no advantage over an
" onlooking " mind. Onlooking, beholding may indeed

114 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

be a part of a genuine act of knowing. But in that
act it is always a stimulus or response to other acts.
It is one of them ; — never a mere spectator of them.
It is when the act of knowing is cut off from its con-
nection with other acts and finds itself adrift that it
seeks metaphysical lodgings. And this it may find
either in an empty psychical mind or in an equally
empty body.*

If, in reinstating the act of knowing as a function
of the nervous system, neo-realism had recognized the
logical significance of the fact that the nervous sys-
tem of which knowing is a function is the same nervous
system of which loving and hating, desiring and striv-
ing are functions and that the transition from these
to the operations of inquiry and knowing is not a
capricious jump but a transition motived by the lov-
ing and hating, desiring and striving — if this had been
recognized the logic of neo-realism would have been
spared its embarrassments over the distinction of truth

* This lack of continuity between the cognitive function of
the nervous system and its other functions accounts for the
strange paradox in the 4ogic of neo-realism of an act of knowing
which is "subjective" and yet is the act of so palpably an
objective aflrair as a nervous system. The explanation is that
the essence of all deprecated subjectivity is, as before pointed
out, functional isolation. That this sort of subjectivity should
be identified with the *' psychical " is not strange, since a living
organism is very difficult to isolate, while the term " psychical,"
in its metaphysical sense, seems to stand for little else than just
this complete isolation. Having once appealed to the nervous
system it seems incredible that the physiological continuity of its
functions with each other and with its environment should not
have suggested the logical corollary. Only the force of the
prepossession of mathematical atomism in analytic logic can
account for its failure to do so.

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 115

and error. It would have seen that the passage
from loving and hating, desiring and striving to in-
quii'y and knowing is made in order to renew and re-
form specific desires and strivings which, through
conflict and consequent equivocation, have become
fruitless and vain ; and it must have seen that the re-
sults of the inquiry are true or false as they succeed
or fail in this reformation and renewal.

But once more, it must steadily be kept in view that
while the loving and hating, desiring and striving,
which the logical operations are reforming and renew-
ing, are functions of the nervous system, they are not
functions of the nervous system alone, else the door
of subjectivism again closes upon us. Loving and
hating, desiring and striving have their " objects."
Hence any reformation of these functions involves no
less a reformation of their objects. When therefore
we say that truth and error are relevant to desires
and strivings, this means relevant to them as includ-
ing their objects, not as entitized processes (such are
the pitfalls of language) inclosed in a nervous system
or mind. With this before us the relevance of truth
and error to desires and strivings can never be made
the basis for the charge of subjectivism. The concep-
tion of desires as peculiarly individual and subjective
is a survival of the very isolation which is the source
of the difficulty with truth and error. Hence the ap-
peal to this isolation, made alike by idealism and real-
ism, in charging instrumental logic with subjectivism
is an elementary petitio.

Doubtless it will be urged again that the act of

116 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

knowing is motived by an independent desire and striv-
ing of its own. This is of course consonant with the
neo-realistic atomism, however inconsonant it may be
with the conception of implication which it employs.
If we take a small enough, isolated segment of ex-
perience we can find meaning for this notion, as we
may for the idea that the earth is flat and that the
sun moves around the earth. But as consequences ac-
crue we find as great difficulties with the one as with
the other. If the course of events did not bring us to
book, if we could get ofif with a mere definition of truth
and error we might go on piling up subsistential defi-
nitional logics world without end. But sublime ad-
venturers, logically unregenerate and uninitiated, will
go on sailing westward to the confusion and confound-
ing of all definitional systems that leave them out of
account.

The conclusion is plain. If logic is to have room
in its Jiousehold for both truth and error, if it is to
avoid the old predicament of knowledge that is trifling
or miraculous, tautologous or false, if it is to have no
fear of the challenge of other sciences or of practical
life, it must be content to take for its subject-matter
the operations of intelligence conceived as real acts
on the same metaphysical plane and in strictest con-
tinuity with other acts. Such a logic will not fear
the challenge of science, for it is precisely this con-
tinuity that makes possible experimentation, which is
the fundamental characteristic of scientific procedure.
Science without experiment is indeed a strange ap-
parition. It is a Xoyo? with no Xiyeiv^ a science

REFORMATION OF LOGIC 117

with no scire; and this spells dogmatism. How neces-
sary such continuity is to experimentation is apparent
when we recall that there is no limit to the range of
operations of every sort which scientific experiment
calls into play ; and that unless there be thoroughgoing
continuity between the logical demand of the experi-
ment and all the materials and devices employed in the
process of the experiment, the operations of the latter
in the experiment will be either miraculous or ruinous.
Finally, if this continuity of the operations of in-
telligence with other operations be essential to science,
its relation to " practical " life is ipso facto established.
For science is " practical " life aware of its prob-
lems and aware of the part that experimental — i.e.,
creative — intelligence plays in the solution of those
problems.

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS

HAROLD CHAPMAN BROWN

Herbart is said to have given the deathblow to
faculty psychology. Man no longer appears endowed
with volition, passion, desire, and reason; and logic,
deprived of its hereditary right to elucidate the opera-
tions of inherent intelligence, has the new problem of
investigating forms of intelligence in the making. This
is no inconsequential task. " If man originally pos-
sesses only capacities which after a given amount of
education will produce ideas and judgments " (Thorn-
dike, Educational Psychology, Vol. I, p. 198), and if
these ideas and judgments are to be substituted for
a mj'thical intelligence it follows that tracing their de-
velopment and observing their functioning renders
clearer our conception of their nature and value and
brings us nearer that exact knowledge of what we
are talking about in which the philosopher at least
aspires to equal the scientist, however much he may fall
below his ideal.

For contemporary thought concerning the mathe-
matical sciences this altered point of view generates
peculiarly pressing problems. Mathematicians have
weighed the old logic and found it wanting. They have
builded themselves a new logic more adequate to their
ends. But they have not whole-heartedly recognized
the change that has come about in psychology; hence

118

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 119

they have retamed the faculty of intelligence knit into
certain indefinables such as implication, relation, class,
term, and the like, and have transported the faculty
from the human soul to a mysterious realm of subsist-
ence whence it radiates its ghostly light upon the realm
of existence below. But while they reproach the old
logic, often bitterly, their new logic merely furnishes
a more adequate show-case in which already attained
knowledge may be arranged to set off its charms for
the observer in the same way that specimens in a
museum are displayed before an admiring world. This
statement is not a sweeping condemnation, however, for
such a setting forth is not useless. It resembles the
classificatory stage of science which, although not itself
in the highest sense creative, often leads to higher
stages by bringing under observation relations and
facts that might otherwise have escaped notice. And
in the realm of pure mathematics, the new logic has
undoubtedly contributed in this manner to such dis-
coveries. Danger appears when the logician attains
Carthesian intoxication with the beauty of logico-
mathematical form and tries to infer from the form
itself the real nature of the formed material. The
realm of subsistence too often has armed Indefinables
with metaphysical myths whose attack is valiant when
the doors of reflection are opened. It may be possible,
however, to arrive at an understanding of mathematics
without entering the kingdom of these warriors.

It is the essence of science to make prediction possi-
ble. The value of prediction lies in the fact that
through this function man can control his environment,

120 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

or, at worst, fortify himself to meet its vagaries. To
attain such predictions, however, the world need not
be grasped in its full concreteness. Hence arise proc-
esses of abstraction. While all other symptoms remain
unnoticed, the temperature and pulse may mark a
disease, or a barometer-reading the weather. The
physicist may work only in terms of quantity in a
world which is equally truly qualitative. All that is
necessary is to select the elements which are most
effective for prediction and control. Such selection
gives the principle that dominates all abstractions.
Progress is movement from the less abstract to the
more abstract, but it is progress only because the
more abstract is as genuinely an aspect of the con-
crete starting-point as anything is. Moreover, the
outcome of progress of this sort cannot be definitely
foreseen at the beginnings. The simple activities of
primitive men have to be spontaneously performed be-
fore their value becomes evident. Only afterwards can
they be cultivated for the sake of their value, and then
only can the self-conscious cultivation of a science be-
gin. The process remains full not only of perplexities,
but of surprises ; men's activities lead to goals far other
than those which appear at the start. These goals,
however, never deny the method by which the start is
made. Developed intelligence is nothing but skill in
using a set of concepts generated in this manner. In
this sense the histories of all human endeavors run
parallel.

Where the empirical bases of a science are continu-
ally in the foreground, as in physics or chemistry, the

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 121

foregoing formulation of procedure is intelligible and
acceptable to most men. Mathematics seem, however,
to stand peculiarly apart. Manj^, with Descartes, have
delighted in them " on account of the certitude and
evidence of their reasonings " and recognized their
contribution to the advancement of mechanical arts.
But since the days of Kant even this value has become
a problem, and many a young philosophic student has
the question laid before him as to why it is that mathe-
matics, " a purely conceptual science," can tell us
an3^thing about the character of a world which is, ap-
parently at least, free from the idiosyncrasies of in-
dividual mind. It may be that mathematics began in
empirical practice, such philosophers admit, but they
add that, somehow, in its later career, it has escaped
its lowly origin. Now it moves in the higher circles of
postulated relations and arbitrarily defined entities
to which its humble progenitors and relatives are denied
the entree. Parvenus, however, usually bear with them
the mark of history, and in the case of this one, at
least, we may hope that the history will be sufficient to
drag it from the affectations of its newly acquired set
and reinstate it in its proper place in the workaday
world. For the sake of this hope, we shall take the
risk of being tedious by citing certain striking mo-
ments of mathematical progress ; and then we shall
try to interpret its genuine status in the world of
working truths.

122 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

I

Beginnings of Arithmetic and Geometry
The most primitive mathematical activity of man is
counting, but here his first efforts are lost in the ob-
scurity of the past. The lower races, however, yield
us evidence that is not without value. Although
the savage mind is not identical with the mind of primi-
tive man, there is much in the activities of undeveloped
races that can throw light upon the behavior of peo-
ples more advanced. We must be careful in our infer-
ences, however. Among the Australians and South
Americans there are peoples whose numerical systems
go little, or not at all, beyond the first two or three
numbers. " It has been inferred from this," writes
Professor Boas {Mind of Primitive Man, pp. 152-53),
" that the people speaking these languages are not
capable of forming the concept of higher num-
bers. . . . People like the South American Indians,
... or like the Esquimo . . . are presumably
not in need of higher numerical expressions, because
there are not many objects that they have to count.
On the other hand, just as soon as these same people
find themselves in contact with civilization, and when
they acquire standards of value that have to be
counted, they adopt with perfect ease higher numerals
from other languages, and develop a more or less per-
fect system of counting. ... It must be borne in
mind that counting does not become necessary until
objects are considered in such generalized form that
their individualities are entirely lost sight of. For this

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 123

reason it is possible that even a person who owns a
herd of domesticated animals may know them by name
and by their characteristics, without even desiring to
count them."

And there is one other false interpretation to be
avoided. Man does not feel the need of counting and
then develop a system of numerals to meet the need.
Such an assumption is as ridiculous as to assume pre-
historic man thinking to himself : " I must speak,"
and then inventing voice culture and grammar to make
speaking pleasant and possible. Rather, when powers
of communication are once attained, presumably in
their beginnings also without forethought, man being
still more animal than man, there were gradually
dissociated communications of a kind approaching
what numbers mean to us. But the number is not yet
a symbol apart from that of the things numbered.
Picture writing, re-representing the things meant, pre-
ceded developmentally any kind of symbolization rep-
resenting the number by mere one-one correspondence
with non-particularized symbols. It is plausible, al-
though I have no anthropological authority for the
statement, that the prevalence of finger words as num-
ber symbols (cf. infra) is originally a consequence of
the fact that our organization makes the hand the
natural instrument of pointing.

The difficulty of passing from concrete representa-
tions to abstract symbols has been keenly stated by
Conant (The Number Concept, pp. 72-73), although
his terminology is that of an old psychology and the
limitations implied for the primitive mind are limita-

121 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

tions of practice rather than of capacity as Mr. Co-
nant seems to believe. " An abstract conception is
something quite foreign to the essentially primitive
mind, as missionaries and explorers have found to their
chagrin. The savage can form no mental concept of
what civilized man means by such a word as soul; nor
would his idea of the abstract number 5 be much clearer.
When he says five, he uses, in many cases at least, the
same word that serves him when he wishes to say hand;
and his mental concept when he says five is a hand.
The concrete idea of a closed fist, of an open hand with
outstretched fingers, is what is uppermost in his mind.
He knows no more and cares no more about the pure
number 5 than he does about the law of conservation
of energ}'. He sees in his mental picture only the real,
material image, and his only comprehension of the
number is, " these objects are as many as the fingers
on my hand." Then, in the lapse of the long interval
of centuries which intervene between lowest barbarism
and highest civilization, the abstract and concrete be-
come slowly dissociated, the one from the other. First
the actual hand picture fades away, and the number
is recognized without the original assistance furnished
by the derivation of the word. But the number is still
for a long time a certain number of objects, and not an
independent concept."

An excellent fur trader's story, reported to me by
Mr. Dewey, suggests a further impulse to count besides
that given by the need of keeping a tally, namely, the
need of making one thing correspond to another in a
business transaction. The Indian laid down one skin

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 125

and the trader two dollars ; if he proposed to count
several skins at once and pay for all together, the
former replied " too much cheatem." The result,
however, demanded a tally either by the fingers,
a pebble, or a mark made in the sand, and as the mag-
nitude of such transactions grows the need of a specific
number symbol becomes ever. more acute.

The first obstacle, then, to overcome — and it has al-
ready been successfully passed by many primitive peo-
ples— is the need of fortuitous attainment of a numeri-
cal symbol, which is not the mere repeated symbol of
the things numbered. Significantly, this sj^mbol is
usually derived from the hand, suggesting gestures of
tallying, and not from the words of already developed
language. Consequently, number words relate them-
selves for the most part to the hand, and written num-
ber symbols, which are among the earliest writings of
most peoples, tend to depict it as soon as they have
passed beyond the stage mentioned above of merely re-
peating the symbol of the things numbered. W. C.
Eells, in writing of the Number Systems of the North
American Indians (Am. Math. Mo., Nov., 1913; pp.
263-72), finds clear linguistic evidence for a digital
origin in about 40^ of the languages examined. Of
the non-digital instances, 1 was sometimes connected
with the first personal pronoun, 2 with roots meaning
separation, 3, rarely, meaning more, or plural as dis-
tinguished from the dual, just as the Greek uses a
plural as well as a dual in nouns and verbs, 4 is often
the perfect, complete right. It is often a sacred num-
ber and the base of a quarternary system. Conant

126 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

(loc. cit., p. 98) also gives a classification of the mean-
ings of simple number words for more advanced lan-
guages ; and even in them the hand is constantly in
evidence, as in 5, the hand ; 10, two hands, half a man,
when fingers and toes are both considered, or a man,
when the hands alone are considered ; 20, one man, two
feet. The other meanings hang upon the ideas of ex-
istence, piece, group, beginning, for 1 ; and repeti-
tion, division, and collection for higher numerals.

A peculiar difBculty lies in the fact that when once
numbering has become a self-conscious effort, the col-
lection of things to be numbered frequently tends to
exceed the number of names that have become avail-
able. Sometimes the difficulty is met by using a second
man when the fingers and toes of the first are used up,
sometimes by a method of repetition with the record
of the number of the repetition itself added to the
numerical significance of the whole process. Hence
arise the various systems of bases that occur in de-
veloped mathematics. But the inertia to be overcome
in the recognition of the base idea is nowhere more
obvious than in the retention by the comparatively de-
veloped Babylonian system of a second base of 60 to
supplement the decimal one for smaller numbers.
Among the American Indians (Eells, loc. cit.) the sys-
tem of bases used varies from the cumbersome binary
scale, that exercised such a fascination over Leibniz
(Opera, III, p. 346), through the rare ternary, and
the more common quarternary to the " natural " qui-
nary, decimal, and vigesimal systems derived from the
use of the fingers and toes in counting.

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 127

The achievement of a number base and number words,
however, does not always open the way to further math-
ematical development. Only too often a complexity of
expression is involved that almost immediately cuts off
further progress. Thus the Youcos of the Amazon
cannot get beyond the number three, for the sim-
plest expression for the idea in their language is
" pzettarrarorincoaroac " (Conant, loc. cit., pp. 145,
83, 53). Such names as " 99, tongo solo manani nun
solo manani " (i.e., 10, understood, 5 plus 4 times, and
5 plus 4) of the Soussous of Sierra Leone; "399,
caxtoUi onnauh poalli ipan caxtolli onnaui " (15 plus
4 times 20 plus 15 plus 4) of the Aztec; " 29, wick a
chimen ne nompah sam pah nep e chu wink a "
(Sioux), make it easy to understand the proverb of
the Yorubas of Abeokuta, " You may be very clever,
but you can't tell 9 times 9."

Almost contemporaneously with the beginnings of
counting various auxiliary devices were introduced to
help out the difficult task. In place of many men,
notched sticks, knotted strings, pebbles, or finger pan-
tomime were used. In the best form, these devices re-
sulted in the abacus ; indeed, it was not until after the
introduction of arable numerals and well into the
Renaissance period that instrumental arithmetic gave
way to graphical in Europe (D. E. Smith, Rara Arith-
metica, under "Counters"). "In eastern Europe,"
say Smith and Mikami (Japanese Mathematics, pp.
18-19), " it " — the abacus — " has never been replaced,
for the tschotii is used everywhere in Russia to-day, and
when one passes over into Persia the same type of

128 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

abacus is common in all the bazaars. In China the
swan-pan is universally used for the purposes of com-
putation, and in Japan the soroban is as strongly en-
trenched as it was before the invasion of western
ideas."

Given, then, the idea of counting, and a mechanical
device to aid computation, it still remains necessary to
obtain some notation in which to record results. At
the early dawn of history the Egyptians seem to have
been already possessed of number signs (cf. Cantor,
Gescli. de. Math., p. 44) and the Phoenicians either
wrote out their number words or used a few simple
signs, vertical, horizontal, and oblique lines, a process
which the Arabians perpetuated up to the beginning
of the eleventh century (Fink, p. 15) ; the Greeks, as
early as 600 B. C, used the initial letters of words for
numbers. But speaking generally, historical begin-
nings of European number signs are too obscure to
furnish us good material.

Our Indians have few number symbols other than
words, but when they occur (cf. Eells, loc. cit.) they
usually take the form of pictorial presentation of some
counting device such as strokes, lines dotted to suggest
a knotted cord, etc. Indeed, the smaller Roman nu-
merals were probably but a pictorial representation of
finger symbols. However, a beautiful concrete instance
is furnished us in the Japanese mathematics (cf. Smith
and Mikami, Ch. III). The earliest instrument of
reckoning in Japan seems to have been the rod, Ch'eou,
adapted from the Chinese under the name of Chikusaku
(bamboo rods) about 600 A. D. At first relatively

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 129

large (measuring rods?), they became reduced to about
12 cm., but from their tendency to roll were quickly
replaced by the sangi (square prisms, about 7 mm.
thick and 5 cm. long) and the number symbols were
evidently derived from the use of these rods:

I, II, III, 1111,11111, T Ti; TTi; Tm:

For the sake of clearness, tens, hundreds, etc., were
expressed in the even place by horizontal instead of
vertical lines and vice versa; thus 1267 would be
formed — 1 1 _L TT. The rods were arranged on a sort of
chessboard called the swan-pan. Much later the lines
were transferred to paper, and a circle used to denote
the vacant square. The use of squares, however, ren-
dered it unnecessary to arrange the even places dif-
ferently from the odd, so numbers like 38057 came to
be written jjillTFTl |lllll|Tr| instead of |IH|^| |^|Tr|
as in the earlier notation.

Somewhere in the course of these early mathematical
activities the process has changed from the more or
less spontaneous operating that led primitive man to
the first enunciation of arithmetical ideas, and has
become a self-conscious striving for the solution of
problems. This change had already taken place be-
fore the historical origins of arithmetic are met. Thus,
the treatise of Ahmes (2000 B. C.) contains the curi-
ous problem : 7 persons each have 7 cats ; each cat eats
7 mice ; each mouse eats 7 ears of barley ; from each ear
7 measures of corn may grow; how much grain has
been saved .f* Such problems are, however, half play,
as appears in a Leonardo of Pisa version some 3000
years later: 7 old women go to Rome; each woman

130 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

has 7 mules ; each mule, 7 sacks ; each sack contains 7
loaves ; with each loaf are 7 knives ; each knife is in 7
sheaths. Similarly in Diophantus' epitaph (330
A. D.) : " Diophantus passed 1/6 of his life in child-
hood, 1/12 in youth, and 1/7 more as a bachelor; 5
years after his marriage, was born a son who died 4
years before his father at 1/2 his age." Often among
peoples such puzzles were a favorite social amusement.
Thus Braymagupta (628 A. D.) reads, " These prob-
lems are proposed simply for pleasure; the wise man
can invent a thousand others, or he can solve the prob-
lems of others by the rules given here. As the sun
eclipses the stars by its brilliancy, so the man of knowl-
edge will eclipse the fame of others in assemblies of
the people if he proposes algebraic problems, and
still more if he solves them" (Cajori, Hist, of Math.,
p. 92).

The limitation of these early methods is that the
notation merely records and does not aid computation.
And this is true even of such a highly developed sys-
tem as was in use among the Romans. If the reader
is unconvinced, let him attempt some such problem
as the multiplication of CCCXVI by CCCCLXVIII,
expressing it and carrying it through in Roman nu-
merals, and he will long for the abacus to assist his
labors. It was the positional arithmetic of the Ara-
bians, of which the origins are obscure, that made pos-
sible the development of modern technique. Of this dis-
covery, or rediscovery from the Hindoos, together with
the zero symbol, Cajori (Hist, of Math., p. 11) has said
" of all mathematical discoveries, no one has con-

I

(

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 131

tributed more to the general progress of intelligence
than this." The notation no longer merely records re-
sults, but now assists in performing operations.

The origins of geometry are even more obscure than
those of arithmetic. Not only is geometry as highly
developed as arithmetic when it first appears in occi-
dental civilization, but, in addition, the problems of
primitive peoples seem to have been such that they
have developed no geometrical formulas striking enough
to be recorded by investigators, so far as I have been
able to discover. But just as the commercial life of the
Phoenicians early forced them self-consciously to de-
velop arithmetical calculation, so environmental con-
ditions seem to have forced upon the Egyptians a need
for geometrical considerations.

It is almost platitudinous to quote Herodotus' re-
mark that the invention of geometry was necessary be-
cause of the floods of the Nile, which washed away the
boundaries and changed the contours of the fields. And
as Proclus Diadochus adds {Prodi Diadochi, in primum
Euclidis elementorum librum commentarii — quoted Can-
tor, I, p. 125) : " It is not surprising that the discovery
of this as well as other sciences has sprung from need,
because everything in the process of beginning pro-
ceeds from the incomplete to the complete. There takes
place a suitable transition from sensible perception to
thoughtful consideration and rational knowledge. Just
as with the Phoenicians, for the sake of business and
commerce, an exact knowledge of numbers had its be-
ginning, so with the Egyptians, for the above-mentioned
reasons, was geometry contrived."

132 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

The earliest Egj^ptian mathematical writing that we
know is that of Ahmcs (2000 B. C), but long before
this the mural decorations of the temple wall involved
many figures, the construction of which involved a cer-
tain amount of working knowledge of such operations
as may be performed with the aid of a ruler and com-
pass. The fact that these operations did not earlier
lead to geometry, as ruler and compass work seems to
have done in Japan in the nineteenth century (Smith
and Mikami, index, "Geometry"), is probably due to
the stage at which the development of Egyptian in-
telligence had arrived, feebly advanced on the road to
higher abstract thinking. It is everywhere character-
istic of Egyptian genius that little purely intellectual
curiosity is shown. Even astronomical knowledge was
limited to those determinations which had religious or
magically practical significance, and its arithmetic and
geometr}^ never escaped these bounds as with the more
imaginative Pythagoreans, where mystical interpre-
tation seems to have been a consequence of rather
than a stimulus to investigation. An old Egyptian
treatise reads (Cantor, p. 63) : " I hold the wooden pin
(Nebi) and the handle of the mallet (semes), I hold
the line in concurrence with the Goddess Safech. My
glance follows the course of the stars. When my eye
comes to the constellation of the great bear and the
time of the number of the hour determined by me is
fulfilled, I place the corner of the temple." This incan-
tation method could hardly advance intelligence; but
the methods of practical measuring were more effec-
tive. Here the rather happy device of using knotted

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 133

cords, carried about by the Harpedonapts, or cord
stretchers, was of some moment. Especially, the fact
that the lengths 3, 4, and 5, brought into triangular
form, served for an interesting connection between
arithmetic and the right triangle, was not a little gain,
later making possible the discovery of the Pythagorean
theorem, although in Egypt the theoretical properties
of the triangle were never developed. The triangle ob-
viously must have been practically considered by the
decorators of the temple and its builders, but the cord
stretchers rendered clear its arithmetical significance.
However, Ahmes' " Rules for attaining the knowledge
of all dark things ... all secrets thait are contained
in objects" (Cantor, loc. cit., p. 22) contains merely
a mixture of all sorts of mathematical information of
a practical nature, — " rules for making a round fruit
house," " rules for measuring fields," " rules for making
an ornament," etc., but hardly a word of arithmetical
and geometrical processes in themselves, unless it be
certain devices for writing fractions and the like.

II
The Progress of Self-conscious Theory
A characteristic of Greek social life is responsible
both for the next phase of the development of mathe-
matical thought and for the misapprehension of its
nature by so many moderns, " When Archytas and
Menaechmus employed mechanical instruments for solv-
ing certain geometrical problems, ' Plato,' says Plu-
tarch, ' inveighed against them with great indignation
and persistence as destroying and perverting all the

134 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

good that there is in geometry; for the method ab-
sconds from incorporeal and intellectual or sensible
things, and besides employs again such bodies as re-
quire much vulgar handicraft: in this way mechanics
was dissimilated and expelled from geometry, and being
for a long time looked down upon by philosophy, be-
came one of the arts of war.' In fact, manual labor
was looked down upon b}^ the Greeks, and a sharp dis-
tinction was drawn between the slaves who performed
bodily work and really observed nature, and the leisured
upper classes who speculated, and often only knew
nature by hearsay. This explains much of the naive
dreamy and hazy character of ancient natural science.
Only seldom did the impulse to make experiments for
oneself break through ; but when it did, a great progress
resulted, as was the case of Archytas and Archimedes.
Archimedes, like Plato, held that it was undesirable for
a philosopher to seek to apply the results of science to
any practical use ; but, whatever might have been his
view of what ought to be in the case, he did actually
introduce a large number of new inventions " ( Jour-
dain, The Nature of Mathematics, pp. 18-19).
Following the Greek lead, certain empirically minded
modern thinkers construe geometry wholly from an
intellectual point of view. History is read by them
as establishing indubitably the proposition that
mathematics is a matter of purely intellectual opera-
tions. But by so construing it, they have, in geome-
try, remembered solely the measuring and forgotten
the land, and, in arithmetic, remembered the counting
and forgotten the things counted.

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 135

Arithmetic experienced little immediate gain from
its new association with geometry, which was destined
to be of momentous import in its latter history, be-
yond the discovery of irrationals (which, however,
were for centuries not accepted as numbers), and the
establishment of the problem of root-taking by its as-
sociation with the square, and interest in negative
numbers.

The Greeks had only subtracted smaller numbers
from larger, but the Arabs began to generalize the
process and had some acquaintance with negative re-
sults, but it was difficult for them to see that these
results might really have significance. N. Chuquet, in
the fifteenth century, seems to have been the first to
interpret the negative numbers, but he remained a long
time without imitators. Michael Stifel, in the sixteenth
century, still calls them " Numeri absurdi " as over
against the " Numeri veri." However, their geometri-
cal interpretation was not difficult, and they soon won
their way into good standing. But the case of the
imaginary is more striking. The need for it was first
felt when it was seen that negative numbers have no
square roots. Chuquet had dealt with second-degree
equations involving the roots of negative numbers in
1484, but says these numbers are " impossible," and
Descartes {Geom., 1637) first uses the word " imagi-
nary " to denote them. Their introduction is due to
the Italian algebrists of the sixteenth century. They
knew that the real roots of certain algebraic equations
of the third degree are represented as results of opera-
tions effected upon " impossible " numbers of the form

136 ' CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

a + h\/ — 1 (where a and h are real numbers) with-
out it beinfT possible in general to find an algebraic
expression for the roots containing only real numbers.
Cardan calculated with these " impossibles," using them
to get real results [(5 + y/— 15) (5 — v^— 15) = 25
— ( — 15) = 40], but adds that it is a " quantitas
quae vere est sophistica " and that the calculus itself
" adeo est subtilis ut est inutilis." In 1629, Girard
announced the theorem that every complete algebraic
equation admits of as many roots, real or imaginar}^,
as there are units in its degree, but Gauss first proved
this in 1799, and finally, in his Theory of Complex
Quantity, in 1831.

Geometry, however, among the Greeks passed into
a stage of abstraction in which lines, planes, etc., in
the sense in which they are understood in our elemen-
tary texts, took the place of actually measured sur-
faces, and also took on the deductive form of presenta-
tion that has served as a model for all mathematical
presentation since Euclid. Mensuration smacked too
much of the exchange, and before the time of Archi-
medes is practically wholly absent. Even such theorems
as " that the area of a triangle equals half the product
of its base and its altitude " is foreign to Euclid (cf.
Cajori, p. 39). Lines were merely directions, and
points limitations from which one worked. But there,
was still dependence upon the things that one meas-
ures. Euclid's elements, " when examined in the light
of strict mathematical logic, . . . has been pro-
nounced by C. S. Peirce to be * Riddled with f alla-
cies ' " (Cajori, p. 37). Not logic, but observation

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 137

of the figures drawn, that is, concrete symboliza-
tion of the processes indicated, saves Euclid from
error.

Roman practical geometry seems to have come from
the Etruscans, but the Roman here is as little inventive
as in his arithmetical ventures, although the latter
were stimulated somewhat by problems of inheritance
and interest reckoning. Indeed, before the entrance of
Arabic learning into Europe and the translation of
Euclid from the Arabic in 1120, there is little or no
advance over the Eg^'ptian geometry of 600 B. C. Even
the universities neglected mathematics. At Paris " in
1336 a rule was introduced that no student should
take a degree without attending lectures on mathe-
matics, and from a commentary on the first six books
of Euclid, dated 1536, it appears that candidates for
the degree of A. M. had to give an oath that they had
attended lectures on these books. Examinations, when
held at all, probably did not extend beyond the first
book, as is sho^vTi by the nickname ' magister mathe-
seos ' applied to the Theorem of Pythagoras, the last
in the first book. ... At Oxford, in the middle of
the fifteenth century, the first two books of Euclid were
read" (Cajori, loc. cit., p. 136). But later geometry
dropped out and not till 1619 was a professorship of
geometry instituted at Oxford. Roger Bacon speaks
of Euclid's fifth proposition as " elefuga," and it also
gets the name of " pons asinorum " from its point of
transition to higher learning. As late as the fourteenth
century an English manuscript begins " Nowe sues
here a Tretis of Geometri whereby you may knowe the

138 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

hegte, dcpnes, and the brede of most what erthely
th^'nges."

The first significant turning-point lies in the geome-
try of Descartes. Viete (1540-1603) and others had
already applied algebra to geometry, but Descartes,
by means of coordinate representation, established the
idea of motion in geometry in. a fashion destined to
react most fruitfully on algebra, and through this, on
arithmetic, as well as enormously to increase the scope
of geometry. These discoveries are not, however, of
first moment for our problem, for the ideas of mathe-
matical entities remain throughout them the general-
ized processes that had appeared in Greece. It is worth
noting, however, that in England mechanics has alwaj^s
been taught as an experimental science, while on the
Continent it has been expanded deductively, as a de-
velopment of a priori principles.

m

contempokary thought in arithmetic and
Geometey

To develop the complete history of arithmetic and
geometry would be a task quite beyond the limits of this
paper, and of the writer's knowledge. In arithmetic
we were able to observe a stage in which spontaneous
behavior led to the invention of number names and
methods of counting. Then, by certain speculative and
" play " impulses, there arose elementary arithmetical
problems which began to be of interest in themselves.
Geometry here also comes into consideration, and, in
connection with positional number symbols, begin those

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 139

interactions between arithmetic and geometry that
result in the forms of our contemporary mathematics.
The complex quantities represented by number sym-
bols are no longer merely the necessary results of
analyzing commercial relations or practical measure-
ments, and geometry is no longer directly based upon
the intuitively given line, point, and plane. If number
relations are to be expressed in terms of empirical spatial
positions, it is necessary to construct many imaginary
surfaces, as is done by Riemann in his theory of func-
tions, a construction representing the type of imagi-
nation which Poincare has called the intuitional in
contradistinction to the logical {Value of Science,
Ch. I). And geometry has not only been led to
the construction of many non-Euclidian spaces, but
has even, with Peano and his school, been freed from
the bonds of any necessary spatial interpretation
whatsoever.

To trace in concrete detail the attainment of mod-
ern refinements of number theory would likewise exhibit
nothing new in the building up of mathematical intelli-
gence. We should find, here, a process carried out
without thought of the consequences, there, an analogy
suggesting an operation that might lead us beyond a
difficulty that had blocked progress ; here, a play in-
terest leading to a combination of symbols out of which a
new idea has sprung; there, a painstaking and methodi-
cal effort to overcome a difficulty recognized from the
start. It is rather for us now to ask what it is that
has been attained by these means, to inquire finally
what are those things called " number " and " line "

UO CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

in the broad sense in which the terms are now used.

In so far as the cardinal number at least is con-
cerned, the answer generally accepted by Dedekind,
Peano, Russell, and such writers is this : the number
is a " class of similar classes " (AVhitehead and Russell,
Prin. Math., Vol. II, p. 4). To the interpretation of
this answer, Mr. Russell, the most self-consciously
philosophical of these mathematicians, has devoted his
full dialectic skill. The definition has at least the
merit of being free from certain arbitrary psychologiz-
ing that has vitiated many earlier attempts at the prob-
lem. Mr. Russell claims for it " (1) that the formal
properties which we expect cardinal numbers to have
result from it; (2) that unless we adopt this definition
or some more complicated and practically equivalent
definition, it is necessary to regard the cardinal num-
ber of a class as indefinable" (loc. cit., p. 4). That
the definition's terms, however, are not without obscur-
ity appears in Mr. Russell's struggles with the zigzag
theory, the no-class theor}^ etc., and finally in his tak-
ing refuge in the theory of " logical types " {loc. cit..
Vol. Ill, Part V. E.), whereby the contradiction that
subverted Frege and drove Mr. Russell from the stand-
point of the Principles of Mathematics is finally over-
come.

The second of Mr. Russell's claims for his definition
adds nothing to the first, for it merely asserts that
unless we adopt some definition of the cardinal number
from which its formal properties result, number Is
undefined. Any such definition would be, ipso facto, a
practical equivalent of the first. We need only con-

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 141

sider whether or no the formal properties of numbers
clearly follow from this definition.

Mr. Russell's own experience makes us hesitate.
When he first adopted this definition from Frege, he
was led to make the inference that the class of all possi-
ble classes might furnish a type for a greatest cardinal
number. But this led to nothing but paradox and
contradiction. The obvious conclusion was that some-
thing was wrong with the concept of class, and the
obvious way out was to deny the possibility of any such
all-inclusive class. Just why there should be such
limitation, except that it enables one to escape the
contradiction, is not clear from Mr. Russell's analysis
(cf. Brown, " The Logic of Mr. Russell," Journ. of
Phil., Psych., and Sci. Meth., Vol. VIII, No. 4, pp.
85-89). Furthermore, to pass to the theory of types
on this ground is to give up the value of the first claim
for the definition (quoted above), since the formal
properties of numbers now merely follow from the defi-
nition because the terms of the definition are reinter-
preted from the properties of number, so that these
properties will follow from it. The definition has be-
come circular.

The real difficulty lies in the concept of the class.
Dogmatic realism is prone to find here an entity for
which, as it is obviously not a physical thing, a home
must be provided in some region of " being." Hence
arises the realm of subsistence, as for Plato the world
of facts duplicated itself in a world of ideas. But
the subsistent realm of the mathematician is even more
astounding than the ideal realm of Plato, for the latter

142 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

world is a prototype of the world of things, while the
world of the mathematician is peopled by all sorts of
entities that never were on land or sea. The trans-
finite numbers of Cantor have, without doubt, a definite
mathematical meaning, but they have no known repre-
sentatives in the world of things, nor in the imagination
of man, and in spite of the efforts of philosophers it
may even be doubted whether an entitj" correlative to
the mathematical infinite has ever been or can ever
be specified.

Mr. Russell now teaches that " classes are merely
symbolic" {Sci. Meth. in Phil., p. 208), but this ex-
pression still needs elucidation. It does, to be sure,
avoid the earlier difficulty of admitting " new and mys-
terious metaphysical entities" {loc. cit., p. 204), but
the " feeling of oddity " that accompanies it seems not
without significance. What can be meant by a merely
symbolic class of similar classes themselves merely sym-
bolical? I do not know, unless it is that we are to
throw overboard the effort aimed at arbitrary and
creative definition and proceed in simple inductive and
interpretative fashion. With classes as entities aban-
doned, we are left, until we have passed to a new point
of view as to arithmetical entities, in the position of
the intelligent ignoramus who defined a stock market
operation as buying what you can't get with money
you never had, and selling what you never owned for
more than it was ever worth.

The situation seems to be that we are now face to
face with new generalizations. Just as number sym-
bols arose to denote operations gone through in count-

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 143

ing things when attention is diverted from the particu-
lar characteristics of the things counted, and remained
a symbol for those operations with things, so now we
are becoming self-conscious of the character of the
operations we have been performing and are develop-
ing new symbols to express possible operations with
operations. The infinity of the number series expresses
the fact that it is possible to continue the enumerating
process indefinitely, and when we are asked by certain
mathematicians to practise ourselves in such thoughts
as that for infinite series a proper part can be the equal
of the whole, where equality is defined through the
establishment of one-one correspondence, we are really
merely informed that among the group of symbols used
to denote the concrete steps of an ever open counting
process are groups of symbols that can be used to
indicate operations that are of the same type as the
given one in so far as the characteristic of being an
open series is concerned. If there were anywhere an
infinity of things to count, an unintelligible supposition,
it would by no means be true that any selection of
things from that series would be the equivalent of all
things in the series, except in so far as equivalence
meant that they could be arranged in the same type
of series as that from which they were drawn.

Similarly the mathematical conception of the con-
tinuum is nothing but a formulation of the manner in
which the cuts of a line or the numbers of a continuous
series must be chosen so that there shall remain no
possible cut or number of which the choice is not in-
dicated. Correspondence is reached between elements

144 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

of such series when the corresponding elements can be
reached by an identical process. It seems to me, how-
ever, a mistake to identify the number continuum with
the linear continuum, for the latter must include the
irrational numbers, whereas the irrational number can
never represent a spatial position in a series. For
example, the \/2 is by nature a decimal involving an
infinite, i.e., an ever increasing, number of digits to
express it and, by virtue of the infinity of these digits,
they can never be looked upon as all given. It is then
truly a number, for it expresses a genuine numerical
operation, but it is not a position, for it cannot be a
determinate magnitude but merely a quantity ap-
proaching a determinate magnitude as closely as one
may please. That is, without its complete expression,
which would be analogous to the self-contradictory task
of finding a greatest cardinal number, there can be no
cut in the line which is symbolized by it. But the opera-
tions of translating algebraic expressions into geomet-
rical ones and vice versa (operations which are so im-
portant in physical investigations) are facilitated by
the notion of a one to one correspondence between num-
ber and space.

When we pass to the transfinite numbers, we have
nothing in the Alephs but the symbols of certain group-
ings of operations expressible in ordinary number
series. And the many forms of numbers are all simply
the result of recognizing value in naming definite
groups of operations of a lower level, which may itself
be a complication of processes indicated by the simple
numerical signs. To create such symbols is by no

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 145

means illegitimate and no paradox results in any forms
as long as we remember that our numbers are not
things but are signs of operations that may be per-
formed directly upon things or upon other operations.

For example, let us consider such a symbol as ^ — 5.
— 5 signifies the totality of a counting process carried
on in an opposite sense from that denoted by +5.
To take the square root is to symbolize a number, the
totality of an operation, such that when the operation
denoted by multiplying it by itself is performed the
result is 5. Consequently the V — 5 is merely the s^^mbol
of these processes combined in such a way that the
whole operation is to be considered as opposite in some
sense to that denoted by ^Jb. Hence, an easy method
for the representation of such imaginaries is based on
the principle of analytic geometry and a system of co-
ordinates.

The nature of this last generalization of mathe-
matics is well shown by Mr. Whitehead in his monu-
mental Universal Algebra. The work begins with the
definition of a calculus as " The art of manipulating
substitutive signs according to fixed rules, and the de-
duction therefrom of true propositions " (loc. cit.,
p. 4). The deduction itself is really a manipulation
according to rules, and the truth consists essentially
in the results being actually derived from the premises
according to rule. Following Stout, substitutive signs
are characterized thus : " a word is an instrument for
thinking about the meaning which it expresses ; a sub-
stitutive sign is a means of not tliinking about the
meaning which it symbolizes." Mathematical symbols

146 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

have, then, become substitutive signs. But this is only
possible because they were at an early stage of their
history exj^ressive signs, and the laws which connected
them were derived from the relations of the things
for which they stood. First it became possible to
forget the things in their concrcteness, and now they
have become mere terms for the relations that had been
generalized between them. Consequently, the things
forgotten and the terms treated as mere elements of a
relational complex, it is possible to state such relational
complexes with the utmost freedom. But this does not
mean that mathematics can be created in a purely
arbitrary fashion. The mark of its origin is upon it in
the need of exhibiting some existing situation through
which the non-contradictory character of its postulates
can be verified. The real advantage of the generaliza-
tion is that of all generalizations in science, namely,
that by looking away from practical applications (as
appears in a historical survey) results are frequently
obtained that would never have been attained if our
labor had been consciously limited merely to those
problems where the advantages of a solution were ob-
vious. So the most fantastic forms of mathematics,
which themselves seem to bear no relation to actual
phenomena, just because the relations involved in them
are the relations that have been derived from dealing
with an actual world, may contribute to the solutions of
problems in other forms of calculus, or even to the crea-
tion of new forms of mathematics. And these new forms
may stand in a more intimate connection with aspects
of the real world than the original mathematics.

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS li7

In 1836-39 there appeared in the Gelehrte Schriften
der Vmversitdt Kasan, Lobatchewsky's epoch-making
" New Elements of Geometry, with a Complete Theory
of Parallels." After proving that " if a straight line
falling on two other straight lines make the alternate
angles equal to one another, the two straight lines
shall be parallel to one another," Euclid, finding him-
self unable to prove that in every other case they
were not parallel, assumed it in an as;iom. But it
had never seemed obvious. Lobatchewsky's system
amounted merely to developing a geometry on the basis
of the contradictory axiom, that through a point out-
side a line jan indefinite number of lines can be drawn,
no one of which shall cut a given line in that plane.
In 1832-33, similar results were attained by Johann
Bolyai in an appendix to his father's " Tenta-
men juventutem studiosam in elementa matheseosos
puree . . . introducendi " entitled " The Science of
Absolute Space." In 1824 the dissertation of Riemann,
under Gauss, introduced the idea of an «-ply extended
magnitude, or a study of ^-dimensional manifolds and
a new road was opened for mathematical intelligence.

At first this new knowledge suggested all sorts of
metaphysical hypotheses. If it is possible to build
geometries of ri-dimensions or geometries in which the
axiom of parallels is no longer true, why may it not
be that the space in which we make our measurements
and on which we base our mechanics is some one of
these "non-Euclidian" spaces.? And indeed many ex-
periments were conducted in search of some clue that
this might be the case. Such experiments in relation to

148 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

" curved spaces " seemed particularly alluring, but a] I
have turned out to be fruitless in results. Failure leads
to investigation of the causes of failure. If our space
had been some one of these spaces how would it have
been possible for us to know this fact.? The traditional
definition of a straight line has never been satisfactory
from a physical point of view. To define it as the short-
est distance between two points is to introduce the idea
of distance, and the idea of distance itself has no
meaning without the idea of straight line, and so the
definition moves in a vicious circle. On the metaphysi-
cal side, Lotze {Metaphysik, p. 249) and others (Merz,
History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Cen-
tury, Vol. II, p. 716) criticized these attempts, on the
whole justly, but the best interpretation of the situa-
tion has been given by Poincare.

Two lines of thought now lead to a recasting of our
conceptions of the fundamental notions of geometry.
On the one hand, that very investigation of postulates
that had led to the discovery of the apparently strange
non-Euclidian geometries was easily continued to an
investigation of the simplest basis on which a geometry
could be founded. Then by reaction it was continued
with similar methods in dealing with algebra, and other
forms of analysis, with the result that conceptions of
mathematical entities have gradually emerged that rep-
resent a new stage of abstraction in the evolution of
mathematics, soon to be discussed as the dominating
conceptions in contemporary thought. On the other
hand, there also developed the problem of the relations
of these geometrical worlds to one another, which has

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 149

been primarily significant in helping to clear up the
relations of mathematics in its " pure " and " applied "
forms.

Geometry passed through a stage of abstraction like
that examined in connection with arithmetic. Begin-
ning with the discovery of non-Euclidian geometry, it
has been becoming more and more evident that a line
need not be a name for an aspect of a physical object
such as the ridge-pole line of a house and the like, nor
even for the more abstract mechanical characteristic
of direction of movement; — although the persistency
with which intuitionally minded geometers have sought
to adapt such illustrations to their needs has somewhat
obscured this fact. However, even a cursory examina-
tion of a modern treatise on geometry makes clear
what has taken place. For example, Professor Hilbert
begins his Grundlagen der Geometrie, not with defini-
tion of points, lines, and planes, but with the assump-
tion of three different systems of things (Dinge) of
which the first, called points, are denoted A, B, C, etc.,
second, called straight lines (Gerade), are denoted
a, b, c, etc., and the third, called planes, are denoted
by a, fty y, etc. The relations between these things
then receive " genaue und vollstandige Beschreibung "
through the axioms of the geometry. And the fact
that these " things " are called points, lines, and planes
is not to give to them any of the connotations ordi-
narily associated with these words further than are
determined by the axiom groups that follow. Indeed,
other geometers are even more explicit on this point.
Thus for Peano (/ Principii di Geometria, 1889) the

150 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

line is a mere class of entities, the relations amongst
which are no longer concrete relations but types of re-
lations. The plane is a class of classes of entities, etc.
And an almost unlimited number of examples, about
which the theorems of the geometry will express truths,
can be exhibited, not one of which has any close re-
semblance to spatial facts in the ordinary sense.

Philosophers, it seems to me, have been slow to rec-
ognize the significance of the step involved in this last
phase of mathematical thought. We have been so
schooled in an arbitrary distinction between relations
and concepts, that while long familiar with general
ideas of concepts, we are not familiar with general-
ized ideas of relations. Yet this is exactly what
mathematics is everywhere presenting. A transition
has been made from relations to types of rela-
tions, so that instead of speaking in terms
of quantitative, spatial and temporal relations,
mathematicians can now talk in terms of symmet-
rical, asymmetrical, transitive, intransitive rela-
tional types and the like. These present, however,
nothing but the empirical character that is common to
such relations as that of father and son ; debtor and
creditor; master and servant; a is to the left of b,
b of c; c of d; a is older than b, b than c, c than d,
etc. Hence this is not abandonment of experience
but a generalization of it, which results in a calculus
potentially applicable not only to it but also to other
subject-m.atter of thought. Indeed, if it were not for
the possibility of this generalization, the almost un-
limited applicability of diagrams, so useful in the

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 151

classroom, to illustrate everything from the nature
of reality to the categorical imperative, as well as to
the more technical usages of the psychological and
social sciences, would not be understandable.

It would be a paradox, however, if starting out from
processes of counting and measuring, generalizations
had been attained that no longer had significance for
counting or measuring, and the non-Euclidian hyper-
dimensional geometries seem at first to present this
paradox. But, as the outcome of our second line of
thought proves, this is not the case. The investigation
of the relations of different geometrical systems to
each other has shown (cf. Brown, "The Work of H.
Poincare," Journ. of Phil., Psy., and Sci. Meth., Vol.
XI, No. 9, p. 229) that these different systems have a
correspondence with one another so that for any
theorem stated in one of them there is a correspond-
ing theorem that can be stated in another. In other
words, given any factual situation that can be stated
in Euclidian geometry, the aspect treated as a straight
line in the Euclidian exposition will be treated as a
curve in the non-Euclidian, and a situation treated as
three-dimensional by Euclid's methods can be treated
as of any number of dimensions when the proper funda-
mental element is chosen, and vice versa, although of
course the element will not be the line or plane in our
empirical usage of the term. This is what Poincare
means by saying that our geometry is a free choice,
but not arbitrary {The Value of Science, Pt. Ill,
Cli. X, Sec. 3), for there are many limitations imposed
by fact upon the choice, and usually there is some

152 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

clear indication of convenience as to the system chosen,
based on the fundamental ideal of simplicity.

It is evident, then, that geometry and arithmetic
have been drawing closer together, and that to-day the
distinction between them is somewhat hard to main-
tain. The older arithmetic had limited itself largely
to the studj' of the relations involved in serial orders
as suggested by counting, whereas geometry had con-
cerned itself primarily with the relations of groups of
such series to each other when the series, or groups
of series, are represented as lines or planes. But partly
by interaction in analytic geometry, and partly in the
generalization of their own methods, both have come to
recognize the fundamental character of the relations
involved in their thought, and arithmetic, through the
complex number and the algebraic unknown quantities,
has come to consider more complex serial types, while
geometry has approached the analysis of its series
through interaction with number theory. For both,
the content of their entities and the relations involved
have been brought to a mmimum. And this is true even
of such apparently essentially intuitional fields as pro-
jective geometry, where entities can be substituted for
directional lines and the axioms be turned into rela-
tional postulates governing their configurations.

Nevertheless, geometry like arithmetic, has remained
true to the need that gave it initial impulse. As in
the beginning it was only a method of dealing with a
concrete situation, so in the end it is nothing but such
a method, although, as in the case of arithmetic, from
ever closer contact with the situation in question, it

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 153

has been led, by refinements that thoughtful and con-
tinual contact bring, to dissect that situation and give
heed to aspects of it which were undreamed of at the
initial moment. In a sense, then, there are no such
things as mathematical entities, as scholastic realism
would conceive them. And yet, mathematics is not
dealing with unrealities, for it is everywhere concerned
with real rational types and systems where such types
may be exemplified. Or we can say in a purely prac-
tical way that mathematical entities are constituted
by their relations, but this phrase cannot here be
interpreted in the Hegelian ontological sense in which
it has played so great and so pernicious a part in con-
temporary philosophy. Such metaphysical interpre-
tation and its consequences are the basis of paradoxi-
cal absolutisms, such as that arrived at by Professor
Royce {World and the Individual, Vol. II, Supple-
mentary Essay). The peculiar character of abstract
or pure mathematics seems to be that its own opera-
tions on a lower level constitute material which serves
for the subject-matter with which its later investiga-
tions deal. But mathematics is, after all, not funda-
mentally different from the other sciences. The
concepts of all sciences alike constitute a special
language peculiarly adapted for dealing with certain
experience adjustments, and the differences in the
development of the different sciences merely express
different degrees of success with which such languages
have been formulated with respect to making it possi-
ble to predict concerning not yet realized situations.
Some sciences are still seeking their terms and funda-

154 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

mental concepts, others arc formulating their first
" grammar," and mathematics, still inadequate, yearly
gains both in vocabulary and flexibility.

But if we are to conceive mathematical entities as
mere terminal points in a relational system, it is neces-
sary that we should become clear as to just what is
meant by relation, and what is the connection between
relations and quantities. Modern thought has shown
a strong tendency to insist, somewhat arbitrarily, on
the " internal " or " external " character of relations.
The former emphasis has been primarily associated
with idealistic ontology, and has often brought with it
complex dialectic questions as to the identity of an
individual thing in passing from one relational situa-
tion to another. The latter insistence has meant pri-
marily that things do not change with changing rela-
tions to other things. It has, however, often implied
the independent existence, in some curiously metaphysi-
cal state, of relations that are not relating anything,
and is hardly less paradoxical than the older view.
In the field of phj'sical phenomena, it seems to triumph,
while the facts of social life, on the other hand, lend
some countenance to the view of the " internalists."
Like many such discussions, the best way around them
is to forget their arguments, and turn to a fresh and
independent investigation of the facts in question.

IV

Things, Relations, and Quantities
As I write, the way is paved for me by Professor
Cohen (Journ. of Phil., Tsy., and Sci. Meth., Vol. XI,

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 155

No. 23, Nov. 5, 1914, pp. 623-24), who outlines a
theory of relations closely allied to that which I have
in mind. Professor Cohen writes : " Like the distinc-
tion between primary and secondary qualities, the dis-
tinction between qualities and relations seems to me a
shifting one because the * nature ' of a thing changes
as the thing shifts from one context to another. . . .
To Professors Montague and Love joy the * thing ' is
like an old-fashioned landowner and the qualities are
its immemorial private possessions. A thing may enter
into commercial relations with others, but these rela-
tions are extrinsic. It never parts with its patrimony.
To me, the * nature ' of a thing seems not to be so
private or fixed. It may consist entirely of bonds,
stocks, franchises, and other ways in which public
credit or the right to certain transactions is repre-
sented. ... At any rate, relations or transactions
may be regarded as wider or more primary than quali-
ties or possessions. The latter may be defined as in-
ternal relations, that is, relations within the system
that constitutes the ' thing.' The nature of a thing
contains an essence, i.e., a group of characteristics
which, in any given system or context, remain invari-
ant, so that if these are changed the things drop out
of our system . . . but the same thing may present
different essences in different contexts. As a thing
shifts from one context to another, it acquires new
relations and drops old ones, and in all transforma-
tions there is a change or readjustment of the line
between the internal relations which constitute the

156 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

essence and the external relations which are outside the
inner circle. ..."

Before continuing, however, I wish to make certain
interpretations of these statements for which, of course,
Professor Cohen is not responsible, and with which he
would not be wholh' in agreement. My general atti-
tude will be shouTi by the first comment. Concepts
are only means of denoting fragments of experience
directly or indirectly given. If we then try to speak
of a " nature of a thing " two interpretations of this
expression are possible. The " thing " as such is only
a bit of reality which some motive, that without undue
extension of the term can be called practical, has led
us to treat as more or less isolable from the rest of
reality. Its nature, then, may consist of either its
relations to other practically isolated realities or
things, its actual effective value in its environment
(and hence shift with the environment as Professor
Cohen points out), or may consist of its essence, the
" relations within the system," considered from the
point of view of the potentialities implied by these for
various environments. In the first sense the nature
may easily change with change in environment, but if
it changes in the second sense, as Professor Cohen
remarks, it " drops out of our system." This I should
interpret as meaning that we no longer have that thing,
but some other thing selected from reality by a differ-
ent purpose and point of view. I should not say with
Professor Cohen that " the same thing may present
different essences in different contexts." Every reality
is more than one thing — man is an aggregate of atoms,

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 157

a living being, an animal, and a thinker, and all of
these are different things in essence, although having
certain common characteristics. All attribution of
" thingship " is abstraction, and all particular things
may be said to participate in higher, i.e., more abstract,
levels of thingship. Hence the effort to retain a thing-
ship through a changing of essence seems to me but
the echo of the motive that has so long deduced
ontological monism from the logical fact that to
conceive any two things is at least to throw them
into a common universe of discourse. Consequently
I should part company from Professor Cohen on this
one point (which is perhaps largely a matter of defini-
tion, though here not unimportant) and distinguish
merely the nature of a thing as actual and as potential.
Of these the former alone changes with the environ-
ment, while the latter changes only as the thing ceases
to be by passing into some other thing. In other
words, if the example does not do violence to Professor
Cohen's thought, I can quite understand this paper
as a stimulator of criticism, or as a means of kindling
a fire. Professor Cohen would, I suspect, take this
to mean that the same thing — this paper — must be
looked upon as having two different essences in two
different contexts, for " the same thing may possess
two different essences in different contexts," whereas
I should prefer to interpret the situation as meaning
that there are before me three (and as many more
as may be) different things having three different
essences: first, the paper as a physical object having
a considerable number of definite properties ; second,

158 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

written words, which are undoubtedly in one sense mere
structural modifications of the physical object paper
(i.e., coloring on it by ink, etc.), but whose reality
for my purpose lies in the power of evoking ideas
acquired by things as symbols (things, indeed, but
things whose essence lies in the effects they produce
upon a reader rather than in their physical character) ;
and third, the chemical and combustion producing
properties of the paper. Now it is simpler for me to
consider the situation as one in which three things
have a common point in thingship, i.e., an abstract
element in common, than to think of " a thing " shifting
contexts and thereby changing its essence.

But now my divergence from Professor Cohen be-
comes more marked. He continues with the following
example (p. 622) : " Our neighbor M. is tall, modest,
cheerful, and we understand a banker. His tallness,
modesty, cheerfulness, and the fact that he is a banker
we usually regard as his qualities ; the fact that he is
our neighbor is a relation which he seems to bear to us.
He may move his residence, cease to be our neighbor,
and yet remain the same person with the same quali-
ties. If, however, I become his tailor, his tallness
becomes translated into certain relations of measure-
ment; if I become his social companion, his modesty
means that he will stand in certain social relations
with me, etc." In other words, we are illustrating the
doctrine that " qualities are reducible to relations "
(cf. p. 623). This doctrine I cannot quite accept
without modification, for I cannot tell what it means.
Without any presuppositions as to subjectivity or

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 159

consciousness (cf. p. 623, (a).) there are in the world
as I know it certain colored objects — let the expression
be taken naively to avoid idealistico-realistic discussion
which is here irrelevant. Now it is as unintelligible
to me that the red flowers and green leaves of the
geraniums before my windows should be reducible to
mere relations in any existential sense, as it would be
to ask for the square root of their odor, though of
course it is quite intelligible that the physical theory
and predictions concerning green and red surfaces
(or odors) should be stated in terms of atomic dis-
tances and ether vibrations of specific lengths. The
scientific conception is, after all, nothing more than
an indication of how to take hold of things and ma-
nipulate them to get foreseen results, and its entities
are real things only in the sense that they are the
practically effective keynotes of the complex reality.
Accordingly, instead of reducing qualities to relations,
it seems to me a much more intelligible view to con-
sider relations as abstract ways of taking qualities in
general, as qualities thought of in their function of
bridging a gap or making a transition between two
bits of reality that have previously been taken as
separate things. Indeed, it is just because things are
not ontologically independent beings (but rather selec-
tions from genuinely concatenated existence) that
relations become important as indications of the prac-
tical significance of qualitative continuities which have
been neglected in the prior isolation of the thing.
Thus, instead of an existential world that is " a net-
work of relations whose intersections are called terras "

160 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

(p. 622), I find more intelligible a qualitatively hetero-
geneous reality tl|at can be variously partitioned into
things, and that can be abstractly replaced by systems
of terms and relations that are adequate to s3'mbolize
their effective nature in particular respects. There is '
a tendency for certain attributes to maintain their
concreteness (qualitativeness) in things, and for others
to suggest the connection of things with other things,
and so to emphasize a more abstract aspect of experi-
ence. Thus there arises a temporary and practical
distinction that tends to be taken as opposition be-
tween qualities and relations. As spatial and temporal
characteristics possess their chief practical value in
the connection of things, so they, like Professor Cohen's
neighbor-character, are ordinarily assumed abstractly
as mere relations, while shapes, colors, etc., and Pro-
fessor Cohen's " modesty, tallness, cheerfulness," may
be thought of more easily without emphasis on other
things and so tend to be accepted in their concreteness
as qualities, but how slender is the dividing-line Pro-
fessor Cohen's easy translation of these things into
relations makes clear.

Taken purely intellectualistically, there would be
first a fiction of separation in what is really already'
continuous and then another fiction to bridge the gap
thus made. This would, of course, be the falsification
against which Bergson inveighs. But this interpreta-
tion is to misunderstand the nature of abstraction.
Abstraction does not substitute an unreal for a real,
but selects from reality a genuine characteristic of it
which is adequate for a particular purpose. Thus to

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS l6l

conceive time as a succession of moments is not to
falsify time, but to select from processes going on in
time a characteristic of them through which predic-
tions can be made, which may be verified and turned
into an instrument for the control of life or environ-
ment. A similar misunderstanding of abstraction,
coupled with a fuller appreciation than Bergson
evinces of the value of its results, has led to the neo-
realistic insistence on turning abstractions into exist-
ent entities of which the real world is taken to be an
organized composite aggregate.

The practice of turning qualities into merely con-
scious entities has done much to obscure the status
of scientific knowing, for it has left mere quantity as
the only real character of the actual world. But once
take a realistic standpoint, and quantity is no more
real than quality. For primitive man, the qualitative
aspect of reality is probably the first to which he gives
heed, and it is only through efforts to get along with
the world in its qualitative character that its quantita-
tive side is forced upon the attention. Then so-called
" exact " science is born, but it does not follow that
qualities henceforth become insignificant. They are
still the basis of all relations, even of those that are
most directly construed as quantitative. Quality and
quantity are only different aspects of the world which
the status of our practical life leads us to take sepa-
rately or abstractly. " Thing " is no less an abstrac-
tion, in which we disregard certain continuities with
the rest of the world because we are so constituted that
the demands of living make it expedient to do so.

162 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Things once given, further abstractions become possi-
ble, among which are those leading to mathematical
thinking, in which higher abstractions are made,
guided alwaj^s by the " generating problem " (cf. Karl
Schmidt, Jour, of Phil., Psy., and Sci. Meth., Vol. X,
No. 3, 1913, pp. 64-75).

V

The Function of Theory in Science
The controlling factors for the progress of scientific
thought are inventions that lead the scientist into
closer contact with his data, and direct attention to
complexities which would otherwise have escaped ob-
servation. This end is best fulfilled by conceiving
entities that under some point of view are practically
isolable from the context in which they occur. Only
too often philosophic thought has confused this prac-
tical segregation with ontological separation, and so
been obliged to introduce metaphysical and external
relations to bring these entities together again in a
real world, when in reality they have never been sepa-
rated from one another and hence not from the real
world. Furthermore, the conceptual model, built on
the lines of a calculus of mathematics, is often con-
sidered the truth par excellence after the analogy of
a camera's portrait. Progress in science, however,
shows that these models have to be continually rebuilt.
Each seems to lead to further knowledge that necessi-
tates its reconstruction, so that truth takes on an ideal
value as an ultimate but unattained, if not unattain*
able, goal, while existing science becomes reduced to

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS l63

working hypotheses. From a positivistic point of view,
however, the goal is not only practically unattain-
able, but it is irrational, for there seems to be every
evidence that it expresses something contrary to the
nature of the real. Yet scientific theory is not wholly
arbitrary. We cannot construe nature as constituted
of any sorts of entities that may suit our whim. And
this is because science itself recognizes that its entities
are not really isolated, but are endowed with all sorts
of properties that serve to connect them with other
entities. They are only symbols of critical points of
reality which, conceived in a certain way, make the
behavior of the whole intelligible. Indeed, the only
significant sense in which they are true for the scientist
is that they indicate real connections that might other-
wise have been overlooked, and this is only possible
from the fact that reality has the characteristics that
they present and that, with their relations, they give
an approximate presentation of what is actually pre-
sented just as a successful portrait painter considers
the individuality of the eyes, nose, mouth, etc., al-
though he does not imply that a face is compounded
of these separate features as a house is built of
boards.

The atomic theory, for example, has undoubtedly
been of the greatest service to chemistry, and atoms
undoubtedly denote a significant resting-place in the
analysis of the physical world. Yet in the light of
electron theories, it is becoming more and more evident
that atoms are not ultimate particles, and are not even
all alike (Becker, " Isostasy and Radioactivity," ScL,

164. CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Jan. 29, 1915) when they represent a single sub-
stance. Again, while there is as yet no evidence to sug-
gest that the electron must itself be considered as
divisible (unless it be the distinction between the posi-
tive and negative electron), there are' suggestions that
electrons may themselves arise and pass away (cf.
Moore, Origin, and Nature of Life, p. 39). " A wisely
positivistic mind," writes Enriques (Problems of
Science, p. 34), " can see in the atomic hypothesis only
a subjective representation," * and, we might add, " in
any other hypothesis." He continues (pp. 34-36) :
" robbing the atom of the concrete attributes inherent
in its image, we find ourselves regarding it as a mere
symbol. The logical value of the atomic theory de-
pends, then, upon the establishment of a proper corre-
spondence between the symbols which it contains and
the reality which we are trying to represent.

" Now, if we go back to the time when the atomic
theory was accepted by modern chemistry, we see that
the plain atomic formulae contain only the representa-
tion of the invariable relations in the combination of
simple bodies, in weight and volume; these last being
taken in relation to a well-defined gaseous state.

" But, once introduced into science, the atomic
phraseology suggested the extension of the meaning
of the symbols, and the search in reality for facts in
correspondence with its more extended conception.

" The theory advances, urged on, as it were, by its

* But it would be better to use the term " logically-practical "
instead of "subjective" with the psychical implications of that
term.

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 165

metaphysical nature, or, if you wish, by the associa-
tion of ideas which the concrete image of the atom
carries with it.

" Thus for the plain formulas we have substituted,
in the chemistry of carbon compounds, structural for-
mulas, which come to represent, thanks to the disposi-
tion or grouping of atoms in a molecule, structural
relations of the second degree, that is to say, relations
inherent in certain chemical transformations with re-
spect to which some groups of elements have in some
way an invariant character. And here, because the
image of a simple molecule upon a plane does not
suffice to explain, for example, the facts of isomerism,
we must resort to the stereo-chemical representation of
Van't Hoff.

" Must we further recall the kinetic theory of gases,
the facts explained by the breaking up of molecules
into ions, the hypothesis suggested, for example, by
Van der Waals by the view that an atom has an actual
bulk? Must we point to a physical phenomenon of
quite a different class, for example, to the coloring of
the thin film forming the soap-bubbles which W.
Thomson has taken as the measure of the size of a
molecule?

" Such a resume of results shows plainly that we
cannot help the progress of science by blocking the
path of theory and looking only at its positive aspects,
that is to say, at the collection of facts that it explains.
The value of a theory lies rather in the hypothesis
which it can suggest, by means of the psychological
representation of the symbols.

166 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

" We shall not draw from all this the conclusion that
the atomic hypothesis ought to correspond to the ex-
tremely subtle sensations of a being resembling a per-
fected man. We shall not even reason about the possi-
bility of those imaginary sensations, in so far as they
are conceived simply as an extension of our own. But
we shall repeat, in regard to the atomic theory, what
an illustrious master is said to have remarked as to
the unity of matter: if on first examination a fact
seems possible which contradicts the atomic view of
things, there is a strong probability that such a fact
will be disproved by experience.

" Does not such a capacity for adaptation to facts,
thus furnishing a model for them, perhaps denote the
positive reality of a theory? "

And the above principles are as true of mathematical
concepts as of chemical. Everywhere it is " capacity
of adaptation to facts " that is the criterion of a
branch of mathematics, except, of course, that in
mathematics the facts are not always physical facts.
Mathematics has successfully accomplished a generali-
zation whereby its own methods furnish the material for
higher generalizations. The imaginary' number and the
hyper-dimensional or non-Euclidian geometries may be
absurd if measured by the standard of phj'sical reality^,
but they nevertheless have something real about them
in relation to certain mathematical processes on a
lower level. There is no philosophic paradox about
modern arithmetic or geometry, once it is recognized
that they are merely abstractions of genuine features
of simpler and more obviously practical manipulations

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 167

that are clearly derived from the dealing of a human
being with genuine realities.

In the light of these considerations, I cannot help
feeling that the frequent attempts of mathematicians
with a philosophical turn of mind, and philosophers
who are dipping into mathematics, to derive geomet-
rical entities from psychological considerations are
quite mistaken, and are but another example of those
traditional presuppositions of psychology which. Pro-
fessor Dewey has pointed out {Jour, of Phil., Psy.,
and Set. Meth., XI, No. 19, p. 508), were " bequeathed
by seventeenth-century philosophy to psychology, in-
stead of originating within psychology "... that
" were wished upon it by philosophy when it was as
yet too immature to defend itself."

Henri Poincare {Science and Hypothesis, Ch. IV,
The Value of Science, Ch. IV) and Enriques (Prob-
lems of Science, Ch. IV, esp. B — The Psychological
Acquisition of Geometrical Concepts) furnish two of
the most familiar examples of this sort of philoso-
phizing. Each isolates special senses, sight, touch, or
motion, and tries to show how a being merely equipped
with one or the other of these senses might arrive at
geometrical conceptions which differ, of course, from
space as represented by our familiar Euclidian geome-
try. Then comes the question of fusing these different
sorts of experience into a single experience of which
geometry may be an intelligible transcription. En-
riques finds a parallel between the historical develop-
ment and the psycho-genetic development of the postu-
lates of geometry {loc. cit., p. 214 seq.). " The three

168 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

groups of ideas that are connected with the concepts
that serve as the basis for the theory of continuum
(Analysis situs) ^ of meterical, and of projective geome-
try, may be connected, as to their psychological origin,
with three groups of sensations : with the general tac-
tile-muscular sensations, with those of special touch,
and of sight, respectively." Poincare even evokes an-
cestral experience to make good his case (Sci. and
Hyp., Ch. V, end). "It has often been said that if
individual experience could not create geometry, the
same is not true of ancestral experience. But what
does that mean.'' Is it meant that we could not experi-
mentally demonstrate Euclid's postulate, but that our
ancestors have been able to do it? Not in the least.
It is meant that by natural selection our mind has
adapted itself to the conditions of the external world,
that it has adopted the geometry most advantageous
to the species : or in other words, the most convenient.^*
Now undoubtedly there may be a certain modicum
of truth in these statements. As implied by the last
quotation from Poincare, the modern scientist can
hardly doubt that the fact of the adaptation of our
thinking to the world we live in is due to the fact that
it is in that world that we evolved. As is implied by
both writers, if one could limit human contact with the
world to a particular form of sense response, thought
about that world would take place in different terms
from what it now does and would presumably be less
efficient. But these admissions do not imply that any
light is thrown upon the nature of mathematical enti-
ties by such abstractions. Russell {Scientific Method in

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS I69

Philosophy) is in the curious position of raising arith-
metic to a purely logical status, but playing with
geometry and sensation after the manner of Poincare,
to whom he gives somewhat grudging praise on this
account.

The psychological methods upon which all such in-
vestigations are based are open to all sorts of criticisms.
Chiefly, the conceptions on which they are based, even
if correct, are only abstractions. There is not the
least evidence for the existence of organisms with a
single differentiated sense organ, nor the least evidence
that there ever was such an organism. Indeed, ac-
cording to modern accounts of the evolution of the
nervous system (cf. G. H. Parker, Pop. Sci. Month.,
Feb., 1914') different senses have arisen through a
gradual differentiation of a more general form of stimu-
lus receptor, and consequently, the possibility of the
detachment of special senses is the latter end of the
series and not the first. But, however this may be,
the mathematical concepts that we are studying have
only been grasped by a highly developed organism,
man, but they had already begun to be grasped by him
in an early stage of his career before he had analyzed
his experience and connected it with specific sense
organs. It may of course be a pleasant exercise, if
one likes that sort of thing, to assume with most
psychologists certain elementary sensations, and then
examine the amount of information each can give in
the light of possible mathematical interpretations, but
to do so is not to show that a being so scantily endowed
would ever have acquired a geometry of the type in

170 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

question, or any geometry at all. Inferences of the
sort are in the same category with those from hypo-
thetical children, tliat used to justify all theories of
the pedagogue and psychologist, or from the economic
man, that still, I fear, play too great a part in the
world of social science.

VI

Mathematical Intelligence
The real nature of intelligence as it appears in the
development of mathematics is something quite other
than that of sensory analysis. Intelligence is funda-
mentally skill, and although skill may be acquired in
connection with some sort of sensory contact of an
organism and environment, it is only determined by
that contact in the sense that if the sensory conditions
were different the needs of the organism might be
different, and the kind and degree of skill it could at-
tain would be other than under the conditions at first
assumed. Whenever the beginnings of mathematics
appear with primitive people, we find a stage of de-
velopment that calls for the exercise of skill in dealing
with certain practical situations. Hence we found early
in our investigations that it was impossible to affirm a
weak intelligence from limited achievements in count-
ing, just as it would be absurd to assume the feeble
intelligence of a philosopher from his inability to ma-
nipulate a boomerang. The instance merely sug-
gests a kind of skill that he has never been led to
acquire.

Yet it is possible to distinguish intellectual skill, or

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 171

better skills, from physical or athletic prowess. Pri-
marily, it is directed at the formation and use of con-
cepts, and the concept is only a symbol that can be
substituted for experiences. A well-built concept is a
part of a system of concepts where relations have taken
the place of real connections in such a fashion that,
forgetting the actuality, it is possible to present situa-
tions that have never occurred or at least are not
immediately given at the time and place of the presen-
tation, and to substitute them for actual situations
in such a fashion that these may be expediently met,
if or when such situations present themselves. An iso-
lated concept, that is, one not a part of any system, is as
mythical an entity as any savage ever dreamed. In-
deed,, it would add much to the clearness of our think-
ing if we could limit the use of " intelligence " to skill
in constructing and using different systems of concepts,
and speak concretely of mathematical intelligence,
philosophical intelligence, economic intelligence, his-
toric intelligence, and the like. The problem of
creative intelligence is, after all, the problem of the
acquisition of certain forms of skill, and while the
general lines are the same for all knowledge (because
the instruments are everywhere symbolic presentations,
or concepts), in each field the situation studied makes
different types of difficulties to be overcome and sug-
gest different methods of attaining the object.

In mathematics, the formal impulse to reduce the
content of fundamental concepts to a minimum, and
to stress merely relations has been most successful.
We saw its results in such geometries as Hilbert's and

172 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Peano's, where the empty name " entity " supplants
the more concrete " point," and the " 1 " of arithmetic
has the same character. In the social sciences, how-
ever, such examples as the " political " and the " eco-
nomic " man are signal failures, while, perhaps, the
" atom " and the " electron " approach the ideal in
physics and chemistry. In mathematics, all further
concepts can be defined by collections of these funda-
mental entities constituted in certain specified ways.
And it is worth noting that both factually and logically
a collection of entities so defined is not a mere aggre-
gate, but possesses a differentiated character of its
own which, although the resultant of its constitution,
is not a property of any of its elements. A whole
number is thus a collection of Is, but the properties of
the whole number are something quite different from
that of the elements through which it is constituted,
just as an atom may be composed of electrons and yet,
in valency, possess a property that is not the direct an-
alogue of any property possessed by electrons not so
organized.

Natural science, however, considers such building
up of its fundamental entities into new entities as a
process taking place in time rather than as consequent
upon change of form of the whole rendering new
analytic forms expedient. Hence it points to the oc-
currence of genuine novelties in the realm of objective
reality. Mathematics, on the other hand, has general-
ized its concepts beyond the facts implied in spatial
and temporal observations, so that while significant
in both fields by virtue of the nature of its abstractions,

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 173

its novelties are the novelties of new conceptual forma-
tions, a distinguishing of previously unnoted generaliza-
tions of relations existent in the realm of facts.
But the fact that time has thus passed beyond its
empirical meaning in the mathematical realm is no
ground for giving mathematics an elevated position as
a science of eternal realities, of subsistent beings, or
the like. The generalization of concepts to cover both
spatial and temporal facts does not create new entities
for which a home must be provided in the partition of
realities. Metaphysicians should not be the " needy
knife grinders" of M. Anatole France (cf. Garden of
Epicurus, Ch. " The Language of the Metaphysi-
cians "). Nevertheless, the success of abstraction for
mathematical intelligence has been immense.

No significant thinking is wholly the work of an
individual man. Ideas are a product of social coopera-
tion in which some have wrested crude concepts from
nature, others have refined them through usage, and
still others have built them into an effective system.
The first steps were undoubtedly taken in an effort to
communicate, and progress has been in part the prog-
ress of language. The original nature of man may
have as a part those reactions which we call curiosity,
but, as Auguste Comte long ago pointed out (Levy-
Bruhl, A. Comte, p. 67), these reactions are among the
feeblest of our nature and without the pressure of prac-
tical affairs could hardly have advanced the race be-
yond barbarism. Science was the plaything of the
Greek, the consolation of the Middle Ages, and only
for the modern has it become an instrument in such

174 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

fashion as to mark an epoch in the still dawning dis-
covery of mind.

Man is, after all, rational only because through his
nervous system he can hold his immediate responses
in check and finally react as a being that has had
experiences and profited by them. Concepts are the
medium through which these experiences are in effect
preserved ; the}' express not merely a fact recorded but
also the significance of a fact, not merely a contact
with the world but also an attitude toward the future.
It may be that the mere judgment of fact, a citation
of resemblances and differences, is the basis of scien-
tific knowledge, but before knowledge is worthy of the
name, these facts have undergone an ideal transforma-
tion controlled by the needs of successful prediction
and motivated by that self-conscious realization of the
value of control which has raised man above the beasts
of the field.

The realm of mathematics, which we have been ex-
amining, is but one aspect of the growth of intelligence.
But in theory, at least, it is among the most
interesting, since in it are reached the highest
abstractions of science, while its empirical be-
ginnings are not lost. But its processes and
their significance are in no way different in
essence from those of the other sciences. It marks
one road of specialization in the discovery of mind.
And in these terms we may read all history. To
quote Professor Woodbridge (Columbia University
Quarterly, Dec, 1912, p. 10) : " We may see man
rising from the ground, startled by the first dim inti-

INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS 175

raation that the things and forces about him are
convertible and controllable. Curiosity excites him,
but he is subdued by an untrained imagination. The
things that frighten him, he tries to frighten in return.
The things that bless him, he blesses. He would scare
the earth's shadow from the moon and sacrifice his
dearest to a propitious sky. It avails not. But the
little things teach him and discipline his imagination.
He has kicked the stone that bruised him only to be
bruised again. So he converts the stone into a weapon
and begins the subjugation of the world, singing a song
of triumph by the way. Such is his history in epitome
— a blunder, a conversion, a conquest, and a song.
That sequence he will repeat in greater things. He
will repeat it yet and rejoice where he now despairs,
converting the chaos of his social, political, industrial,
and emotional life into wholesome force. He will sing
again. But the discovery of mind comes first, and then,
the song."

SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND INDIVIDUAL

THINKER

GEORGE H. MEAD

The scientist in the ancient world found his test of
reality in the evidence of the presence of the essence
of the object. This evidence came by way of observa-
tion, even to the Platonist. Plato could treat this
evidence as the awaking of memories of the ideal essence
of the object seen in a world beyond the heavens during
a former stage of the existence of the soul. In the
language of Theatetus it was the agreement of fluc-
tuating sensual content with the thought-content im-
printed in or viewed by the soul. In Aristotle it is again
the agreement of the organized sensuous experience
with the vision which the mind gets of the essence of
the object through the perceptual experience of a num-
ber of instances. That which gives the stamp of reality
is the coincidence of the percept with a rational content
which must in some sense be in the mind to insure
knowledge, as it must be in the cosmos to insure exist-
ence, of the object. The relation of this test of reality
to an analytical method is evident. Our perceptual
world is always more crowded and confused than the
ideal contents by which the reality of its meaning is
to be tested. The aim of the analysis varies with the
character of the science. In the case of Aristotle's
theoretical sciences, such as mathematics and meta-

176

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 177

physics, where one proceeds by demonstration from the
given existences, analysis isolates such elements as
numbers, points, lines, surfaces, and solids, essences
and essential accidents. Aristotle approaches nature,
however, as he approaches the works of human art.
Indeed, he speaks of nature as the artificer par excel-
lence. In the study of nature, then, as in the study
of the practical and productive arts, it is of the first
importance that the observer should have the idea — the
final cause — as the means of deciphering the nature of
living forms. Here analysis proceeds to isolate charac-
ters which are already present in forms whose functions
are assumed to be known. By analogy such identities
as that of fish fins with limbs of other vertebrates are
assumed, and some very striking anticipations of mod-
ern biological conceptions and discoveries are reached.
Aristotle recognizes that the theory of the nature of
the form or essence must be supported by observation
of the actual individual. What is lacking is any body
of observation which has value apart from some theory.
He tests his theory by the observed individual which
is already an embodied theory, rather than by what
we are wont to call the facts. He refers to other ob-
servers to disagree with them. He does not present
their observations apart from their theories as mate-
rial which has existential value, independent for the
time being of any hypothesis. And it is consistent
with this attitude that he never presents tlie observa-
tions of others in support of his own doctrine. His
analysis within this field of biological observation does
not bring him back to what, in modern science, are the

178 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

data, but to general characters which make up the
definition of the form. His induction involves a gath-
ering of individuals rather than of data. Thus an-
alysis in the theoretical, the natural, the practical,
and the productive sciences, leads back to universals.
This is quite consistent with Aristotle's metaphysical
position that since the matter of natural objects has
reality through its realization in the form^ whatever
appears without such meaning can be accounted for
only as the expression of the resistance which matter
offers to this realization. This is the field of a blind
necessit}^, not that of a constructive science.

Continuous advance in science has been possible
only when analysis of the object of knowledge has sup-
plied not elements of meanings as the objects have
been conceived but elements abstracted from those
meanings. That is, scientific advance implies a will-
ingness to remain on terms of tolerant acceptance of
the reality of what cannot be stated in the accepted
doctrine of the time, but what must be stated in the
form of contradiction with these accepted doctrines.
The domain of what is usually connoted by the term
facts or data belongs to the field lying between the old
doctrine and the new. This field is not inhabited by
the Aristotelian individual, for the individual is but
the realization of the form or universal essence. When
the new theory has displaced the old, the new indi-
vidual appears in the place of its predecessor, but
during the period within which the old theory is being
dislodged and the new is arising, a consciously growing
science finds itself occupied with what is on the one

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 179

hand the debris of the old and on the other the building
material of the new. Obviously, this must find its im-
mediate raison d'etre in something other than the
meaning that is gone or the meaning that is not yet
here. It is true that the barest facts do not lack
meaning, though a meaning which has been theirs in
the past is lost. The meaning, however, that is stiU
theirs is confessedly inadequate, otherwise there would
be no scientific problem to be solved. Thus, when
older theories of the spread of infectious diseases lost
their validity because of instances where these expla-
nations could not be applied, the diagnoses and ac-
counts which could still be given of the cases of the
sickness themselves were no explanation of the spread
of the infection. The facts of the spread of the in-
fection could be brought neither under a doctrine of
contagion which was shattered by actual events nor
under a doctrine of the germ theory of disease, which
was as yet unborn. The logical import of the de-
pendence of these facts upon observation, and hence
upon the individual experience of the scientist, I shall
have occasion to discuss later; what I am referring to
here is that the conscious growth of science is accom-
panied by the appearance of this sort of material.
There were two fields of ancient science, those of
mathematics and of astronomy, within which very con-
siderable advance was achieved, a fact which would
seem therefore to offer exception to the statement just
made. The theory of the growth of mathematics is a
disputed territory, but whether mathematical discovery
and invention take place by steps which can be identified

180 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

with those which mark tlic advance in the experimental
sciences or not, the individual processes in which
the discoveries and inventions have arisen are almost
uniformly lost to view in the demonstration which pre-
sents the results. It would be improper to state that
no new data have arisen in the development of mathe-
matics, in the face of such innovations as the minus
quantity, the irrational, the imaginary, the infinitesi-
mal, or the transfinite number, and yet the innovations
appear as the recasting of the mathematical theories
rather than as new facts. It is of course true that
these advances have depended upon problems such as
those which in the researches of Kepler and Galileo
led to the early concepts of the infinitesimal procedure,
and upon such undertakings as bringing the combined
theories of geometry and algebra to bear upon the
experiences of continuous change. For a century after
the formulation of the infinitesimal method men were
occupied in carrying the new tool of analysis into
every field where its use promised advance. The
conceptions of the method were uncritical. Its ap-
plications were the center of attention. The next
century undertook to bring order into the concepts,
consistency into the doctrine, and rigor into the
reasoning. The dominating trend of this movement
was logical rather than methodological. The de-
velopment was in the interest of the foundations of
mathematics rather than in the use of mathematics
as a method for solving scientific problems. Of course
this has in no way interfered with the freedom of
application of mathematical technique to the problems

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 181

of physical science. On the contrary, it was on account
of the richness and variety of the contents which the
use of mathematical methods in the physical sciences
imported into the doctrine that this logical houseclean-
ing became necessary in mathematics. The movement
has been not only logical as distinguished from metho-
dological but logical as distinguished from metaphysical
as well. It has abandoned a Euclidean space with its
axioms as a metaphysical presupposition, and it has
abandoned an Aristotelian subsumptive logic for which
definition is a necessary presupposition. It recognizes
that everything cannot be proved, but it does not under-
take to state what the axiomata shall be; and it also
recognizes that not everything can be defined, and does
not undertake to determine what shall be defined im-
plicitly and what explicitly. Its constants are logical
constants, as the proposition, the class and the re-
lation. With these and their like and with relatively
few primitive ideas, which are represented by symbols,
and used according to certain given postulates, it be-
comes possible to bring the whole body of mathematics
within a single treatment. The development of this
pure mathematics, which comes to be a logic of the
mathematical sciences, has been made possible by such
a generalization of number theory and theories of the
elements of space and time that the rigor of mathe-
matical reasoning is secured, while the physical
scientist is left the widest freedom in the choice
and construction of concepts and imagery for his
hypotheses. The only compulsion is a logical com-
pulsion. The metaphysical compulsion has disappeared

182 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

from mathematics and the sciences whose techniques it
provides.

It was just this compulsion which confined ancient
science. Euclidian geometry defined the limits of
mathematics. Even mechanics was cultivated largely
as a geometrical field. The metaphysical doctrine
according to which physical objects had their own places
and their own motions determined the limits within
which astronomical speculations could be carried on.
Within these limits Greek mathematical genius achieved
marvelous results. The achievements of any period
will be limited by two variables : the type of problem
against which science formulates its methods, and the
materials which analysis puts at the scientist's dis-
posal in attacking the problems. The technical prob-
lems of the trisection of an angle and the duplication
of a cube are illustrations of the problems which
characterize a geometrical doctrine that was finding
its technique. There appears also the method of an-
alysis of the problem into simpler problems, the
assumption of the truth of the conclusion to be proved
and the process of arguing from this to a known truth.
The more fundamental problem which appears first
as the squaring of the circle, which becomes that of
the determination of the relation of the circle to its
diameter and development of the method of exhaustion,
leads up to the sphere, the regular polyhedra, to conic
sections and the beginnings of trigonometry. Number
was not freed from the relations of geometrical magni-
tudes, though Archimedes could conceive of a number
greater or smaller than any assignable magnitude.

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 183

With the method of exhaustion, with the conceptions
of number found in writings of Archimedes and others,
with the beginnings of spherical geometry and trigo-
nometry, and with the slow growth of algebra finding
its highest expression in that last flaring up of Greek
mathematical creation, the work of Diophantes ; there
were present all the conceptions which were necessary
for attack upon the problems of velocities and chang-
ing velocities, and the development of the method of
analysis which has been the revolutionary tool of Eu-
rope since the Renaissance. But the problems of a
relation between the time and space of a motion that
should change just as a motion, without reference to
the essence of the object in motion, were problems
which did not, perhaps could not, arise to confront
the Greek mind. In any case its mathematics was firmly
embedded in a Euclidian space. Though there are
indications of some distrust, even in Greek times, of
the parallel axiom, the suggestion that mathematical
reasoning could be made rigorous and comprehensive
independently of the specific content of axiom and
definition was an impossible one for the Gi*cek, be-
cause such a suggestion could be made only on the
presupposition of a number theory and an algebra
capable of stating a continuum in terms which are
independent of the sensuous intuition of space and time
and of the motion that takes place within space and
time. In the same fashion mechanics came back to
fundamental generalizations of experience with refer-
ence to motions which served as axioms of mechanics,
both celestial and terrestial: the assumptions of the

18t CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

natural motion of earthly substances to their own
places in straight lines, and of celestial bodies in circles
and uniform velocities, of an equilibrium where equal
weights operate at equal distances from the fulcrum.

The incommensurable of Pythagoras and the para-
doxes of Zeno present the " no thoroughfares " of an-
cient matliematical thought. Neither the continuum
of space nor of motion could be broken up into ulti-
mate units, when incommensurable ratios existed which
could not be expressed, and when motion refused to be
divided into positions of space or time since these are
functions of motion. It was not until an algebraic
theor}' of number led mathematicians to the use of
expressions for the irrational, the minus, and the im-
aginary numbers through the logical development of
generalized expressions, that problems could be formu-
lated in which these irrational ratios and quantities
were involved, though it is also true that the effort
to deal with problems of this character was in no small
degree responsible for the development of the algebra.
Fixed metaphj'sical assumptions in regard to number,
space, time, motion, and the nature of physical objects
determined the limits within which scientific investiga-
tion could take place. Thus though the hypothesis
of Copernicus and in all probability of Tycho Brahe
were formulated by Greek astronomers, their physical
doctrine was unable to use them because they were in
flaffrant contradiction with the definitions the ancient

i

world gave to earthlj^ and celestial bodies and their
natural motions. The atomic doctrine with Democri-
tus* thoroughgoing undertaking to substitute a quan-

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 185

titative for a qualitative conception of matter with the
location of the qualitative aspects of the world in the
experience of the soul appealed only to the Epicurean
who used the theory as an exorcism to drive out of the
universe the spirits which disturbed the calm of the
philosopher.

There was only one field in which ancient science
seemed to break away from the fixed assumptions
of its metaphysics and from the definitions of natural
objects which were the bases for their scientific in-
ferences, this was the field of astronomy in the period
after Eudoxus. Up to and including the theories of
Eudoxus, physical and mathematical astronomy went
hand in hand. Eudoxus' nests of spheres within spheres
hung on different axes revolving in different uniform
periods was the last attempt of the mathematician
philosopher to state the anomalies of the heavens, and
to account for the stations, the retrogressions, and
varying velocities of planetary bodies by a theory re-
solving all phenomena of these bodies into motions of
uniform velocities in perfect circles, and also placing
these phenomena within a physical theory consistent
with the prevailing conceptions of the science and phi-
losophy of the time. As a physicist Aristotle felt the
necessity of introducing further spheres between the
nests of spheres assigned by Eudoxus to the planetary
bodies, spheres whose peculiar motions should correct
the tendency of the different groups of spheres to pass
their motions on to each other. Since the form of the
orbits of heavenly bodies and their velocities could not
be considered to be tlie results of their masses and of

186 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

their relative positions with reference to one another;
since it was not possible to calculate the velocities and
orbits from the physical characters of the bodies, since
in a word these physical characters did not enter into
the problem of calculating the positions of the bodies
nor offer explanations for the anomalies which the
mathematical astronomer had to explain, it was not
strange that he disinterested himself from the meta-
physical celestial mechanics of his time and concen-
trated his attention upon the geometrical hypotheses
by means of which he could hope to resolve into uni-
form revolutions in circular orbits the anomalous mo-
tions of the planetary bodies. The introduction of the
epicycle with the deferent and the eccentric as working
hypotheses to solve the anomalies of the heavens is
to be comprehended largely in view of the isolation of
the mathematical as distinguished from the physical
problem of astronomy. In no sense were these concep-
tions working hypotheses of a celestial mechanics.
They were the only means of an age whose mathematics
was almost entirely geometrical for accomplishing
what a later generation could accomplish by an alge-
braic theory of functions. As has been pointed out,
the undertaking of the ancient mathematical astrono-
mer to resolve the motions of planetary bodies into
circular, uniform, continuous, symmetrical movements
is comparable to the theorem of Fourier which allows
the mathematician to replace any one periodic func-
tion by a sum of circular functions. In other words,
the astronomy of the Alexandrian period is a somewhat
cumbrous development of the mathematical technique j

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 187

of the time to enable the astronomer to bring the anom-
alies of the planetary bodies, as they increased under
observation, within the axioms of a metaphysical
physics. The genius exhibited in the development of
the mathematical technique places the names of Apol-
lonius of Perga, Hipparchus of Nicaea, and Ptolemy
among the great mathematicians of the world, but they
never felt themselves free to attack by their hypotheses
the fundamental assumptions of the ancient metaphysi-
cal doctrine of the universe. Thus it was said of
Hipparchus by Adrastus, a philosopher of the first
century A. D., in explaining his preference for the
epicycle to the eccentric as a means of analyzing the
motions of the planetary bodies : " He preferred and
adopted the principle of the epicycle as more probable
to his mind, because it ordered the system of the
heavens with more symmetry and with a more intimate
dependence with reference to the center of the universe.
Although he guarded himself from assuming the role
of the physicist in devoting himself to the investigations
of the real movements of the stars, and in undertaking
to distinguish between the motions which nature has
adopted from those which the appearances present to
our eyes, he assumed that every planet revolved along
an epicycle, the center of which describes a circum-
ference concentric with the earth." Even mathematical
astronomy does not offer an exception to the scientific
method of the ancient world, that of bringing to
consciousness the concepts involved in their world
of experience, organizing these concepts with refer-
ence to each, analyzing and restating them within

188 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

the limits of their essential accidents, and assimilat-
ing the concrete objects of experience to these typical
forms as more or less complete realizations.

At the beginning of the process of Greek self-con-
scious reflection and analysis, the mind ran riot among
the concepts and their characters until the contradic-
tions which arose from these unsystematized specula-
tions brought the Greek mind up to the problems of
criticism and scientific method. Criticism led to the
separation of the many from the one, the imperfect copy
from the perfect type, the sensuous and passionate from
the rational and the intrinsically good, the impermanent
particular from the incorruptible universal. The line
of demarcation ran between the lasting reality that
answered to critical objective thought and the realm
of perishing imperfect instances, of partiallj^ realized
forms full of unmeaning differences due to distortion
and imperfection, the realm answering to a sensuous
passionate unreflective experience. It would be a quite
inexcusable mistake to put all that falls on the wrong
side of the line into a subjective experience, for these
characters belonged not alone to the experience, but also
to the passing show, to the world of imperfectl}' de-
veloped matter which belonged to the perceptual pas-
sionate experience. While it may not then be classed
as subjective, the Greeks of the Sophistic period felt
that this phase of existence was an experience which
belongs to the man in his individual life, that life in
which he revolts from the conventions of society, in
which he questions accepted doctrine, in which he dif-
ferentiates himself from his fellows. Protag-oras seems

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 189

even to have undertaken to make this experience of the
individual, the stuff of the known world. It is difficult
adequately to assess Protagoras' undertaking. He
seems to be insisting both that the man's experience as
his own must be the measure of reality as known and
on the other hand that these experiences present norms
which offer a choice in conduct. If this is true Pro-
tagoras conceived of the individual's experience in its
atypical and revolutionary form as not only real but
the possible source of fuller realities than the world
of convention. The undertaking failed both in philo-
sophic doctrine and in practical politics. It failed
in both fields because the subjectivist, both in theory
and practice, did not succeed in finding a place
for the universal character of the object, its mean-
ing, in the mind of the individual and thus in find-
ing in this experience the hypothesis for the recon-
struction of the real world. In the ancient world the
atypical individual, the revolutionist, the non-conform-
ist was a self-seeking adventurer or an anarchist, not
an innovator or reformer, and subjectivism in ancient
philosophy remained a skeptical attitude which could
destroy but could not build up.

Hippocrates and his school came nearer consciously
using the experience of the individual as the actual
material of the object of knowledge. In the skeptical
period in which they flourished they rejected on the
one hand the magic of traditional medicine and on the
other the empty theorizing that had been called out
among the physicians by the philosophers. Their prac-
tical tasks held them to immediate experience. Their

190 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

functions in the gymnasia gave their medicine an in-
terest in health as well as in disease, and directed their
attention largely toward diet, exercise, and climate
in the treatment even of disease. In its study they have
left the most admirable sets of observations, including
even accounts of acknowledged errors and the results
of different treatments of cases, which ancient science
can present. It was the misfortune of their science
that it dealt with a complicated subject-matter de-
pendent for its successful treatment upon the whole
body of physical, chemical, and biological disciplines
as well as the discovery and invention of complicated
techniques. They were forced after all to adopt a
hopelessly inadequate physiological theory — that of
the four humors — with the corresponding doctrine of
health and disease as the proper and improper mix-
ture of these fluids. Their marvelously fine observation
of symptoms led only to the definition of types and a
medical practice which was capable of no consistent
progress outside of certain fields of surgery. Thus
even Greek medicine was unable to develop a different
type of scientific method except in so far as it kept alive
an empiricism which played a not unimportant part
in post-Aristotelian philosophy. Within the field of
astronomy in explaining the anomalies of the heavens
involved in their metaphysical assumptions, they built
up a marvelously perfect Euclidian geometry, for here
refined and exhaustive definition of all the elements was
possible. The problems involved in propositions to be
proved appeared in the individual experience of the
geometrician, but this experience in space was uniform

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 191

with that of every one else and took on a universal not
an individual form. The test of the solution was given
in a demonstration which holds for every one living
in the same Euclidian space. When the mathematician
found himself carried by his mathematical technique
beyond the assumptions of a metaphysical physics he
abandoned the field of physical astronomy and confined
himself to the development of his mathematical ex-
pressions.

In other fields Greek science analyzed with varying
success and critical skill only the conceptions found in
the experience of their time and world. Nor did Greek
thought succeed in formulating any adequate method
by which the ultimate concepts in any field of science
were to be determined. It is in Aristotle's statement of
induction and the process of definition that we appre-
ciate most clearly the inadequacy of their method. This
inadequacy lies fundamentally in Aristotle's conception
of observation which, as I have already noted, implies
the recognition of an individual, that is, an object
which is an embodied form or idea. The function of
knowledge is to bring out this essence. The mind sees
through the individuals the universal nature. The
value of the observation lies, then, not in the con-
trolled perception of certain data as observed facts,
but in the insight with which he recognizes the nature
of the object. When this nature has been seen it is
to be analyzed into essential characters and thus
formulated into the definition. In Aristotle's method-
ology there is no procedure by which the mind can
deliberately question the experience of the community

192 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

and by a controlled method reconstruct its received
world. Thus the natural sciences were as really fixed
by the conceptions of the community as were the exact
sciences by the conceptions of a Euclidian geometry
and the mathematics which the Greeks formulated
within it. The individual within whose peculiar ex-
perience arises a contradiction to the prevailing con-
ceptions of the community and in whose creative
intelligence appears the new hypothesis which makes
possible a new heaven and a new earth could utilize
his individual experience only in destructive skepti-
cism. Subjectivism served in ancient thought to in-
validate knowledge not to enlarge it.

Zeller has sketched a parallelism between the ideal
state of Plato and the social structure of the medieval
world. The philosopher-king is represented by the Pope,
below him answering to the warrior class in the Platonic
state stands the warrior class of the Holy Roman
Empire, who in theory enforce the dictates of the
Roman curia, while at the bottom in both communities
stand the mass of the people bound to obedience to the
powers above. There is, however, one profound differ-
ence between the two, and that is to be found in the
relative positions of the ideal worlds that dominate
each. Plato's ideal world beyond the heavens gives
what reality it has to this through the participation
by the world of becoming in the ideas. Opinion dimly
sensed the ideas in the evanescent objects about it, and
though Plato's memory theory of knowledge assumed
that the ideas had been seen in former existence and
men could thus recognize the copies here, the ideal

SCIENTIFIC METHOD IpS

world was not within the mind but without. In a real
sense the Kingdom of Heaven was within men in the
medieval world, as was the Holy Roman Empire. They
were ideal communities that ought to exist on earth,
and it was due to the depravity of men that they did
not exist. From time to time men undertook in various
upheavals to realize in some part these spiritual and
political ideals which they carried within them. And
men not only carried within them the ideas of a New
Jerusalem in which the interest of one was the interest
of all and of an earthly state ordered by a divine
decree to fulfil this Christian ideal, but the determin-
ing causes of the present condition and the future
realization depended also upon the inner attitudes and
experiences of the individuals themselves.

Without carrying the analogy here too far, this
relation between the experience of the individual and
the world which may arise through the realization of
his ideas is the basis of the most profound distinction
between the ancient world and the modern. Before
the logic of this attitude could appear in science a long
period of intellectual and social growth was necessary.
The most essential part of this growth was the slow
but stead}^ development of psychological doctrine which
placed the objective world in the experience of the
individual. It is not of interest here to bring out the
modern epistemological problem that grew out of this,
or to present this in the world of Leibnitzian monads
that had no windows or in the Berkeley an subjective
idealism. What is of interest is to point out that this
attitude established a functional relationship between

194 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

oven the subjective experience of the individual and the
object of knowledge. A skepticism based upon subjec-
tivism might thereafter question the justification of
the reference of experience beyond itself; it could not
question knowledge and its immediate object.

Kant formalizes the relation of what was subjective
and what was objective by identifying the former with
the sensuous content of experience and the latter with
the application of the forms of sensibility and under-
standing to this content. The relationship was formal
and dead. Kant recognized no functional relationship
between the nature of the Mannigfaltigkeit of sensuous
experience and the forms into which it was poured. The
forms remained external to the content, but the rela-
tionship was one which existed within experience, not
without it, and within this experience could be found
the necessity and universality which had been located
in the world independent of experience. The melting
of these fixed Kantian categories came with the spring
floods of the romantic idealism that followed Kant.

The starting-point of this idealism was Kantian.
Within experience lay the object of knowledge. The
Idealist's principal undertaking was to overcome the
skepticism that attached to the object of knowledge
because of its reference to what lies outside itself. If,
as Kant had undertaken to prove, the reality which
knowledge implies must reach beyond experience, then,
on the Kantian doctrine that knowledge lies within
experience, knowledge itself is infected with skepticism.
Kant's practical bridge from the world of experience
to the world of things-in-themselves, which he walked

I

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 195

by faith and not by sight, was found in the postulates
of the conduct of the self as a moral being, as a per-
sonality. The romantic idealists advance by the same
road, though as romanticists not critical philosophers,
they fashioned the world of reality, that transcends
experience, out of experience itself, by centering the
self in the absolute self and conceiving the whole in-
finite universe as the experience of the absolute self.
The interesting phase of this development is that the
form which experience takes in becoming objective is
found in the nature and thought of the individual, and
that this process of epistemological experience becomes
thus a process of nature, if the objective is the natural.
In Kant's terms our minds give laws to nature. But
this nature constantly exhibits its dependence upon
underlying noumena that must therefore transcend the
laws given by the understanding. The Romanticist in-
sists that this other reality must be the same stuff as
that of experience, that in experience arise forms which
transcend those which bound the experience in its earlier
phase. If in experience the forms of the objective
world are themselves involved, the process of knowledge
sets no limits to itself, which it may not, does not, by
implication transcend. As further indication of the
shift by which thought had passed into possession of
the world of things in themselves stands the antinomy
which in Kantian experience marks the limit of our
knowledge while in post-Kantian idealism it becomes
the antithesis that leads to the synthesis upon the
higher plane. Contradiction marks the phase at which
the spirit becomes creative, not simply giving an empty

196 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

formal law to nature, but creating the concrete uni-
verse in which content and form merge in true ac-
tuality. The relation of the sensuous content to the
conceptual form is not dead, as in Kant's doctrine. It
is fused as perception into concept and carries its
immediacy and concreteness of detail into the concrete
universal as the complete organization of stimulation
and response pass into the flexible habit. And yet
in the Hegelian logic, the movement is always away
from the perceptual experience toward the higher realm
of the Idee. Thought is creative in the movement, but
in its ultimate reality it transcends spatial and tem-
poral experience, the experience with which the natural
and mathematical sciences deal. Thought is not a
means of solving the problems of this world as they
arise, but a great process of realization in which this
world is forever transcended. Its abstract particu-
larities of sensuous detail belong only to the finite expe-
rience of the partial self. This world is, therefore,
alwa^'s incomplete in its reality and, in so far, alwaj's
untrue. Truth and full reality belong not to the field
of scientific investigation.

In its metaphj^sics Romantic Idealism, though it
finds a place for scientific discovery and reconstruction,
leaves these disdainfully behind, as incomplete phases
of the ultimate process of reality, as infected with un-
truth and deceptive unwarranted claims. The world is
still too much with us. We recognize here three strik-
ing results of the development of reflective conscious-
ness in the modern world : — first, it is assumed that the
objective world of knowledge can be placed within

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 197

the experience of the individual without losing thereby
its nature as an object, that all characters of that
object can be presented as belonging to that experi-
ence, whether adequately or not is another question;
and second, it is assumed that the contradictions in
its nature which are associated with its inclusion in
individual experience, its references beyond itself when
so included, may themselves be the starting-point of
a reconstruction which at least carries that object
beyond the experience within which these contradic-
tions arose; and third, it is assumed that this growth
takes place in a world of reality within which the
incomplete experience of the individual is an essential
part of the process, in which it is not a mere fiction,
destroying reality by its representation, but is a grow-
ing-point in that reality itself.

These characters of philosophic interpretation, the
inclusion of the object of knowledge in the individual
experience and the turning of the conflicts in that ex-
perience into the occasion for the creation of new
objects transcending these contradictions, are the
characters in the conscious method, of modern science,
which most profoundly distinguish it from the method
of ancient science. This, of course, is tantamount to
saying that they are those which mark the experimental
method in science.

That phase of the method upon which I have touched
already has been its occupation with the so-called data
or facts as distinguished from Aristotelian individuals.

Whenever we reduce tlie objects of scientific investi-
gation to facts and undertake to record them as such,

198 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

they become events, happenings, whose hard factual
character lies in the circumstance that they have taken
place, and this quite independently of any explanation
of their taking place. When they are explained they
have ceased to be facts and have become instances of
a law, that is, Aristotelian individuals, embodied
theories, and their actuality as events is lost in the
necessity of their occurrence as expressions of the law ;
with this change their particularity as events or hap-
penings disappears. They are but the specific values
of the equation when constants are substituted for
variables. Before the equation is known or the law
discovered they have no such ground of existence. Up
to this point they find their ground for existence in
their mere occurrence, to which the law which is to
explain them must accommodate itself.

There are here suggested two points of view from
which these facts may be regarded. Considered with
reference to a uniformity or law by which they will
be ordered and explained they are the phenomena with
which the positivist deals ; as existencies to be identified
and localized before they are placed within such a uni-
formity they fall within the domain of the psychological
philosopher who can at least place them in their rela-
tion to the other events in the experience of the in-
dividual who observes them. Considered as having
a residual meaning apart from the law to which they
have become exceptions, they can become the subject-
matter of the rationalist. It is important that we
recognize that neither the positivist nor the rationalist
is able to identify the nature of the fact or datum

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 199

to which they refer. I refer to such stubborn facts as
those of the sporadic appearance of infectious diseases
before the germ theory of the disease was discovered.
Here was a fact which contradicted the doctrine of the
spread of the infection by contact. It appeared not as
an instance of a law, but as an exception to a law.
As such, its nature is found in its having happened
at a given place and time. If the case had appeared
in the midst of an epidemic, its nature as a case of the
infectious disease would have been cared for in the
accepted doctrine, and for its acceptance as an object
of knowledge its location in space and time as an event
would not have been required. Its geographical and
historical traits would have followed from the theory
of the infection, as we identify by our calculations the
happy fulfilment of Thales' prophecy. The happening
of an instance of a law is accounted for by the law.
Its happening may and in most instances does escape
observation, while as an exception to an accepted law
it captures attention. Its nature as an event is, then,
found in its appearance in the experience of some in-
dividual, whose observation is controlled and recorded
as his experience. Without its reference to this in-
dividual's experience it could not appear as a fact
for further scientific consideration.

Now the attitude of the positivist toward this fact
is that induced by its relation to the law which is sub-
sequently discovered. It has then fallen into place in
a series, and his doctrine is that all laws are but uni-
formities of such events. He treats the fact when it
is an exception to law as an instance of the new law

200 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

and assumes that the exception to the old law and
the instance of the new are identical. And this
is a great mistake, — the mistake made also by the neo-
realist when he assumes that the object of knowledge
is the same within and without the mind, that nothing
happens to what is to be known when it by chance
strays into the realm of conscious cognition. Any as
yet unexplained exception to an old theory can happen
only in the experience of an individual, and that which
has its existence as an event in some one's biography
is a different thing from the future instance which is
not beholden to any one for its existence. Yet there
are, as I indicated earlier, meanings in this exceptional
event which, at least for the time, are unaffected by
the exceptional character of the occurrence. For ex-
ample, certain clinical symptoms by which an infectious
disease is identified have remained unchanged in diag-
nosis since the days of Hippocrates. These characters
remain as characters of the instance of the law of germ-
origin when this law has been discovered. This may
lead us to say that the exception which appears for
the time being as a unique incident in a biography
is identical with the instance of a germ-induced disease.
Indeed, we are likely to go further and, in the assurance
of the new doctrine, state that former exceptions can
(or with adequate acquaintance with the facts could)
be proved to be necessarily an instance of a disease
carried by a germ. The positivist is therefore confi-
dent that the field of scientific knowledge is made up
of events which are instances of uniform series, al-
though under conditions of inadequate information

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 201

some of them appear as exceptions to the statements
of uniformities, in truth the latter being no uniformities
at aU.

That this is not a true statement of the nature of
the exception and of the instance, it is not difficult to
show if we are willing to accept the accounts which
the scientists themselves give of their own observation,
the changing forms which the hypothesis assumes dur-
ing the effort to reach a solution and the ultimate
reconstruction which attends the final tested solution.
Wherever we are fortunate enough, as in the biogra-
phies of men such as Darwin and Pasteur, to follow
a number of the steps by which they recognized prob-
lems and worked out tenable hypotheses for their
solution, we find that the direction which is given to
attention in the early stage of scientific investigation
is toward conflicts between current theories and ob-
served phenomena, and that since the form which these
observations take is determined by the opposition, it is
determined by a statement which itself is later aban-
doned. We find that the scope and character of the
observations change at once when the investigator sets
about gathering as much of the material as he can
secure, and changes constantly as he formulates tenta-
tive hypotheses for the solution of the problem, which,
moreover, generally changes its form during the inves-
tigation. I am aware that this change in the form
of the data will be brushed aside by many as belonging
only to the attitude of mind of the investigator, while
it is assumed that the " facts " themselves, however
selected and organized in his observation and thought,

202 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

remain identical in their nature throughout. Indeed,
the scientist himself carries with him in the whole pro-
cedure the confidence that the fact-structure of reality
is unchanged, however varied are the forms of the ob-
servations which refer to the same entities.*

The analj'sis of the fact-structure of reality shows
in the first place that the scientist undertakes to form
such an hypothesis that all the data of observation
will find their place in the objective world, and in the
second place to bring them into such a structure that
future experience will lead to anticipated results. He
does not undertake to preserve facts in the form in
which they existed in experience before the problem
arose nor to construct a world independent of experi-
ence or that will not be subject itself to future recon-
structions in experience. He merely insists that future

* An analysis which has been many times carried out has made
it clear that scientific data never do more than approximate the
laws and entities upon which our science rests. It is equally
evident that the forms of these laws and entities themselves shift
in the reconstructions of incessant research, or where they seem
most secure could consistently be changed, or at least could be
fundamentally different were our psychological structure or even
our conventions of thought different. I need only refer to the
Science et Hypoth^se of Poincare and the Problems of Science
of Enriques. The positivist who undertakes to carry the struc-
ture of the world back to the data of observation, and the
uniformities appearing in the accepted hypotheses of growing
sciences cannot maintain that we ever succeed in isolating data
which must remain the same in the kaleidoscope of our research
science; nor are we better served if we retreat to the ultimate
elements of points and instants which our pure mathematics
assumes and implicitly defines, and in connection with which it has
worked out the modern theory of the number and continuous
series, its statements of continuity and infinity.

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 203

reconstructions will take into account the old in re-
adjusting it to the new. In such a process it is evident
that the change of the form in the data is not due to
a subjective attitude of the investigator which can be
abstracted from the facts. When Darwin, for in-
stance, found that the marl dressings which farmers
spread over their soil did not sink through the soil
by the force of gravity as was supposed, but that the
earthworm castings were thrown up above these dress-
ings at nearly the same rate at which they disappeared,
he did not correct a subjective attitude of mind. He
created in experience a humus which took the place
of a former soil, and justified itself by fitting it into
the whole process of disintegration of the earth's sur-
face. It would be impossible to separate in the earlier
experiences certain facts and certain attitudes of mind
entertained by men with reference to these facts. Cer-
tain objects have replaced other objects. It is only after
the process of analysis, which arose out of the conflict-
ing observations, has broken up the old object that what
was a part of the object, heavier-things-pushing-their
way-through-soil-of-lighter-texture, can become a mere
idea. Earlier it was an object. Until it could be
tested the earthworm as the cause of the disappearance
the dressings was also Darwin's idea. It became fact.
For science at least it is quite impossible to distinguish
between what in an object must be fact and what may
be idea. The distinction when it is made is dependent
upon the form of the problem and is functional to its
solution, not metaphysical. So little can a consistent
line of cleavage between facts and ideas be indicated.

£01. CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

that we can never tell where in our world of observation
the problem of science will arise, or what will be re-
garded as structure of reality or what erroneous
idea.

There is a strong temptation to lodge these supposi-
titious fact-structures in a world of conceptual objects,
molecules, atoms, electrons, and the like. For these at
least lie beyond the range of perception b}'^ their very
definition. They seem to be in a realm of things-in-
themselves. Yet they also are found now in the field
of fact and now in that of ideas. Furthermore, a study
of their structure as they exist in the world of con-
structive science shows that their infra-sensible charac-
ter is due simply to the nature of our sense-processes,
not to a different metaphysical nature. They occupy
space, have measurable dimensions, mass, and are sub-
ject to the same laws of motion as are sensible objects.
We even bring them indirectly into the field of vision
and photograph their paths of motion.

The ultimate elements referred to above provide a
consistent sym.bolism for the finding and formulating of
applied mathematical sciences, within v/hich lies the whole
field of physics, including Euclidian geometry as well.
However, they have succeeded in providing nothing
more than a language and logic pruned of the obstinate
contradictions, inaccuracies, and unanalyzed sensuous
stuff of earlier mathematical science. Such a rational-
istic doctrine can never present in an unchanged form
the objects with which natural science deals in an}' of
the stages of its investigation. It can deal only with
ultimate elements and forms of propositions. It is

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 205

compelled to fall back on a theory of analysis
which reaches ultimate elements and an assumption of
inference as an indefinable. Such an analysis is actually
impossible either in the field of the conceptual objects
into which physical science reduces physical objects, or
in the field of sensuous experience. Atoms pan be re-
duced into positive and negative electrical elements and
these may, perhaps do, imply a structure of ether that
again invites further analysis and so on ad infinitum.
None of the hypothetical constructs carry with them-
selves the character of being ultimate elements unless
they are purely metaphysical. If they are fashioned
to meet the actual problems of scientific research they
will admit of possible further analysis, because they
must be located and defined in the continuity of space
and time. They cannot be the points and instants of
modern mathematical theory. Nor can we reach ulti-
mate elements in sensuous experience, for this lies
also within a continuum. Furthermore, our scientific
analyses are dependent upon the form that our objects
assume. There is no general analysis which research
in science has ever used. The assumption that psy-
chology provides us with an analysis of experience
which can be carried to ultimate elements or facts, and
which thereby provides the elements out of which the
objects of our physical world must be constructed,
denies to psychology its rights as a natural science of
which it is so jealous, turning it into a Berkeleyan
metaphysics.

This most modern form of rationalism being unable
to find ultimate elements in the field of actual science

206 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

is compelled to take what it can find there. Now the
results of the analysis of the classical English psycho-
logical school give the impression of being what Mr.
Russell calls " hard facts," i.e., facts which cannot be
broken up into others. They seem to be the data of
experience. Moreover, the term hard is not so uncom-
promising as is the term element. A fact can be more
or less hard, while an ultimate element cannot be more
or less ultimate. Furthermore, the entirely formal
character of the logic enables it to deal with equal
facility with any content. One can operate with the
more or less hard sense-data, putting them in to satisfy'
the seeming variables of the propositions, and reach
conclusions which are formally correct. There is no
necessity for scrutinizing the data under these circum-
stances, if one can only assume that the data are those
which science is actually using. The difficulty is that
no scientist ever analyzed his objects into such sense-
data. They exist only in philosophical text-books.
Even the psychologists recognize that these sensations
are abstractions which are not the elements out of which
objects of sense are constructed. They are abstrac-
tions made from those objects whose ground for isola-
tion is found in the peculiar problems of experimental
psj'chology, such as those of color or tone perception.
It would be impossible to make anything in terms of
Berkeleyan sense-data and of symbolic logic out of any
scientific discovery. Research defines its problem by
isolating certain facts which appear for the time being
not as the sense-data of a solipsistic mind, but as expe-
riences of an individual in a highly organized society.

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 207

facts which, because they are in conflict with accepted
doctrines, must be described so that they can be
experienced by others under like conditions. The
ground for the analysis which leads to such facts is
found in the conflict between the accepted theory and
the experience of the individual scientist. The analysis
is strictly ad hoc. As far as possible the exception is
stated in terms of accepted meanings. Only where the
meaning is in contradiction with the experience does
the fact appear as the happening to an individual and
become a paragraph out of his biography. But as such
an event, whose existence for science depends upon the
acceptance of the description of him to whom it has
happened, it must have all the setting of circumstantial
evidence. Part of this circumstantial evidence is found
in so-called scientific control, that is, the evidence that
conditions were such that similar experiences could
happen to others and could be described as they are
described in the account given. Other parts of this
evidence which we call corroborative are found in the
statements of others which bear out details of this
peculiar event, though it is important to note that
these details have to be wrenched from their settings
to give this corroborative value. To be most conclu-
sive they must have no intentional connection with
the experience of the scientist. In other words,
those individuals who corroborate the facts are made,
in spite of themselves, experiencers of the same facts.
The perfection of this evidence is attained when the
fact can happen to others and the observer simply
details the conditions under which he made the obser-

208 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

vation, which can be then so perfectly reproduced that
others may repeat the exceptional experience.

This process is not an analysis of a kno'vm world
into ultimate elements and their relations. Such an
analysis never isolates this particular exception which
constitutes the scientific problems as an individual ex-
perience. The extent to which the analysis is carried
depends upon the exigencies of the problem. It is the
indefinite variety of the problems which accounts for
the indefinite variety of the facts. ^Vhat constitutes
them facts in the sense in which we are using the
term is their exceptional nature ; formally they appear
as particular judgments, being denials of universal
judgments, whether positive or negative. This excep-
tional nature robs the events of a reality which would
have belonged to them as instances of a universal law.
It leaves them, however, with the rest of their meaning.
But the value which they have lost is just that which
was essential to give them their place in the world as
it has existed for thought- Banished from that uni-
versally valid structure, their ground for existence is
found in the experience of the puzzled observer. Such
an observation was that of the moons of Jupiter made
possible by the primitive telescope of Galileo. For
those who lived in a Ptolemaic cosmos, these could have
existence only as observations of individuals. As moons
they had distinct meaning, circling Jupiter as our
moon circles the earth, but being in contradiction with
the Ptolemaic order they could depend for their exist-
ence only on the evidence of the senses, until a Coper-
nican order could give them a local habitation and a

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 209

name. Then they were observed not as the experiences
of individuals but as instances of planetary order in
a heliocentric system. It would be palpably absurd to
refer to them as mere sense-data, mere sensations. They
are for the time being inexplicable experiences of cer-
tain individuals. They are inexplicable because they
have a meaning which is at variance with the structure
of the whole world to which they belong. They are the
phenomena termed accidental by Aristotle and rejected
as full realities by him, but which have become, in the
habitat of individual experience, the headstone of the
structure of modern research of science.

A rationalism which relegates implication to the
indefinables cannot present the process of modern
science. Implication is exactly that process by which
these events pass from their individual existence into
that of universal reality, and the scientist is at pains
to define it as the experimental method. It is true that
a proposition implies implication. But the proposition
is the statement of the result of the process by which
an object has arisen for knowledge and merely indicates
the structure of the object. In discovery, invention,
and research the escape from the exceptional, from the
data of early stages of observation, is by way of an
hypothesis ; and every hypothesis so far as it is tenable
and workable in its form is universal. No one would
waste his time with a hypothesis which confessedly was
not applicable to all instances of the problem. An
hypothesis may be again and again abandoned, it may
prove to be faulty and contradictory, but in so far as
it is an instrument of research it is assumed to be

210 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

universal and to perfect a system which has broken
down at the point indicated by the problem. Impli-
cation and more elaborated instances flow from the
structure of this hypothesis. The classical illustra-
tion which stands at the door of modern experimental
science is the hypothesis Avhich Galileo formed of the
rate of the velocity of a falling body. He conceived
that this was in proportion to the time elapsed during
the fall and then elaborated the consequences of this
h^^pothesis by working it into the accepted mathemati-
cal doctrines of the physical world, until it led to an
anticipated result which would be actually secured and
which would be so characteristic an instance of a fall-
ing body that it would answer to every other instance
as he had defined them. In this fashion he defined his
inference as the anticipation of a result because this
result was a part of the world as he presented it
amended by his hypothesis. It is true that back of the
specific implication of this result lay a mass of other
implications, many not even presented specifically in
thought and many others presented by symbols which
generalized innumerable instances. These implications
are for the scientist more or less implicit meanings, but
they are meanings each of which may be brought into
question and tested in the same fashion if it should be-
come an actual problem. Many of them which would
not have occurred to Galileo as possible problems have
been questioned since his day. What has remained after
this period of determined questioning of the founda-
tions of mathematics and the structure of the world
of physical science is a method of agreement with one-

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 211

self and others, in (a) the identification of the object
of thought, in (b) the accepted values of assent and
denial called truth and falsehood, and in (c) referring
to meaning, in its relation to what is meant. In any
case the achievement of symbolic logic, with its inde-
finables and axioms has been to reduce this logic to
a statement of the most generalized form of possible
consistent thought intercourse, with entire abstraction
from the content of the object to which it refers.
If, however, we abstract from its value in giving
a consistent theory of number, continuity, and in-
finity, this complete abstraction from the content has
carried the conditions of thinking in agreement with
self and others so far away from the actual problem
of science that symbolic logic has never been used as
a research method. It has indeed emphasized the fact
that thinking deals with problems which have reference
to uses to which it can be put, not to a metaphysical
world lying beyond experience. Symbolic logic has to
do with the world of discourse, not with the world of
things.

What Russell pushes to one side as a happy guess
is the actual process of implication by which, for ex-
ample, the minute form in the diseased human system is
identified with unicellular life and the history of the
disease with the life history of this form. This iden-
tification implies reclassification of these forms and a
treatment of the disease that answers to their life his-
tory. Having made this identification we anticipate the
result of this treatment, calling it an inference.

Implication belongs to the reconstruction of the ob-

812 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ject. As long as no question has arisen, the object
is what it means or means what it is. It does not
imply any feature of itself. When through conflict
with the experience of the individual some feature of
the object is divorced from some meaning the relation-
ship between these becomes a false implication. When
a hypothetically reconstructed object finds us antici-
pating a result which accords with the nature of such
objects we assert an implication of this meaning. To
carry this relation of implication back into objects
which are subject to no criticism or question would of
course resolve the world into elements connected by
external relations, with the added consequence that
these elements can have no content, since every con-
tent in the face of such an analysis must be subject
to further analysis. We reach inevitably symbols such
as X, Y, and Z, which can symbolize nothing. Theo-
retically we can assume an implication between any
elements of an object, but in this abstract assumption
the symbolic logician overlooks the fact that he is also
assuming some content which is not analyzed and which
is the ground of the implication. In other words this
logician confuses the scientific attitude of being ready
to question anything with an attitude of being willing
to question everything at once. It is only in an un-
questioned objective world that the exceptional in-
stance appears and it is only in such a world that an
experimental science tests the implications of the hypo-
thetically reconstructed object.

The guess is happy because it carries with it the con-
sequences which follow from its fitting into the world,

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 213

and the guess, in other words the hypothesis, takes on
this happy form solely because of the material recon-
struction which by its nature removes the unhappy
contradiction and promises the successful carrying out
of the conflicting attitudes in the new objective world.
There is no such thing as formal implication.

Where no reconstruction of the world is involved in
our identification of objects that belong to it and
where, therefore, no readjustment of conduct is de-
manded, such a logic symbolizes what takes place in
our direct recognition of objects and our response
to them. Then " X is a man implies X is mortal for
all values of X" exactly symbolizes the attitude toward
a man subject to a disease supposedly mortal. But
it fails to symbolize the biological research which start-
ing with inexplicable sporadic cases of an infectious
disease carries over from the study of the life history
of infusoria a hypothetical reconstruction of the his-
tory of disease and then acts upon the result of this
assumption. Research-science presents a world whose
form is always universal, but this universal form is
neither a metaphysical assumption nor a fixed form of
the understanding. While the scientist may as a meta-
physician assume the existence of realities which lie
beyond a possible experience, or be a Kantian or Neo-
Kantian, neither of these attitudes is necessary for his
research. He may be a positivist — a disciple of Hume
or of John Stuart Mill. He may be a pluralist who
conceives, with William James, that the order which
we detect in parts of the universe is possibly one that
is rising out of the chaos and which may never be as

214 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

universal as our hypothesis demands. None of these'
attitudes has any bearing upon his scientific method.
This simplifies his thinking, enables him to identify the
object in which he is interested wherever he finds it, and
to abstract in the world as he conceives it those features
which carry with them the occurrence he is endeavoring
to place. Especially it enables him to make his thought
a part of the socially accepted and socially organized
science to which his thought belongs. He is far too
modest to demand that the world be as his inference
demands.

He asks that his view of the world be cogent and
convincing to all those whose thinking has made his
own possible, and be an acceptable premise for the
conduct of that society to which he belongs. The
hypothesis has no universal and necessary characters
except those that belong to the thought which preserves
the same meanings to the same objects, the same rela-
tions between the same relata, the same attributes of
assent and dissent under the same conditions, the same
results of the same combinations of the same things.
For scientific research the meanings, the relations with
the relata, the assent and dissent, the combinations
and the things combined are all in the world of experi-
ence. Thinking in its abstractions and identifications
and reconstructions undertakes to preserve the values
that it finds, and the necessity of its thinking lies in its
ability to so identify, preserve, and combine what it
has isolated that the thought structure will have an
identical import under like conditions for the thinker
with all other thinkers to whom these instruments of

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 215

research conduct are addressed. Whatever conclusions
the scientist draws as necessary and universal results
from his hypothesis for a world independent of his
thought are due, not to the cogency of his logic, but
to other considerations. For»he knows if he reflects
that another problem may arise which will in its solu-
tion change the face of the world built upon the present
hypothesis. He will defend the inexorableness of his
reasoning, but the premises may change. Even the
contents of tridimensional space and sensuous time are
not essential to the cogency of that reasoning nor can
the unbroken web of the argument assure the content
of the world as invariable. His universals, when ap-
plied to nature, are all hypothetical universals ; hence
the import of experiment as the test of an hypothesis.
Experience does not rule out the possible cropping up of
a new problem which may shift the values attained.
Experience simply reveals that the new hypothesis fits
into the meanings of the world which are not shaken;
it shows that, with the reconstruction which the hy-
pothesis offers, it is possible for scientific conduct to
proceed.

But if the universal character of the hypothesis and
the tested theory belong to the instrumental character
of thought in so reconstructing a world that has proved
to be imperfect, and inadequate to conduct, the stuff
of the world and of the new hypothesis are the same.
At least this is true for the scientist who has no in-
terest in an epistemological problem that does not
affect his scientific undertakings in one way nor an-
other. I have already pointed out that from the stand-

216 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

point of logical and psychological analysis the things
with which science deals can be neither ultimate ele-
ments nor sense-data ; but that they must be phases and
characters and parts of things in some whole, parts
which can only be isolated because of the conflict be-
tween an accepted meaning and some experience. I have
pointed out that an analysis is guided by the practical
demands of a solution of this conflict; that even that
which is individual in its most unique sense in the con-
flict and in attempts at its solution does not enter into
the field of psychology — which has its own problems
peculiar to its science. Certain psj^chological problems
belong to the problems of other sciences, as, for exam-
ple, that of the personal equation belongs to astronomy
or that of color vision to the theory of light. But they
bulk small in these sciences. It cannot be successfully
maintained that a scientific observation of the most
unique sort, one which is accepted for the time being
simply as a happening in this or that scientist's experi-
ence, is as such a psychological datum, for the data in
psychological text-books have reference to psychologi-
cal problems. Psychology deals with the consciousness
of the individual in its dependence upon the physio-
logical organism and upon those contents which detach
themselves from the objects outside the individual and
which are identified with his inner experience. It deals
with the laws and processes and structures of this con-
sciousness in all its experiences, not with exceptional
experiences. It is necessary to emphasize again that
for science these particular experiences arise within a
world which is in its logical structure organized and

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 217

universal. They arise only through the conflict of the
individual's experience with such an accepted structure.
For science individual experience presupposes the or-
ganized structure; hence it cannot provide the material
out of which the structure is built up. This is the error
of both the positivist and of the psychological philoso-
pher, if scientific procedure gives us in any sense a
picture of the situation.

A sharp contrast appears between the accepted hy-
pothesis with its universal form and the experiences
which invalidate the earlier theory. The reality of
these experiences lies in their happening. They were
unpredictable. They are not instances of a law. The
later theory, the one which explains these occurrences,
changes their character and status, making them nec-
essary results of the world as that is conceived under
this new doctrine. This new standpoint carries with it
a backward view, which explains the erroneous doctrine,
and accounts for the observations which invalidated it.
Every new theory must take up into itself earlier
dectrines and rationalize the earlier exceptions.
A generalization of this attitude places the scientist
in the position of anticipating later reconstructions.
He then must conceive of his world as subject to
continuous reconstructions. A familiar interpreta-
tion of his attitude is that the hypothesis is thus
approaching nearer and nearer toward a reality which
would never change if it could be attained, or, from the
standpoint of the Hegelian toward a goal at infinity.
The Hegelian also undertakes to make this continuous
process of reconstruction an organic phase in reality

218 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

and to identify with nature the process of finding ex-
ceptions and of correcting them. The fundamental
difference between this position and that of the scientist
who looks before and after is that the Hegelian under-
takes to make the exception in its exceptional character
a part of the reality which transcends it, while the
scientist usually relegates the exception to the experi-
ence of individuals who were simply caught in an error
which later investigation removes.

The error remains as an historical incident explica-
ble perhaps as a result of the conditions under which it
occurred, but in so far as it was an error, not a part
of reality. It is customary to speak of it as subjective,
though this implies that we are putting the man who
was unwittingly^ in error into the position of the one
who has corrected it. To entertain that error in the
face of its correction would be subjective. A result
of this interpretation is that the theories are abstracted
from the world and regarded as something outside it.
It is assumed that the theories are mental or subjective
and change while the facts remain unchanged. Even
when it is assumed that theories and facts agree, men
speak of a correspondence or parallelism between idea
and the reality to which it refers. Wliile this attitude
seems to be that of science toward the disproved theo-
ries which lie behind it, it is not its attitude to the
theories which it accepts. These are not regarded as
merely parallel to realities, as abstracted from the
structure of things. These meanings go into the make-
up of the world. It is true that the scientist who looks
before and after realizes that any specific meaning

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 219

which is now accepted may be questioned and discarded.
If he carries his reflection far enough he sees that a com-
plete elimination of all the meanings which might con-
ceivably be so discredited would leave nothing but logical
constants, a world with no facts in any sense. In this
position he may of course take an agnostic attitude
and be satisfied with the attitude of Hume or Mill or
Russell. But if he does so, he will pass into the camp
of the psychological philosophers and will have left
the position of the scientist. The scientist always deals
with an actual problem, and even when he looks before
and after he does so in so far as he is facing in in-
quiry some actual problem. No actual problem could
conceivably take on the form of a conflict involving
the whole world of meaning. The conflict always arises
between an individual experience and certain laws, cer-
tain meanings while others are unaffected. These others
form the necessary field without which no conflict can
arise. They give the man of research his ( ttov ffrco )
upon which he can formulate his problem and under-
take its solution. The possible calling in question of
any content, whatever it may be, means always that
there is left a field of unquestioned reality. The atti-
tude of the scientist never contemplates or could con-
template the possibility of a world in which there
would be no reality by which to test his hypothetical
solution of the problem that arises. Nor does this
attitude when applied to past discarded theories neces-
sarily carry with it the implication that these older
theories were subjective ideas in men's minds, while
the reality lay beside and beyond them unmingled with

220 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ideas. It always finds a standpoint from which these
ideas in the earlier situation are still recognized as
reliable, for there are no scientific data without mean- §
ings. There could be no histor)' of science on any other
basis. No history of science goes back to ultimate ele- i
ments or sense-data, or to any combination of bare data
on one hand and logical elements on the other. The
world of the scientist is always there as one in which
reconstruction is taking place with continual shifting
of problems, but as a real world within which the prob-
lems arise. The errors of the past and present appear
as untenable hypotheses which could not bear the test
of experiment if the experience were sufficiently en-
larged and interpreted. But they are not mere errors
to be thrown into the scrap heap. They become a part
of a different phase of reality which a fuller history
of the past records or a fuller account of the present
interprets, giving them thereby their proper place in
a real world.*

The completion of this program, however, awaits the
solution of the scientific problem of the relation of the
psychical and the ph3'sical with the attendant problem
of the meaning of the so-called origin of consciousness
in the history of the world. My own feeling is that
these problems must be attacked from the standpoint
of the social nature of so-called consciousness. The
clear indications of this I find in the reference of our
logical constants to the structure of thought as a

* In other words, science assumes that every error is ex post
facto explicable as a function of the real conditions under which
it really arose. Hence, " consciousness," set over against Reality,
was not its condition.

SCIENTIFIC METHOD S21

means of communication, in the explanation of errors
in the history of science by their social determination,
and in the interpretation of the inner field of experi-
ence as the importation of social intercourse into the
conscious conduct of the individual. But what-
ever may be the solution of these problems, it must
carry with it such a treatment of the experience of the
individual that the latter will never be regarded merely
as a subjective state, however inadequate it may have
proved itself as a scientific hypothesis. This seems
to me to be involved in the conception of psychology
as a natural science and in any legitimate carrying
out of the Hegelian program of giving reality and
creative import to individual experience. The experi-
ence of the individual in its exceptional character is
the growing-point of science, first of all in the recog-
nition of data upon which the older theories break, and
second in the hypothesis which arises in the individual
and is tested by the experiment which reconstructs the
world. A scientific history and a scientific psychology
from which epistemology has been banished must place
these observations and hypotheses together with errone-
ous conceptions and mistaken observations within the
real world in such a fashion that their reference to the
experience of the individual and to the world to which
he belongs will be comprehensible. As I have indicated,
the scientific theory of the physical and conscious in-
dividual in the world implied in this problem has still
to be adequately developed. But there is implied in
the conception of such a theory such a location of the
process of thought in the process of reality as will

222 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

give it an import both in the meaning of things and
in the individual's thinking. We have the beginning of
such a doctrine in the conception of a functional value
of consciousness in the conduct of living forms, and the
development of reflective thought out of such a con-
sciousness which puts it within the act and gives it the
function of preparation where adjustment is necessary.
Such a process creates the situation with reference to
which the form acts. In all adjustment or adaptation
the result is that the form which is adjusted finds that
by its adjustment it has created an environment. The
ancients by their formulation of the Ptolemaic theory
committed themselves to the world in which the fixed
values of the heavenly over against the earthly obtained.
Such a world was the interpretation of the experience
involved in their physical and social attitudes. They
could not accept the hypothesis of Aristarchus because
it conflicted with the world which they had created, with
the values which were determining values for them. The
same was true of the hypothesis of Democritus. They
could not, as they conceived the physical world, accept
its purely quantitative character. The conception of a
disinterested truth which we have cherished since the
Middle Ages is itself a value that has a social basis as
really as had the dogma of the church. The earliest
statement of it was perhaps that of Francis Bacon.
Freeing investigation from the church dogma and its
attendant logic meant to him the freedom to find in
nature what men needed and could use for the ameliora-
tion of their social and physical condition. The full
implication of the doctrine has been recognized as that

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 223

of freedom, freedom to effect not only values already
recognized, but freedom to attain as well such complete
acquaintance with nature that new and unrecognized
uses would be at our disposal; that is, that progress
should be one toward any possible use to which in-
creased knowledge might lead. The cult of increasing
knowledge, of continually reconstructing the world, took
the place both of the ancient conception of ade-
quately organizing the world as presented in thought,
and of the medieval conception of a systematic formula-
tion on the basis of the statement in church dogma of so-
cial values. This modern conception proceeds from the
standpoint not of formulating values, but giving society
at the moment the largest possible number of alterna-
tives of conduct, i.e., undertaking to fix from moment
to moment the widest possible field of conduct. The pur-
poses of conduct are to be determined in the presence
of a field of alternative possibilities of action. The ends
of conduct are not to be determined in advance, but in
view of the interests that fuller knowledge of conditions
awaken. So there appears a conception of determin-
ing the field that shall be quite independent of given
values. A real world which consists not of an un-
changed universe, but of a universe which may be con-
tinually readjusted according to the problems arising
in the consciousness of the individuals within society.
The seemingly fixed character of such a world is found
in the generally fixed conditions which underlie the
type of problems which we find. We determine the
important conditions incident to the working out of
the great problems which face us. Our conception of a

224 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

given universe is formed in the effort to mobilize all
the material about us in relation to these problems —
the structure of the self, the structure of matter, the
physical process of life, the laws of change and the
interrelation of changes. With reference to these
problems certain conditions appear fixed and become
the statement of the world by which we must deter-
mine by experimental test the viability of our hy-
potheses. There arises then the conception of a world
which is unquestioned over against any particular
problem. While our science continually changes that
world, at least it must be always realized as there.
On the other hand, these conceptions are after all
relative to the ends of social conduct which may
be formulated in the presence of any freedom of
action.

We postulate freedom of action as the condition of
formulating the ends toward which our conduct shall
be directed. Ancient thought assured itself of its ends
of conduct and allowed these to determine the world
which tested its hypothesis. We insist such ends may
not be formulated until we know the field of possible
action. The formulation of the ends is essentially a
social undertaking and seems to follow the statement
of the field of possible conduct, while in fact the state-
ment of the possible field of conduct is actually de-
pendent on the push toward action. A moving end
which is continually reconstructing itself follows upon
the continually enlarging field of opportunities of
conduct.

The conception of a world of existence, then, is the

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 225

result of the determination at the moment of the con-
ditions of the solution of the given problems. These
problems constitute the conditions of conduct, and the
ends of conduct can only be determined as we realize
the possibilities which changing conditions carry with
them. Our world of reality thus becomes independent
of any special ends or purposes and we reach an en-
tirely disinterested knowledge. And yet the value and
import of this knowledge is found in our conduct and
in our continually changing conditions. Knowledge
for its own sake is the slogan of freedom, for it alone
makes possible the continual reconstruction and en-
largement of the ends of conduct.
\_The individual in his experiences is continually creat-
ing a world which becomes real through his dis-
covery."^ In so far as new conduct arises under the
conditions made possible by his experience and his hy-
pothesis the world, which may be made the test of
reality, has been modified and enlarged.

I have endeavored to present the world which is an
implication of the scientific method of discovery with
entire abstraction from any epistemological or meta-
physical presuppositions or complications. Scientific
method is indifferent to a world of things-in-themselves,
or to the previous condition of philosophic servitude of
those to whom its teachings are addressed. It is a
method not of knowing the unchangeable but of deter-
mining the form of the world within which we live as
it changes from moment to moment. It undertakes to
tell us what we may expect to happen when we act in
such or such a fashion. It has become a matter of

226 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

serious consideration for a philosophy which is inter-
ested in a world of things-in-themselves, and the episte-
mological problem. For the cherished structures of
the metaphysical world, having ceased to house the
values of mankind, provide good working materials in
the hypothetical structures of science, on condition of
surrendering their metaphysical reality ; and the episte-
mological problem, having seemingly died of inanition,
has been found to be at bottom a problem of method
or logic. My attempt has been to present what seems
to me to be two capital instances of these transforma-
tions. Science always has a world of reality by which
to test its hypotheses, but this world is not a world
independent of scientific experience, but the immediate
world surrounding us within which we must act. Our
next action may find these conditions seriously changed,
and then science will formulate this world so that in
view of this problem we may logically construct our
next plan of action. The plan of action should be
made self-consistent and universal in its form, not that
we may thus approach nearer to a self -consistent and
universal reality which is independent of our conduct,
but because our plan of action needs to be intelligent
and generally applicable. Again science advances by
the experiences of individuals, experiences which are
different from the world in which they have arisen
and which refer to a world which is not yet in existence,
so far as scientific experience is concerned. But this
relation to the old and new is not that of a subjective
world to an objective universe, but is a process of
logical reconstruction by which out of exceptions the

SCIENTIFIC METHOD 227

new law arises to replace a structure that has become
inadequate.

In both of these processes, that of determining the
structure of experience which will test by experiment
the legitimacy of the- new hypothesis, and that of for-
mulating the problem and the hypothesis for its solu-
tion, the individual functions in his full particularity,
and yet in organic relationship with the society that
is responsible for him. It is the import for scientific
method of this relationship that promises most for the
interpretation of the philosophic problems involved.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

BOYD H. BODE

If it is true that misery loves company, those per-
sons who feel despondent over the present situation in
philosophy may console themselves with the reflection
that things are not so bad as they might be. Our
friends, the psychologists, are afflicted even as we are.
The disagreements of experts as to both the subject-
matter and the method of psychology are as funda-
mental as anything that philosophy can show. A spirit
of revolt is abroad in the land, and psychology is once
more on trial. The compact which provided that
psychology should be admitted to the rank of a natural
science, on condition that it surrender its pretension
to be the science of the soul and confine itself to the
study of consciousness, is no longer considered binding.
The suspicion is growing that consciousness is nothing
more nor less than an attenuated form of the soul that
it pretends to displace. Consequently the psychology
without a soul to which we have just become accus-
tomed is now attacked on behalf of a psychology with-
out a consciousness, on the ground that this latter
standpoint alone can give assurance against entangling
alliances between psychology and metaphysics.

From the side of philosophy this situation is inter-
esting, not only to such as may crave the comfort that
springs from the spectacle of distress, but also to those

228

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 229

who take a more hopeful view of present-day tend-
encies. The question- that is at issue is fundamentally
the question of the nature of consciousness, which is
quite as important to philosophy as to psychology.
On the one hand it is maintained that psychology has
to do with consciousness and that its distinctive method
is the method of introspection. On the other hand it
is urged that psychology is nothing more nor less than
a study of behavior, that it is not a science at all, un-
less the existence of consciousness is denied or at least
ignored, and that the method of introspection is a
delusion and a snare. The two standpoints are not
always clearly formulated, nor can we say that every
system of psychology is true to type. It is, in fact,
the lack of clearness in the fundamental concepts that
makes the status of psychology a matter of so much
uncertainty.

The situation presents an apparent anomaly. Both
parties profess to deal with facts of observation, yet
the claim of the introspectionist that he observes facts
of consciousness is met by the assertion of his rival that
there is no consciousness to be observed. How can this
be, unless we assume that introspection presupposes
an esoteric principle, like the principle of grace in
religion? It seems evident that we have to do here
with some deep-seated misconception regarding the
facts that are supposed to constitute the subject-
matter for observation and description.

A common procedure on the part of introspectionism
is to assert the existence of consciousness as something
which is indeed indefinable, but which admits of obser-

230 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

vation and description. But this procedure is no longer
justified. In the first place, the assertion that con-
sciousness exists is not the statement of a fact but the
designation of a problem. What is the nature of the
fact that we call consciousness.'' If the common-sense
individual, who assents so readily to the proposition
that we all know consciousness, be asked to differentiate
between consciousness and the objects of consciousness,
he is dazed and helpless. And, secondly, the assertion
of indefinability involves us in a difficulty. The inde-
finability of consciousness has sometimes been likened
to that of space, but in this latter case we find no such
confusion between space and the objects in space. It
is clear, however, that if consciousness is not some-
thing distinguishable from objects, there is no need to
discuss consciousness, and if it is distinguishable, it
must be distinguished before we are entitled to proceed
with observation and description. Definition is indis-
pensable, at least to the extent of circumscribing the
facts that are to be investigated. Moreover, if con-
sciousness cannot be defined, neither can it be described.
What is definition, after all, but a form of description?
To assert, in effect, that consciousness is indefinable
because it is indescribable, and that for this reason we
must be content with description, is both a flagrant dis-
regard of consistency and an unwarranted abuse of our
good nature.

This difficulty leads on to another, for doubts, like
lies, have a singular propensity to breed more of their
kind. If consciousness is something that everybody
knows, why should it be necessary to look to the psy-

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 231

chologist for a description of it? If the study of con-
sciousness brings to light any new fact, that fact by
definition is not a conscious fact at all, and consequently
is not the kind of thing that we set out to describe.
Consciousness, in short, cannot be analyzed; it cannot
be resolved into elements or constituents. It is
precisely what it is and not some product of
our after-thought that we are pleased to substitute
for it.

These familiar considerations do not, indeed, decide
the issue between the rival theories of psychology, but
they serve to suggest that our introspective psychology
has been too easily satisfied in the conception of its
specific problem or subject-matter. As a matter of
fact, the work that has been done in the name of psy-
chology has been peculiarly barren of results, so far
as a consciousness an sich is concerned, although it has
led to a wealth of material pertaining to adaptive be-
havior. Its solid achievements lie in the domain, not
of consciousness, but of instinctive, habitual, and in-
telligent adaptation. It teaches us little that has to
do unequivocally with consciousness as distinct from
things, but it teaches us much concerning stimulus and
response, attention and habit, conflict and adjustment.
The doctrine that psychology is a science of behavior
is justified at least to the extent that it emphasizes a
factor, the importance of which introspectionism has
consistently refused to recognize. Whatever conclu-
sion we may ultimately reach regarding the nature of
consciousness, the whole drift of psychological and
biological investigation seems to indicate that an ade-

232 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

quate conception of consciousness and of the distinc-
tive problem of psychology can be attained only on the
basis of a painstaking reflection on the facts of be-
havior.

I

It is evident that the attempt to ascertain the nature
of consciousness and of psychology from the stand-
point of behavior is committed to the assumption that
the behavior in question is of a distinctive kind. The
justification of this assumption will enable us to for-
mulate the definitions which we seek. Discussions of
conscious behavior ordinarily emphasize the similarity
between conscious and reflex beha^^or rather than the
difference. An attitude of expectancy, for example,
is usually conceived as a sort of temporary reflex.
Certain nervous connections are organized for the oc-
casion, so that, when a given stimulus arrives, it will
induce its appropriate response. This situation is
best exemplified, perhaps, in simple reaction-experi-
ments, in which the subject makes a certain predeter-
mined response upon presentation of the stimulus. The
process is supposed to be of the reflex type throughout,
the only difference being that ordinary reflexes are
relatively permanent and unvarying, whereas a pre-
arranged response to a stimulus has to do with a reflex
that is made to order so as to meet the exigencies
of the moment.

For certain purposes such a description of conscious
behavior is no doubt sufficiently accurate. Our present
concern, however, is with the differences between these

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 23S

temporary organizations and ordinary reflexes. In
order to bring out these differences, let us introduce
a slight complication into our reaction-experiment and
suppose that the subject is to make one of two alterna-
tive responses, according to the nature of the stimulus.
His state of expectancy is accompanied by a certain
bodily " set " or preparedness for the coming event,
although the precise nature of the event is a matter of
uncertainty. His nervous system is in readiness to
respond this way or that, or rather, it has already
started to act in both of the alternative ways. If the
subject is to respond with the right hand to one stimu-
lus and with the left hand to the other, both hands
are in a state of activity before the stimulus appears.
The organization of the temporary reflex through the
agency of the cerebral cortex could not be achieved
were it not for the fact that all the movements entering
into the organization are nascently aroused before the
spring is touched which permits the act to unroll itself
in orderly sequence.

The various successive movements, then, which make
Qp our temporary reflex achieve their relationship to
one another from the fact that they are started simul-
taneously, and this peculiarity constitutes a distinctive
feature. Apparently this feature is absent from true
reflexes. An act of swallowing, performed uncon-
sciously, may start the complicated processes of diges-
:ion, but it is merely the first act of a series. There
s no evidence that the movements of the stomach and
)f the other organs concerned in digestion must be pre-
iupposed before the act of swallowing can take place.

234 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

The swallowing may start the other processes, but we
cannot say that these other processes react back upon
the first act and make it one of swallowing rather than
something else. Yet this " back stroke " is precisely
what is necessary in our reaction-experiment, for it is
by virtue of this fact that the organization of the tem-
porary reflex becomes a possibility. The first response
cannot take place until the last is provided for. Thus
the immediate act of looking has embodied in it the
activity that is to follow later. The looking is not
simply with the eye, but with the hands that are to
complete the response. The optical response is a re-
sponse which, in the language of Bergson, prefigures
or sketches out the act of a later moment. The nervous
system is enabled to act as a unit, because the move-
ments that are to occur at a later time are represented
in the first stage of the complete act. The first stage,
accordingly, does not occur independently, but as a
preliminary to the second. With an imperfect organi-
zation of the entire response, it may happen that the
subsequent movements are not suppressed until their
proper moment arrives, but appear in advance of their
scheduled time. In writing, for example, we frequently
omit words or add to a word the final letter of some
word that belongs to a subsequent part of the sentence.
An error of this sort could hardly occur so readily in
the course of an act that belongs to the type of the
true reflex.

Lest the reader suspect that this is a 'priori physi-
ology, I may quote the following from a prominent
neurologist : " No simple sensory impulse can, under

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 235

ordinary circumstances, reach the cerebral cortex with-
out first being influenced by subcortical association
centers, within which complex reflex combinations may
be effected and various automatisms set off in accord-
ance with their preformed structure. These subcor-
tical systems are to some extent modifiable by racial
and individual experience, but their reactions are chiefly
of the determinate or stereotyped character, with a
relatively limited range of possible reaction types for
any given stimulus complex.

" It is shown by the lower vertebrates, which lack
the cerebral cortex, that these subcortical mechanisms
are adequate for all of the ordinary simple processes
of life, including some degree of associative memory.
But here, when emergencies arise which involve situa-
tions too complex to be resolved by these mechanisms,
the animal will pay the inevitable penalty of fail-
ure— perhaps the loss of his dinner, or even of his
life.

" In the higher mammals with well-developed cortex
the automatisms and simple associations are likewise
performed mainly by the subcortical apparatus, but
the inadequacy of this apparatus in any particular sit-
uation presents not the certainty of failure, but rather
a dilemma. The rapid preformed automatisms fail to
^ive relief, or perhaps the situation presents so many
complex sensory excitations as to cause mutual inter-
'crence and inhibition of all reaction. There is a stasis
n the subcortical centers. Meanwhile the higher neural
csistance of the cortical pathways has been overcome
)y summation of stimuli and the cortex is excited to

2-36 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

function. Here is a mechanism adapted, not for a
limited number of predetermined and immediate re-
sponses, but for a much greater range of combination
of the afferent impressions with each other and with
memory vestiges of previous reactions and a much
larger range of possible modes of response to an}' given
set of afferent impressions. By a process of trial and
error, perhaps, the elements necessary to effect the
adaptive response may be assembled and the problem
solved.

" It is evident here that the physiological factors
in the dilemma or problem as this is presented to the
cortex are by no means simple sensory impressions,
but definitely organized systems of neural discharge,
each of which is a physiological resultant of the re-
flexes, automatisms, impulses, and inhibitions charac-
teristic of its appropriate subcortical centers. The
precise form which these subcortical combinations will
assume in response to any particular excitation is in
large measure determined by the structural connections
iriter se. . . .

" From the standpoint of the cerebral cortex con-
sidered as an essential part of the mechanism of higher
conscious acts, every afferent stimulus, as we have seen,
is to some extent affected by its passage through vari-
ous subcortical association centers (i.e., it carries a
quale of central origin). But this same afferent im-
pulse in its passage through the spinal cord and brain
stem may, before reaching the cortex, discharge col-
lateral impulses into the lower centers of reflex coordi-
nation, from which incipient (or even actually consum-

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 237

mated) motor responses are discharged previous to the
cortical reaction. These motor discharges may,
through the ' back stroke ' action, in turn exert an
influence upon the slower cortical reaction. Thus the
lower reflex response may in a literal physiological
sense act into the cortical stimulus complex and become
an integral part of it."*

It seems clear, then, that conscious behavior involves
a certain process of organization which constitutes a
differential. The units entering into this process are
" definitely organized systems of neural discharge,"
the antecedent organization of these several systems
being due either to the inherited or to the acquired
structure of the nervous system. Given a certain
amount of plasticity, the nervous system builds up
specific forms of response for certain objects or situa-
tions, and these forms of response subsequently become
the material from which new organizations or new
modes of response are constructed. The achievements
of the past, accordingly, become stepping-stones to
new achievement. The new organization, moreover, is
not determined by a mechanism antecedently provided,
but has a peculiar flexibility, so as to meet the demands
of a new situation. That is, a new mode of procedure
is adopted. Instead of being a purely mechanical
reaction, the response that results from the situation
is tentative or experimental in character, and " by a
process of trial and error, perhaps, the elements neces-

* C. Judson Herrick, " Some Reflections on the Origin and Sig-
nificance of the Cerebral Cortex," Journal of Animal Behavior,
Vol. Ill, pp. 228-233.

238 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

sarj^ to effect the adaptive response may be assembled
and the problem solved."

We may add at once that the reorganization which is
required to constitute conscious behavior varies a great
deal in extent. In an act that is more or less habitual,
a comparatively slight modification of the correspond-
ing organized system of neural discharge will suffice
to harmonize the conflicting elements, whereas on other
occasions a more extensive modification is required.
But in any case it appears that there is a certain
impropriety in describing conscious behavior in terms
of a temporary reflex, since the study of this behavior
is concerned with the organization of the discordant
elements, not as a result, but primarily as a process.
In a reflex act we may suppose that the stimulus which
evokes the first stage in the response is like the first
in a row of upstanding bricks, which in falling knocks
down another. That is, the reflex arc is built up by
agencies that are quite independent of the subsequent
act. The arc is all set up and ready for use by the
time the reflex act appears upon the scene. In the case
of conscious activit}'^, on the other hand, we find a very
different state of affairs. The arc is not first con-
structed and then used, but is constructed as the act
proceeds ; and this progressive organization is, in the
end, what is meant by conscious behavior. If the
course of a reflex act may be compared with traveling
in a railroad train, the progress of a conscious act. is
more like that of a band of explorers, who hew their
path and build their bridges as they go along. The

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 239

direction of the act is not determined from without but
from within ; the end is internal to the process.

This process of organization and purposive direction
is exemplified in every act of attention. Is that noise,
for example, a horse in the street, or is it the rain on
the roof? What we find in such a situation is not a
paralysis of activity, but a redirection. The incom-
patibility of responses is purely relative. There is
indeed a mutual inhibition of the responses for hoof-
beats and rain respectively, in the sense that neither
has undisputed possession of the field; but this very
inhibition sets free the process of attention, in which
the various responses participate and cooperate.
There is no static balancing of forces, but rather a
process in which the conflict is simply a condition for
an activity of a different kind. If I am near a window
facing the street, my eye turns thither for a clue ; if
the appeal to vision be eliminated, the eye becomes
unseeing and cooperates with the ear by excluding all
that is irrelevant to the matter in hand. In this pro-
cess the nervous system functions as a unit, with refer-
ence to the task of determining the source and char-
acter of the sound. This task or problem dominates
the situation. A voice in an adjoining room may break
in, but only as something to be ignored and shut out;
whereas a voice in the street may become all-absorbing
as possibly indicating the driver of the hypothetical
horse. That is, the reason why the conflict of re-
sponses does not end in a deadlock, but in a redirection,
is that a certain selectiveness of response comes into
play. Out of the mass of more or less inchoate activi-

210 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ties a certain response is selected as a rallying-point
for the rest, and this selection is of a purposive char-
acter. The selection is determined by reference to the
task in hand, which is to restore a certain harmony
of response. Accordingly, that response is selected
which gives promise of forwarding the business of the
moment. By virtue of this selective character, one of the
constituents of the total activity becomes exalted among
its fellows and is entrusted with the function of deter-
mining further behavior.

The purpose of the discussion, up to this point, is
to put forward this selective or teleological character
as the fundamental and differentiating trait of conscious
behavior; and our task, accordingly, is to give an ac-
count of the nature and modus operandi of this purpo-
sive control. This control, it is evident, consists in giv-
ing direction to behavior with reference to results that
are still in the future. The basis for this anticipation
of the future is furnished by the nascent responses
which foreshadow further activity, even while they are
still under the thraldom of the inhibitions which hold
them back. These suppressed activities furnish a sort
of diagram or sketch of further possible behavior, and
the problem of consciousness is the problem of making
the result or outcome of these incipient responses ef-
fective in the control of behavior. Future results or
consequences must be converted into present stimuli ;
and the accomplishment of this conversion is the miracle
of consciousness. To be conscious is to have a future
possible result of present behavior embodied as a present
existence functioning as a stimulus to further behavior.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 241

Thus the qualities of a perceptual experience may be
interpreted, without exception, as anticipations of the
results of activities which are as yet in an embryonic
stage. The results of the activity that is as yet partly
suppressed are already expressed or anticipated in the
perception. The present experience may, as James says,
" shoot its perspective far before it, irradiating in ad-
vance the regions in which lie the thoughts as yet un-
born."* A baseball player, for example, who is all
" set " to field a ball as a preliminary to a further play,
sees the ball, not simply as an approaching object,
but as ball-to-be-caught-and-then-thrown-to-first-base.
Moreover, the ball, while still on the wa}'^, is a ball-that-
may-bound-to-the-right-or-to-the-left. The correspond-
ing movements of the player to the right or left, and
the act of throwing, although present only as inhibited
or incipient acts, are nevertheless embodied in the visual
experience. Similarly my couch looks soft and inviting,
because the optical stimulation suggests or prompts, not
only the act of lying down, but also the kind of relaxa-
tion that is made possible by a comfortable bed. So
likewise the tiger's jaws and claws look cruel and horri-
ble, because in that perception are reflected the incipi-
ent movements of defense and recoil which are going on
in the body of the observer. Perception, like our air-
castles, or like dreams in the Freudian theory, presents
what is at best but a suggestion or program in the guise
of accomplished fact.

This projection, however, of our submerged activi-
ties into our perceptions requires a more precise state-

* Psychology, Vol. I, p. 256.

242 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ment. According to the foregoing contention, the ap-
pearance, for example, of a razor's edge as sharp is the
sensory correlate of an incipient response which, if it
were to attain full-blown perfection, would be the
reaction to a cut. By hypothesis, however, the response
is inhibited, and it is this inhibition which calls forth
the perception of the object. If the response encoun-
tered no obstruction, adaptation would be complete and
perception would not occur. Since there is a blocking
of the response, nature resorts to a special device in
order to overcome the difficulty, and this device con-
sists in furnishing the organism with a new type of
stimulus. The razor as perceived does not actually
cut just now, but it bodies forth the quality ' will cut,'
i.e., the perceived attribute derives its character from
what the object will, or may, do at a future time. That
is, a perceived object is a stimulus which controls or
directs the organism by results which have not yet oc-
curred, but which will, or may, occur in the future.
The uniqueness of such a stimulus lies in the fact that
a contingent result somehow becomes operative as a
present fact ; the future is transferred into the present
so as to become effective in the guidance of behavior.

This control by a future that is made present is what
constitutes consciousness. A living body may respond
to an actual cut by a knife on purely mechanical or
reflex principles ; but to respond to a cut by anticipa-
tion, i.e., to behave with reference to a merely possible
or future injur}', is manifestly an exhibition of intelli-
gence. Not that there need be any conscious reference
to the future as future in the act. Merely to see the

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 243

object as " sharp " is sufficient to give direction to
conduct. But " sharp " is equivalent to " will cut " ;
the quality of sharpness is a translation of future pos-
sibility into terms of present fact, and as thus
translated the future possibility becomes a factor
in the control of behavior. Perception, there-
fore, is a point where present and future coincide.
What the object will do is, in itself, just a contingency,
an abstract possibility, but in perception this possi-
bility clothes itself in the garments of present, con-
crete fact and thus provides the organism with a differ-
ent environment. The environment provides a new
stimulus by undergoing a certain kind of change, i.e.,
by exercising a peculiar function of control. This con-
trol is seeing, and the whole mystery of consciousness is
just this rendering of future stimulations or results into
terms of present existence. Consciousness, accordingly,
is a name for a certain change that takes place in the
stimulus ; or, more specifically, it is a name for the
control of conduct by future results or consequences.

To acquire such a stimulus and to become conscious
are one and the same thing. As was indicated previ-
ously, the conscious stimulus is correlated with the vari-
ous inherited and acquired motor tendencies which have
been set off and which are struggling for expression,
and the uniqueness of the stimulus lies in the fact that
the adaptive value of these nascent motor tendencies be-
comes operative as the determining principle in the
organization of the response. The response, for exam-
ple, to " sharp " or " will cut " is reminiscent of an
earlier reaction in which the organism engaged in cer-

244 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

tain defensive movements as the result of an actual in-
jury. That is, the response to " sharp " is a nascent
or incipient form of a response which at the time of its
first occurrence was the expression of a maladaptation.
The response that is induced when an object is seen as
sharp would be biologically bad, if it were com-
pleted, and the fact that the object is seen as sharp
means that this result is foreshadowed and oper-
ates as a stimulus to prevent such maladaptation.
Similarly the couch which meets my weary eye becomes
a stimulus to repose because the nascent activity which
is aroused would be biologically good if completed. In
any case the character of the stimulus is determined by
the adaptive value which the incipient activity would
have if it were carried out. Consciousness, accord-
ingly, is just a future adaptation that has been set to
work so as to bring about its own realization. The
future thus becomes operative in the present, in much
the same way as the prospects for next year's crop may
be converted by the farmer into ready money with
which to secure the tools for its production.

To justify this conclusion by a detailed and extensive
application of this interpretation to every form of
quality and relation would carry us beyond the limits of
the present undertaking. It is a view, however, which
offers possibilities that have not as yet been properly
recognized. Certain considerations, besides those al-
ready discussed, may be mentioned as giving it an ante-
cedent plausibility. As regards simple sense-qualities,
there is abundant reason for believing that Locke's doc-
trine of " simple ideas " is a violent perversion of the

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 245

facts. To assume that the last results of analysis are the
first things in experience is to give a fatal twist to psy-
chology and to commit us to the fruitless agonies of
epistemology. The original " blooming, buzzing con-
fusion " with which experience starts becomes differ-
entiated into specific qualities only to the extent that
certain typical and organized forms of response are
built up within the body. Sense-qualities, in other
words, are functionally not simple but extremely com-
plex; they owe their distinctiveness or individuality to
the fact that each of them embodies a specific set of
cues or anticipations, with reference to further experi-
ences. The difference between a quality like " sharp-
ness " and a quality like " red " lies in the fact that
the former is a translation of a relatively simple possi-
bility, viz., " will cut," whereas the latter embodies a
greater variety of anticipations. The perception of
red, being the outcome of many comparisons and asso-
ciations, presupposes a complex physical response
which contains multitudinous tendencies to reinstate
former responses ; and the combined effect of these sup-
pressed tendencies is the perception of a color which
offers possibilities of control over behavior in such direc-
tions as reminiscences, idle associations, or perhaps
scrutiny and investigation. A similar explanation evi-
dently applies to abstract ideas, which neither admit
of reduction to " revived sensations " nor compel the
adoption of a peculiarly " spiritual " or " psychic "
existence in the form of unanalyzable meanings. Here
again a complex mode of response must be assumed,
having as its correlate an experience describable only

246 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

in terms of its functioning, which is such as to
enable the organism to act intelligently, i.e., with ref-
erence to future results, which are sufficiently embodied
in the experience to secure appropriate behavior.
Again, this point of view offers a satisfactory solution
for the time-worn puzzle of relativity. If perception is
just the translation of future possible stimulations into
present fact, there is assuredly no justification for
the notion that perception distorts the facts or that
discrepancies among different perceptions prove their
" subjectivity." There remains but one test by which
the correctness or validity of perception may be
judged, viz., whether the perceived object proves to be
the kind of stimulus which is reported or anticipated in
the present experience.

So far our discussion has emphasized the anticipa-
tory character of the conscious stimulus. Future con-
sequences come into the present as conditions for fur-
ther behavior. These anticipations are based, indeed,
upon previous happenings, but they enter into the
present situation as conditions that must be taken into
account. But to take them into account means that
the conscious situation is essentially incomplete and in
process of transformation or reconstruction. This
peculiar incompleteness or contingency stands out
prominently when the situation rises to the level of
uncertainty and perplexity. To borrow the classical
illustration of the child and the candle, the child
is in a state of uncertainty because the neural
activity of the moment comprises two incompatible
systems of discharge, the one being a grasping and

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 247

holding, the other a withdrawal and such further
movements as may be induced by contact with fire.
Hence the candle has the seductiveness of a prize,
but at the same time carries the suggestion of burn-
ing the fingers. That is, the perceived object has
a unique character of uncertainty, which inheres in it
as a present positive quality. We are here confronted
with genuine contingency, such as is encountered no-
where else. Other modes of behavior may be uncertain
in the sense that the incoming stimulation finds no fixed
line of discharge laid down for itself within the organ-
ism. In seeking to convert itself into response it may
either sweep away the obstructions in its path or work
itself out along lines of less resistance, in ways that no
man can foretell. There may be moments of equilib-
rium, moments when it remains to be seen where the
dam will break and the current rush through. Such
uncertainty, however, is the uncertainty of the by-
stander who attempts to forecast what will happen
next. It is not the uncertainty that figures as an
integral part of conscious behavior.

This inherent uncertainty means that conscious
behavior, as contrasted with the mechanical character
of the reflexes, is essentially experimental. The un-
certainty exists precisely because an effort is under way
to clear up the uncertainty. The resort to eye or ear
or to reflective thinking is suggested by the corre-
sponding nascent responses and is an endeavor to se-
cure something which is still to seek, but which, when
found, will meet the requirements of the situation.
Translating this process into terms of stimulus and

248 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

response, we may say that the conscious stimulus
of the moment induces the investigation or scrutiny
which presently results in the arrival of a stimulus that
is adequate to the situation. The stimulus, in other
words, provides for its own successor ; or we may say
that the process as a whole is a self-directing, self-
determining activity. Stimulus and response are not
successive stages or moments, but rather simultaneous
functions or phases of the total process. Within this
process the given situation is the stimulus because
it is that aspect or function which guides the subse-
quent course of the activity, while the bodily movements
are the response because they already embody the ac-
tivity that is to follow. The significant circumstance
here is that stimulus and response resist the temporal
separation that we find in a purely reflex act ; stimulus
and response are bound together as correlated func-
tions in a unitary, self-directing process, so that these
twain are one flesh.

Situations of uncertainty and expectancy, as exem-
plified by the familiar child-candle incident, are of in-
terest because they emphasize both the anticipator}'
character of experience and the peculiar reconstruction
of the stimulus. These situations, however, difi'er
merely in degree, not in kind, from other experiences ;
their merit is that in them the distinctive character of
conscious life is writ large. To say that they are con-
scious situations is to say that they are so constituted
that the possibilities of a subsequent moment are em-
bodied in them as a positive quality. In them the
present moment embodies a future that is contingent.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 249

And similarly the response has neither the predeter-
mined organization of the reflex nor the aimless char-
acter of a response that issues in a set of random move-
ments. It is, so to speak, of a generalized character,
like the paleontological specimens that foreshadow in,
their structure the advent of both fish and reptile. This
form of organization, however, while exemplified most
strikingly in situations of uncertainty, pertains to all
conscious behavior. In uttering a sentence, for exam-
ple, we know in advance what we are going to say, yet
the sentence shapes itself into definite form only as we
proceed ; or perhaps we get " stuck," and by hemming
and hawing bear witness that a struggle for a certain
kind of organization is going on. The same word in
different contexts is a diff^erent word in each instance,
by virtue of the coloring that it takes on from what
is to follow after. And this is equally true of our
most casual experiences. The auditory or visual object
that we happen to notice and immediately afterwards
ignore is apprehended with reference to the possibility
of warranting further attention, or else it presents
itself as an intruder that is to be excluded in order that
we may go on with the concern of the moment. All ex-
perience is a kind of intelligence, a control of present
behavior with reference to future adjustment. To be
in experience at all is to have the future operate in the
present.

This reference to the future may be in the nature of
an end or goal that controls a series of activities or it
may be of a momentary and casual kind. In any case
the character of the stimulus changes with the progress

250 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

of the act. The book on the table must become succes-
sively book-to-be-reached-f or, book-to-be-picked-up, and
book-to-be-opened, unless the process is to drop back to
the type of reflex. This development of the stimulus
gives genuine continuity, since every moment in the
process comes as a fulfilment of its predecessor and as
a transition-point to its successor. In a purely me-
chanical act response follows stimulus like the succes-
sive strokes of a clock. It is a touch-and-go affair;
the stimulus presses the button and then subsides,
while the neural organization does the rest. In
conscious behavior, on the other hand, stimulus and
response keep step with each other. A mere suc-
cession of stimuli would reduce conscious behavior
to a series of explosive jerks, on the principle
of the gasoline engine. To be conscious at all is to
duplicate in principle the agility of the tight-rope per-
former, who continuously establishes new co-ordina-
tions according to the exigencies of the moment and
with constant reference to the controlling considera-
tion of keeping right side up. The sensory stimulus
provides continuously for its own rehabilitation or ap-
propriate transformation, and in a similar way the
neural organization is never a finished thing, but is in
constant process of readjustment to meet the demands
of an adaptation that still lies in the future.

It is this relationship of present response to the re-
sponse of the next moment that constitutes the distinc-
tive trait of conscious behavior. The relatively unor-
ganized responses of the present moment, in becoming
reflected ifi the experienced object, reveal their outcome

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 251

or meaning before they have become overt, and thus
provide the conditions of intelligent action. In other
words, future consequences become transformed into a
stimulus for further behavior. We are confronted here
with a distinctive mode of operation, which must be
properly recognized, if we are to give a consistent and
intelligent account of conscious behavior. On the other
hand, if we refuse to recognize the advent here of a
new category, intelligence becomes an anomaly and
mystery deepens into contradiction. Since intelligence
or consciousness must be provided for somehow, we are
forced back upon either interactionism or else epiphe-
nomenalism, more or less disguised under a euphonious
name, such as psycho-physical parallelism or the double-
aspect theory. That is, the relation of stimulus and
response is either reduced to plain cause and effect or
else is rejected altogether and supplanted by a bare con-
comitance of the physical and mental series. In either
case conscious behavior is reduced to the type of reflex
action, the only issue between the two doctrines being
the question whether or not it is necessary or permissi-
ble to interpolate mental links in the causal chain.

According to the doctrine of parallelism, conscious
behavior is nothing more than a complicated form of
reflex, which goes on without any interference on the
part of mind or intelligence. Intelligence adds noth-
ing to the situation except itself; it carries no implica-
tions or new significance with regard to conduct. The
psychic correlate is permitted to tag along, but the
explanations of response remain the same in kind as
they were before they reached the level of consciousness.

252 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

" Mere complexity should not becloud the issue. Every
brain process, like every reflex activity, is presumably
the result of physico-chemical processes. The assump-
tion of a mysterious intuition or ' psychic force ' adds
nothing to the mechanistic explanation, even when the
latter is most fragmentary. The interactionists go out
of their way unnecessarily in assuming a special activ-
ity of consciousness to account for the dislocation of
reactions from sensations. The nervous organization
suffices to explain it. Distant-stimuli and central
stimuli co-operate to bring about anticipatory reac-
tions ; foresight is but the conscious side of this process.
The phenomenon is both ph^^sical and mental." *

The passage just quoted is fairly typical. Since the
mental is an aspect or concomitant of the physical it
is clearly entitled to an occasional honorable mention,
but the fact remains that the explanation of behavior
is to be given wholly in terms of neural organization.
The mental is quite literally an " also ran." To say
that a physico-chemical process is also mental is of no
particular significance as long as it is implied that the
end or goal of the process plays no part in shaping the
course of events. The mental simply gives dignity to
the occasion, like the sedan chair with no bottom, in
which the Irishman's admirers, according to James's
story, ran him along to the place of banquet and which
prompted the hero to remark : " Faith, if it wasn't for
the honor of the thing, I might as well have come on
foot."

It is this empty show of respect which the interac-
* H. C. Warren, Psychological Review, Vol. XXI, Page 93.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 253

tionists seek to avoid when they make the mental a dis-
tinct link in the causal sequence. The physical first
causes the mental, and the mental in turn brings about
a change in the physical. In this way a certain im-
portance is indeed secured to mental facts, but it ap-
pears that, so far as purposive action is concerned, we
are no better off than we were before. The mental is
simply another kind of cause; it has as little option
regarding its physical effect as the physical cause has
with regard to its mental effect. Non-mechanical be-
havior is again ruled out, or else a vain attempt is made
to secure a place for it through the introduction of an
independent psychic agency.

It is true, indeed, that we are under no antecedent
obligation to maintain the existence of an activity that
is not entirely reducible to the type of everyday cause
and effect. But neither does scientific zeal and incor-
ruptibility require us to do violence to the facts in order
to secure this uniformity of type. Not to speak at all
of the difficulties inherent in this dualism, it seems un-
deniable that some facts persistently refuse to conform
to the type of mechanism, unless they are previously
clubbed into submission. Foresight and the sense of
obligation, for example, must learn to regard them-
selves as nothing more than an interesting indication
of the way in which the neural machinery is operating
before they will fit into the scheme. And similarly the
progress of an argument is no way controlled or di-
rected by the end in view, or by considerations of logical
coherence, but by the impact of causation. Ideas lose
their power to guide conduct by prevision of the fu-

254, CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ture, and truth and error consequently lose their sig-
nificance, save perhaps as manifestations of cerebral
operations. Since reasoning involves association, it
must be reducible to bare association ; the sequence of
the process is just sequence and nothing more. A
description of this kind is on a par with the celebrated
opinion that violin music is just a case of scraping
horse-hair on catgut. Everything that is distinctive in
the facts is left out of account, and we are forced to
the conclusion that no conclusion has any logical sig-
nificance or value.

In the end these difficulties, and in fact most of our
philosophic ills, may be traced back to the prejudice
that experience or knowing is a process in which the
objects concerned do not participate and have no share.
This assumption commits us at once to various corol-
laries and thus breeds a set of abstractions that pass
themselves off as entities and add themselves to the world
of our experience as demonstrable facts. In philosophy,
as in the financial world, there is a constant temptation
to do business on a basis of fictitious capitalization.
Our abstract physico-chemical processes, with their
correlates, such as passive, independent objects, souls,
minds, or absolutes, do not represent actual working
capital, but watered stock, and their inevitable tend-
ency is to convert the legitimate business of philosophy
into a campaign of exploitation, which is none the less
exploitation because it is frequently done in the inter-
ests of what are supposed to be the spiritual values of
man. A careful inventory of our assets brings to light
no such entities as those which have been placed to our

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 255

credit. We do not find body and object and conscious-
ness, but only body and object. We do not find ob-
jects that remain indifferent to the experiential proc-
ess, but rather objects that exhibit a flexibility and
mobility which defy all description. We do not find a
self-sufficient environment or absolute to which intelli-
gence must needs adjust itself, but an environment that
is at odds with itself and struggling in the throes of a
reconstruction. The process of intelligence is some-
thing that goes on, not in our minds, but in things ; it
is not photographic, but creative. From the simplest
perception to the most ideal aspiration or the wildest
hallucination, our human experience is reality engaged
in the guidance or control of behavior. Things undergo
a change in becoming experienced, but the change con-
sists in a doing, in the assumption of a certain task or
duty. The experiential object hence varies with the
response; the situation and the motor activity fit to-
gether like the sections of a broken bowl.

The bearing of this standpoint on the interpretation
of psychology is readily apparent. If it be granted
that consciousness is just a name for behavior that is
guided by the results of acts not yet performed but re-
flected beforehand in the objects of experience, it
follows that this behavior is the peculiar subject-
matter of psychology. It is only by reference to
behavior that a distinctive field can be marked off
for psychological enterprise. When we say that
the flame is hot, the stone hard, and the ice cold and
slippery, we are describing objects and nothing more.
These qualities are, indeed, anticipations of future pes-

256 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

sibilities, but this means simply that the objects are
described in terms of their properties or capacities as
stimuli of the organism. Such an account leaves out
of consideration certain changes which things undergo
when they exercise the function of controlling or
directing changes in the adjustment of the body. A
quality, such as " sharp " or " hot," is not mental or
constituted by consciousness, but the function of the
quality in giving direction to behavior through certain
changes which it undergoes is consciousness. The
changes that take place in things as a result of asso-
ciation, attention, or memory, are changes that have
no significance, save with regard to their function as
stimuli to new adjustments. Psychology, therefore,
is properly a study of the conditions which determine
the change or development of stimuli; more specifically
it is a study of the conditions which govern such proc-
esses as those by which problems are solved, lessons are
memorized, habits and attitudes are built up, and de-
cisions are reached. To call such study " applied "
psychology is to misunderstand the proper scope and
purpose of the subject. Psychology frequently has
occasion to draw extensively upon physics and physi-
ology, but it has its own problem and its own method
of procedure.

That this view of conscious behavior should involve
an extensive reinterpretation of familiar facts is alto-
gether natural and inevitable. If consciousness is a
form of control, the question, for example, what is
" in " consciousness and what is not must be inter-
preted with reference to this function of control. In a

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 257

sense we perceive many things to which we are not pay-
ing attention, suclf as the light in the room or the
familiar chairs and bookcases. These are perceived
" marginally," as we say, in the sense that the presence
of these objects aifects the total adjustment of the
moment in such a way that the experience would be-
come a clue to these objects if they were withdrawn.
And similarly we may speak of marginal sensations of
strain or movement, to indicate possible clues to certain
bodily activities which are factors in the process. These
marginal perceptions or images are not actual exist-
ences, but are symbols and nothing more. The signifi-
cance of thesfe symbols is that they point to certain
conditions by which the experiences in question are
determined. Thus the question whether a given ex-
perience involves certain " sensations " is just a ques-
tion whether certain bodily or extra-bodily condi-
tions are involved in the experience. If this ref-
erence to conditions is ignored and experience is ex-
plained in terms of sensory material that blends and
fuses and otherwise disposes itself, the explanation
is no longer science but sleight-of-hand. Psychology
has no proper concern with such mythical constitu-
ents of consciousness; its business is with things as
related to conduct, which is to say that psychology
is a science of behavior.

II

According to the standpoint set forth in the pre-
ceding discussion, the key to a consistent and fruitful
interpretation of consciousness and psychology lies in

258 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

behavior. If we turn now to the ps3'chology of intro-
spection, which has been dominant so many years, we
find a standpoint and mode of procedure which, on the
surface at least, is of a radically different kind. It
behooves us, therefore, to consider this standpoint in
some detail in order to justify the attempt to reinter-
pret and " evaluate " it in the light of our own doc-
trine.

The point of departure for introspective psychology
is to be found, so it seems, not in the facts of behavior,
but in the distinction between focal and marginal ex-
perience. It is on this distinction that the introspec-
tive psychologist bases the attempt to give a psycho-
logical analysis and description of the contents of
experience. To analyze and describe the facts of con-
sciousness is to bring the marginal constituents of
experience into the white light of attention. Analysis
and description are possible just because experience
is so largely a welter of elements that disguise their
identity and character. In some way these unrecog-
nized and unidentified elements are constituents of the
total experience. To borrow the language of a writer
quoted by James, " However deeply we may suppose
the attention to be engaged by any thought, any con-
siderable alteration of the surrounding phenomena
would still be perceived; the most abstruse demonstra-
tion in this room would not prevent a listener, how-
ever absorbed, from noticing the sudden extinction of
the lights."* Or, as James remarks: "It is just like
the overtones in music. Different instruments give the
* Principles of Psychology, I, p. 241, note.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 25p

' same note,' namely, various upper harmonics of it
which differ from one instrument to another. They are
,not separately heard by the ear ; they blend with the
fundamental note and suffuse it, and alter it." * Let
the attention be directed to these overtones, however,
and they at once detach themselves from their surround-
ings and step forth into the light of day. Even so the
ticking of the clock may pass unnoticed in the sense
that it is an undiscriminated element in the background
of our consciousness ; but if the ticking comes to a sud-
den stop, the feeling of a void in our consciousness pro-
claims the fact that something has gone out from it.

The observation and description of the facts of con-
sciousness, then, is based directly on the fact that ex-
perience, as the psychologist deals with it, possesses a
focus and margin. Nature as conceived by the physical
sciences presents no such distinction. The facts are
what they are, and their character as focal or marginal,
as clear or obscure, depends altogether upon their re-
lation to an intelligence. Or we may say that if the
facts of experience were always focal and never mar-
ginal, it would never occur to us to speak of conscious-
ness as we do at present. As long as we confine
ourselves to a given color, shape or temperature, as
experienced focally, we are not dealing with conscious-
ness, but with objects. An analysis of such facts that
does not bring in the marginal is not an analysis of
consciousness, but an analysis of physical reality. Even
if we consider non-physical objects, such as mathe-
matical or economic concepts, we find that our analysis
* Ibid., p. 258.

260 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

is not psychological as long as the marginal is left out.
The consideration of the margin, however, brings us
into the presence of facts which are of a distinctive
kind and which warrant a new science. Let the margin
be eliminated and psychology disappears at the same
time.

The psychological doctrine of focus and margin,
then, is a matter of fundamental importance. On the
interpretation of this doctrine depend our sj'stems of
psychology and of philosophy. What, then, is meant
by focus and margin.'' If we turn to our psychologies,
we seem to be confronted once more with something
that everybody knows and nobody can define. But
since we have to do with a distinction, the obligation to
differentiate cannot be wholly ignored. Consciousness
is sometimes likened to a visual field and sometimes to
the waves of the sea. Like the visual field it has a fore-
ground and a background, a near and a remote, a
center and a margin or periphery. The contents of
consciousness are vivid or clear in the center of this
field and fade away into vagueness or obscureness in
proportion to their approach to the periphery. Or, to
take the other comparison, the focus may be repre-
sented by the crest of a wave and the margin by what we
may call its base. This illustration has the advantage
that it indicates the difference between higher and lower
degrees of concentration. As concentration increases,
the crest of the wave rises higher and its width
decreases, while the reverse is true where the concentra-
tion of attention is less intense. All consciousness pos-
sesses the distinction of focus and margin in some

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 26l

degree ; however much we may be absorbed in an ob-
ject or topic, there is always an indirect mental vision
that informs us of other facts, which for the time being
are in the background of our consciousness.

For purposes of description a metaphor is at best a
clumsy device. It has a tendency to substitute itself
for the thing to be described and thus to conceal its
limitations and inaccuracies. The present case is no
exception. I am forced to think that the visual field in
particular is a thoroughly vicious metaphor when em-
ployed to body forth the distinction of focus and
margin. Whatever this distinction may in the end turn
out to be, it is not such as this comparison would lead
one to suppose. Objects seen in indirect vision appear
obscure and blurred precisely because they are in the
focus of consciousness. We get pretty much the same
sort of obscureness or blur on a printed page when we
look at it in indirect vision as we do when we look at
it from a distance that is just too great to make out
the words or characters. What the illustration shows
is that things look different according as the circum-
stances under which we see them are different, but what
bearing this has on marginal consciousness is not at all
obvious to an unsophisticated intelligence.

When we speak of a focus and margin in conscious-
ness, we are presumably dealing with conscious fact.
Now this illustration of the visual field docs not repre-
sent conscious fact. Ordinary perception carries with
it no sense of obscureness at all, and when it docs we
have exactly the same kind of situation as when an
object is too distant or in some other way inaccessible

262 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

to satisfactory perception. That is, the object per-
ceived is in the ' focus ' and not in the margin. The
obscureness of objects when seen with the margin of the
retina has no more to do with the margin of conscious-
ness than the obscureness caused by an attack of diz-
ziness or b}"^ a morning fog.

It will be said, perhaps, that consciousness may be
unclear even though there be no sense of unclearness,
that there is such a thing as intrinsic clearness, quite
apart from obstacles and problems. In other words,
the same sensation is capable of realizing various de-
grees of clearness. It is not at all obvious, however,
why the different experiences that are concerned in such
a comparison should be called the same sensation. As
long as we abstract from objective reference, each sen-
sation is just what it is and there is no opportunity to
make comparisons on the basis of clearness. A sensa-
tion as such — if we are bound to speak of sensations
— can by no possibility be an obscure sensation, for the
trait that we call obscureness or vagueness constitutes
the intrinsic being of that sensation. If we permit our-
selves to speak of clearness at all, we should rather say
that it possesses a maximum of clearness, since it has
managed to express or present its whole nature with
not one trait or feature lacking. What more could be
demanded, in the way of clearness, of any conscious
fact than that it should body forth every detail that it
possesses?

If sensations or states of consciousness possess de-
grees of clearness, it seems to follow that we may
scrutinize them for the purpose of discovering char-

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 263

acteristics that were present though scarcely perceived,
in much the same way that the polishing of old furni-
ture brings out the grain in the wood. But such a
parallel, I submit, is plain nonsense. The supposition
that consciousness is something that in due time and
with good fortune may attain consciousness is too ab-
surd for discussion, even though it is a supposition that
plays a considerable role in present-day psychology.

The purpose of the discussion, up to this point, has
not been to deny the validity of the distinction between
focus and margin, but to insist upon the necessity of
reconsidering the meaning of this distinction, if we are
to attain to a workable definition of consciousness and
a fruitful or even intelligible conception of the prob-
lem of psychology. I have endeavored to show, in the
first place, that the doctrine of focus and margin in-
volves the raison d'etre of psychology. Apart from
this doctrine we have no task or problem that psy-
chology can claim as its distinctive possession. The
analysis of what is in the focus of consciousness is ade-
quately provided for in the other sciences ; it is only
with the introduction of what is called the margin that
an enterprise of a different kind becomes necessary.
But, secondly, this distinction of focus and margin can-
not be drawn on the basis of the experienced contrast
between clearness and obscureness. The very fact that
anything is experienced as obscure means that it is an
object of attention, or, in otlicr words, that it is in the
focus of consciousness and not in the margin. The
comparison of focus and margin with direct and indi-
rect vision is misleading, because it suggests that ex-

264 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

periences are marginal in proportion as they are felt
as obscure. And, thirdly, if we undertake to distin-
guish between focus and margin on the basis of a dif-
ference in clearness or vividness of which no note is
taken at the time, we encounter the difficulty that ex-
perience or consciousness, taken abstractly, does not
admit of such variations in degree, and so this criterion
likeAvise goes by the board.

The situation is indeed peculiar. That there is a
realm of psychological fact is universally conceded. As
a consequence of this conviction a great body of fact
and of doctrine has been built up. It would be folly
to deny either the distinctiveness or the significance of
this achievement. And yet James's description of psy-
chology as "a string of raw facts; a little gossip and
wrangle about opinions ; a little classification and gen-
eralization on the mere descriptive level ; a strong preju-
dice that we have states of mind and that our brain con-
ditions them," * is not wholly untrue even today. It is
even possible for a present-day critic to outdo James
and maintain that the legitimacy of psychology as a
separate inquiry is a matter of faith rather than of
sight. The ' raw facts ' of which James speaks resolve
themselves into physical and ph3^siological material on
the one hand and metaphysical dogmas on the other;
the gossip and wrangle are largely over fictitious prob-
lems ; the classifications and generalizations as a rule
involve trespassing on other fields; the prejudice that
we have states of mind has less standing-ground today
than it had twenty years ago. In other words, there
* Psychology. Briefer Course. P, 468.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 265

is still plausible ground for James's pessimistic com-
ment : " This is no science, it is only the hope of a
science." A situation such as this carries with it the
insistent suggestion that the trouble lies, not primarily
in the nature of the subject-matter, but in our con-
ception of the problem. " The matter of a science,"
as James says, " is with us." And if the distinction
of focus and margin constitutes the starting-point and
justification for a science of psychology, a better un-
derstanding of this distinction will mean a more ade-
quate appreciation of the problem with which psy-
chology has to deal.

As a starting-point for a reconsideration of focus
and margin, we may take those experiences in which the
distinction of clearness and obscureness is presented as
an experienced fact. Let us then turn once more to the
familiar illustration of the visual field. " When we look
at a printed page, there is always some one portion
of it, perhaps a word, which we see more clearly than
we do the rest ; and out beyond the margin of the page
we are still conscious of objects which we see only in
a very imperfect way." * That is, we appreciate the
distinction between what lies in the center of our visual
field and what is more remote, just because in this ex-
periment we are tr3'ing to see what lies beyond the
center without turning our eyes in that direction. We
set ourselves the task of seeing what is on the page,
and at the same time we interpose an artificial obstacle.
Hence the sense of effort, and the contrast between
what is clear and what is obscure. The present experi-
* Angell, Psychology, p. 65.

266 CREATIVE INTELLIGENXE

ence is obscure, not inherently, but only with reference
to a certain problem or question. It is inadequate as
an anticipation of further experience. The contrast
between clear and obscure is created by our attempt to
overcome the difficult}', and is therefore absent from
ordinary, unobstructed visual perception.

The situation described in the following familiar
quotation from James is an illustration of the same
thing: " Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name.
The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is
a gap therein ; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is
intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in
it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at
moments tingle with the sense of our closeness, and
then letting us sink back without the longed-for term."*

' I met this man on the train, and later at the recep-
tion; but what is his name?' The struggle rends our
consciousness in twain. The occasions of our meeting,
his appearance, his conversation, are solid fact, yet all
suffused with the pervasive, evanscent " wraith " that
tantalizes us with glimpses which half reveal and half
conceal the name we seek to grasp.

To account for such experiences simply in terms of
half-submerged " sensations " and " images " is to do
violence to all the requirements for clear thinking. If
we rule out explanations of this kind, we are evidently
forced to the conclusion that these experiences are ob-
scure, not in themselves or in the abstract, but with
reference to the function of putting us in possession
of the name to which they are inadequate clues. It is
* Psychology, Vol. I, p. 251.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 267

the subsequent, satisfactory experience of the name
which furnishes our standard for clearness ; in other
words, the implications of obscureness are of a func-
tional, and not of a static or structural, kind. The
marginal character of an experience is simply a refer-
ence to its function as a clue or cue to some further ex-
perience, i.e., a reference to its character as a changing
stimulus. Or we may say that the distinction between
focus and margin is just another aspect of the distinc-
tion between the conditions for further activity and the
incompleteness which leads to further adjustment.
The transfer of the future into the present gives us a
fact, here and now, and in this respect the experience is
entirely focal in character, and as such it is subject-
matter for the various sciences. Whatever the nature
of the experience, it is just what it is, and not some-
thing else. With respect to the further experience,
however, which it conditions or for which it prepares
the way, the present experience is entirely marginal,
i.e., in its character as a changing stimulus it is sub-
ject-matter for psychology. The distinction of focus
and margin, then, is based ultimately upon the func-
tion of experience in the control of behavior. The
given situation is a present fact and is in functional
change ; or, in terms of our present discussion, it
has both a focus and a margin. As present fact it
is a reality which requires recognition in the form of
adjustment; as in functional change it provides oppor-
tunity for bringing the adjustment to fruition. That is,
the experience both sets a task or makes a demand and
it points the way. The distinction is a distinction of

268 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

function, not of static existence, and it is this distinction
which is represented by the contrast of focus and
margin.

If we compare this interpretation of focus and mar-
gin with that of traditional psychology, we find that
the latter construes the relation of the present to the
future experience wholly in static terms, the functional
relation being left out of account. The later experience
is read back into its predecessor in the form of dim or
marginal images, which need but show themselves more
corapletel^^ to make the two identical. If these sensa-
tions were intended only as symbols of a functional
relationship, it would perhaps be scarcely worth while
to enter a protest against them. But when the func-
tional relationship is quite overlooked, the explanation
that is given becomes exceedingly dubious. The ticking
of the clock, for example, that is present, though un-
noticed, the overtones of the note that suffuse the whole
without diverting attention to their individual quali-
ties,— in what precise way are facts of this kind con-
cerned in the description of the experience which they
modify'? A study of the clock or of the overtones
can hardly pass as an analysis of consciousness ; it is
too obviously an affair of physics. Such a study be-
comes merely an excuse for repeating the analyses of
physics and reading them off in terms of sensations
and images. Moreover, the transfer of all this mate-
rial to consciousness looks suspiciously like a transac-
tion in mental chemistry. Where, then, is psychology
to gain a foothold.'' What is the meaning of these un-
canny sensations and images, which nobody experi-

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 269

ences, unless it be their character as symbols of
adjustment? They have no legitimate status, and psy-
chology, by consequence, has no legitimate problem,
except in so far as they represent those possible acts
of adaptation which are the sole and proper concern
of psychology.

It remains to point out briefly the bearing of these
results on what is called " the method of introspection."
We are sometimes assured that introspection has dis-
carded the belief in a separate mental stuff or subject-
matter, but there is ground for the suspicion that such
protestations are made in the same spirit that we affirm
our belief in the Ten Commandments or the Golden
Rule, with no thought of being taken seriously. At all
events, without a literal " looking within " it seems to
become exceedingly difficult to differentiate introspec-
tion from ordinary observation as practised in the
other sciences. The reason for this difficulty is that
there is nothing left in introspection by which it can
be differentiated. The term introspection properly
designates, not a method but a problem ; the problem,
namely, of interpreting given facts with reference to
their function in the control of behavior. If psy-
chology is to justify its claim to the status of a science,
it is in duty bound to secure for itself both an objective
criterion for the adjudication of disputes which other-
wise are of necessity interminable, and a subject-matter
that is not simply a heritage of metaphysical prejudice,
but a realm of fact that is attested by everyday obser-
vation and experience.

270 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ni

Within recent years the doctrine that psychology
is a science of behavior has acquired a certain promi-
nence. It is presupposed, of course, that the behavior
with which psychology is concerned is of a distinctive
sort ; but the differentia is unfortunately the ver}' thing
that the " behaviorist " has hitherto left out of ac-
count. In his revolt against introspectionism, which has
been accustomed to give to its subject-matter a sub-
jectivistic and " psychic " interpretation, he goes to
the other extreme and relies on behavior pure and sim-
ple. Being without a serviceable differentia, he is
unable to mark off the field of psjxholog}' from con-
tiguous territory. The selection of certain problems
within the general range of behavior, with no recogni-
tion of any distinctive trait to guide and justify the
selection, is hardly enough to warrant a new science.
Even an arbitrary principle of selection is better than
none, and it would, therefore, be quite as reasonable
to subdivide the field of botany in the interests of a
new science, and group together for separate botanical
study those flowers which have enabled poets to give
symbolic expression to the beauty of women.

That the principle of selection is, in the end, the
ability to modify behavior through the anticipation of
possible consequences, appears from the fact that the
category of stimulus and response is otherwise found
to be unworkable. It is true that in the simpler forms
of behavior stimulus and response may be correlated
without practical difficulty. But when we deal with
what has been called " delayed overt response," the

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 271

matter becomes more complicated and the theoretical
difficulty becomes more prominent. The behaviorist
would not seriously undertake to record everything
that happens between stimulus and response. He pro-
ceeds selectively, taking the relation of stimulus and
response as his clue. He is properly interested in the
movements which result from the application of the
stimulus only in so far as they constitute response.
Otherwise his study is not a study of behavior, but a
study of movements. But when does a movement con-
stitute a response? Do we label as stimulus the spoken
word which results in overt action a week later, or the
visual perception which sets a complicated and long-
drawn-out problem, for no other reason than that it
appears somewhere as an antecedent in the causal chain
of events.'' If so, there is no obvious reason why the
event which occurred just before or immediatel}' after
the soi-disant stimulus should not be regarded as the
true stimulus. Unless a satisfactory reason is forth-
coming, it would seem better to substitute cause and
effect for stimulus and response and to drop the term
behavior from our vocabular3\ Psychology then be-
comes a stud}^ of certain causal relationships, but is
still without a principle for the selection of those causal
events which are supposed to constitute its peculiar
subject-matter.

Even if we manage to become reconciled to this sit-
uation, however, our troubles are not yet at an end.
There still remains the difficulty in certain cases of
showing that the event which is selected as stimulus
or cause bears any significant relationship to the event

272 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

which figures in our scheme as the response. The
stimulus is supposed to have a causal connection with
the response, but how are we to know that this is the
fact? How are we to know that the engineer who
solves a problem for me at my request might not have
done so anyway? No behaviorist can possibly show that
the air waves set in motion by my vocalization were an
indispensable stimulus. We doubtless believe that the
spoken word was in fact the spark which lit the fuse
and finally exploded the mine, but this belief involves
a complication of causes which it is wholly beyond
our power to control or to verify.

It is true, of course, that we are able, as a matter
of fact, to correlate stimulus and response. I know
that it was the spoken word which caused the commis-
sion to be executed, for the expert reminds me of the
fact and presents a bill. But neither of us makes any
pretense that his belief is derived from a scrutiny of
the causal sequence. Memorj" furnishes us with a short-
cut to the result. While our present acts are doubt-
less connected with the past through causation, we do
not regard them as simply the effects of antecedent
causes. They are rather responses to present stimuli.
The expert presents his bill, being moved thereto by
a stimulus which may be indicated by saying that it
is the spoken-word-constituting-a-commission-now-com-
pleted-and-entitling-me-to-compensation. That is, the
stimulus cannot be pushed back and anchored at a
fixed point in the past, but is a present factor at the
moment of response and is operative by virtue of its
anticipation of future events.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 273

If, then, psychology is to be regarded as a study
of behavior, it is plainly necessary to reinterpret the
category of behavior. For example, a purely rae-
clianical response to a light-stimulus may properly be
viewed as response to the ether-vibration or wave-length
upon which it follows in temporal sequence. But if
this stimulation results in what is commonly called con-
sciousness, a different kind of response ensues. The
light-stimulus becomes a cause or occasion for the act
of looking. But why look, unless it be to secure a
new stimulus for further response.'' We stop to look,
precisely because the first stimulus does not run
smoothly off the reel. The response will not go for-
ward, but is halted and expends itself in the effort to
secure a further stimulus. This is the moment of at-
tention, in which the stimulus undergoes a process of
transformation, concomitantly with the process of re-
organization in the motor responses, and in the direction
of ends or results that are foreshadowed in it. This
change in the stimulus takes place under certain speci-
fiable conditions, and the study of these conditions is
a study of such processes as perceiving, attending, re-
membering, and deliberating, which are distinctively
psychological in their nature. Processes of this kind,
if taken as changes in stimuli, find an objective cri-
terion in the adaptive behavior for the sake of which
they occur, and they provide psychology with a dis-
tinctive task and subject-matter.

As against the introspectionist, then, the behaviorist
is justified in his contention that psychological pro-
cedure must be objective and experimental in character.

274, CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

The danger to which he has exposed himself is the
failure to differentiate his problem from that of physi-
ology and physics. It is only bj' a proper recognition
of both the objective and the distinctive character of
conscious behavior that psychology can free itself of
the reproach which is heaped upon it by members of its
own household and take the place that rightfully be-
longs to it in the community' of the sciences.

IV

According to the preceding exposition, the current
psychological doctrine of focus and margin is an at-
tempt to reduce the changes in the stimulus to terms
of static entities denominated sensations and images.
By abstracting from change we convert the new-
stimulus that is already on the way into inert sensory
material, which lends itself to purely analytic treat-
ment. In this way the suggested hardness of the rock
becomes a " centrally aroused sensation " of a stubbed
toe, the heat of the candle becomes an image of a
burn, etc. As was said before, the sensations are not
existences, but representatives or symbols of our
nascent activities ; they are the static equivalents of
this foreshadowing or reference to the future. The ex-
planation of experience that we find in James and
Bergson approximates this view so closely in one re-
spect and departs from it so widely in another as to
warrant a brief discussion.

A prominent characteristic of the doctrine advo-
cated by James and Bergson is the emphasis given to
the foreshadowings or anticipations of the future. Ex-

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 275

periences of conflict, such as the struggle to recall a
name, take on their peculiar coloring, so these writers
contend, from their relationship to a beyond, to some-
thing which is yet to be. If we are to understand
experience as it really is, we must guard against the
besetting temptation to translate everything into
spatial equivalents. This forward reference is usually
read off as a distinction and contrast between simul-
taneously existing components. Some constituent is
first set apart as the nucleus or focus and is then en-
veloped with an elusive, intangible wraith of meaning,
which is called the margin. We have been taught to
think of the focus as made up of sensory material of
some sort and silhouetted against a background lit up
by the fitful, inconsequential heat-lightning of meaning.
But this is a perversion of the facts. When we are
engaged in a problem it is precisely these unformed
meanings that are of interest and importance. They
are in the focus of consciousness, in so far as we can
speak of a focus at all. They absorb our attention
and direct our energies. They inform us of a margin,
not by refusing to compete for our attention with more
important or more interesting facts, but by bodying
forth the unfinished character of the situation. Hence
this beckoning, this tingling with the sense of close-
ness, this sinking back when our efforts meet with de-
feat. Focus and margin, in short, have to do with
movement, with transition, and not with a static field.
These situations are felt as inherently unstable and in
process of reconstruction. There is a peculiar sense
of activity, of " something doing," of a future knock-

276 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ing on the door of the present. What is thus on its
way to the present we can designate only in terms of
the object as it is after it has arrived. To call it
marginal is to immerse the object in this temporal
flux, which embodies perfectly the characteristics of
Bergsonian duration.

But this is only a first step. If we turn now to
those experiences from which this inner diremption
of fact and meaning is absent, we find a process that
is essentially the same in kind. They likewise consti-
tute a temporal flow, even though there be no sense of
duration or of change as such. The different moments
of these experiences are not mechanically juxtaposed,
but blend together in much the same way as when the
process is experienced as a process. In principle we
have the same transition, the same becoming, the same
growth from less to more, the same activity of continu-
ous reconstruction. Conscious life, we find, is a con-
tinuous adjustment; each of its moments is a "transi-
tive state." The more evenly flowing experiences
are likewise endowed with a focus and margin, not in
the form of static elements, but as a dynamic rela-
tionship of what is with what is to be.

Such an interpretation of experience, moreover,
opens the way for a proper valuation of the psycholo-
gist's procedure. The concept of sensation is method-
ology pure and simple. Granted that focus and
margin are such as was indicated a moment ago, how
are they to be described, unless we resort to some
Hilfsbegriff such as sensations ? James's description of
the effort to recall a forgotten name is not descrip-

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 277

tion at all in a scientific sense, since the " wraith of
the name " that we are trying to recover is of too un-
earthly a fabric to be weighed and measured by ac-
cepted scientific standards. It makes us " tingle," it
lets us " sink back," but such portrayal is literature
rather than science. Our first step must be to resolve
our material into components. These components we
identify with genuine elements if we can, with pious
fictions if we must; but until this is done there can
be no exact description. There can be no precision in
our statement of the facts and no formulation of the
laws that govern their changes.

This view undeniably has a certain plausibility. As
long as the results are attained which the psychologist
sets out to reach, we need not be hypersensitive on the
score of methods. In the field of natural science, at
all events, this Jesuitical principle is not incompatible
with respectability. If it be true, however, that sensa-
tion is but a tool or artifact, a means to an end, what
is the end that is to be attained by this device? It
is at this point that we come to the parting of the ways.
According to the view previously elaborated, the an-
ticipations of the future have to do with the results
of our possible acts, and sensations are simply symbols
for the various elements in our complex motor re-
sponses. In the case of Bergson and James, however,
the clue that is furnished by response is discarded.
The reference to the future, being dissociated from
behavior, is taken as evidence of an abstract or meta-
physical duration, so that experience is somehow other
than it seems; and sensation is regarded as the trans-

278 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

lation of duration into the language of space. Asso-
ciationism is justified in its belief that realitj' is dif-
ferent from its appearance in our experience, but is
criticized for attempting to interpret the real in terms
of space rather than time. In both cases the lead of
the subject-matter is abandoned in favor of an expla-
nation that is derived from a fourth-dimensional plane
of existence.

The suspicion that these two positions have a deep-
seated affinity is strengthened if we call to mind that
the concept of sensation was originated, not in the
interests of methodology, but as the expression of a
historic preconception that mistook fiction for fact.
The fundamental error back of it was the preposterous
notion that consciousness consists of subconscious or
unconscious constituents, which by their mechanical or
chemical combinations make our experience what it is.
The question which it raises and which has afflicted us
even to the present day is not primarily the question
of fact, but the question of intelligibility, as the con-
troversy'^ over mindstuff abundantly attests. TMiether
we regard experience as made up of sensory material,
however, or as constituted in a Bergsonian fashion, is
a matter of detail; the primary question is whether
a distinction between consciousness as it appears and
as it " reall}' " is has any meaning. In so far as this
distinction is maintained, we are beating the thin air
of mythology, despite our reinterpretations and justi-
fications. True conversion does not consist in a renam-
ing of old gods, but demands a humble and a contrite
heart. To call sensation an artifact, a methodological

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 279

device, without a surrender of the metaphysical assump-
tion that lies back of Associationism is not to correct
the evil, but is more likely to be treated as an indulgence
for sins that are yet to be committed.

This fundamental identity is presumably the reason
for certain other similarities, which would perhaps not
be readily anticipated. Both doctrines undertake to
tell us what is going on behind the scenes, what con-
sciousness or experience " really " is. The descriptions
present an astonishing difference of vocabulary, but
if we take care not to be misled by superficial differ-
ences, we find an equally astonishing agreement as to
content. From the one side consciousness is explained
as a juxtaposition of elements ; from the other as an
interpenetration of elements so complete that the parts
can be neither isolated nor distinguished from the whole.
On the one hand we find a multiplicity without unity,
on the other a unity without multiplicity. In the one
account the temporal unit is a sensation devoid of
internal temporal diversity ; in the other duration as
such is a unity in which past, present, and future blend
into an undifferentiated whole. The one position gath-
ers its facts by a mystifying process called introspec-
tion; the other obtains its results from a mystical
faculty of intuition. The difference in language re-
mains, but both accounts lead us away into a twilight
region where words substitute themselves for facts.

As was suggested a moment ago, the contrast between
ordinary experience and something else of which it is
the appearance is the result of the failure to give
proper recognition to the facts of behavior. If we

280 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

connect the forward reference of experience with the
operations of our nascent activities, we have no need
of a pure duration or of bridging the gulf between
reality and its appearances. In the same wa}^ if we
construe sensations as just symbols of our responses,
we rid ourselves of problems that are insoluble because
they are unintelligible. Such problems constitute meta-
physics in the bad sense of the word, whether they show
themselves in the domain of science or of philosophy.
To describe experience by reference to such a real is
to explain what we know in terms of what we do not
know. The question what is real is absolutely sterile.
Our descriptions and explanations must remain on the
same plane as the experiences with which they deal,
and not seek after a real of a different order. If we
are to have an explanation of consciousness at all, the
explanation must not take us back to hypothetical sen-
sations that are almost but not quite experienced, nor
to a duration in which all distinctions are swallowed
up, but must be rendered in terms of other facts that
dwell in the light of common day.

By way of conclusion I venture to urge once more
that a proper consideration of the facts of behavior
will furnish us with a key that will unlock many a door.
The conception of stimulus and response gives us a
differentia for experience and also enables us to dis-
tinguish within experience between consciousness and
object. If, however, we disregard behavior, we are
bound to lose our way. The distinction between the
experienced and the unexperienced is either wiped out

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY 281

or else is permitted to convert itself into a distinction
between appearance and reality that leads nowhere and
explains nothing. The significance of truth as the
successful guidance of behavior, in accordance with
the program laid down in the organization of stimulus
and response, is lost to sight and recourse is had to
a fourth-dimensional truth or reality for the miracle
of breathing life into the dead bones of our philosophic
abstractions. The study of behavior constitutes a
mode of approach that holds out the hope of deliver-
ance from questions that should never have been asked.
We are on a different and, let us hope, a higher level
when we cease to ask how consciousness can lay hold
of passive objects, or how knowledge uberhaupt is pos-
sible, and concern ourselves rather with the wondrous
activity whereby this plastic dance of circumstance
that we call the universe transcends the domain of
mechanism and embodies itself in the values of con-
scious life.

THE PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST

HENRY WALDGRAVE STUART

§ 1. In the logic of Instrumentalism, truth has been
identified with usefuhiess and the good with the satis-
factory. Classifying critics have seen in this the dam-
aging mark of Utilitarianism, certain of them deeming
" Amerikanismus " an even shrewder and more specific
diagnosis. The association of these terms together
and the aptness of either to express what the critics
have in mind are matters of small interest. It is of
more importance to discover, behind the reproach im-
plied, the assumptions which may have made the re-
proach seem pertinent. One cannot, of course, suppose
it to express a sheer general aversion to the useful or
an ascetic abhorrence of all satisfaction on principle.
Puritanism, aestheticism, and pedantry should be last
resorts in any search for an interpretative clue.

The distrust of Utilitarianism need be ascribed to
none of these. It comes instead from a conception of
the true Utilitarian as a dull and dogmatic being with
no interests beyond the range of his own uninquiring
vision, no aspiration beyond the complacent survey
of his own perfections and no standards beyond the
inventory of his own bourgeois tastes and prejudices.
The type is indeed not yet extinct in our day: but is
it plausible to charge a " new " philosophy with con-
spiring to perpetuate it? Is Instrumentalism only

28d

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 283

Philistinism called by a more descriptive name? It pro-
fesses at least to be a logic of hypothesis and experi-
ment, whereas for the perfect philistine there are no
ultimate problems and hence no logic but the logic of
self-evidence. When Instrumentalism speaks of needs
and interests in its analysis of truth and goodness does
it then mean the needs and interests that define the in-
dividual in what is sometimes invidiously termed a
" biological " sense — interests that control him before
his conduct becomes in any way a problem for himself?
Quite as a matter of course, just this has been the as-
sumption. The satisfactoriness of prompt and cogent
classification has had a hand in the vindication of truth's
supremacy over satisfaction. In the view of instru-
mentalism this ready interpretation of its mean-
ing is nothing less than the thinking of the unthink-
able and the bodying-forth of what is not. The
man who has solved a problem simply is not the man
he was before — if his problem was a genuine one and
it was he who solved it. He cannot measure and judge
the outcome by his earlier demands for the very good
reason that the outcome of real deliberation empties
these earlier demands of their interest and authority
for him.

Can the conception thus suggested of personal
growth through exercise of creative or constructive in-
telligence be in any measure verified by a general sur-
vey of the economic side of life? Has it any important
bearings upon any parts of economic theory? These
are the questions to which this essay is addressed.

284 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

§ 2. How have the real or fancied needs of the aver-
age person of today come to be what they are? For
all sorts and conditions of men, the ways and means of
living have, during the past century ontwo — even during
the past decade or two — undergone revolutionary
changes. It is true that many of these changes have been
relatively superficial, touching only certain externalities
and entering in no important way into life's underlj'ing
and dominant motives. Others, no doubt, may fairly
be held to confuse and disperse the energies of men
instead of making for wholeness, sanity and develop-
ment of human interest and power. And critics of in-
dustrial and social progress who have felt the need
for reservations of this sort fall easily into a certain
mood of historic homesickness for the supposed " sim-
plicity " of an earlier age. But our interest, in this
discussion, is in the genesis, the actual process of be-
coming, of our present " standards of living," not their
value as rated by any critical (or uncritical) standard.
And accordingly we shall take it for a fact that on
the whole the average person of today is reasonably,
perhaps unreasonably, well satisfied with his telephone,
his typewriter, and his motor-car; with his swift and
easy journeyings over land and sea; with his increas-
ingly scientific medical attendance and public sanita-
tion; with his virtually free supplies of literature and
information, new and old, and with his electric light
or his midnight oil (triple distilled) to aid in the
perusal. More than this, he is so well satisfied with

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 285

all these modern inventions that, historical or aestheti-
cal or other " holidays " apart, he would never for a
moment dispense with any one of them as a matter of
free choice. Grossly material and humbly instrumental
though they are, these things and their like constitute
the framework sustaining the whole system of spiritual
functions that make up the life we live today, as a
society and as individuals. And our present problem
simply is the way in which they were first received by
those who were to use them, and passed into their pres-
ent common acceptance. To put the matter in general
terms, how is it that novel means of action or enjoy-
ment, despite their novelty, are able to command fair
scrutiny and hearing and can contrive to make their
way, often very speedily, into a position of importance
for industry and life?

There is an easy and not unnatural way of thinking
of this process as we see it going on about us that may
keep us long unmindful of even the possibility of such
a question. In every field of action, we habitually
look back upon accomplished changes from some present
well-secured vantage-point, and as we trace the steps
by which they have come to pass it is almost inevitable
that we should first see the sequence as an approach,
direct or devious but always sure, to the stage on
which we happen to have taken our stand. It seems
clear to us that what we have attained is better than
aught that has gone before — if it were not dis-
tinctly satisfactory on its own merits we should not
now be taking it as the standpoint for a survey.
But once it is so taken, our recognition of its

286 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

appreciable and satisfying superiority passes over in-
sensibly into metaphysics. What we now find good we
find ourselves perceiving to have been all the while pre-
destined in the eternal scheme of things ! We pause in
retrospect like the wayfarer who has reached the turn-
ing of a mountain road or the man of middle age who
for the first time feels that his professional position
is assured. This, we say, justifies the effort it has cost,
this at last is really living ! And the next step in ret-
rospective reconstruction follows easily; this was my
true goal from the first, the dim and inexpressible hope
of which would not let me pause and kept me until now
dissatisfied. The end was present in the beginning,
provoking the first groping efforts and affording pro-
gressively the test and measure by which their results
were found ever wanting.

This retrospective logic may explain the presence
and perennial charm of those panoramic pages in our
encyclopaedias purporting to show forth the gradual
perfecting of great instrumentalities upon which our
modern life depends. We survey the " evolution " of
printing, for example, from the wooden blocks of the
Chinese or of Laurens Coster down to the Hoe press,
the stereotype plate, and the linotype machine. Or we
see the forms of written record from pictured papyrus,
cuneiform brick, and manuscript scroll down to the
printed book and the typewritten page ; the means of
carriage by land from the ox-cart of the patriarchs to
the stage-coach, the Cannonball Limited, the motor-
truck, and the twelve-cylinder touring-car. And as one
contemplates these cheerfully colored exhibits there is in

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 287

each case an almost irresistible suggestion of a constant
and compelling need of " universal man " seeking in
more and more marvellously ingenious ways an ade-
quate expression and satisfaction. This need seems
never to have lapsed or changed its nature. All along
both driving power and direction, it has been the
one fixed factor in a long process in which all else has
been fluctuating, contingent, and imperfect — all else ex-
cept the nature of the materials and the principles of
mechanics, which, too, are seen in the end to have been
mutely conspiring toward the result. Essential human
nature, it seems clear, does not and happily cannot
change. Spiritual progress, in this ultimate optimism,
means simply clearer vision, completer knowledge, and
a less petulant and self-assertive habit of insistence
upon the details of particular purposes as individual
" impulse " and " idiosyncrasy " define them. We for-
tunate beings of today have available, in the various de-
partments of our life, certain instrumentalities, and to
these our interests attach. These interests of ours in
their proportional strength (so the argument runs) ex-
press our native and generic constitution in so far as this
constitution has been able as yet to achieve outward
expression and embodiment. And accordingly, in in-
terpreting the long history of technological evolution,
we take what we conceive ourselves now lo be as norma-
tive and essential. We project back into the lives of
primitive man, of our own racial ancestors, or of our
grandfathers, the habits and requirements which we ac-
knowledge in ourselves today and we conceive the men
of the past to have been driven forward on the ways

288 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

of progress by the identical discontent that would pre-
sumably beset ourselves if we were to be suddenly car-
ried back to their scale and manner of existence.

§ 3. Whatever else may be thought of it, there is
at least this to be said for the cult of historic home-
sickness to which reference has just been made: it hap-
pens to be at one with modern ethnology and history in
suggesting that earlier cultures were on the whole not
less content and self-satisfied in their condition than our
own. It is primitive man, not the modern, who is slow
to move and is satisfied, as a matter of course, with the
manner of life in which he fancies his people to have
lived from time immemorial. Change in early social
groups is tragic when it is not insensible. It comes
through conquest and enslavement by outsiders or
through stress of the dread of these, or by gradual
adaptation of custom to failing environmental resources
or to increasing wealth. Assent to change is in general
grudging or tacit at best and is commonly veiled by some
more or less transparent fiction.

And our suspicion of fallacy lurking somewhere in
the type of retrospective Idealism we have been con-
sidering is strengthened when we come to look a little
closely to details. To take a commonplace example —
can it be held that the difference between using a type-
writer and " writing by hand " is purely and simply
a matter of degree — that the machine serves the same
purpose and accomplishes the same kind of result as
the pen, but simply does the work more easily, rapidly,
and neatly? Undoubtedly some such impression may
easily be gathered from an external survey of the ways

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 289

that men have used at different times for putting
their ideas on record. But it ignores important
aspects of the case. For one thing, the modern inven-
tion effects a saving of the writer's time which can be
used in further investigation or in more careful revi-
sion or in some way wholly unrelated to literary work,
and if the machine makes any part of the writer's
task less irksome, or the task as a whole less engross-
ing, the whole matter of literary effort becomes less
forbidding and its place and influence as a social or
a personal function may for better or for worse be
altered. The difference brought to pass transcends
mere technical facility — it ramifies into a manifold of
differences affecting the entire qualitative character
and meaning of the literary function. And only by
an arbitrary sophistication of the facts can this com-
plexity of new outcome be thought of as implicit and
dynamic in the earlier stage.

In the same way precisely, the motor-car, as every
one knows, has " vanquished distance " and has " revo-
lutionized suburban life." In England it is said to
have made acute the issue of plural voting. In America
it is hailed by the optimistic as the solution of the
vexed problem of urban concentration and the decline
of agriculture. Even as a means of recreation it is
said by the initiated to transform the whole meaning
of one's physical environment, exploiting new values
in sky and air and the green earth, which pass the
utmost possibilities of family " carry-all " or coach
and four. Or consider the ocean steamship and its
influence : today we travel freely over the world, for all

290 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

manner of reasons, sufficient or otherwise. A hundred
years ago distant journejings by sea or land were
arduous and full of peril, undertaken only by the most
adventurous or the most curious or for urgent need.
Now commodities of every sort can be transported to
virtually every quarter of the globe — rails and loco-
motives, cement and structural steel, machinery of all
kinds from the motor and the dynamo to the printing
press and the cinematograph, in a word whatever is
necessary to recreate the waste places of the earth and
to make life in these regions humanly liveable. The
sheer scale and magnitude of such operations lifts them
above the level of the international trade of five hundred
or even a hundred years ago. And their far-reaching
results of every sort in the lives of nations and of indi-
viduals the world over can in no intelligible sense be un-
derstood as mere homogeneous multiples of what trade
meant before our age of steam, iron, and electricit3\
Finally, we may think of modern developments in print-
ing as compared, for example, with the state of the
craft in the days when the New England Primer served
to induct juvenile America into the pleasant paths of
" art and literature." And it is clear that the me-
chanical art that makes books and reading both widely
inviting and easily possible of enjoyment today is not
merely a more perfect substitute for the quill and ink-
horn of the mediasval scribe or even for the printing
press of Caxton or of Benjamin Franklin. The enor-
mously and variously heightened " efficiency " of the
mechanical instrumentalities nowadays available has for
good and for evil carried forward the whole function

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 291

of printing and publication into relations and effects
which are qualitatively new and beyond the possible
conception of the earlier inventors and readers.

§ 4. The real evolution in such cases of the com-
ing of a new commodity or a new instrument into
common and established use is an evolution of a
more radical, more distinctly epigenetic type than
the pictured stories of the encyclopasdia-maker serve
to suggest. At each forward step the novelty makes
possible not merely satisfactions more adequate as
measured by existing requirements or more economical
in terms of cost, but new satisfactions also for which
no demand or desire before existed or could pos-
sibly exist — satisfactions which, once become habit-
ual, make the contentment of former times in the lack of
them hard to understand or credit. And indeed the
story is perhaps never quite one-sided; the gain we
reckon is perhaps never absolutely unmixed. There
may be, perhaps must in principle be, not only gain
but loss. The books we read have lost something of
the charm of the illuminated manuscript ; our com-
positors and linotypers, it may be, have forgotten some-
thing of the piety and devotion of the mediaeval scribe
and copyist. So everywhere in industry the machine
depreciates and pushes out the skilled artisan and
craftsman, summoning into his place the hired operative
whose business is to feed and serve instead of to con-
ceive and execute. For cheapness and abundance, for
convenience of repair and replacement we everywhere
sacrifice something of artistic quality in the instrumen-
talities of life and action and something of freedom

292 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

and self-expression in the processes of manufacture.
Thus again, to change the venue, there are those who
miss in democratic government or in an ethical type
of religion the poignant and exalting spiritual quality
of devotion to a personal sovereign or a personal God.
Whatever one's judgment may be in particular cases,
there can be no reason for disputing that in epigenetic
or creative evolution there is, in a sense, loss as well as
gain. There is no more reason for supposing that all
that was wholesome or ennobling or beautiful in an
earlier function must somehow have its specific compen-
sation in kind infallibly present in the new than for
supposing that all that is desirable in the new must
surely have been present discernibly or indiscernibly in
the old.

If we are on the whole satisfied with the new on its
intrinsic merits as a present complex fact, we have
therein sufficient ground for saying that it marks
a stage in progress. This, in fact, is what such a
proposition means. And the old then appears more
or less widely discontinuous with the new — not merely
that it shows, in units of measure, less of the ac-
ceptable quality or qualities which the new fact or
situation is found to possess, but that it belongs for us
to a qualitativelj' different level and order of existence.
How, we wonder, could our ancestors have found life
tolerable in their undrained and imperfectly heated
dwellings, without the telephone, the morning's news of
the world by cable, and the phonograph.'' How, again,
could feudal homage and fealty have ever been the
foundation of social order in countries where today

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 293

every elector is wont to think and to act in his
public relations no longer as a subject but as a citizen.
And how, in still a different sphere, could the father
or the mother of a happy family of children ever have
found the freedom and irresponsibility of bachelor-
hood endurable? Shall we say that in changes like
these we have to do simply with the quantitative in-
crease of some quality, present in small measure in
the earlier stages and in larger measure in the
later? Or shall we evade the issue with the general
admission that of course, as every schoolboy knoMs,
there are in this world many differences of degree that
somehow " amount to differences of kind " ? As a mat-
ter of fact what has happened in every case like these
is an actual change of standard, a new construction in
the growing system of one's norms of value and be-
havior. Provisionally, though hopefully, a step has
been taken — a real event in personal and in social his-
tory has been given place and date. From some source
beyond the scope and nature of the earlier function a
suggestion or an impulsion has come by which the
agent has endeavored to move forward. The change
wrought is a transcendence of the earlier level of
experience and valuation, not a widening and clari-
fication of vision on that level. And the standards
which govern on the new level serve not so much to
condemn the old as to seal its consignment to disuse
and oblivion. Least of all can a judgment or appraisal
of the old from the standpoint of the new be taken
for a transcript of the motives which led to the
transition.

294 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

We must confine ourselves more closely, however,
to the sphere of material goods and their uses. And
in this sphere objection to the view proposed will run
in some such terms as the following: Take our an-
cestors, for example, and their household arrangements
to which invidious reference has been made: why should
we suppose that their seeming contentment was anything
more (or less) than a dignified composure In which
we might well imitate them — an attitude In no way
precluding a definite sense of specific discomforts and
embarrassments and a distinct determination to be rid
of them as soon as might be? And, in fact, if they were
satisfied with what they had why did they receive the
new when it was offered? If, on the other hand, they
were not satisfied, how is the fact intelligible except
upon the assumption that they had distinct and definite
wants not j^et supplied, and were wishing (but pa-
tiently) for conveniences and comforts of a sort not
yet existent. And this latter hypothesis, it will be
urged, is precisely what the foregoing argument has
sought to discredit as an account of the moving
springs in the evolution of consumption.

§ 5. Any adequate discussion of the central issue
thus presented would fall into two parts. In the first
place, before a consumption good can come into general
acceptance and currency it must have been in some way
discovered, suggested or invented, and the psychology
of invention is undoubtedly a matter of very great
complexity and difiiculty. But for the purposes of the
present inquiry all this may be passed over. The other
branch of a full discussion of our problem has to do

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 295

with the reception of the nev/lj Invented commodity
or process into wider and wider use — and this again Is
a social phenomenon not less complex than the other.
It is this phenomenon of increasing extension and vogue,
of widening propagation from person to person, that
is directly of present concern for us — and in particular
the individual person's attitude toward the new thing
and the nature of the interest he takes in it.

It has recently been argued by a learned and acute
investigator of economic origins that " Invention is the
mother of necessity," and not the child.* Such a com-
plete reversal of all our ordinary thought about the
matter seems at first sheer paradox. What, one may
ask, can ever suggest an invention and what can give
it welcome and currency but an existing need — which,
if it happens to be for the time being latent and uncon-
scious, needs only the presentation of its appropriate
means of satisfaction to " arouse " and " awaken " it
fully into action? But this paradox as to Invention
Is at all events not more paradoxical than the view as
to the reception of new commodities and the rise of
new desires that has been above suggested. What it
appears to imply is in principle Identical with what
has seemed, from our consideration of the other aspect
of the general situation, to be the simple empirical fact ;
neither the existence of the new commodity nor our
interest in it when it is presented admits of explanation
as an effect on each particular occasion of a preexist-
ing unsatisfied desire for it. What both sides of the
problem bring to view is a certain original bent or
* Thorstein Veblen: The Instinct of Workmanship, p. 316.

29ff CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

constitutive character of human nature — a predisposi-
tion, an clan vital perhaps, which we must recognize
as nothing less than perfectly general and comprehen-
sive— finding expression in inventive effort and likewise
in the readiness with which the individual meets a new
commodity halfway and gives it opportunity to become
for him, if it can, a new necessity and the source of
a new type of satisfaction.

From the point of view of " logic," as William
James might have said, such a version of psychological
fact may seem essentially self-contradictory. Unless,
it may be argued, a novelty when presented excites
some manner of desire for itself in the beholder, the
beholder will make no effort towards it and thus
take no step away from his existing sj^stem of life
to a new system in which a new desire and a new
commodity shall have a place. So much would seem
clear enough but the question immediately follows :
How can a thing that is new arouse desire? In so
far as it is new it must ex vi termini be unknown
and wanting definition in terms of remembered past
experiences; and how can a thing unknown make that
connection with the present character of the individual
which must be deemed necessary to the arousal of de-
sire in him? A new thing would seem, then, from this
point of view, to be able to arouse desire only in so
far as it is able to conceal or subordinate its aspects
of novelty and appear as known and well-accredited —
either this or there must be in the individual some
definite instinctive mechanism ready to be set in action
by the thing's presentment. And on neither of these

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 297

suppositions can having to do with the new thing effect
any fundamental or radical difference in the individual
— it can serve at most only to " bring out " what was
already " there " in him in a " latent " or " implicit "
status. Whatever new developments of power or de-
sire may be attained and organized into the individual's
character through his commerce with the novelty must
be new in only a superficial sense — they will be new only
as occurrences, only as the striking of the hour by
the clock and the resulting abrasion of the bell and
hammer are new events. But the clock was made to
strike; it is the nature of metal to wear away and
likewise these changes in the individual are in deeper
truth not new at all but only a disclosure of the agent's
character, a further fulfilment along preestablishcd
and unalterable lines which all along was making head-
way in the agent's earlier quests and efforts and
attainments.

There is a sense, no doubt, in which some such ver-
sion of the facts as this is unanswerable, but contro-
versial advantage is paid for, here as elsewhere in the
logic of absolute idealism, at the cost of tangible mean-
ing and practical importance. Just what docs the con-
tention come to.f* Let us say, for example, that one
has learned to use a typewriter. What has happened
is like an illiterate person's learning to read and write.
Correspondence with one's friends begins to take on
new meaning and to acquire new value: one begins to
find a new pleasure and stimulation taking the place
of the ineffectual drivings of an uneasy conscience. All
this, let us say, has come from the moderate outlay for

298 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

a superior mechanical instrument. And now let it be
granted that it would not have come if the fortunate
individual had not been " what he was." If it has come
it is because the individual and the rest of the world
were " of such a sort " that the revival and new growth
of interest could take its rise with the provision of the
new instrumentality. But what, precisely, does such a
statement mean.'* What sort of verification does it ad-
mit of.^* What fruitful insight into the concrete facts
of the case does it convey? Of what sort, prior to the
event, does it show the individual to have been.P

The truth is, of course, that he was of no sort, then
and there and with reference to the purchase — he was
of no sort decisively. He was neither purchaser nor
rejector. He was neither a convinced " t3'pist " nor
piously confirmed in his predilection for writing " by
hand." He was neither wholly weary of his corre-
spondence nor fully cognizant of the importance of
intercourse with his friends for his soul's good. He
may have been dissatisfied and rebellious or he may
have been comfortably persuaded that letter-writing,
though an irksome labor, was even at that sufficiently
w^orth while. The most that can be said is simply that
he must have been willing and desirous to try the ex-
periment for the sake of any good, imaginable or beyond
present imagination, that might come of it. But being
of " such a sort " as this could not prejudge the issue —
although, undoubtedly, in willingness to raise an issue
there lies always the possibility of change. All the
plausibility of the dogma we are here considering comes
from its hasty inclusion of this general attitude of

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 299

constructively experimental inquiry and effort, this
essential character of creative Intelligence, as one among
the concrete interests which constitute and define our
particular problems In their Inception. To say ex post
facto that the individual must have been " of such a
sort " as to do what he has in fact done is a purely
verbal comment which, whatever may be Its uses, can
assuredly be of no use whatever in suggesting either
solution or method for the next situation to arise. It
may be comfortably reassuring afterwards, but it is an
empty oracle beforehand.

§ 6. If then " logic " is unable to express the nature
of our forward looking interest in the unexperienced
and unpredlctible, perhaps the empirical fact will speak
for Itself. We call things new; we recognize their
novelty and their novelty excites our interest. But just
as we are sometimes told that we can only Jcnow the
new In terms of its resemblances to what we have known
before, so it may be held that in the end we can desire
it only on the like condition. Are we, then, to con-
clude that the seeming novelty of things new is an
illusion, or shall we hold, on the contrary, that novelty
need not be explained away and that a spontaneous
constructive interest stands more or less constantly
ready in us to go out to meet It and possess It.''

Unquestionably, let us say the latter. Any new
commodity will, of course, resemble in part or in a
general way some old one. It is said that bath-tubs
are sometimes used In " model tenements " as coal-bins.
Old uses persist unchanged in the presence of new pos-
sibilities. But in general new possibilities invite interest

300 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

and effort because our experimental and constructive
bent contrives on the whole to make head against habit-
uation and routine. We recognize the new as new.
And if it be contended that novelty in its own right
cannot be a ground of interest, that novelty must first
get restatement as the old with certain " accidents "
externally adhering, the answer is that the " accidents "
interest us nevertheless. They may prove their right
to stand as the very essence of some new " kind " that
one may wish to let take form and character for him.
Instead of the chips and shavings, they are in fact the
raw material of the logical process. For if we can
know the new as new, if we can know the " accident "
as accidental in a commodity before us, the fact betrays
an incipient interest in the quality or aspect that its
novelty or contingency at least does not thwart. And
is this quite all.'' Will it be disputed that a relation
of a quality or feature to ourselves which we can know,
name, and recognize — like " novelty " — must be known,
as anything else is known, through an interest of which
it is the appropriate terminus.? *

* It may still be argued that we must depend upon analogj' in
our acceptance or rejection of a new commodity. For any element
of novelty must surely suggest something to us, must mean some-
thing to us, if it is to attract or repel. Thus, the motor-car will
whirl us rapidly over the country, the motor-boat will dart over
the water without effort on our part. And in such measure as we
have had them hitherto, we have always enjoj-ed experiences of
rapid motion. These new instrimients simply promise a per-
fectly well-known sort of experience in fuller measure. So the
argument may run. And our mental process in such a case may
accordingly be held to be nothing more mysterious than a passing
by analogy from the old ways in which we got rapid motion in

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 301

And there is no difficulty in pointing to instances
in which the character of novelty seems fundamental.
Consider, for example, the interest one feels in spending
a day with a friend or in making a new acquaintance
or, say, in entering on the cares of parenthood.
Or again, take the impulse toward research, artistic
creation, or artistic study and appreciation. Or again,
take the interest in topography and exploration. That
there is in such phenomena as these a certain essentially
and irreducibly forward look, a certain residual free-

the past to the new way which now promises more of the same.
And more of the same is what we want.

" More of the same " means here intensive magnitude and in this
connection at all events it begs the question. Bergson's polemic
seems perfectly valid against such a use of the notion. But kept
in logical terms the case seems clearer. It is said that we reason
in such a case by " analogy." We do, indeed ; but what is an-
alogy? The term explains nothing until the real process behind
the term is clearly and realistically conceived. What I shall here
suggest holds true, I think, as an account of analogical inference
generally and not simply for the economic type of case we have
here to do with. Reasoning is too often thought of as proceed-
ing from given independent premises — as here (1) the fact that
hitherto the driving we have most enjoyed and the sailing we
have most enjoyed have been fast and (2) the fact that the
motor-car is fast. But do we accept the conclusion because
the premises suggest it in a way we cannot resist? On the con-
trary, stated thus, the premises clearly do not warrant the conclu-
sion that the motor-car will be enjoyable. Such a statement of
the premises is wholly formal and ex post facto. What, then, is
our actual mental process in the case? The truth is, I think, that
we simply — ^yes, " psychologically " — wish to try that promised
unheard-of rate of speed! That comes first and foremost. But
we mean to be reasonably prudent on the whole, although we are
avowedly adventurous just now in this particular dircclion! We,
therefore, ransack our memory for other fast things we have

302 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

dom of our interest and effort from dependence on the
detail of prior experience down to date, probably few
persons without ulterior philosophical prepossessions
will dispute. If we call these phenomena instinctive
we are using the term in a far more loose and general
sense than it seems to have in the best usage of animal
psychology. If we call them attitudes or dispositions,
such a term has at least the negative merit of setting
them apart from the class of instinctive acts, but it may
carry with it a connotation of fixity and unconscious-
known, to see whether the}' have encouragement to give us. We
try to supply ourselves with a major premise because the new
proposal in its own right interests us — instead of having the
major premise already there to coerce us by a purely "logical"
compulsion as soon as we invade its sphere of influence. And con-
fessedly, in point of " logic," there is no such compulsion in the
second figure: there is only a timid and vexatious neutrality, a
mere " not proven."

Why, then, do we in fact take the much admired "inductive
leap," in seeming defiance of strict logic? Why do we close our
eyes to logic, turn our back upon logic, behave as if logic were
not and had never been? In point of fact, we do nothing of the
sort. The " inductive leap " is no leap away from logic, but the
impulsion of logic's mainspring seen only in its legitimate event.
Because we have not taken care to see the impulse coming, it
surprises us and we are frightened. And we look about for an
illusive assurance in some " law of thought," or some question-
begging " universal premise " of Nature's " uniformity." We do
not see that we were already conditionally committed to the
" leap " by our initial interest. Getting our premises together
is no hurried forging of a chain to save us from our own
madness in the nick of time. We are only hoping to rid our-
selves of an excess of conservative ballast. To reason by analogy
is not to repress or to dispense with the interest in the radically
novel, but to give methodical and intelligent expression to that
interest.

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 303

ness that after all surrenders the essential distinction.
It will suffice to look at a single one of these instances.

In friendship, for example, there is undoubtedly
strongly operative a desire for the mere recurrence, in
our further friendly intercourse, of certain values that
have become habitual and familiar. We may have long
known and become attached to a friend's tones of voice,
peculiarities of manner and external appearance, turns
of speech and thought and the like, which we miss in
absence and which give us pleasure when we meet the
friend again. But if the friendship is not one of " pleas-
ure " or " utility " simply, but of " virtue " * as well,
there is also present on both sides a constructive or pro-
gressive or creative interest. And this interest, stated
on its self-regarding and introspective side, is more
than a desire for the mere grateful recurrence of the old
looks and words " recoined at the old mint." It is an
interest looking into the " undone vast," an interest
in an indefinite prolongation, an infinite series, of joint
experiences the end of which cannot and need not be
foreseen and the nature of which neither can nor need
be forecasted. And there is the same characteristic
in all the other instances mentioned in this connection.
It is not a desire for recurrent satisfactions of a de-
terminate type, but an interest in the active develop-
ment of unexperienced and indeterminate possibilities.
If finally the question be pressed, how there can be an
interest of this seemingly self-contradictor}' type in
human nature, the answer can only be that we must take

* Aristotle's Nicomachaean Ethics (Welldon's transl.), Book

vm.

S04, CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

the facts as we find them. Is such a conception
inherently more difficult than the view that all ramifica-
tions and developments of human interest are con-
cretely predetermined and implicit a priori? To ig-
nore or deny palpable fact because it eludes the reach
of a current type of conceptual analysis is to part
company with both science and philosophy. We are
in fact here dealing with the essential mark and trait
of what is called self-conscious process. If there are
ultimates and indefinables in this world of ours, self-
consciousness may as fairly claim the dignity or avow
the discredit as any other of the list.

§ 7. Does our interest in economic goods on occa-
sion exhibit the trait of which we are here speaking?
Precisely this is our present contention. And yet it
seems not too much to say that virtually all economic
theory, whether the classical or the present dominant
type that has drawn its terminology and working con-
cepts from the ostensible psychology of the Austrian
School, is founded upon the contradictory assumption.
The economic interest, our desire and esteem for solid
and matter-of-fact things like market commodities and
standardized market services, has been conceived as
nothing visionary and speculative, as no peering into
the infinite or outreaching of an inexpressible discon-
tent, but an intelligent, clear-eyed grasping and holding
of known satisfactions for measured and acknowledged
desires. Art and religion, friendship and love, sport
and adventure, morality and legislation, these all may
be fields for the free play and constructive experi-
mentation of human faculty, but in our economic efforts

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 305

and relations we are supposed to tread the solid
ground of fact. Business is business. Waste not,
want not. First a living, then (perhaps) a " good
life." * And we are assured one need not recoil from
the hard logic of such maxims, for they do not dispute
the existence of spacious (and well-shaded) suburban
regions fringing the busy areas of industry and com-
merce.

Such is the assumption. We have said that it pre-
cludes the admission of speculation as an economic
factor. Speculation for economic theory is a purely
commercial phenomenon, a hazarding of capital on the
supposition that desires will be found ready and wait-
ing for the commodity produced — with a sufficient offer-
ing of purchasing power to afford a profit. And the
" creation of demand," where this is part of the pro-
gram of speculative enterprise, means the arousal
of a " dormant " or implicit desire, in the sense above
discussed — there is nothing, at all events, in other parts
of current theory to indicate a different conception.
The economist will probably contend that what the
process of the creation of demand may be is not his
but the psychologist's affair; that his professional con-
cern is only whether or not the economic demand, as an
objective market fact, be actually forthcoming. But
what we here contend for as a fact of economic experi-
ence is a speculation that is in the nature of personal
adventure and not simply an " adventuring of stock."

§ 8. For what is the nature of the economic " cx-

* Cf. Aristotle's Politics (Jowett's trans.) III. 9. §6 ff. and else-
where; Nicom. Ethics, I, Chap. Ill (end).

306 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

perience " or situation, considered as a certain type of
juncture in the life of an individuaL'' It may be shortly
described as the process of determining how much of
one's time, strength, or external resources of any sort
shall be expended for whatever one is thinking of doing
or acquiring. Two general motives enter here to gov-
ern the estimate and each may show the routine or the
innovative phase. In any work there is possible, first,
more or less of the workman's interest — an interest not
merely in a conventional standard of excellence in the
finished result but also in betterment of the standard
and in a corresponding heightened excellence of
technique and spirit in the execution.* These in-
terests, without reference to the useful result and " for
their own sake " (i.e., for the workman's sake, in ways
not specifiable in advance), may command a share of
one's available time, strength, and resources. In the
second place, any work or effort or offer to give
in exchange has a namable result of some kind in
view — a crop of wheat, a coat, a musical rendition,
or the education of a child. Why are such things
"produced" or sought for.'' Verbally and plati-
tudinously one may answer : For the sake of the " satis-
factions " they are expected to afford. But such an
answer ignores the contrast of attitudes that both work-
manship and productive or acquisitive effort in the ordi-
nary sense display. As the workman may conform
to his standard or may be ambitious to surpass it, so
the intending consumer may be counting on known
satisfactions or hoping for satisfactions of a kind that
* Cf . Veblen : op. cit.

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 307

he has never known before. Both sorts of effort
may be of either the routine or the innovative type.
In neither workmanship nor acquisition can one fix upon
routine as the " normal " type, hoping to derive or to
explain away the inevitable residue of " outstanding
cases." For as a matter of fact the outstanding cases
prove to be our only clue to a knowledge of how
routine is made.*

The above formula will apply, with the appropriate
changes of emphasis, to buyers and sellers in an organ-
ized market, as well as to the parties to a simple trans-
action of barter. Two main empirical characteristics
of the economic situation are suggested in putting
the statement in just these terms. In the first place,
the primary problem in such a situation is that of
" exchange valuation," the fixation of a " subjective "
(or better, a " personal ") price ratio between what
the agent wishes to acquire and wliatever it is that
he oflPers in exchange. The agent thus is engaged
in determining what shall be the relative importance
for himself of two commodities or exchangeable goods.
And in the second place these goods get their values
determined together and in relation to each other,

* W. McDougall in his Social Psychology (Ed. 1912, pp. 358 flF.)
recognizes " incomplete anticipation of the end of action " as a
genuine type of preliminary situation in human behavior, hut ap-
pears to regard this as in so far a levciling-down of man to the
blindness of the " brutes." But " incompleteness " is a highly
ambiguous term and seems here to beg the question. " Incomplete-
ness " may be given an emphasis in which it imports conjecture and
hypothesis — almost anything, in fact, but blindness. Rather do
the brutes get levelled up to man by such facts as tliose Mc-
Dougall cites.

308 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

never singly and with a view to subsequent com-
parison. These values when they have been determined
will be measured in terms of marginal utility in accord-
ance with familiar principles, but the marginal utilities
that are to express the attained and accepted ratio at
which exchange eventually takes place are not known
quantities at all in the inception of the process of com-
parison. If these dogmatic statements seem to issue in
hopeless paradox or worse, then let us not fear to face
the paradox and fix its lines with all possible distinct-
ness. Can a man decide to offer so much of one com-
modity for so much of another unless he first has settled
what each is worth to him in some intelligible terms
or other.? And is not this latter in point of fact the real
decision — at all events clearly more than half the battle.''
Does not the exchange ratio to which one can agree
" leap to the eyes," in fact, as soon as the absolute
values in the case have been once isolated and given
numerical expression.''

In a single word we here join issue. For the com-
parison in such a case is constructive comparison, not
a mechanical measuring of fixed magnitudes, as the above
objection tacitly assumes. And constructive compari-
son is essentially a transitive or inductive operation
whereby the agent moves from one level to another,
altering his standard of living in some more or less
important way, embarking upon a new interest, entering
upon the formation of a new habit or upon a new ac-
cession of power or effectiveness — making or seeking to
make, in short, some transformation in his environment
and in himself that shall give his life as an entire sys-

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 309

tem a changed tenor and perspective. The term " con-
structive comparison " is thus intended, among other
things, to suggest that the process is in the nature of
adventure, not calculation, and, on the other hand,
that though adventurous it is not sheer hazard
uncontrolled. And the motive dominant through-
out the process — the economic motive in its con-
structive phase — is neither more nor less than a sup-
position, on the agent's part, that there may be
forthcoming for him in the given case in hand just
such an " epigenetic " development of new significance
and value as we have found actual history to disclose
as a normal result of economic innovation. It is the
gist of hedonism, in economic theory as in its other
expressions, that inevitably the agent's interests and
motives are restricted in every case to the precise range
and scope of his existing tendencies and desires ; he
can be provoked to act only by the hope of just those
particular future pleasures or means of pleasure which
the present constitution of his nature enables him to
enjoy. Idealism assumes that the emergent new interest
of the present was wrapped up or " implied," in some
sense, in the interests of the remote and immediate past
— interests of which the agent at the time could of
course be but " imperfectly " aware. Such differences
as one can discern between the two interpretations seem
small indeed — like many others to which idealism has
been wont to point in disparagement of the hedonistic
world view. For in both philosophies the agent is with-
out initiative and effect ; he is in principle but the con-
vergence of impersonal motive powers which it is, In

310 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

the one view, absurdly futile, in the other misguidedly
presumptuous, to try to alter or control.

§ 9. A commodity sought or encountered may then
be of interest to us for reasons of the following three
general sorts. In the first place it may simply be the nor-
mal and appropriate object of some established desire
of ours. We may be seeking the commodity be-
cause this desire has first become active, or encounter-
ing the commodity in the market may have suddenly
awakened the desire. Illustration seems superfluous ;
tobacco for the habitual smoker, clothing of most
sorts for the ordinary person, regular supplies of the
household staples — these will suffice. This is the prov-
ince within which a hedonistic account of the economic
motive holds good with a cogency that anti-hedonistic
criticism has not been able to dissolve. Our outlays for
such things as these may as a rule be held in their due
and proper relation to each other — at all events in their
established or " normal " relation — simply by recalling
at critical times our relative marginal likes and dislikes
for them. That these likes and dislikes are not self-
explanatory, that they are concrete expectations and
not abstract affective elements, does not seem greatly
to matter where the issue lies between maintaining or
renouncing an existing schedule of consumption. And
in this same classification belong also industrial and
commercial expenditures of a similarly routine sort.
Even where the scale of operations is being enlarged,
expenditures for machines, fuel, raw materials, and
labor may have been so carefully planned in advance
with reference to the desired increase of output or pecu-

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 311

niary profit that no special problem of motivation at-
taches directly to them. And these outlays are so im-
portant in industry and commerce that the impression
comes easily to prevail that all business undertaking,
and then all consumption of finished goods, fall under
the simple hedonistic type.

But if we keep to the plane of final consumption,
there appears a second sort of situation. Our interest
in the commodity before us may be due to a suggestion
of some sort that prompts us to take a step beyond
the limits that our present formed desires mark out.
The suggestion may be given by adroit advertising,
by fashion, by the habits of another class to which one
may aspire or by a person to whom one may look as
guide, philosopher, and friend. An authority of one
sort or another invites or constrains us to take the
merits of the article on trust. Actual trial and use
may show, not so much that it can minister to a latent
desire as that we have been able through its use to form
a habit that constitutes a settled need.

And, finally, in the third place, there is a more spon-
taneous and intrinsically personal type of interest which
is very largely independent of suggestion or authority.
A thing of beauty, a new author, a new acquaintance,
a new sport or game, a new convenience or mechanical
device may challenge one's curiosity and powers of
appreciation, may seem to offer a new facility in action
or some unimagined release from labor or restriction.
The adventure of marriage and parenthood, the inti-
mate attraction of great music, the mystery of an un-
known language or a forbidden country, the disdainful

312 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

aloofness of a mountain peak dominating a landscape
are conspicuous instances inviting a more spontaneous
type of constructive interest that finds abundant ex-
pression also in the more commonplace situations and
emergencies of everyday life. It is sheer play upon
words to speak in such cases of a pleasure of adventur-
ousness, a pleasure of discovery, a pleasure of conquest
and mastery, assigning this as the motive in order to
bring these interests to the type that fits addiction to
one's particular old coat or easy-chair. The specific
" pleasure " alleged could not exist were the tendency
not active beforehand. While the same is true in a
sense for habitual concrete pleasures in relation to their
corresponding habits, the irreducible difference in con-
structive interest as a type lies in the transition which
this type of interest purposes and effects from one
level of concrete or substantive desire and pleasure to
another. Here one consciously looks to a result that
he cannot foresee or foretell; in the other type his in-
terest as interest goes straight to its mark, sustained
by a confident forecast.*

* I take routine to be the essence and meaning of hedonism.
There are two fundamental types of conduct — routine and con-
structiveness. Reference may be made here to Bohm-Bawerk's
pronouncement on hedonism in Kapital und Kapitahins, 1912
(II-2, pp. 310 ff.): "What people love and hate, strive towards
or fight off — whether only pleasure and pain or other ' lovable '
and ' hatable ' things as well,— is a matter of entire indifference
to the economist. The only thing important is that they do love
and hate certain things. . . . The deductions of marginal
utility theory lose no whit of their cogency even if certain ends
(dependent for their realization upon a supply of goods inade-
quate to the fulfillment of all ends without Umit) are held to

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 313

§ 10. But constructive interests, whether provoked
bj suggestion or of the more freely imaginative type,
may, as has been said, be held to lie outside the scope of
economic theory. How a desire for a certain thing has
come to get expression may seem quite immaterial — eco-
nomically speaking. Economics has no concern with hu-
man folly as such or human imitativeness, or human
aspiration high or low or any other of the multitude of
motives that have to do with secular changes in the
" standard of living " and in the ideals of life at large.
It has no concern with anything that lies behind the fact
that I am in the market with my mind made up to buy or

have the character not of pleasure but of something else. The
marginal utility may be a least pleasure or a competing least
utility of some other sort. . . ." (p. 317). This is a not
uncommon view. As W. C. Mitchell has suggested, it is too
obvious to be wholly convincing. (Journ. Pol. Ec, Vol. XVIII.
"The Rationality of Economic Activity.") Veblen has made it
perfectly clear that particular matters of theory are affected by
the presupposition of hedonism. (Journ. Pol. Ec, Vol. XVII,
Quart. Journ. Econ., Vol. XXII, p. 147 ff.) The matter is too
complex for a footnote, but I think it of little consequence
whether " pleasure " be in any case regarded as substantively the
end of desire or not. This is largely a matter of words. What is
important is the practical question whether a thing is so habitual
with me that when the issue arises I cannot or will not give it up
and take an interest in something new the " utility " of which I
cannot as yet be cognizant of because it partly rests with me
to create it. If this is the fact it will surely look as if pleasure or
the avoidance of pain were my end in the case. Hedonism and
egoism are in the end convertible terms. There is conduct wear-
ing the outward aspect of altruism that is egotistic in fact — not
because it was from the first insincere or self-delusive, but
because it has become habitual and may in a crisis be held to
for the sake of the satisfaction it affords. Genuine altruism,
on the other hand, is a form of constructiveness.

314 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

sell a thing at a certain price. And the answer to this
contention must be that it first reverses and then dis-
torts the true perspective of our economic experience.
Let it be admitted freely — indeed, let it be insisted on —
that the definition of a science must be determined by
the pragmatic test. If an economist elects to concern
himself with the problems of what has been called the
" loose mechanics of trade " there can be no question
of his right to do so or of the importance of the services
he may render thereby, both to theory and to practice.
But on the other hand economic theory cannot be there-
fore, once and for all, made a matter of accounting —
to the effacement of all problems and aspects of prob-
lems of which the accountant has no professional
cognizance. Just this, apparently, is what it means to
level down all types of interest to the hedonistic, leaving
aside as " extra-economic " those that too palpably
resist the operation. It is acknowledged that freshly
suggested modes of consumption and ends of effort re-
quire expenditure and sacrifice no less than the habitual,
that the exploration of Tibet or of the Polar Seas
affects the market for supplies not less certainly than
the scheduled voyages of oceanic liners. Moreover,
behind these scheduled voyages there are all the varied
motives that induce people to travel and the desires
that lead to the shipment of goods. Shall it be said
that all of these motives and desires must be traceable
back to settled habits of behavior and consumption .''
And if this cannot be maintained is it not hazardous to
assume that such general problems of economic theory
as the determination of market values or of the shares

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 315

in distribution require no recognition of the other em-
pirical types of interest? These types, if they are
genuine, are surely important ; they may well prove
to be, in many ways, fundamentally important. For a
commodity that has become habitual must once have
been new and untried.

§ 11. The economic demands which make up the
budget of a particular person at a particular time are
clearly interdependent. A man's income or the greater
part of it is usually distributed among various chan-
nels of expenditure in a certain fairly constant way.
In proportion to the definiteness of this distribution
and the resoluteness with which it is maintained does
the impression gain strength that the man is carrying
out a consistent plan of some sort. Such a regular
plan of expenditure may be drawn out into a schedule,
setting forth the amounts required at a certain price
for the unit of each kind. And such a schedule is an
expression in detail, in terms of ways and means, of
the type of life one has elected to lead. For virtually
any income above the level of bare physical subsistence,
there will be an indefinite number of alternative budgets
possible. A little less may be spent for household
conveniences and adornments and a little more for food.
Some recreations may be sacrificed for an occasional
book or magazine. One may build a house or pur-
chase a motor-car instead of going abroad. And which-
ever choice is made, related expenditures must be made in
consequence for which, on the assumption of a definite
amount of income, compensation must be made by cur-
tailment of outlay at other points. What seems clear

316 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

in general is that one's total budget is relative to
the general plan and manner of life one deems for
him the best possible and that this plan, more or less
definitely formulated, more or less steadily operative,
is what really determines how far expenditure shall go
in this direction and in that. The budget as a whole
will define for the individual an equilibrium among his
various recognized wants ; if the work of calculating it
has been carefully done there will be for the time being
no tendency to change in any item.

If, then, we choose to say in such a case that the in-
dividual carries his expenditure along each line to the
precise point at which the last or marginal utility en-
joyed is precisely equal to the marginal utility on every
other line, it seems not difficult to grasp what such a
statement means. Quite harmlessly, all that it can mean
is that the individual has planned precisely what he has
planned and is not sorry for it, and for the time being
does not think he can improve upon it. As there is one
earth drawing toward its center each billiard ball of the
dozen in equilibrium in a bowl, so there is behind the
budget of the individual one complex personal concep-
tion of a way of life that fixes more or less certainly
and clearly the kinds and intensities of his wants
and assigns to each its share of purchasing power.
That the units or elements in equilibrium hold their
positions with reference to each other for reasons capable
of separate statement for each unit seems a supposition
no less impossible in the one case than in the other. To
think of each kind of want in the individual's nature
as holding separately in fee simple and clamoring for

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 317

full and separate " satisfaction " in its separate kind,
is the characteristic illusion of a purely formal type
of analysis. The permanence of a budget and its carry-
ing- out no doubt require the due and precise realization
of each plotted marginal utility — to go further than
this along any one line would inevitably mean getting
not so far along certain others, and thus a distorted
and disappointing total attainment in the end. But
to say that one actually plans and controls his expendi-
tures along various lines by the ultimate aim of attain-
ing equivalent terminal utilities on each is quite another
story. It is much like saying that the square inches of
canvas assigned in a picture to sky and sea and crannied
wall are arranged upon the principle of identical and
equal effects for artist or beholder from the last inches
painted of each kind. The formula of the equalitj^ of
marginal effects is no constructive principle ; it is only a
concise if indeed somewhat grotesque wa}' of phrasing
the essential fact that no change of the qualitative whole
is going to be made, because no imperfection in it as a
whole is felt.*

* Until after this essay was finished I had not seen John A.
Hobson's book entitled Work and Wealth, A Human Valuation
(London, 1914.). My attention was first definitely called to this
work by a friend among the economists who read my finished
MS. late in 1915, and referred me in particular to the concluding
chapter on " Social Science and Social Art." On now tardily
reading this chapter I find that, as any reader will readily per-
ceive, it distinctly anticipates, almost verbatim in parts, what
I have tried, with far less success, to say in the foregoing two
paragraphs above. Hobson argues, with characteristic clearness
and eflfect, for the qualitative uniqueness and the integral cfiar-
acter of personal budgets, holding that the logic of raarginality

318 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

§ 12. We come, then, to the problem of the indi-
vidual's encounter with a new commodity. In general, a
purchase in such a case must amount to more or less of
a departure from the scheme of life in force and a
transition over to a different one. And a new com-
modity (in the sense in which the term has been used
above) is apt to be initially more tempting than an
addition along some line of expenditure already rep-
resented in the budget. The latter, supposing there
has been no change of price and no increase of income,
is usually a mere irregularity, an insurgent departure
from some one specification of a total plan without pre-
liminary compensating adjustment or appropriate
change at other points. The erratic outlay, if consid-

is " an entirely illusory account of the psychical process by
which a man lays out his money, or his time, or his energy "
(p. 331). "So far as it is true that the last sovereign of my
expenditure in bread equals in utility the last sovereign of my
expenditure in books, that fact proceeds not from a comparison,
conscious, or unconscious, of these separate items at this margin,
but from the parts assigned respectively to bread and books in
the organic plan of my life. Quantitative analysis, inherently
incapable of comprehending qualitative unity or qualitative dif-
ferences, can only pretend to reduce the latter to quantitative
differences. What it actually does is to ignore alike the unity
of the whole and the qualitativeness of the parts" (p. 334).
Hobson not only uses the analogy of the artist and the picture
(p. 330) precisely as I have done, but oflFers still other illustra-
tions of the principle that seem to me even more apt and telling.
Though not indebted to him for what I have put into the above
paragraphs, I am glad to be able to cite the authority of so dis-
tinguished an economist and sociologist for conclusions to which
I found my own way. Other parts as well of Work and Wealth
(e. g.. Chapter IV, on "The Creative Factor in Production")
seem to have a close relation to the main theme of the present
discussion.

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 319

erable, will result in sheer disorder and extravagance —
indefensible and self-condemned on the principles of
the individual's own economy. But with a new com-
modity the case stands differently. It is more inter-
esting to consider a really new proposal than to reopen
a case once closed when no evidence distinctly new is
offered. A sheer " temptation " or an isolated impulse
toward new outlay along a line already measured in
one's scheme has the force of habit and a presumption of
un-wisdom to overcome. If the case is one not of tempta-
tion but of " being urged " one is apt to answer, " No,
I can make no use of any more of that." But a new com-
modity has the charm of its novelty, a charm consisting
in the promise, in positive fashion, of new qualitative
values about which a new entire schedule will have to be
organized. Partly its strength of appeal lies in its
radicalism ; it gains ready attention not only by its
promise but by its boldness. " Preparedness " gains a
more ready acclaim than better schools or the extirpa-
tion of disease. The automobile and the " moving pic-
ture " probably have a vogue today far surpassing any
use of earlier " equivalents " that a mere general aug-
mentation of incomes could have brought about. In-
deed, the economic danger of the middle classes in
present-day society lies not in mere occasional excess at
certain points but in heedless commitment to a showy
and thinned-out scheme of life in which the elements
are ill-chosen and ill-proportioned and from which, as a
whole, abiding satisfaction cannot be drawn. It is where
real and thoroughgoing change in the manner of life is
hopeless that irregular intemperance of various sorts

320 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

appears to bulk relatively largest as an economic
evil.

Shall we not say, however, that the superior attrac-
tion of the new in competition with established lines
of expenditure only indicates the greater " satiation "
of the wants the latter represent and the comparative
freshness of the wants the novelty will satisfy? On the
contrary the latter wants are in the full sense not yet
existent, the new satisfactions are untried and un-
measured ; the older wants have the advantage of posi-
tion, and if satiated today, will reassert themselves
with a predictable strength tomorrow. The new wants,
it is true, if they are acquired, will be part of a new
system, but the present fact remains that their full
meaning cannot be known in advance of trial and the
further outlines of the new scheme of uses and values
cannot be drawn up until this meaning has been learned.
If, then, the new commodity is taken, it is not because
the promised satisfaction and the sum of known utilities
to be sacrificed are found equal, nor again because the
new commodity will fit neatly into a place in the existing
schedule that can be vacated for it. This latter is the
case of substitution. Such an interpretation of the
facts is retrospective only ; it is a formal declaration that
the exchange has been deemed on the whole worth while,
but the reasons for this outcome such a formula is pow-
erless to suggest.

In general the new commodity and the habits it
engenders could not remain without effect upon a sys-
tem into which they might be mechanically introduced.
Certain items in the schedule, associated in use with

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 321

those dispensed with for the new, must be rendered ob-
solete by the change. The new interests called into
play will draw to themselves and to their further de-
velopment attention which may be in large measure
diverted from the interests of older standing. And in
the new system all interests remaining over from the
old will accordingly stand in a new light and their
objects will be valued, will be held important, for rea-
sons that will need fresh statement.*

In similar fashion it might be argued that the com-
modities or uses which one sacrifices for the sake of a
new venture are inevitably more than a simple deduction
that curtails one's schedule in a certain kind and amount.
Such a deduction or excision must leave the remaining
lines of the original complex hanging at loose ends. The

* It may be worth while to glance here for the sake of illustra-
tration at an ethical view of preference parallel with the eco-
nomic logic above contested. " The act which is right in that it
promotes one interest, is, by the same principle," writes R. B.
Perry, " wrong in that it in j ures another interest. There is no
contradiction in this fact .... simply because it is possible
for the same thing to possess several relations, the question of
their compatibility or incompatibility being in each case a ques-
tion of empirical fact. Now .... an act ....
may be doubly right in that it conduces to the fulfillment of two
interests. Hence arises the conception of comparative goodness.
If the fulfillment of one interest is good, the fulfillment of two
is better; and the fulfillment of all interests is best. . . .
Morality, then, is such performance as under the circumstances,
and in view of all the interests affected, conduces to most good-
ness. In other words, that act is morally right which is most
right." {Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 334. Cf. also The
Moral Economy). It is evident that constructive change in tlie
underlying system (or aggregate?) of the agent's interests gets
no recognition here as a matter of moral concern or as a fact

322 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

catching-up of these and their coordination with the
new interest must in any event amount, as has been con-
tended, to a thoroughgoing reorganization. What must
really happen then, in the event of action, is in principle
nothing less than the disappearance of the whole from
which the sacrificed uses are dissevered. These latter,
therefore, stand in the process of decision as a symbol
for the existing personal economy as a whole. The old
order and the new confront each other as an accepted
view of fact and a plausible hypothesis everywhere con-
front each other and the issue for the individual is the
practical issue of making the transition to a new work-
ing level. To declare that the salient elements of the
confronting complexes are quantitatively equivalent is
only to announce in symbolic terms that the transition
has been effected, the die cast.*

of the agent's moral experience. Thus Perry understands the
meaning of freedom to lie in the fact that " interests operate,"
i.e., that interests exist as a certain class of operative factors
in the universe along with factors of other sorts. " I can and do,
within limits, act as I will. Action, in other words, is governed
by desires and intentions" (pp. 343 fi.). The cosmical heroics
of Bertrand Russell are thus not quite the last word in Ethics
(p. 346). Nevertheless, the "free man," in Perrj^'s view, ap-
parently must get on with the interests that once for all initially
defined him as a "moral constant" (p. 34'3).

* In a recent interesting discussion of " Self-Interest " (T. N.
Carver, Essays in Social Justice, 1915, Chap. Ill) occurs the
following: " We may conclude .... that even after we
eliminate from our consideration all other beings than self, there
is yet a possible distinction between one's present and one's future
self. It is always, of course, the present self which esteems or
appreciates all interests whether they be present or future. And
the present self estimates or appreciates present interests some-
what more highly than it does future interests. In this respect

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 323

§ 13. The statement thus given has been purposely
made, for many transactions of the sort referred to,
something of an over-statement. If I contemplate pur-
chasing a typewriter or a book on an unfamiliar but
inviting subject it may well seem somewhat extravagant
to describe the situation as an opposition between two
schemes of life. Is the issue so momentous ; is the act
so revolutionary.'' But the purpose of our over-state-
ment was simply to make clear the type of situation
without regard to the magnitudes involved. No novelty
that carries one in any respect beyond the range of
existing habits can be wholly without its collateral
effects nor can its proximate and proper significance
be measured in advance. This is in principle as true
of a relatively slight innovation as of a considerable

the present self appreciates the interests of the future self accord-
ing to a law quite analogous to, if indeed it be not the same law
as that according to which it appreciates the interests of others "
(p. 71). This bit of "subjective analysis" (p. 60), a procedure
rather scornfully condemned as "subjective quibbling" on the
following page, must be counted a fortunate lapse. It could be
bettered, I think, in only one point. Must the future self " of
course " and " alwaj^s " get license to live by meeting the stand-
ards of the present self? Has the present self no modesty, no
curiosity, no "sense of humor"? If it is so stupidly hard and
fastj how can a self new and qualitatively different ever get
upon its feet in a man? In some men no such thing can happen-
but must it be in aJl men impossible and impossible "of course"?
And what of the other self? Carver has not applied the "methods
of subjective analysis " to change from self to self or from interest
in self to interest in others. The present tense of formal logic
governs fundamentally throughout the whole account.

If this essay were a volume I should try to consider, from the
point of view of constructive intelligence, the explanation of
interest as due to the undervaluation of future goods.

324 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

one. And our present conscious exaggeration departs
less widely from the truth than the alternative usual
preoccupation of economic theory with the logic of
routine desire and demand. For the phenomena of rou-
tine and habit are thereby made a standard by which
all others, if indeed recognized as real at all, must be
judged " exceptional." And, as we shall see, to do this
introduces difficulty into certain parts of substantive
economic theory.

Again, objection may attach to the view that equiva-
lence of the " salient members " of the opposing sys-
tems is only another name for the comprehensive fact
of the novelty's acceptance. For if we hesitate in such
a case, is this not because we judge the price too high.''
What can this signify but that the service or satisfac-
tion we expect from the novelty falls short of sufficing
to convince us.'' And unless we are dealing with meas-
ured quantities, how can we come to this conclusion.''
Moreover, if the novel commodity is divided into units
we may take a smaller quantity when the price de-
manded is " high " than if the price were lower. And
does this not suggest predetermined value-magnitudes
as data.'' But if one takes thus a smaller amount, as
the argument contends, it is because there is a pre-
sumption of being able to make some important total
use of it and there is no general reason apparent for
supposing that this will be merely a fractional part
of a larger but like significance that might be hoped
for from a larger quantity. And on the other hand,
the prospect simply may not tempt at all ; the smaller
quantity may be deemed an improbable support for a

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 325

really promising total program and the present pro-
gram will hold its ground, not seriously shaken. The
total demand of a market for a given commodity is
no doubt in some sort a mathematical function of the
price. The lower the price the greater in some ratio
will be the number of persons who will buy and in
general the greater the number of units taken by tliose
who are already buyers. But that such a proposition
admits of statistical proof from the observ^ation of a
seiries of price changes in a market affords no pre-
sumption concerning the nature of the reasons that move
any individual person to his action. The theoretical
temptation is strong, here as elsewhere, in passing from
the study of ma,rkets to the personal economy of the
individual forthwith to find this also a trafficking in unit-
quantities and marginal satisfactions to which the con-
cepts and notation of market analysis will readily apply.
It remains to consider certain implications of this
view of economic desire and demand.

II

§ 14. It is evident that the issue finally at stake in
any economic problem of constructive comparison, is an
ethical issue. Two immediate alternatives are before
one — to expend a sum of money in some new and inter-
esting way, or to keep it devoted to the uses of one's
established plan. Upon the choice, one recognizes,
hinge consequences of larger and more comprehensive
importance than the mere present enjoyment or non-
enjoyment of the new commodity.* And tliesc " more
* Fite, Introductory Study of Ethics, pp. 3-8.

326 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

important " consequences are important because there
appears to lie in them the possibility of a type of per-
sonal character divergent from the present type and
from any present point of view incommensurable with
it.* The ethical urgency of such a problem will impress
one in the measure in which one can see that such an
issue really does depend upon his present action and
irretrievably depends. And we are able now to see
what that economic quality is that attaches to ethical
problems at a certain stage of their development and
calls for a supplementary type of treatment.

Let us first consider certain types of juncture in
conduct that will be recognized at once as ethical and
in which any economic aspect is relatively inconspicu-
ous. Temperance or intemperance, truth or falsehood,
idleness or industry, honesty or fraud, social justice or
class-interest — these will serve. What makes such
problems as these ethical is their demand for creative
intelligence. In each, alternative types of character
or manners of life stand initially opposed. If the con-
crete issue is really problematical, if there is no rule
that one can follow in the case with full assurance, con-
structive comparison, whether covertly or openly, must
come into play. How long, then, will a problem of tem-
perance or intemperance, idleness or industry, preserve
its obviously ethical character without admixture.?
Just so long, apparentl}', as the modes of conduct that
come into view as possible solutions are considered and
valued with regard to their directly 'physiological and
psychological consequences alone. Any given sort of
* Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, pp. 205-11.

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 327

conduct, that is to say, makes inevitably for the forma-
tion of certain habits of mind or muscle, weakening, or
precluding the formation of, certain others. Attention
is engrossed that is thereby not available elsewhere,
time and strength are expended, discriminations are
dulled and sharpened, sympathies and sensitivities are
narrowed and broadened, every trait and bent of char-
acter is directly or indirectly affected in some way b}'
every resolve concluded and every action embarked upon.
If one moves a certain way along a certain line he can
never return to the starting-point and set out un-
changed along any other. If one does one thing one
cannot do another. And when the sufficient reasons
for this mutual exclusion lie in the structure and
organization of the human mind and body our deliber-
ation as between the two alternatives, our construc-
tive comparison of them remains upon the ethical
plane.

If one does one thing one cannot do another. If we
substitute the well-worn saying " one cannot eat his
cake and have it " we indicate the economic plane of
constructive comparison with all needful clearness.

This is in fact the situation that has been already
under discussion at such length above and the economic
quality of which we are just now in quest arises from
neither more nor less than the fact of our dependence
in the working out of our personal problems upon
limited external resources. The eventual solution sought
under these circumstances remains ethical as before.
But to reach it, it is necessary to bring Into considera-
tion not only such other interests and ends as the psycho-

328 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

physical structure of human nature and the laws of
character-development show to be involved, but a still
wider range of interests less intimately or " internally "
related to the focal interest of the occasion but
imperatively requiring to be heard. If my acquisi-
tion of a phonograph turns upon the direct psy-
chological bearing of the new interest upon my other
interests, its probable effects whether good or bad
upon my musical tastes and the diplomatic compli-
cations with my neighbors in which the possession
of the instrument may involve me, the problem of
its purchase remains clearly in the ethical phase. But
when I count the cost in terms of sacrifices which the
purchase price makes necessary, from literature down to
food and fuel, and must draw this whole range of fact
also into the adjustment if I can, the economic phase
is reached. In principle two entire and very concrete
schemes of life now stand opposed. Just what concrete
sacrifices I shall make I do not know — this, in fact, is one
way of stating my problem. Nor, conversely, do I know
just what I shall be able to make the phonograph worth
to me. It is my task to come to a conclusion in the case
that shall be explicit and clear enough to enable me to
judge in the event whether my expectation has been real-
ized and I have acted wisely or unwisely. Thus a prob-
lem is economic when the fact of the limitation of my
external resources must be eventually and frankly faced.
The characteristic quality of a problem grown economic
is a certain vexatiousness and seeming irrationality in
the ill-assorted array of nevertheless indisputable inter-
ests, prosaic and ideal, that have to be reduced to order.

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 329

It is perhaps this characteristic emotional quality
of economic problems that has insensibly inclined econo-
mists to favor a simpler and more clear-cut analysis.
As for ethical problems — they have been left to " con'
science" or to the jurisdiction of a "greatest happi-
ness " principle in which the ordinary individual or leg-
islator has somehow come to take an interest. That
they arise and become urgent in us of course does hu-
man nature unimpeachable credit and economics must by
all means wait respectfully upon their settlement. So
much is conceded. But economics is economics, when all
is said and done. What we mean by the economic in-
terest is an interest in the direct and several satisfac-
tions that a man can get from the several things he
shrewdly finds it worth his while to pay for. And
shrewdness means nicety of calculation, accuracy of
measurement in the determination of tangible loss and
gain. Here, then, is no field for ethics but a field of fact.
Thus ethics on her side must also wait until the case is
fully ready for her praise or blame. Such is the modus
Vivendi. But its simplicity is oversimple and unreal.
It pictures the " economic man " as bound in the chains
of a perfunctory deference that he would throw off if he
could. For the theory of constructive comparison or
creative intelligence, on the other hand, instead of a
seeker and recipient of " psychic income " and a calcu-
lator of gain and loss, he is a personal agent maintain-
ing continuity of action in a life of discontinuously
changing levels of interest and experience. His meas-
ure of attainment lies not in an accelerating rate
of " psychic income," but in an increasing sense of

SSO CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

personal effectiveness and an increasing readiness and
confidence before new junctures.

The possession and use of commodities are, then, not
in themselves and directly economic facts at all. As
material things commodities serve certain purposes and
effect certain results. They are means to ends and
their serving so is a matter of technology. But do I
seriously want their services.'' This is a matter of
my ethical point of view. Do I want them at the
price demanded or at what price and how many? This
is the economic question and it obviously is a question
wholly ethical in import — more broadly and inclusively
ethical, in fact, than the ethical question in its earlier
and more hmnanly inviting form. And what we have
now to see is the fact that no consideration that has
a bearing upon the problem in its ethical phase can
lose its importance and relevance in the subsequent
phase.

There can be no restriction of the economic interest,
for example, to egoism. If on general principles I would
really rather use goods produced in safe and cleanly
factories or produced by " union labor," there is no
possible reason why this should not incline me to pay
the higher prices that such goods may cost and make
the needful readjustment in my budget. Is there rea-
son why my valuation of these goods should not thus
be the decisive act that takes me out of one relation to
industrial workers and sets me in another — can any-
thing else, indeed, quite so distinctly do this.'* For eco-
nomic valuation is only the fixation of a purchase price,
or an exchange relation in terms of price and quantity,

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 331

upon which two schemes of life, two differing perspec-
tives of social contact and relationship converge — the
scheme of life from which I am departing and the one
upon which I have resolved to make my hazard. It is this
election, this transition, that the purchase price ex-
presses— drawing all the strands of interest^and action
into a knot so that a single grasp may seize them. The
only essential egoism in the case lies in the " subjectiv-
ism " of the fact that inevitably the emergency
and the act are mine and not another's. This is the
" egocentric predicament " in its ethical aspect. And
the egocentric predicament proves Hobbes and La
Rochefoucauld as little as it proves Berkeley or Karl
Pearson. No social interest, no objective interest of
any sort, is shown ungenuine by my remembering in
season that if I cannot fill my coal-bin I shall freeze.*

* The term "egocentric predicament" (cf. R. B. Perry: Present
Philosophical Tendencies, p. 129 flF.) has had, for a philosophic
term, a remarkable literary success. But at best it convej's a
partial view of the situation it purports to describe. The "ego-
centricity " of our experience, viewed in its relation to action,
seems, rightly considered, less a " predicament " than an oppor-
tunity, a responsibility and an immunity. For in relation to action
it means (1) that an objective complex situation has become, in
various of its aspects, a matter of my cognizance in terms sig-
nificant to me. That so many of its aspects have come into rela-
tions of conflict or reenforcement significant for me is my oppor-
tunity for reconstructive effort if I choose to avail myself of it.
Because, again, I am thus "on hand myself" (op. cit., p. 120)
and am thus able to "report" upon the situr-.tion, I am {2)
responsible, in the measure of my advantages, for the adequacy
of my performance. And finally (3) I cannot be held to account
for failure to reckon with such aspects of the situation as 1
cannot get hold of in the guise of " ideas, objects of knowledge
or experiences" {Ibid.). Our egocentricity is, tlien, a predicament

832 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

§ 15. This logical and psychological continuity of the
ethical and economic problems suggests certain general
considerations of some practical interest. In the first
place as to " egoism." I am, let us say, an employer.
If I am interested in procuring just " labor," in the
sense of foot-pounds of energy, then undoubtedly labor
performed under safe and healthful conditions is worth
no more to me than other labor (provided it does not
prove more efficient). But is this attitude of interest
in just foot-pounds of energy the attitude par excellence
or solely entitled to be called economic? And just this
may be asserted for the reason that an exclusive interest

only so long as one stubbornly insists, to no obvious positive pur-
pose, on thinking of knowledge as a self-sufficing entitative com-
plex, like a vision suddenly appearing full-blown out of the blue,
and as inviting judgment in that isolated character on the repre-
sentative adequacy which it is supposed to claim (cf. A. W.
Moore, "Isolated Knowledge," Joiirn. of Philos., etc., Vol. XI).
The way out of the predicament for Perry and his colleagues is
to attack the traditional subjective and representative aspects of
knowledge. But, this carried out, what remains of knowledge is
a " cross-section of neutral entities " which still retains all the
original unaccountability, genetically speaking, and the original
intrinsic and isolated self-sufficiency traditionallj' supposed to be-
long to knowledge. The ostensible gain achieved for knowledge is
an alleged proof of its ultimate self-validation or the meaningless-
ness of any suspicion of its validity (because there is no uncon-
trolled and distorting intermediation of " consciousness " in the
case). But to wage strenuous war on subjectivism and representa-
tionism and still to have on hand a problem calling for the inven-
tion ad hoc of an entire nev/ theory of mind and knowledge seems
a waste of good ammunition on rather unimportant outworks.
They might have been circumvented.

But what concerns us here is the ethical parallel. The ego-
centric predicament in this aspect purports to compel the admis-
sion by the " altruist " tliat since whatever he chooses to do must

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 333

in just labor is the only interest in the case that men
of business, or at least many of them, can entertain
without going speedily to the wall. If, then, I do in
fact pay more than I must in wages or if I expend more
than a bare minimum for conveniences and safety-
guards this is not because of the valuation I put upon
labor, but only because I take pleasure in the con-
tentment and well-being of others. And this is not
" business " but " uplift " — or else a subtle form of
emotional self-indulgence. Suppose, however, that by
legislation similar working conditions have been made
mandatory for the entire industry and suppose that

be his act and is obviously done because he wishes, for good and
sufficient reasons of his own, to do it, therefore he is an egoist
after ail — perhaps in spite of himself and then again perhaps not.
The ethical realism of G. E. Moore (Principia Ethica, 1903)
breaks out of the predicament by declaring Good independent
of all desire, wish or human interest and indefinable, and by
supplying a partial list of things thus independently good. What
I do, I do because it seems likely to put me in possession of
objective Good, not because it accords with some habit or whim
of mine (although ray own pleasure is undoubtedly one of the
good things). It is noteworthy that Perry declines to follow
Moore in this (op. cit., p. 331 ff.). Now such an ethical objec-
tivism can give no account of the molivation, or the process, of
the individual's efforts to attain, for guidance in any case, a
" more adequate " apprehension of what things are good than he
may already possess, just as the objectivist theory of consciousness
(= knowledge) can supply no clue as to how or whether a more
or a less comprehensive or a qualitatively different "cross-section
of entities" can or should be got into one's "mind" as warrant or
guidance ("stimulus") for a contemplated response that is to
meet a present emergency (cf. John Dewey, " The Reflex Arc
Concept in Psychology," Psychol. Rev., Vol. IV). Thus neither
sort of deliverance out of the alleged predicament of egoccntricity
abates in the least the only serious inconvenience or danger
threatened by subjectivism.

334 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

the community approves the law, even to the extent
of chccrfull}' paynig so much of the additional cost
thereby imposed as may be shifted upon them.

Shall we say that this is an ethical intrusion into the
sphere of economics or shall we say that the former
economic demand for labor " as such " has given place
to an economic demand for labor better circumstanced
or better paid? The community at all events is paying
the increase of price or a part of the increase. It
seems arbitrary to insist that the old price is still the
economic price of the commodity and the increase only
the price of a quiet conscience. The notion of a strictly
economic demand for labor pure and simple seems in
fact a concept of accounting. To meet the community's
demand for the commodity a number of producers were
required. The least capable of these could make both
ends meet at the prevailing price only by ignoring all
but the severely impersonal aspects of the process.
Taking these costs as a base, other more capable or
more fortunate producers may have been able to make
additional expenditures of the sort in question, charg-
ing these perhaps to " welfare " account. The law then
intervenes, making labor in effect more expensive for
all by requiring the superior conveniences or by com-
pelling employers' insurance against accidents to work-
men or by enforcing outright a higher minimum wage.
The old basic labor cost becomes thus obsolete. And
without prejudging as to the expediency of such legis-
lation in particular industrial or business situations
may we not protest against a priori and wholesale con-
demnation of such legislation as merely irresponsibly

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 335

" ethical " and " unscientific "? Is it not, rather, eco-
nomically experimental and constructive, amounting in
substance to a simple insistence that henceforth the
hiring and paying of labor shall express a wider range
of social interests — shall signalize a more clearly self-
validating level of comprehension, on the part of em-
ployers and consumers, of the social significance of
industry than the old? And may we not protest also,
as a matter of sheer logic, against carrying over a pro-
ducer's distinction of accounting between " labor " cost
and " welfare " cost into the consumer''s valuation of the
article? How and to what end shall a distinction be
drawn between his " esteem " for the trimmed and
isolated article and his esteem for the men who made it
— which, taken together, dispose him to pay a certain
undivided price for it?

For the egoism of men is no fixed and unalterable
fact. Taking it as a postulate, a mathematical theory
of market phenomena may be erected upon it, but such
a postulate is purely formal, taking no note of the
reasons which at any given time lie behind the individ-
uals' " demand " or " supply schedules." It amounts
simply to an assumption that these schedules will not
change during the lapse of time contemplated in the
problem in hand. And it therefore cannot serve as the
basis for a social science. As an actual social phenom-
enon egoism is merely a disclosure of a certain present
narrowness and inertness in the nature of the individual
which may or may not be definitive for him. It is pre-
cisely on a par with anemia, dyspepsia or fatigue, or
any other like unhappy fact of personal biography.

3S6 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

§ 16. There is another suggestion of ethical and
economic continuity that may be briefly indicated. If
our view of this relation is correct, a problem, by be-
coming economic, may lose something in dramatic inter-
est and grandiosity but gains in precision and com-
plexity. In the economic phase an issue becomes
sensibly crucial. It is in this phase that are chiefly
developed those qualities of clear-headedness, temper-
ateness of thought and action, and well-founded self-
reliance that are the foundation of all genuine personal
morality and social effectiveness. And one may ques-
tion therefore the ethical consequences of such measures
as old age, sickness, and industrial accident insurance
or insurance against unemployment. In proportion as
these measures are effective they amount to a constant
virtual addition to the individual's income from year
to year vrithout corresponding effort and forethought on
his part. They ma}^ accordingly be condemned as sys-
tematic pauperization — the " endowment of the unfit."
There is evidently a fundamental problem here at issue,
apart from all administrative difficulties. Clearly this
type of criticism assumes a permanent incapacity in
" human nature " or in most actual beings therewith
endowed, to recognize as seriously important other in-
terests than those upon which hinge physical life and
death. The ordinary man, it is believed, is held back
from moral Quixotism as from material extravagance by
the fear of starvation alone; and it is assumed that
there are no otlier interests in the " normal " man that
can or ever will be so wholesomely effective to these
ends. And two remarks in answer appear not without

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 337

a measure of pertinence. First, if what is alleged be
true (and there is evidence in Malthus' Essay and else-
where to support it) it seems less a proof of orginal sin
and " inperfectibility " than a reproach to a social order
whose collective tenor and institutions leave the mass
untouched and unawakened above the level of animal re-
production and whose inequalities of opportunity pre-
vent awakened life from growing strong. And second,
the democratic society of the future, if it exempts the
individual in part or wholly from the dread of premature
physical extinction must leave him on higher levels of
interest similarly dependent for success or failure upon
his ultimate personal discretion. And is it inconceivable
that on higher levels there should ever genuinely be such
a persisting type of issue for the multitude of men.'' *

§ 17. We have held constructive comparison in its
economic phase to be a reciprocal evaluating of the
" salient members " of two budgets. The respective
budgets in such a case express in the outcome (1) the
plane of life to which one is to move and (2) the plane
one is forsaking. It was the salient member of the
former that presented the problem at the outset. In the
course of the process its associates were gathered about
it in their due proportions and perspective. The salient
member of the latter (i.e., whatever the purchase is to
oblige one to do without), it was the business of con-
structive comparison to single out from among its asso-
ciates and designate for sacrifice. In any case at all
departing from the type of substitution pure and sim-

* Cf. W. Jethro Brown, The Underlying Principles of Modern
Legislation (3d ed., London, 1914), pp. 165-G8.

338 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

pie, the commodities sacrificed will come to have a
certain " value in exchange " that clearly is a new
fact, a new judgment, in experience. This value in ex-
change, this " subjective " or " personal " exchange
value, may fittingly be termed a " value for transition."
The transition once made, the exchange once concluded,
I shall deem the motor-car, for example, that I have not
bought to replace one used-up, to be worth less than the
piano I have bought instead. This indeed (in no dispar-
aging sense) is a tautology. But does this lesser relative
value equal or exceed or fall short of the value the car
would have had if no question of a piano had been raised
at aril and I had bought it in replacement of the old one
as a matter of course? How can one say? The question
seems unmeaning, for the levels of value referred to are
different and discontinuous and the magnitudes belong
to different orders. In a word, because a " value for
transition " marks a resolve and succinctly describes an
act, it cannot be broken in two and expressed as an
equating of two magnitudes independently definable
apart from the relation. The motor-car Jiad its value
as a member of the old system — the piano has its value
as a member of the new. " The piano is worth more than
the car " ; " the car is worth less than the piano " —
these are the prospective and retrospective views across
a gulf that separates two " specious presents," not
judgments of static inequality in terms of a common
measure.

Is value, then, absolute or relative? Is value or
price the prior notion? Was the classical English
economics superficial in its predilection for the relative

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 339

conception of value? Or is the reigning Austrian eco-
nomics profound in its reliance upon marginal utility?
By way of answer let us ask — What in our world can
be more absolute a fact than a man's transition from
one level of experience and action to another? Can the
flight of time be stayed or turned backward? And if
not can the acts by whose intrinsic uniqueness and suc-
cessiveness time becomes filled for me and by which I
feel time's sensible passage as swift or slow, lose their
individuality? But it is not by a m.ere empiric tem-
poralism alone that the sufficient absoluteness of the
present act is attested. My transition from phase to
phase of " finitude " is a thing so absolute that Idealism
itself has deemed an Absolute indispensable to assure
its safe and sane achievement. And with all Idealism's
distrust of immediate experience for every evidential
use, the Idealist does not scruple to cite the " higher
obviousness " of personal effort, attainment, and frui-
tion as the best of evidence for his most momentous
truth of all.* And accordingly (in sharp descent) we
need not hesitate to regard value in exchange as a
primary fact in its own right, standing in no need of
resolution into marginal pseudo-absolutes. A price
agreed to and paid marks a real transition to another
level. There are both marginal valuation and Wcrthal-
tung on this level, but they are subordinate incidents
to this level's mapping and the conservation of its re-
sources. On this level every marginal utility is relative,
as we have seen, to every other through their common

*Bosanquet: Principle of Individuality and Value, pp. 13, 15,
20, 24, 27, 30.

340 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

relation to the complex plan of organization as a
whole.*

§ 18. In conclusion one more question closely related
to the foregoing may be briefly touched upon. We have
held that the individual's attitude toward a commodity
is in the first instance one of putting a price-estimate
upon it and only secondarily that of holding it in a
provisionally settled marginal esteem. If this principle

* The case against the Austrian explanation of market-price
in terms of marginal utility has been well summed up and re-
enforced by B, M. Anderson in his monograph, Social Value
(Boston, 1911). Anderson finds the fatal flaw in the Austrian
account to consist in the psychological particularism of the mar-
ginal utility theory. The only way, he holds, to provide an
adequate foundation for a non-circular theory of price is to un-
derstand the marginal estimates people put upon goods as result-
ants of the entire moral, legal, institutional, scientific, aesthetical,
and religious state of society at the time. This total and there-
fore absolute state of affairs, if I understand the argument, is
to be regarded as focussed to a unique point in the estimate each
man puts upon a commodity. Thus, presumably, the values which
come together, summed up in the total demand and supply
schedules for a commodity in the market, are " social values "
and the resultant market-price is a " social price." This
cross-sectional social totality of conditions is strongly suggestive
of an idealistic Absolute. The individual is a mere focussing of
impersonal strains and stresses in the Absolute. But the real
societj' is a radically temporal process. The real centers of
initiation in it are creatively intelligent individuals whose eco-
nomic character as such expresses itself not in " absolute " margi-
nal registrations but in price estimates.

On the priority of price to value I venture to claim the sup-
port of A. A. Young, " Some Limitations of the Value Con-
cept," Quart. Journ. Econ., Vol. XXV, p. 409 (esp. pp. 417-19).
Incidentally, I suspect the attempt to reconstruct ethical
theory as a branch of what is called Werttheorie to be a mistake
and likely to result only in useless and misleading terminology.

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 3H

of the priority of price-estimation or exchange value is
true, it seems evident that there can be no line of de-
markation drawn (except for doubtfully expedient peda-
gogical purposes) between (1) " Subjective valuations "
with which individuals are conceived to come to a
market and (2) a mechanical equilibration of demand
and supply which it is the distinctive and sole function
of market concourse to effect. In such a view the
market process in strict logic must be timeless as it is
spaceless; a superposition of the two curves is effected
and they are seen to cross in a common point which
their shapes geometrically predetermine. Discussion,
in any proper sense, can be no inherent part of a
market process thus conceived. Once in the market,
buyers and sellers can only declare their " subjective
exchange valuations " of the commodity and await the
outcome with a dispassionate certainty that whoever
may gain by exchanging at the price to be determined,
those who cannot exchange will at all events not lose.
But considered as a tj'pical likeness of men who have
seen a thing they want and are seeking to possess it,
this picture of mingled hope and resignation is not
convincing. Most actual offering of goods for sale
that one observes suggests less the dispassionate man-
ner of the physiologist or psychologist taking the
measure of his subject's reactions, sensibilities, and
preferences than the more masterful procedure of the
physician or the hypnotist who seeks to uproot or
modify or reconstruct them. This is the process known
in economic writing since Adam Smith as " the hig-
gling and bargaining of the market."

342 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

In fact, the individual's ante-market valuation, when
there temporarily is one, is an exchange valuation of
the constructive or experimental and therefore (in any
significant sense of the word) perfectly objective type,
and the market process into which this enters is only
a perfectly homogeneous temporal continuation of it
that carries the individual forward to decisive action.
There is no more reason for a separation here than for
sundering the ante-experimental sketching out of an
hypothesis in any branch of research from the work of
putting the hypothesis to experimental test. The re-
sults of experiment may serve in a marked way in both
sorts of process to elucidate or reconstruct the hy-
pothesis.

The " higgling and bargaining of the market " has
been accorded but scant attention by economists. It
has apparently been regarded as a kind of irrelevance
— a comedy part, at best, in the serious drama of in-
dustry and trade, never for a moment hindering the sig-
nificant movement and outcome of the major action.
As if to excuse the incompetence of this treatment (or
as another phase of it) theory has tended to lay stress
upon, and mildly to deplore, certain of the less amiable
and engaging aspects of the process. The very term
indeed as used by Adam Smith, imported a certain
aesthetic disesteem, albeit tempered with indulgent ap-
probation on other grounds. In Bohm-Bawerk's more
modern account this approbation has given place to a
neutral tolerance. A certain buyer, he says (in his dis-
cussion of simple "isolated" exchange), will give as
much as thirty pounds for a horse ; the horse's owner will

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 343

take as little as ten pounds — these are predetermined
and fixed valuations brought to the exchange negotia-
tions and nothing that happens in the game of wits is
conceived to modify them. The price will then be fixed
somewhere between these limits. But how? "Here
..." we read, " is room for any amount of ' higgling,'
According as in the conduct of the transaction the buyer
or the seller shows the greater dexterity, cunning, ob-
stinacy, power-of-persuasion, or such like, will the price
be forced either to its lower or to its upper limit." * But
the higgling cannot touch the underlying attitudes.
Even " power of persuasion " is only one part of " skill
in bargaining," with all the rest and like all the rest ;
if it were more than this there would be for Bohm-
Bawerk no theoretically grounded price limits to define
the range of accidental settlement and the whole expla-
nation, as a theory of price, would reduce to nullity. f

* Positive Theory of Capital (Eng. trans.). Bk. IV, Ch. II.
The passage is unchanged in the author's latest edition (1912).

t It is pointed out (e. g., by Davenport in his Economics of
Enterprise, pp. 53-54) that, mathematically, in a market where
large numbers of buyers and sellers confront each other with their
respective maximum and minimum valuations on the commodity
this interval within which price must fall becomes indefinitely
small to the point of vanishing. This is doubtless in accord with
the law of probability, but it would be an obvious fallacy to see
in this any manner of proof or presumption that therefore the
assumptions as to the nature of the individual valuations upon
which such analysis proceeds are true. In a large market where
this interval is supposed to be a vanishing quantity is there more
or less higgling and l)argaining than in a small market where
the interval is admittedly perceptible? And if there is higgling
and bargaining (op. cit., pp. 96-97), what is it doing thnt is
of price-fixing importance unless there be supposed to be a criti-
cal interval for it to work in? Such a use of probability-theory

344 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

With this, then, appears to fall away all ground for
a one-sided, or even a sharply two-sided, conception of
the process of fixation of market-values. A " marginal
utility " theory and a " cost of production " theory
of market price alike assume that the factor chosen
as the ultimate determinant is a fixed fact defined by
conditions which the actual spatial and temporal meet-
ing-together of buyers and sellers in the market cannot
affect. In this logical sense, the chosen determinant
is in each case an ante-market or extra-market fact and
the same is true of the blades of Marshall's famous pair
of scissors.

The price of a certain article let us say is $5. Ac-
cording to the current type of analysis this is the price
because, intending buyers' and sellers' valuations of the
article being just what they are, it is at this figure
that the largest number of exchanges can occur. Were
the price higher there would be more persons willing
to sell than to buy ; were it lower there would be more
persons willing to buy than to sell. At $5 no buyer
or seller who means what he says about his valuation
when he enters the market goes away disappointed or
dissatisfied. With this price established all sellers
whose costs of production prevent their conforming to
it must drop out of the market ; so must all buyers
whose desire for the article does not warrant their paying
so much. More fundamentally then, Why is $5 the

is a good example of the way in which mathematics may be used
to cover the false assumptions which have to be made in order to
make a mathematical treatment of certain sorts of subject-matter
initially plausible as description of concrete fact.

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 3i5

price ? Is it because intending buyers and the marginal
buyer in particular do not desire the article more
strongly? Or is it because conditions of production,
all things considered, do not permit a lower marginal
unit cost? The argument might seem hopeless. But
the advantage is claimed for the principle of demand.
Without demand arising out of desires expressive of
wants there would simply be no value, no production,
and no price. Demand evokes production and sanctions
cost. But cost expended can give no value to a product
that no one wants.

Does it follow, however, that the cost of a commodity
in which on its general merits I have come to take a
hypothetical interest can in no wise affect my actual
price-offer for it? Can it contribute nothing to the
preciser definition of my interest which is eventually to
be expressed in a price offer? If the answer is " No,
for how can this external fact affect the strength of
your desire for the object?" — then the reason given
bogs the question at issue. Is my interest in the object
an interest in the object alone? And is the cost of the
object a fact for me external and indifferent? It is,
at all events, not uncommon to be assured that an arti-
cle " cannot be produced for less," that one or another
of its elements of cost is higher than would be natural
to suppose. Not always scientifically accurate, such
assurances express an evident confidence that they will
not be without effect upon a hesitant but fair-minded
purchaser. And in other ways as well, tlie position
of sellers in the market is not so defenseless as a strict
utility theory of price conceives — apart from the stand-

346 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

point of an abstract " normality " that can never con-
trive to get itself realized in empirical fact.* It is true
that, in general, one tends to purchase an article of a
given familiar kind where its price, all things considered,
is lowest. In consequence the less " capable " pro-
ducers or sellers must go to the wall. But the fact
seems mainly " regulative " and of subordinate im-
portance. Is it equally certain that as between branches
of expenditure, such as clothing, food, and shelter,
children, books, and " social " intercourse, the shares
of income we expend upon them or the marginal prices
we are content to pay express the original strength of
separate and unmodified extra-market interests.'' On
the contrary we have paid in the past what we have
had to pay, what we have deemed just and reasonable,
M'hat we have been willing experimentally to hazard
upon the possibility of the outlay's proving to have
been worth while. In these twilight-zones of indetermi-

* As I have elsewhere argued (" Subjective and Exchange
Value," Journ. Pol. Econ., Vol. IV, pp. 227-30). By the same
token, I confess skepticism of the classical English doctrine that
cost can affect price only through its eflfect upon quantity pro-
duced. "If all the commodities used by man," wrote Senior
(quoted by Davenport, op. cit., p. 58), "were supplied by nature
without any interference whatever of human labor, but were sup-
plied in precisely the same amounts that they now are, there
is no reason to suppose either that they would cease to be valua-
ble or would exchange at any other than the present proportions."
But is this inductive evidence or illustrative rhetoric? One won-
ders, indeed, whether private property would ever have developed
or how long modern society would tolerate it if all wealth were
the gift of nature instead of only some of it (that part, of course,
which requires no use of produced capital goods for its appro-
jpriation).

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 3i7

nation, cost as well as other factors of supply have
had their opportunit3\ Shall we nevertheless insist that
our " demands " are ideally fixed, even though in falli-
ble human fact they are more or less indistinct, yielding
and modifiable? On the contrary they are " in princi-
ple and for the most part " indeterminate and expectant
of suggested experimental shaping from the supply side
of the market. It is less in theory than in fact that
they have a salutary tendency (none too dependable)
toward rigidity.

CONCLUSION

§ 19. The argument may now be summarily re-
viewed,

I. How are we to understand the acquisition, by an
individual, of wha^ are called new economic needs and
interests? Except by a fairly obvious fallacy of ret-
rospection we cannot regard this phenomenon as a
mere arousal of so-called latent or implicit desires.
New products and new means of production afford
" satisfactions " and bring about objective results
which are unimaginable and therefore unpredictable, in
any descriptive fashion, in advance. In a realistic or
empirical view of the matter, these constitute genuinely
new developments of personality and of social function,
not mere unfoldings of a preformed logical or vital
system. " Human nature " is modifiable and economic
choice and action are factors in this indivisible process
{%% 2-4). Now "logically" it would seem clear tliat
unless a new commodity is an object of desire it will
not be made or paid for. On the other hand, with

Si8 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

equal " logic," a new commodity, it would seem, can-
not be an object of desire because all desire must be
for what we already know. Wc seem confronted with
a complete impasse (§ 5). But the impasse is con-
ceptual only. We have simply to acknowledge the pat-
ent fact of our recognition of the new as novel and our
interest in the new in its outstanding character of
novelty. We need only express and interpret this fact,
instead of fancying ourselves bound to explain it away.
It is an interest not less genuine and significant in
economic experience than elsewhere (§§ 6, 7). Its
importance lies in the fact that it obliges us to regard
what is called economic choice not as a balancing of
utilities, marginal or otherwise, but as a process of
" constructive comparison." The new commodity and
its purchase price are in reality symbols for alterna-
tively possible systems of life and action. Can the old
be relinquished for the new.? Before this question is
answered each system may be criticized and interpreted
from the standpoint of the other, each may be supple-
mented by suggestion, by dictate of tradition and by
impulsive prompting, by inference, and b}' conjecture.
Finally in experimental fashion an election must be
made. The system as accepted may or may not be, in
terms, identical with one of the initial alternatives ; it
can never be identical in full meaning and perspective
with either one. And in the end we have not chosen the
new because its value, as seen beforehand, measured more
than the value of the old, but we now declare the old,
seen in retrospect, to have been worth less (§§ 8-12).
There are apparently no valid objections to this view to

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 24^9

be drawn from the current logical type of marginal-
utility analysis (§ 13).

II. Because so-called economic " choice " is in reality
" constructive comparison " it must be regarded as es-
sentially ethical in import. Ethics and economic theory,
instead of dealing with separate problems of conduct,
deal with distinguishable but inseparable stages belong-
ing to the complete analysis of most, if not all, problems
(§ 14). This view suggests, (a) that no reasons in ex-
perience or in logic exist for identifying tlie economic
interest with an attitude of exclusive or particularistic
egoism (§ 15), and (b) that social reformers are justi-
fied in their assumption of a certain " perfectibility " in
human nature — a constructive responsiveness instead of
an insensate and stubborn inertia (§ 16). Again, in
the process of constructive comparision in its economic
phase. Price or Exchange Value is, in apparent accord
with the English classical tradition, the fundamental
working conception. Value as " absolute " is essentially
a subordinate and " conservative " conception, belonging
to a status of system and routine, and is " absolute " in
a purely functional sense (§ 17). And finally con-
structive comparison, with price or exchange value as
its dominant conception, is clearly nothing if not a mar-
ket process. In the nature of the case, then, there can
be no such ante-market definiteness and rigidity of de-
mand schedules as a strictly marginal-utility theory of
market prices logically must require (§ 18).

§ 20. In at least two respects the argument falls
short of what might be desired. No account is given of
the actual procedure of constructive comparison and

350 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

nothing like a complete survey of the leading ideas and
problems of economic theory is undertaken by way of
verification. But to have supplied the former in any
satisfactory way would have required an unduly ex-
tended discussion of the more general, or ethical,
phases of constructive comparison. The other de-
ficiency is less regrettable, since the task in ques-
tion is one that could only be hopefully undertaken
and convincingly carried through by a professional
economist.

For the present purpose, it is perhaps enough to
have found in our economic experience and behavior the
same interest in novelty that is so manifest in other de-
partments of life, and the same attainment of new self-
validating levels of power and interest, through the ac-
quisition and exploitation of the novel. In our economic
experience, no more than elsewhere, is satisfaction an
ultimate and self-explanatory term. Satisfaction car-
ries with it always a reference to the level of power and
interest that makes it possible and on which it must be
measured. To seek satisfaction for its own sake or to
hinge one's interest in science or art upon their ability
to serve the palpable needs of the present moment —
these, together, make up the meaning of what is called
Utilitarianism. And Utilitarianism in this sense (which
is far less what Mill meant by the term than a tradition
he could never, with all his striving, quite get free of),
this type of Utilitarianism spells routine. It is the
surrender of initiative and control, in the quest for
ends in life, for a philistine pleased acceptance of the
ends that Nature, assisted by the advertisement-writers.

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 351

sets before us. But this type of Utilitarianism is less
frequent in actual occurrence than its vogue in popu-
lar literature and elsewhere may appear to indicate. As
a matter of fact, we more often look to satisfaction,
not as an end of effort or a condition to be preserved, but
as the evidence that an experimental venture has been
justified in its event. And this is a widely different
matter, for in this there is no inherent implication of
a habit-bound or egoistic narrowness of interest in the
conceiving or the launching of the venture.

The economic interest, as a function of intelligence,
finds its proper expression in a valuation set upon one
thing in terms of another — a valuation that is either
a step in a settled plan of spending and consumption
or marks the passing of an old plan and our embarka-
tion on a new. From such a view it must follow that
the economic betterment of an individual or a society
can consist neither in the accumulation of material
wealth alone nor in a more diversified technical knowl-
edge and skill. For the individual or for a coUectivist
state there must be added to these things alertness and
imagination in the personal quest and discovery of
values and a broad and critical intelligence in making
the actual trial of them. Without a commensurate
gain in these qualities it will avail little to make techni-
cal training and industrial opportunity more free or
even to make the rewards of effort more equitable and
secure. But it has been one of the purposes of this
discussion to suggest that just this growth in outlook
and intelligence may in the long run be counted on —
not indeed as a direct and simple consequence of in-

352 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

creasing material abundance but as an expression of
an inherent creativeness in man that responds to
discipline and education and will not fail to recognize
the opportunity it seeks.

Real economic progress is ethical in aim and out-
come. We cannot think of the economic interest as re-
stricted in its exercise to a certain sphere or level of
effort — such as " the ordinary business of life " or the
gaining of a " livelihood " or the satisfaction of our
so-called " material " wants, or the pursuit of an
enlightened, or an unenlightened, self-regard. Eco-
nomics has no special relation to " material " or even
to commonplace ends. Its materialism lies not in its
aim and tendency but in its problem and method. It
has no bias toward a lower order of mundane values.
It only takes note of the ways and degrees of depend-
ence upon mundane resources and conditions that
values of every order must acknowledge. It reminds us
that morality and culture, if they are genuine, must
know not only what they intend but what they cost.
They must understand not only the direct but the in-
direct and accidental bearing of their purposes upon
all of our interests, private and social, that they are
likely to affect. The detachment of the economic in-
terest from any particular level or class of values is
only the obverse aspect of the special kind of concern
it has with values of every sort. The very generality
of the economic interest, and the abstractness of the
ideas by which it maintains routine or safeguards
change in our experience, are what make it unmistaka-
bly ethical. Without specific ends of its own, it af-

PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST 353

fords no ground for dogmatism or apologetics. And
this indicates as the appropriate task of economic
theory not the arrest and thwarting but the steadying
and shaping of social change.

THE MORAL LIFE AND THE CONSTRUCTION
OF VALUES AND STANDARDS *

JAMES HAYDEN TUFTS

Writing about ethics has tended to take one of two
directions. On the one hand we have description of
conduct in terms of psychology, or anthropology. On
the other a study of the concepts right and wrong,
good and bad, duty and freedom. If we follow the
first line we may attempt to explain conduct psy-
chologically by showing the simple ideas or feelings
and the causal connections or laws of habit and as-
sociation out of which actions arise. Or anthropo-
logically we may show the successive stages of custom
and taboo, or the family, religious, political, legal, and
social institutions from which morality has emerged.
But we meet at once a difficult}^ if we ask what is the
bearing of this description and analysis. Will it aid
me in the practical judgment " What shall I do? " In
physics there is no corresponding difficulty. To ana-
lyze gravity enables us to compute an orbit, or aim a
gun; to analyze electric action is to have the basis for
lighting streets and carrying messages. It assumes
the uniformity of nature and takes no responsibility as
to whether we shall aim guns or whether our messages

* Certain points in tiiis discussion have been raised in two
papers, entitled, " The Present Task of Ethical Theory," Int.
Jour, of Ethics, XX, and " Ethical Value," Jour, of Phil., Psy.,
and Scientific Methods, V, p. 517.

354

THE MORAL LIFE 355

shall be of war or of peace. Whereas m ethics it is
claimed that the elements are so changed by their
combination — that the process is so essential a factor —
that no prediction is certain. And it is also claimed
that the ends themselves are perhaps to be changed as
well as the means. Stated otherwise, suppose that man-
kind has passed through various stages, can mere obser-
vation of these tell me what next.^ Perhaps I don't care
to repeat the past; how can I plan for a better future?
Or grant that I may discover instinct and emotion, habit
and association in my thinking and willing, how will
this guide me to direct my thinking and willing to right
ends .''

The second method has tended to examine concepts.
Good is an eternal, changeless pattern; it is to be dis-
covered by a vision; or right and good are but other
terms for nature's or reason's universal laws which are
timeless and wholly unaffected by human desires or pas-
sions ; moral nature is soul, and soul is created not
built up of elements, — such were some of the older ab-
solutisms. Right and good are unique concepts not to
be resolved or explained in terms of anything else, —
this is a more modern thesis which on the face of it
may appear to discourage analysis. The ethical world
is a world of " eternal values." Philosophy " by tak-
ing part in empirical questions sinks both itself and
them." These doctrines bring high claims, but are they
more valuable for human guidance than the empirical
method.'' *

* Cf. also John Dewey, Influence of Darwin upon Philosophy,
and Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, Ch. XVI.

356 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

" The knowledge that is superhuman only is ridic-
ulous in man.'' No man can ever find his way home
with the pure circle unless he has also the art of the
impure. It is the conviction of this paper that
in ethics, as in knowledge, thoughts without contents
are empty; percepts without concepts are blind. De-
scription of what has been — empiricism — is futile in
itself to project and criticize. Intuitions and deduc-
tions a priori are empty. The " thoughts " of ethics
are of course the terms right, good, ought, worth, and
their kin. The " percepts " are the instincts and emo-
tions, the desires and aspirations, the conditions of
time and place, of nature, and institutions.

Yet it is misleading to say that in studying the his-
tory of morals we are merely empiricists, and can hope
to find no criterion. This would be the case if we were
studying non-moral beings. But moral beings have to
some degree guided life by judgments and not merely
followed impulse or habit. Early judgments as to
taboos, customs, and conduct may be crude and in need
of correction; they are none the less judgments. Over
and over we find them reshaped to meet change from
hunting to agriculture, from want to plenty, from war
to peace, from small to large groupings. Much more
clearly when we consider civilized peoples, the interac-
tion between reflection and impulse becomes patent. To
study this interaction can be regarded as futile for the
future only if we discredit all past moral achievement.

Those writers who have based their ethics upon con-
cepts have frequently" expressed the conviction that the
security of morality depends upon the question whether

THE MORAL LIFE 357

good and right are absolute and eternal essences inde-
pendent of human opinion or volition. A different
source of standards which to some offers more promise
for the future is the fact of the moral life as a con-
stant process of forming and reshaping ideals and of
bringing these to bear upon conditions of existence.
To construct a right and good is at least a process
tending to responsibility, if this construction is to be
for the real world in which we must live and not merely
for a world of fancy or caprice. It is not the aim of
this paper to give a comprehensive outline of etiiical
method. Four factors in the moral life will be pointed
out and this analysis will be used to emphasize espe-
cially certain social and constructive aspects of our
concepts of right and good.

The four factors which it is proposed to emphasize
are these:

(1) Life as a biological process involving relation
to nature, with all that this signifies in the equipment
of instincts, emotions, and selective activity by which
life maintains itself.

(2) Interrelation with other human beings, includ-
ing on the one hanH associating, grouping, mating,
communicating, cooperating, commanding, obeying,
worshiping, adjudicating, and on the psychological
side the various instincts, emotions, susceptibilities to
personal stimulation and appropriate responses in lan-
guage and behavior which underlie or are evoked by the
life in common.

358 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

(3) Intelligence and reason, through which experi-
ence is interrelated, viewed as a whole, enlarged in
imagination.

(4) The process of judgment and choice, in which
different elements are brought together, considered in
one conscious universe, evaluated or measured, thereby
giving rise reciprocally to a self on the one hand and
to approved or chosen objects on the other.

(1) Life. Life is at least the raw material of all
values, even if it is not in itself entitled to be called
good without qualification. For in the process of
nourishing and protecting itself, the plant or animal
selects and in the case of higher animals, manipulates ;
it adapts itself to nature and adapts nature to itself;
it shows reciprocal relation of means to end, of whole to
part. It foreshadows the conscious processes in so
many ways that men have always been trying to read
back some degree of consciousness. And life in the
animal, at least, is regarded as having experiences of
pleasure and pain, and emotions of fear, anger, shame,
and sex, which are an inseparable aspect of values. If
it is not the supreme or only good, if men freely sacri-
fice it for other ends, it is none the less an inevitable
factor. Pessimistic theories indeed have contended
that life is evil and have sought to place good in a will-
less Nirvana. Yet such theories make limited appeal.
Their protest is ultimately not against life as life but
against life as painful. And their refutation is rather
to be intrusted to the constructive possibilities of
freer life than to an analysis of concepts.

THE MORAL LIFE 359

Another class of theories which omit life from the
good is that which holds to abstractly ontological con-
cepts of good as an eternal essence or form. It must
be remembered, however, that the idea of good was not
merely a fixed essence. It was also for Plato the self-
moving and the cause of all motion. And further,
Plato evidentl}^ believed that life, the very nature of
the soul, was itself in the class of supreme values along
with God and the good. The prize of immortality was
HaXov and the hope great. And with Aristotle and his
followers the good of contemplation no less truly than
the good of action had elements of value derived from
the vital process. Such a mystic as Spinoza, who finds
good in the understanding values this because in it man
is " active," and would unite himself with the All be-
cause in God is Power and Freedom. The Hebrew
prophet found a word capable of evoking great ethical
values when he urged his countrymen to " choose life,"
and Christian teaching found in the conception of " eter-
nal life " an ideal of profound appeal. It is not sur-
prising that with his biological interests Spencer should
have set up life of greatest length and breadth as a goal.

The struggle of the present war emphasizes tre-
mendously two aspects of this factor of life. National
life is an ideal which gets its emotional backing largely
from the imagery of our physical life. For any one of
the small nations involved to give up its national life
— ^whatever the possibilities of better organized in-
dustry or more comfortable material conditions —
seems to it a desperate alternative. Self-defense is re-
garded by the various powers at war as a complete

SCO CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

justification not merely for armed resistance or attack
but for ruthless acts. And if we are tempted to say
that the war involves a prodigal waste of individual
life on a scale never known before, we are at the same
time compelled to recognize that never before has the
bare destruction of life aroused such horror.

For never before has peace set its forces so de-
terminedly to protect life. The span of human life has
been lengthened: the wastefulness of accident and dis-
ease has been magnified. The dumb acquiescence with
which former generations accepted the death of infants
and children and those in the prime of life has given
way to active and increasingly successful efforts to
preserve. The enormous increase in scientific study of
biology, including eugenics, reflects not only an ad-
vance of science but a trend in morality. It is scarcely
conceivable that it should grow less in absolute import-
ance, whatever crises may temporarily cause its de-
preciation relatively to other values.

One exception to the growing appreciation calls for
notice — the interest in immortality appears to be less
rather than greater. The strong belief in life beyond
the grave which since the days of ancient Egypt has
prevailed in the main stream of Western culture seems
not only to be affected by the scientific temper of the
day, but also to be subject to a shift in interest. This
may be in part a reaction from other-worldliness. In
part it may be due to loss of fervor for a theological
picture of a future heaven of a rather monotonous sort
and may signify not so much loss of interest in life
as desire for a more vital kind of continuance. It is

THE MORAL LIFE 361

not true that all that a man hath will he give for his
life, yet it is true that no valuing process is intelligi-
ble that leaves out life with its impulses, emotions, and
desires as the first factor to be reckoned with.

(2) The second factor is the life in common, with
its system of relations, and its corresponding instincts,
emotions, and desires.

So much has been written in recent years on the so-
cial nature of man that it seems unnecessary to
elaborate the obvious. Protest has even been raised
against the exaggeration of the social. But I believe
that in certain points at least we have not yet pene-
trated to the heart of the social factor, and its sig-
nificance for morals.

So far as the moral aspect is concerned I know
nothing more significant than the attitude of the Com-
mon Law as set forth by Professor Pound.* This has
sought to base its system of duties on relations. The
relation which was prominent in the Middle Ages was
that of landlord and tenant; other relations are those
of principal and agent, of trustee, etc. An older re-
lation was that of kinship. The kin was held for the
wergeld ; the goel must avenge his next of kin ; the
father must provide for prospective parents-in-law ;
the child must serve the parents. Duty was the legal
term for the relation. In all this there is no romanti-
cism, no exaggeration of the social; there is a fair
statement of the facts which men have recognized and
acted upon the world over and in all times. Individual-
istic times or peoples have modified certain phases.
* International Journal of Ethics, XXV, 1914, pp. 1-24.

362 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

The Roman law sought to ground many of its duties
in the contract, the will of the parties. But covenants
by no means exhaust duties. And according to Pro-
fessor Pound the whole course of English and Ameri-
can law today is beljung the generalization of Sir
Henry Maine, that the evolution of law is a progress
from status to contract. We are shaping law of in-
surance, of public service companies, not by contract
but by the relation of insurer and insured, of public
utility and patron.

Psychologically, the correlate of the sji^stem of rela-
tions is the set of instincts and emotions, of capacity
for stimulation and response, which presuppose society
for their exercise and in turn make society possible.
There can be no question as to the reality and strength
of these in both animals and men. The bear will fight
for her young more savagely than for her life. The
human mother's thoughts center far more intensely
upon her offspring than upon her own person. The
man who is cut dead by all his acquaintance suffers
more than he would from hunger or physical fear. The
passion of sex frequently overmasters every instinct of
individual prudence. The majority of men face pov-
erty and live in want ; relatively few prefer ph3'sical
comfort to family ties. Aristotle's cpiXia is the oftenest
quoted recognition of the emotional basis of common
life, but a statement of Kant's earlier years is particu-
larly happy, " The point to which the lines of direc-
tion of our impulses converge is thus not only in our-
selves, but there are besides powers moving us in the
will of others outside of ourselves. Hence arise the

THE MORAL LIFE 363

moral impulses which often carry us away to the dis-
comfiture of selfishness, the strong law of duty, and the
weaker of benevolence. Both of these wring from us
many a sacrifice, and although selfish inclinations now
and then preponderate over both, these still never fail
to assert their reality in human nature. Thus we rec-
ognize that in our most secret motives, we are depend-
ent upon the rule of the general will." *

The " law of duty," and I believe we may add, the
conception of right, do arise objectively in the social
relations as the common law assumes and subjectively
in the social instincts, emotions, and the more intimate
social consciousness which had not been worked out in
the time of Kant as it has been by recent authors.
This point will receive further treatment later, but I
desire to point out in anticipation that if right and
duty have their origin in this social factor there is at
least a presumption against their being subordinate
ethicall}^ to the conception of good as we find them in
certain writers. If they have independent origin and
are the outgrowth of a special aspect of life it is at
least probable that they are not to be subordinated to
the good unless the very notion of good is itself recip-
rocally modified by right in a way that is not usually
recognized in teleological systems.

(3) Intelligence and reason imply (a) considering
the proposed act or the actually performed act as a
whole and in its relations. Esppcinlly the}^ mean con-
sidering consequences. In order to foresee conse-
quences there is required not only empirical observa-
* Dreams of a Spirit Seer.

364 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

tion of past experience, not only deduction from al-
ready formulated concepts — as when we say that in-
justice will cause hard feelings and revolt — but that
rarer quality which in the presence of a situation dis-
cerns a meaning not obvious, suggests an idea, " in-
justice," to interpret the situation. Situations are
neither already labeled " unjust," nor are they ob-
viously unjust to the ordinary mind. Analysis into
elements and rearrangement of the elements into a new
synthesis are required. This is eminently a synthetic
or " creative " activity. Further it is evident that the
activity of intelligence in considering consequences im-
plies not only what we call reasoning in the narrower
sense but imagination and feeling. For the conse-
quences of an act which are of importance ethically are
consequences which are not merely to be described but
are to be imagined so vividly as to be felt, whether they
are consequences that affect ourselves or affect others.
(b) But it would be a very narrow intelligence that
should attempt to consider only consequences of a sin-
gle proposed act without considering also other possi-
ble acts and their consequences. The second important
characteristic of intelligence is that it considers either
other means of reaching a given end, or other ends, and
by working out the consequences of these also has the
basis for deliberation and choice. The method of
" multiple working hypotheses," urged as highly im-
portant in scientific investigation, is no less essential
in the moral field. To bring several ends into the field
of consideration is the characteristic of the intelligent,
or as we often say, the open-minded man. Such con-

THE MORAL LIFE 365

sideration as this widens the capacity of the agent and
marks him off from the creature of habit, of prejudice,
or of instinct.

(c) IntelHgence impHes considering in two senses
all persons involved, that is, it means taking into ac-
count not only how an act will affect others but also
how others look at it. It is scarcely necessary to say
that this activity of intelligence cannot be cut off from
its roots in social intercourse. It is by the processes
of give and take, of stimulus and response, in a social
medium that this possibility of looking at things from a
different angle is secured. And once more this different
angle is not gained by what in the strict sense could
be called a purely intellectual operation, although
it has come to be so well recognized as the necessary
equipment for dealing successfully with conditions that
we commonly characterize the person as stupid who does
not take account of what others think and feel and how
they will react to a projected line of conduct. This social
element in intelligence is to a considerable degree implied
in the term " reasonable," which signifies not merely that
a man is logical in his processes but also that he is ready
to listen to what others say and to look at things from
their point of view whether he finally accepts it or not.

The broad grounds on which it is better to use the
word intelligence than the word reason in the analysis
with which we are concerned are two. (1) It is not a
question-begging term which tends to commit us at the
outset to a specific doctrine as to the source of our
judgments. (2) The activity of intelligence which is
now most significant for ethical progress is not sug-

366 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

gested bj the term reason, for unless we arbitrarily
smuggle in under the term practical reason the whole
activity- of the moral consciousness without inquiry as
to the propriety of the name we shall be likely to omit
tlie constructive and creative efforts to promote moral-
ity by positive supplj'ing of enlarged education, new
sources of interest, and more open fields for develop-
ment, by replacing haunting fears of misery with posi-
tive hopes, and by suggesting new imagery, new ambi-
tions in the place of sodden indifference or sensuality.
The term reason as used by the Stoics and by Kant
meant control of the passions by some " law " — some au-
thority cosmic or logical. It prepared for the inevi-
table ; it forbade the private point of view. But as thus
presenting a negative aspect the law was long ago char-
acterized by a profound moral genius as " weak." It
has its value as a schoolmaster, but it is not in itself
capable of supplying the new life which dissolves the
old sentiment, breaks up the settled evil habit, and sup-
plies both larger ends and effective motives.

If we state human progress in objective fashion we
may say that although men today are still as in earlier
times engaged in getting a living, in mating, in rearing
of offspring, in fighting and adventure, in play, and
in art, they are also engaged in science and invention,
interested in the news of other human activities all
over the world; they are adjusting differences by judi-
cial processes, cooperating to promote general welfare,
enjoying refined and more permanent friendships and
affections, and viewing life in its tragedy and comedy
with enhanced emotion and broader sympathy. Leav-

THE MORAL LIFE 367

ing out of consideration the work of the religious or
artistic genius as not in question here, the great ob-
jective agencies in bringing about these changes have
been on the one hand the growth of invention, scientific
method, and education, and on the other the increase
in human intercourse and communication. Reason
plays its part in both of these in freeing the mind from
wasteful superstitious methods and in analyzing situa-
tions and testing hypotheses, but the term is inadequate
to do justice to that creative element in the formation
of hypotheses which finds the new, and it tends to leave
out of account the social point of view involved in the
widening of the area of human intercourse. More will
be said upon this point in connection with the discus-
sion of rationalism.

(4) The process of judgment and choice. The ele-
ments are not the sum. The moral consciousness is not
just the urge of life, plus the social relations, plus intelli-
gence. The process of moral deliberation, evaluation,
judgment, and choice is itself essential. In this process
are born the concepts and standards good and right,
and likewise the moral self which utters the judgment.
It is in this twofold respect synthetic, creative. It is
as an interpretation of this process that the concept of
freedom arises. Four aspects of the process may be
noted.

{a) The process involves holding possibilities of ac-
tion, or objects for valuation, or ends for choice, in
consciousness and measuring them one against another
in a simultaneous field — or in a field of alternating ob-
jects, any of which can be continually recalled. One

368 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

possibility after another may be tried out in anticipa-
tion and its relations successively considered, but the
comparison is essential to the complete moral con-
sciousness.

(b) The process yields a universe of valued objects
as distinguished from a subjective consciousness of de-
sires and feelings. We say, " This is right," " That is
good." Every " is " in such judgments may be denied
by an " is not " and we hold one alternative to be true,
the other false. As the market or the stock exchange
or board of trade fixes values by a meeting of bu3'ers
and sellers and settles the price of wheat accuratel}'
enough to enable farmers to decide how much land to
seed for the next season, so the world of men and
women who must live together and cooperate, or fight
and perish, forces upon consciousness the necessity of
adjustment. The preliminary approaches are usually
hesitant and subjective — ^like the offers or bids in the
market — e.g., " I should like to go to college; I believe
that is a good thing " ; " My parents need my help ; it
does not seem right to leave them." The judgments
finally emerge. " A college education is good ; " " It
is wrong to leave my parents " — both seemingly objec-
tive yet conflicting, and unless I can secure both I must
seemingly forego actual objective good, or commit ac-
tual wrong.

(c) The process may be described also as one of
*' universalizing " the judging consciousness. For it is
a counterpart of the objective implication of a judg-
ment that it is not an affirmation as to any individual's
opinion. This negative characterization of the judg-

THE MORAL LIFE

ment is commonly converted into the positive doctrine
that any one who is unprejudiced and equally well in-
formed would make the same judgment. Strictly
speaking the judgment itself represents in its completed
form the elimination of the private attitude rather
than the express inclusion of other judges. But in the
making of the judgment it is probable that this elimina-
tion of the private is reached by a mental reference to
other persons and their attitudes, if not by an actual
conversation with another. It is dubious whether an
individual that had never communicated with another
would get the distinction between a private subjective
attitude and the " general " or objective.

Moreover, one form of the moral judgment: "This
is right," speaks the language of law — of the collec-
tive judgment, or of the judge who hears both sides
but is neither. This generalizing or universalizing is
frequently supposed to be the characteristic activity' of
" reason." I believe that a comparison with the kin-
dred value judgments in economics supports the doc-
trine that in judgments as to the good as well as in those
as to right, there is no product of any simple faculty,
but rather a synthetic process in which the social fac-
tor is prominent. A compelling motive toward an ob-
jective and universal judgment is found in the prac-
tical conditions of moral judgments. Unless men
agree on such fundamental things as killing, stealing,
and sex relations they cannot get on together. Not
that when I say, " Killing is wrong," I mean to affirm
" I agree with you in objecting to it " ; but that the
necessity (a) of acting as if I either do or do not ap-

370 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

prove it, and (b) of either making mj attitude agree
with yours, or yours agree with mine, or of fighting
it out with you or with the whole force of organized
society, compels me to put my attitude into objective
terms, to meet you and society on a common platform.
This is a synthesis, an achievement. To attribute the
synthesis to any faculty of " practical reason," adds
nothing to our information, but tends rather to ob-
scure the facts.

(d) The process is thus a reciprocal process of
valuing objects and of constructing and reconstruct-
ing a self. The object as first imaged or anticipated
undergoes enlargement and change as it is put into re-
lations to other objects and as the consequences of
adoption or rejection are tried in anticipation. The
self by reflecting and by enlarging its scope is similarly
enlarged. It is the resulting self which is the final
valuer. The values of most objects are at first fixed
for us by instinct or they are suggested by the ethos
and mores of our groups — family, society, national re-
ligions, and " reign under the appearance of habitual
self-suggested tendencies." The self is constituted ac-
cordingly. Collisions with other selves, conflicts be-
tween group valuations and standards and individual
impulses or desires, failure of old standards as applied
to new situations, bring about a more conscious defini-
tion of purposes. The agent identifies himself with
these purposes, and values objects with reference to
them. In this process of revaluing and defining, of
comparing and anticipation, freedom is found if any-
where. For if the process is a real one the elements

THE MORAL LIFE 371

do not remain unaffected by their relation to each
other and to the whole. The act is not determined by
any single antecedent or by the sum of antecedents.
It is determined by the process. The self is not made
wholly by heredity, or environment. It is itself creat-
ing for each of its elements a new environment, viz., the
process of reflection and choice. And if man can
change the heredity of pigeons and race horses by
suitable selection, if every scientific experiment is a
varying of conditions, it is at least plausible that man
can guide his own acts by intelligence, and revise his
values by criticism.

The self is itself creating for each of its elements a
new environment — this is a fact which if kept in mind
will enable us to see the abstractness and fallacies not
merely of libertarianism and determinism, but of sub-
jectivism and objectivism. Subjective or " inward "
theories have sought standards in the self; but in re-
garding the self as an entity independent of such a
process as we have described they have exposed them-
selves to the criticism of providing only private, vari-
able, accidental, unauthoritative sources of standards —
instincts, or emotions, or intuitions. The self of the
full moral consciousness, however, — the only one which
can claim acceptance or authority — is born only in the
process of considering real conditions, of weighing and
choosing between alternatives of action in a real world
of nature and persons. Its judgments are more than
subjective. Objectivism in its absolutist and abstract
forms assumes a standard — nature, essence, law — in-
dependent of process. Such a standard is easily shown

372 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

to be free from anything individual, private, or chang-
ing. It is universal, consistent, and eternal, in fact it
has many good mathematical characteristics, but un-
fortunately it is not moral. As mathematical, logical,
biological, or what not, it offers no standard that ap-
peals to the moral nature as authoritative or that can
help us to find our way home.

II

If we are dissatisfied with custom and habit and seek
to take philosophy for the guide of life we have two pos-
sibilities : ( 1 ) we may look for the good, and treat
right and dut}'^ as subordinate concepts which indicate
the way to the good, that is, consider them as good as
a means, or (2) we may seek first to do right irrespec-
tive of consequences, in the belief that in willing to do
right we are already in possession of the highest good.
In either case we may consider our standards and
values either as in some sense fixed or as in the mak-
ing.* We may suppose that good is objective and ab-
solute, that right is discovered by a rational faculty, or
we may consider that in regarding good as objective
we have not made it independent of the valuing process
and that in treating right as a standard we have not
thereby made it a fixed concept to be discovered by the
pure intellect. The position of this paper will be (1)
that good while objective is yet objective as a value and
not as an essence or physical fact; (2) that a social
factor in value throws light upon the relation between
moral and other values; (3) that right is not merely a
* Cf. A. W. Moore, Pragmatism and Its Critics, 257-78.

THE MORAL LIFE 373

means to the good but has an independent place in the
moral consciousness; (4) that right while signifying
order does not necessarily involve a timeless, eternal
order since it refers to an order of personal relations;
(5) that the conception of right instead of being a
matter for pure reason or even the " cognitive faculty "
shows an intimate blending of the emotional and intel-
lectual and that this appears particularly in the con-
ception of the reasonable.

( 1 ) We begin with the question of the synthetic and
objective character of the good. With G. E. Moore
as with the utilitarians the good is the ultimate con-
cept. Right and duty are means to the good. Moore
and Rashdall also follow Sidgwick in regarding good
as unique, that is, as " synthetic." Sidgwick empha-
sized in this especially the point that moral value can-
not be decided by physical existence or the course of
evolution, nor can the good be regarded as meaning the
pleasant. Moore and Russell reinforce this. However
true it may be that pleasure is one among other good
things or that life is one among other good things,
good does not mean either pleasure or survival. Good
means just " good."

A similar thought underlies Croce's division of the
Practical into the two spheres of the Economic and
the Ethical. " The economic activity is that which
wills and effects only what corresponds to the condi-
tions of fact in which a man finds himself; the ethical
activity is that which, although it correspond to these
conditions, also refers to something that transcends

374 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

them. To the first correspond what are called indi-
vidual ends, to the second universal ends ; the one gives
rise to the judgment concerning the greater or less co-
herence of the action taken in itself, the other to that
concerning its greater or less coherence in respect to
the universal end, which transcends the individual." *
Utilitarianism is according to Croce an attempt to re-
duce the Ethical to the Economic form, although the
utilitarians as men attempt in various ways to make
a place for that distinction which as philosophers they
would suppress. " Man is not a consumer of pleasures.
He is a creator of life." With this claim of the distinc-
tive, synthetic, character of the moral consciousness
and of the impossibility of testing the worth of ideals
by cosmic laws, or by gratification of particular wants
as measured b}' pleasure, I have no issue. The
analysis of the moral judgment made above points out
just how it is that good is synthetic. It is synthetic
in that it represents a measuring and valuing of ends
— instinctive and imagined, individual and social —
against each other and as part of a whole to which a
growing self corresponds. It is synthetic in that it
represents not merel}' a process of evaluating ends
which match actually defined desires, but also a process
in which the growing self, dissatisfied with any ends al-
ready in view, gropes for some new definition of ends
that shall better respond to its living, creative ca-
pacity', its active synthetic character. Good is the con-
cept for just this valuing process as carried on by a
conscious being that is not content to take its desire
* Croce, Philosophy of the Practical^ pp. 312 f.

THE MORAL LIFE 375

as ready made by its present construction, but is
reaching out for ends that shall respond to a growing,
expanding, inclusive, social, self. It expresses value as
value.

Value as value! not as being; nor as independent
essence ; nor as anything static and fixed. For a syn-
thetic self, a living personality, could find no supreme
value in the complete absence of valuing, in the cessa-
tion of life, in the negation of that very activity of pro-
jection, adventure, construction, and synthesis in which
it has struck out the concept good. A theory of ethics
which upholds the synthetic character of the good may
be criticized as being not synthetic enough if it fails
to see that on the basis of the mutual determination
of percepts and concepts, of self and objects, the syn-
thetic character of the process must be reflected in the
ultimate meaning of the category which symbolizes and
incorporates the process.

(2) We may find some light upon the question how
moral value gets its distinctive and unique character,
and how it comes to be more " objective " than eco-
nomic value if we consider some of the social factors
in the moral judgment. For although the concept
good is rooted in the life process with its selective ac-
tivity and attending emotions it involves a subtle social
element, as well as the more commonly recognized fac-
tors of intelligence.

Within the fundamental selective process two types
of behavior tend to differentiate in response to two gen-
eral sorts of stimulation. One sort is simpler, more
monotonous, more easily analyzable. Response to such

376 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

stimulation, or treatment of objects which may be de-
scribed under these terms of simple, analyzable, etc., is
easily organized into a habit. It calls for no great
shifts in attention, no sudden readjustments. There is
nothing mysterious about it. As satisfying various
wants it has a certain kind of value. It, however,
evokes no consciousness of self. Toward the more vari-
able, complex sort of stimuli, greater attention, con-
stant adjustment and readjustment, are necessary.

Objects of the first sort are treated as things, in the
sense that they do not call out any respect from us
or have any intrinsic value. We understand them
through and through, manipulate them, consume them,
throw them away. We regard them as valuable only
with reference to our wants. On the other hand, ob-
jects of the second sort take their place in a bi-focal
situation. Our attention shifts alternately to their be-
havior and to our response, or, conversely, from our
act to their response. This back and forth movement
of attention in the case of certain of these objects is
reinforced by the fact that certain stimuli from them
or from the organism, find peculiar responses already
prepared in social instincts ; gesture and language play
their part. Such a bi-focal situation as this, when
completely developed, involves persons. In its earlier
stages it is che quasi-personal attitude which is found
in certain savage religious attitudes, in certain aesthetic
attitudes, and in the emotional attitudes which we all
have toward many of the objects of daily life.

Economic values arise in connection with attitudes
toward things. We buy things, we sell them. They

THE MORAL LIFE 377

have value just in that they gratify our wants, but
they do not compel any revision or change in wants or
in the self which wants. They represent a partial in-
terest— or if they become the total interest we regard
them as now in the moral sphere. Values of personal
affection arise as we find a constant rapport in thought,
feeling, purpose, between the two members of our so-
cial consciousness. The attitude is that of going along
with another and thereby extending and enriching our
experiences. We enter into his ideas, range with his
imagination, kindle at his enthusiasms, sympathize with
his joys or sorrows. We may disagree with our
friend's opinions, but we do not maintain a critical at-
titude toward him, that is, toward his fundamental
convictions and attitudes. If " home is the place
where, when you have to go there, they have to take
you in," as Frost puts it, a friend is one who, when
you go to him, has to accept you.

Moral values also arise in a social or personal rela-
tion— not in relation to things. This is on the surface
in the form of judgment: "He is a good man," " That
is a good act." If it is less obvious in the practical
judgment, " This is the better course of action," i.e.,
the course which leads to the greater good, or to the
good, this is because we fail to discern that the good
in these cases is a something with which I can identify
myself, not a something which I merely possess and
keep separate from my personality. It is something
I shall be rather than have. Or if I speak of a share
or participation it is a sharing in the sense of enter-
ing into a kindred life. It is an ideal, and an ideal for

378 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

a conscious personal being can hardly be other than
conscious. It may be objected that however personal
the ideal it is not on this account necessarily social.
It embodies what I would be, but does not necessarily
imply response to any other personality. This, how-
ever, would be to overlook the anah'ses which recent
psychology has made of the personal. The ideal does
not develop in a vacuum. It implies for one thing in-
dividuality which is conceivable only as other indi-
viduals are distinguished. It implies the definition of
purposes, and such definition is scarcely if ever at-
tempted except as a possible world of purposes is
envisaged.

Esthetic valuation is in certain respects intermedi-
ate between the valuation of things on the one hand
and the moral evaluation of acts of persons or con-
scious states on the other. Esthetic objects are in
many cases seemingly things and yet even as things
they are quasi-personal; they are viewed with a cer-
tain sympathy quite different from that which we feel
for a purely economic object. If it is a work of art
the artist has embodied his thought and feeling and
the observer finds it there. The experience is that of
Einfuhlung. Yet we do not expect the kind of response
which we look for in friendship, nor do we take the ob-
ject as merely a factor for the guidance or control of
our own action as in the practical judgment of
moralit}'. The aesthetic becomes the object of con-
templation, not of response ; of embodied meaning, not
of individuality. It is so far personal that no one of
gesthetic sensibility likes to see a thing of beauty de-

THE MORAL LIFE 379

stroyed or mistreated. The situation in which we rec-
ognize in an object meaning and embodied feeling, or
at least find sources of stimulation which appeal to our
emotions, develops an esthetic enhancement of con-
scious experience. The aesthetic value predicate is the
outcome of this peculiar enhancement.

It seems that the social nature of the judgment plays
a part also in the varying objectivity of values. It is
undoubtedly true that some values are treated as be-
longing to objects. If we cannot explain this full^^ we
ma}'^ get some light upon the situation bj^ noticing the
degree to which this is true in the cases of the kinds
of values already described.

Economic values are dubiously objective. We use
both forms of expression. We say on the one hand,
*' I want wheat," " There is a demand for wheat," or,
on the other, " Wheat is worth one dollar a bushel."
Conversely, " There is no demand for the old-fashioned
high-framed bicycle " or " It is worthless." The Mid-
dle Ages regarded economic value as completely objec-
tive. A thing had a real value. The retailer could not
add to it. The medieval economist believed in the ex-
ternality 9f relations ; he prosecuted for the offenses of
forestalling and regrating the man who would make a
profit by merely changing things in place. He con-
demned usury. We have definitel}^ abandoned this
theory. We recognize that it is the want which makes
the value. To make exchange possible and socialize
to some degree the scale of prices we depend upon a
public market or a stock exchange.

In values of j^crsonal affection we may begin with a

380 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

purely individual attitude, " I love or esteem my
friend." If I put it more objectively I may say, " He
is an honored and valued friend." Perhaps still more
objectively, we — especially if we are feminine — may
say " Is not X dear? " We may then go on to seek a so-
cial standard. We perhaps look for reinforcement in
a small group of like-minded. We are a little per-
plexed and, it may be, aggrieved if other members of
the circle do not love the one whom we love. In such
a group judgment of a common friend there is doubt-
less greater objectivity than in the economic judgment.
The value of a friend does not depend upon his adjust-
ment to our wants. As Aristotle pointed out, true
friendship is for its own sake. Its value is " disinter-
ested." If a man does not care for an economic good
it does not reflect upon him. He may be careless of
futures, neglectful of corn, indifferent to steel. It les-
sens the demand, lowers the values of these goods, an
infinitesimal, but does not write him down an inferior
person. To fail to prize a possible friend is a reflec-
tion upon us. However the fact that in the very na-
ture of the case one can scarcely be a personal friend
to a large, not to say a universal group, operates to
limit the objectivity.

In the aesthetic and moral attitudes we incorporate
value in the object decisively. We do not like to think
that beauty can be changed with shifting fashions or to
affirm that the firmament was ever anything but sub-
lime. It seems to belong to the very essence of right
that it is something to which the self can commit itself
in absolute loyalty and finality. And, as for good, we

THE MORAL LIFE S81

may say with Moore in judgments of intrinsic value,
at least, " we judge concerning a particular state of
things that it would be worth while — would be a good
thing — that that state of things should exist, even if
nothing else were to exist besides."

With regard to this problem of objectivity it is sig-
nificant in the first place that the kind of situation out
of which this object value is affirmed in esthetic and
moral judgments is a social situation. It contrasts in
this respect with the economic situation. The economic
is indeed social in so far as it sets exchange values, but
the object valued is not a social object. The aesthetic
and moral object is such an object. Not only is there
no contradiction in giving to the symbolic form or the
moral act intrinsic value: there is entire plausibility in
doing so. For in so far as the situation is really per-
sonal, either member is fundamentally equal to the
other and may he treated as embodying all the value
of the situation. The value which rises to conscious-
ness in the situation is made more complete by eliminat-
ing from consideration the originating factors, the
plural agents of admiration or approval, and incor-
porating the whole product abstractly in the object.
In thus calling attention to the social or personal char-
acter of the aesthetic or moral object it is not intended
to minimize that factor in the judgment which we
properly speak of as the universalizing activity of
thought, much less to overlook the importance of the
judgmental process itself. The intention is to point
out some of the reasons wliy in one case the thinking
process does universalize while in the other it does not,

382 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

wh}' in one case the judgment is completely objective
while in the other it is not. In both aesthetic and moral
judgments social art, social action, social judgments,
through collective decisions prepare the way for the
general non-personal, objective form. It is probable
that man would not say, " This is right," using the
word as an adjective, if he had not first said, as mem-
ber of a judicially acting group, " This is right," using
the word as a noun. And finally whatever we may
claim as to the " cognitive " nature of the aesthetic and
moral judgment, the only test for the beauty of an ob-
ject is that persons of taste discover it. The only test
for the Tightness of an act is that persons of good
character approve it. The only test for goodness is
that good persons on reflection approve and choose it
— just as the test for good persons is that they choose
and do the good.

(3) Right is not merely a means to good but has
a place of its own in the moral consciousness. Many
of our moral choices or judgments do not take the
form of choice between right and wrong, or between
duty and its opposite; they appear to be choices be-
tween goods. That is, we do not always consider our
value as crystallized into a present standard or feel a
tension between a resisting and an authoritative self.
But when they do emerge they signify a distinct fac-
tor. What Moore says of good may be said also of
right. Right means just " right," nothing else.
That is, we mean that acts so characterized correspond
exactly to a self in a peculiar attitude, viz., one of ade-
quate standardizing and adjustment, of equilibrium, in

THE MORAL LIFE 383

view of all relations. The concept signifies that in find-
ing our way into a moral world into which we are born
in the process of valuing and judging, we take along
the imagery of social judgment in which through lan-
guage and behavior the individual is constantly adjust-
ing himself, not only to the social institutions and
group organization but far more subtly and uncon-
sciously to the social consciousness and attitudes.

This conception of an order to which the act must
refer has usually been regarded as peculiarly a " ra-
tional " factor. It is, however, rather an order of
social elements, of a nature of persons, than of a
" nature of things." In savage life the position of
father, wife, child, guest, or other members of the house-
hold, is one of the most prominent facts of the situa-
tion. The relationship of various totem groups and inter-
marrying groups is the very focus of moral conscious-
ness. Even in the case of such a cosmic conception of
order as Dike and Themis, Rita and Tao, the " Way "
is not impersonal cosmos. It is at least quasi-personal.
And if we say such primitive myth has no bearing on
what the " nature " of right or the " true " meaning
of right is, it is pertinent to repeat that concepts with-
out percepts are empt}-; that the term means nothing
except the conceptual interpretation of a unique syn-
thetic process in which an act placed in relation to a
standard is thereby given new meaning. So long as
custom or law forms the only or the dominant factor
in the process, we have little development of the ideal
concept right as distinct from a factual standard.
But when reason and intelligence enter, particularly

384 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

when that creative activity of intelligence enters which
attempts a new construction of ends, a new ordering
of possible experience, then the standardizing process
is set free; a new self with new possibilities of relation
seeks expression. The concept " right " reflects the
standardizing, valuing process of a synthetic order and
a synthetic self. Duty born similarly in the world of
social relations and reflecting especially the tension be-
tween the individual and the larger whole is likewise
given full moral significance when it becomes a tension
within the synthetic self. And as thus reflecting the
immediate attitudes of the self to an ideal social order
both right and duty are not to be treated merely as
means to any value which does not include as integrant
factors just what these signify.

This view is contrary to that of Moore, for whom
" right does and can mean nothing but ' cause of a
good result,' and is thus identical with useful."*
The right act is that which has the best consequences.f
Similarly duty is that action which will cause more
good to exist in the Universe than any possible alterna-
tive. It is evident that this makes it impossible for
any finite mind to assert confidently that any act is
right or a duty. " Accordingly it follows that we never
have any reason to suppose that an action is our duty:
we can never be sure that any action will produce the
greatest value possible. J

Whatever the convenience of such a definition of right

* G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, p. 147.

■f Ethics, ch. V.

J G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, p. 149.

THE MORAL LIFE 885

and duty for a simplified ethics it can hardly be claimed
to accord with the moral consciousness, for men have
notoriously supposed certain acts to be duty. To say
that a parent has no reason to suppose that it is his
duty to care for his child is more than paradox. And
a still greater contradiction to the morality of common
sense inheres in the doctrine that the right act is that
which has the best consequences. Considering all the
good to literature and free inquiry which has resulted
from the condemnation of Socrates it is highly probable
— or at least it is arguable — that the condemnation had
better results than an acquittal would have yielded. But
it would be contrary to our ordinary use of language
to maintain that this made the act right. Or to take
a more recent case: the present war may conceivably
lead to a more permanent peace. The " severities,"
practised by one party, may stir the other to greater
indignation and lead ultimately to triumph of the latter.
Will the acts in question be termed right by the second
party if they actually have this effect .^ On this hy-
pothesis the more outrageous an act and the greater
the reaction against it, the better the consequences are
likely to be and hence the more reason to call the act
right and a duty. The paradox results from omitting
from right the elements of the immediate situation and
considering only consequences. The very meaning of
the concept right, implies focussing attention upon the
present rather than upon the future. It suggests a
cross-section of life in its relations. If the time process
were to be arrested immediately after our act I think
we might still speak of it as right or wrong. In trying

386 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

to judge a proposed act we doubtless try to discover
what it will mean, that is, we look at consequences. But
these consequences are looked upon as giving us the
meaning of the present act and we do not on this ac-
count subordinate the present act to these consequences.
Especially we do not mean to eliminate the significance
of this very process of judgment. It is significant that
in considering what are the intrinsic goods Moore
enumerates personal affection and the appreciation of
beauty, and with less positiveness, true belief, but does
not include any mention of the valuing or choosing or
creative consciousness.

(4) If we regard right as the concept which reflects
the judgment of standardizing our acts by some ideal
order, questions arise as to the objectivity of this order
and the fixed or moving character of the implied stand-
ard. Rashdall lays great stress upon the importance
of objectivity: "Assuredly there is no scientific prob-
lem upon which so much depends as upon the answer
we give to the question whether the distinction which
we are accustomed to draw between right and wrong
belongs to the region of objective truth like the laws
of mathematics and of physical science, or whether it
is based upon an actual emotional constitution of in-
dividual human beings." * The appraisement of the
various desires and impulses by myself and other men
is " a piece of insight into the true nature of things." f
While these statements are primarily intended to oppose
the moral sense view of the judgment, they also bear

* Rashdall, Is Conscience an Emotion? pp. 199 f.
t/6iU, 177.

THE MORAL LIFE 387

upon the question whether right is something fixed.
The phrase " insight into the true nature of things "
suggests at once the view that the nature of things
is quite independent of any attitude of human beings
toward it. It is something which the seeker for moral
truth may discover but nothing which he can in
any way modif3\ It is urged that if we are to have any
science of ethics at all what was once right must be
conceived as always right in the same circumstances.*

I hold no brief for the position — if any one holds the
position — that in sa^ung " this is right " I am making
an assertion about my own feelings or those of any one
else. As already stated the function of the judging
process is to determine objects, with reference to which
we say " is " or " is not." The emotional theory of
the moral consciousness does not give adequate recog-
nition to this. But just as little as the process of the
moral consciousness is satisfied by an emotional theory
of the judgment does it sanction any conception of
objectivity which requires that values are here or there
once for all; that they are fixed entities or " a nature
of things " upon which the moral consciousness may
look for its information but upon which it exercises no
influence. The process of attempting to give — or dis-
cover— moral values is a process of mutual determina-
tion of object and agent. We have to do in morals not
with a nature of things but with natures of persons.
The very characteristic of a person as we have under-
stood it is that he is synthetic, is actually creating
something new by organizing experiences and purposes,
* G. E. Moore, Ethics, Ch, III.

388 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

by judging and choosing. Objectivity does not neces-
saril}^ iuiplj' changelcssness.

Whether right is a term of fixed and changeless char-
acter depends upon whether the agents are fixed units,
either in fact or in ideah If, as we maintain, right is
the correlate of a self confronting a world of other
persons conceived as all related in an order, the vital
question is whether this order is a fixed or a moving
order. " Straight " is a term of fixed content just be-
cause v.e conceive space in timeless terms ; it is by its very
meaning a cross-section of a static order. But a world
of living intelligent agents in social relations is in its
very presuppositions a world of activity, of mutual
understanding and adjustment. Rationalistic theor}',
led astray by geometrical conceptions, conceived that
a universal criterion must be like a straight line, a fixed
and timeless — or eternal — entity. But in such an order
of fixed units there could be no selection, no adjustment
to other changing agents, no adventure upon the new
untested possibility which marks the advance of every
great moral idea, in a word, no morality of the positive
and constructive sort. And if it be objected that the
predicate of a judgment must be timeless whatever
the subject, that the word " is " as Plato insists cannot
be used if all flows, we reply that if right=the correlate
of a moving order, of living social intelligent beings,
it is quite possible to affirm " This is according to
that law." If our logic provides no form of judgment
for the analysis of such a situation it is inadequate for
the facts which it would interpret. But in truth man-
kind's moral judgments have never committed themselves

THE MORAL LIFE 389

to any such implication. We recognize the futility of
attempting to answer simply any such questions as
whether the Israelites did right to conquer Canaan or
Hamlet to avenge his father.

(5) The category of right has usually been closely
connected, if not identified, with reason or " cognitive "
activity as contrasted with emotion. Professor Dewey
or the contrary has pointed out clearly * the impossi-
bility of separating emotion and thought. " To put our-
selves in the place of another ... is the surest way to
attain universality and objectivity of moral knowl-
edge." " The only truly general, the reasonable as dis-
tinct from the merely shrewd or clever thought, is the
generous thought." But in the case of certain judg-
ments such as those approving fairness and the general
good Sidgwick finds a rational intuition. " The prin-
ciple of impartiality is obtained by considering the
similarity of the individuals that make up a Logical
Whole or Genus." f Rashdall challenges any but a
rationalistic ethics to explain fairness as contrasted with
partiality of affection.

There is without question a properly rational or in-
tellectual element in the judgment of impartiality,
namely, analysis of the situation and comparison of the
units. But what we shall set up as our units — whether
we shall treat the gentile or the barbarian or negro as
a person, as end and not merely means, or not, depends
on something quite other than reason. And this other

factor is not covered by the term " practical reason."

I
* Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, pp. 334. f.

^Methods of Ethics, p. 380.

I

390 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

In fact no ethical principle shows better the subtle
blending of the emotional and social factors with the
rational. For the student of the history of justice is
aware that only an extraordinarily ingenious exegesis
could regard justice as having ever been governed by
a mathematical logic. The logic of justice has been
the logic of a we-group gradually expanding its area.
Or it has been the logic of a Magna Charta — a document
of special privileges wrested from a superior by a strong
group, and gradually widening its benefits with the
admission of others into the favored class. Or it has
been the logic of class, in which those of the same level
are treated alike but those of different levels of birth
or wealth are treated proportionately. Yet it would
seem far-fetched to maintain that the countrymen of
Euclid and Aristotle were deficient in the ability to
perform so simple a reasoning process as the judgment
one equals one, or that men who developed the Roman
Law, or built the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, were
similarly lacking in elementary analysis. Inequality
rather than equality' has been the rule in the world's
justice. It has not onh' been the practice but the ap-
proved principle. It still is in regard to great areas
of life. In the United States there is no general dis-
approval of the great inequalities in opportunity for
children, to say nothing of inequalities in distribution
of wealth. In England higher education is for the
classes rather than for the masses. In Prussia the in-
equality in voting strength of different groups and the
practical immunity of the military class from the con-
straints of civil law seem to an American unfair. The

THE MORAL LIFE 391

western states of the Union think it unfair to restrict
the suffrage to males and give women no voice in the
determination of matters of such vital interest to them
as the law of divorce, the guardianship of children, the
regulation of women's labor, the sale of alcoholic liquors,
the protection of milk and food supply. Are all these
differences of practice and conviction due to the fact
that some people use reason while others do not? Of
course in every case excellent reasons can be given for
the inequality. The gentile should not be treated as a
Jew because he is not a Jew, The slave should not
be treated as a free citizen because he is not a free
citizen. The churl should not have the same wergeld
as the thane because he is lowborn. The more able
should possess more goods. The woman should not vote
because she is not a man. The reasoning is clear and
unimpeachable if you accept the premises, but what
gives the premises? In every case cited the premise
is determined largely if not exclusively by social or
emotional factors. If reason can then prescribe equally
well that the slave should be given rights because he is
a man of similar traits or denied rights because he has
different traits from his master, if the Jew may either
be given his place of equality because he hath eyes,
hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,
or denied equality because he differs in descent, if a
woman is equal as regards taxpaying but unequal as
regards voting, it is at least evident that reason is no
unambiguous source of morality. The devil can quote
Scripture and it is a very poor rcasoner who cannot
find a reason for anything that he wishes to do, A

392 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

partiality that is more or less consistently partial to
certain sets or classes is perhaps as near impartiality
as man has yet come, whether by a rational faculty or
any other.

Is it, then, the intent of this argument merely to
reiterate that reason is and ought to be the slave of
the passions? On the contrary, the intent is to sub-
stitute for such blanket words as reason and passions
a more adequate analysis. And what difference will
this make? As regards the particular point in con-
troversy it will make this difference: the rationalist
having smuggled in under the cover of reason the whole
moral consciousness then proceeds to assume that be-
cause two and two are always four, or the relations of
a straight line are timeless, therefore ethics is simi-
larly a matter of fixed standards and timeless goods.
A legal friend told me that he once spent a year trying
to decide whether a corporation was or was not a per-
son and then concluded that the question was imma-
terial. But when the supreme court decided that a
corporation was a person in the meaning of the Four-
teenth Amendment it thereby made the corporation
heir to the rights established primarily for the negro.
Can the moral consciousness by taking the name
*' reason " become heir to all the privileges of the
absolute idea and to the timelessness of space and
number ?

Suppose I am to divide an apple between my two
children — two children, two pieces — this is an analysis
of the situation which is obvious and may well be called
the analytic activity of reason. But shall I give to

THE MORAL LIFE 39S

each an equal share on the ground that both are equally
my children or shall I reason that as John is older or
larger or hungrier or mentally keener or more generous
or is a male, he shall have a larger piece than Jane?
To settle this it may be said that we ought to see
whether there is any connection between the size of the
piece and the particular quality of John which is con-
sidered, or that by a somewhat different use of reason
we should look at the whole situation and see how we
shall best promote family harmony and mutual af-
fection. To settle the first of these problems, that of
the connection beween the size of the piece and the
size of the hunger or the sex of the child, is seemingly
again a question of analysis, of finding identical units,
but a moment's thought shows that the case is not so
simple; that the larger child should have the larger
piece is by no means self-evident. This is in principle
doubtless the logic, to him that hath shall be given.
It is the logic of the survival of the strong, but over
against that the moral consciousness has always set an-
other logic which says that the smaller child should
have the larger piece if thereby intelligent sympathy can
contribute toward evening up the lot of the smaller.
Now it is precisely this attitude of the moral conscious-
ness which is not suggested by the term reason, for it
is quite different from the analytic and identifying ac-
tivity. This analytical and identifying activity may
very well rule out of court the hypothesis that I should
give John the larger piece because he has already eaten
too much or because he has just found a penny or be-
cause he has red hair; it has undoubtedly helped in

39i CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

abulibhing such practices as that of testing innocence
by the ordeal. But before the crucial question of justice
which divides modern society, namely, whether we shall
lay emphasis upon adjustment of rewards to previous
abilities, habits, possessions, character, or shall lay
stress upon needs, and the possibility of bringing about
a greater measure of equality, the doctrine which would
find its standard in an a priori reason is helpless.

If we look at the second test suggested, namely, that
of considering the situation as a whole with a view to
the harmony of the children and the mutual affection
within the family, there can be even less question that
this is no mere logical problem of the individuals in a
logical genus. It is the social problem of individuals
who have feelings and emotions as well as thought and
will. The problem of distributing the apple fairly is
then a complex in which at least the following processes
enter. (1) Analj'sis of the situation to show all the
relevant factors with the full bearing of each; (2) put-
ting yourself in the place of each one to be considered
and experiencing to the full the claims, the difficulties
and the purposes of each person involved; (3) con-
sidering all of these as members of the situation so
that no individual is given rights or allowed claims
except in so far as he represents a point of view which
is comprehensive and sympathetic. This I take it is
the force of President Wilson's utterance which has
commanded such wide acceptance : " America asks noth-
ing for herself except what she has a right to ask in
the name of humanity." Kant aimed to express a high
and democratic ideal of justice in his doctrine that we

THE MORAL LIFE 395

should treat every rational being as end. The defect
in his statement is that the rational process as such has
never treated and so far as can be foreseen never will
treat human beings as ends. To treat a human being
as an end it is necessary to put oneself into his place
in his whole nature and not simply in his universalizing,
and legislative aspects. Kant's principle is profound
and noble, but his label for it is misleading and leaves
a door open for appalling disregard of other people's
feelings, sympathies, and moral sentiments, as Professor
Dewey has indicated in his recent lectures on " German
Philosophy and Politics."

The term " reasonable," which is frequently used in
law and common life as a criterion of right, seems to
imply that reason is a standard. As already stated,
common life understands by the reasonable man one who
not only uses his own thinking powers but is willing to
listen to reason as presented by some one else. He
makes allowance for frailities in human nature. To be
reasonable means, very nearly, taking into account all
factors of the case not only as I see them but as men
of varying capacities and interests regard them. The
type of the " unreasonable " employer is the man who
refuses to talk over things with the laborers ; to put
himself in their place; or to look at matters from the
point of view of society as a whole.

Just as little does the term reasonable as used in
law permit a purely intcllectualistic view of the process
or an a priori standard. The question as to what is
reasonable care or a reasonable price is often declared
to be a matter not for the court but for the jury to

396 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

decide, i.e., it is not to be deduced from any settled
principle but is a question of what the average thought-
ful man, who considers other people as well as himself,
would do under the circumstances. A glance at some
of the judicial definitions of such phrases as *' reason-
able care," " reasonable doubt," " reasonable law," as
brought together in Words and Phrases Judicially/ De-
fined, illustrates this view. We get a picture not of
any definite standard but of such a process as we have
described in our analysis, namely, a process into which
the existing social tradition, the mutual adjustments
of a changing society and the intelligent consideration
of all facts, enter. The courts have variously defined
the reasonable (1) as the customary, or ordinary, or
legal, or (2) as according with the existing state of
knowledge in some special field, or (3) as proceeding
on due consideration of all the facts, or (4) as offering
sufficient basis for action. For example, (1) reason-
able care means " according to the usages, habits, and
ordinary risks of the business," (2) " surgeons should
keep up with the latest advances in medical science,"
(3) a reasonable price " is such a price as the jury
would under all the circumstances decide to be reason-
able." " If, after an impartial comparison and con-
sideration the jury can say candidly they are not satis-
fied with the defendant's guilt they have a reasonable
doubt." Under (4) falls one of various definitions of
" beyond reasonable doubt." " The evidence must be
such as to produce in the minds of prudent men such
certainty that they would act without hesitation in
their own most important affairs." There is evidently

THE MORAL LIFE 397

ground for the statement of one judge that " reason-
able " (he was speaking, the phrase " reasonable care,"
but his words would seem to apply to other cases) " can-
not be measured by any fixed or inflexible standard."
Professor Freund characterizes " reasonable " as " the
negation of precision." In the development of judicial
interpretation as applied to the Sherman Law the tend-
ency is to hold that the " rule of reason " will regard as
forbidden by the statute (a) such combinations as have
historically been prohibited and (5) such as seem to
work some definite injury.

in

The above view of the function of intelligence, and of
the synthetic character of the conscious process may be
further defined in certain aspects by comparison with
the view of Professor Fite, who likewise develops the sig-
nificance of consciousness and particularly of intelli-
gence for our ethical concepts and social program.

Professor Fite insists that in contrast with the " func-
tional psychology " which would make consciousness
merely a means to the preservation of the organic in-
dividual in mechanical working order, the whole value
of life from the standpoint of the conscious agent con-
sists in its being conscious. Creative moments in which
there is complete conscious control of materials and
technique represent high and unique individuality. Ex-
tension of range of consciousness makes the agent " a
larger and more inclusive being," for he is living in the
future and past as well as in the present. Conscious-
ness means that a new and original force is inserted

398 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

into tlic economy of the social and tlie physical world." *
On the basis of the importance of consciousness Pro-
fessor Fite would ground his justification of rights, his
conception of justice, and his social program. The
individual derives his rights simply from the fact that
he knows what he is doing, hence as individuals differ
in intelligence they differ in rights. The problem of
justice is that of according to each a degree of recog-
nition proportioned to his intelligence, that is, treat
others as ends so far as they are intelligent ; so far
as they are ignorant treat them as means. f " The
conscious individual when dealing with other conscious
individuals will take account of their aims, as of other
factors in his situation. This will involve * adjust-
ment,' but not abandonment of ends, i.e., self-sacrifice.
Obligation to consider these ends of others is based
on ' the same logic that binds me to get out of the way
of an approaching train.' " +

The point in which the conception of rights and
justice and the implied social program advocated in
this paper differs as I view" it from that of Professor
Fite is briefly this. I regard both the individual and
his rights as essentially synthetic and in constant proc-
ess of reconstruction. Therefore what is due to any
individual at a moment is not measured by his present
stage of consciousness. It is measured rather by his
possibilities than his actualities. This does not mean
that the actual is to be ignored, but it does mean that

* Individualism, 55, 61, 62.

t Lectures III and IV, especially 175, 176, 235-39.

j:Pp. lllflF., 172-75, 329 ff.

THE MORAL LIFE 399

If we take our stand upon the actual we are committed
to a program with little place for Imagination, with an
emphasis all on the side of giving people what they
deserve rather than of making them capable of deserv-
ing more. Professor Fite's position I regard as con-
ceiving consciousness Itself too largely in the category
of the identical and the static rather than in the more
" conscious " categories of constant reconstruction.
When by virtue of consciousness you conceive new ends
in addition to your former particular ideas of present
good the problem is, he says, " to secure perfect ful-
filment of each of them." The " usefulness " or " ad-
vantage " or " profitableness " of entering into social
relations Is the central category for measuring their
value and their obligation.

Now the conception of securing perfect fulfilment
of all one's aims by means of society rather than of
putting one's own aims into the process for reciprocal
modification and adjustment with the aims of others
and of the new social whole involves a view of these ends
as fixed, an essentially mechanical view. The same Is
the implication in considering society from the point
of view of use and profit. As previously suggested
these economic terms apply appropriately to things
ratlier than to intrinsic values. To consider the uses
of a fellow-being is to measure him In terms of some
other end than his own intrinsic personal worth. To
consider family life or society as profitable implies In
ordinary language that such life is a means for securing
ends already established rather than that It proves a
good to the man who Invests In It and thereby becomes

400 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

himself a new individual with a new standard of values.
Any object to be chosen must of course have value to
the chooser. But it is one thing to be valued because
it appeals to the actual chooser as already constituted ;
it is another thing to be valued because it appeals to a
moving self which adventures upon this new unproved
objective. This second is the distinction of taking
an interest instead of being interested.

The second point of divergence is that Professor Fite
lays greater stress upon the intellectual side of intelli-
gence, whereas I should deny that the intellectual ac-
tivity in itself is adequate to give either a basis for
obligation or a method of dealing with the social prob-
lem. The primary fact, as Professor Fite well states
it, is " that men are conscious beings and therefore
know themselves and one another." It involves " a
mutual recognition of personal ends." " That very
knowledge which shows the individual himself shows him
also that he is living in a world with other persons and
other things whose mode of behavior and whose interests
determine for him the conditions through which his own
interests are to be realized."

What kind of " knowledge " is it " which shows the
individual himself " ? Professor Fite has two quite dif-
ferent ways of referring to this. He uses one set of
terms when he would contrast his view with the senti-
mental, or the " Oriental," or justify exploitation by
those who know better what they are about than the
exploited. He uses another set of terms to characterize
it when he wishes to commend his view as human, and
fraternal, and as affording the only firm basis for social

THE MORAL LIFE 401

reform. In the first case he speaks of " mere knowing " ;
of intelligence as " clear," and " far-sighted," of higher
degrees of consciousness as simply " more in one."
" Our test of intelligence would be breadth of vision
(in a coherent view), fineness and keenness of insight." *

In the second case it is " generous," it will show an
" intelligent sympathy " ; it seeks " fellowship," and
would not " elect to live in a social environment in
which the distinction of * inferiors ' were an essential
part of the idea." f The type of intelligence is found
not in the man seeking wealth or power, nor in the legal
acumen which forecasts all discoverable consequences
and devises means to carry out purposes, but in litera-
ture and art. J

The terms which cover both these meanings are the
words " consider " and " considerate." " Breadth of
consideration " gives the basis for rights. The selfish
man is the " inconsiderate." § This term plays the
part of the amor intellectualis in the system of Spinoza,
which enables him at once to discard all emotion and yet
to keep it. For " consideration " is used in common
life, and defined in the dictionaries, as meaning both
" examination," " careful thought," and " appreciative
or sympathetic regard." The ambiguity in the term
may well have served to disguise from the author him-
self the double role which intelligence is made to play.
The broader use is the only one that does justice to the
moral consciousness, but we cannot include sympathy
and still maintain that " mere knov/ing " covers the

• Pp. 73, 186, 236, 261 f., 267, 269. % 263 flF ., 123.

1 124, 182, 301. § Pp. 180, 24.1.

402 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

whole. The insistence at times upon the " mere know-
ing " is a mechanical element which needs to be re-
moved before the ethical implications can be accepted.
Once more, how does one know himself and others.''
Is it the same process precisely as knowing a mechanical
object.'' Thoughts without percepts are empty, and
what are the " percepts " in the two cases? In the first
case, that of knowing things, the percepts are colors,
sounds, resistances ; in the case of persons the percepts
are impulses, feelings, desires, passions, as well as
images, purposes, and the reflective process itself. In
the former case we construct objects de-humanized;
in the latter we keep them more or less concrete. But
now, just as primitive man did not so thoroughly de-
personalize nature, but left in it an element of personal
aim, so science may view human beings as objects whose
purposes and even feelings may be predicted, and hence
may, as Professor Fite well puts it, view them mechani-
cally. What he fails to note is that just this mechanical
point of view is the view of " mere knowing " — if
" mere " has any significance at all, it is meant to shut
out " sentiment." And this mechanical view is entirely
equal to the adjectives of " clear," " far-sighted," and
even " broad " so far as this means " more in one."
For it is not essential to a mechanical point of view
that we consider men in masses or study them by statis-
tics. I may calculate the purposes and actions, yes,
and the emotions and values of one, or of a thousand,
and be increasingly clear, and far-sighted, and broad,
but if it is " mere " knowing — scientific information —
it is still " mechanical," i.e., external. On the other

THE MORAL LIFE 40S

hand, if it is to be a knowledge that has the qualities
of humaneness, or " intelligent sympathy," it must
have some of the stuff of feeling, even as in the realm
of things an artist's forest will differ from that of the
most " far-sighted," " clear," and " broad " statis-
tician, by being rich with color and moving line.

And this leads to a statement of the way in which my
fellow-beings will find place in " my " self. I grant that
if they are there I shall take some account of them.
But they may be there in all sorts of ways. They
may be there as " population " if I am a statistician,
or as " consumers," or as rivals, or as enemies, or
as fellows, or as friends. They will have a " value "
in each case, but it will sometimes be a positive value,
and sometimes a negative value. Which it will be, and
how great it will be, depends not on the mere fact of
these objects being " in consciousness " but on the
capacity in which they are there. And this capacity
depends on the dominant interest and not on mere
knowing. The trouble with the selfish man, says Pro-
fessor Fite, is that he " fails to consider," " he fails
to take account of me." * Well, then, why does he
fail.'' Why does he not take account of me? He prob-
ably does " consider " me in several of the ways that
are possible and in the ways that it suits him to con-
sider me. I call him selfish because he does not consider
me in the one particular way in which I wish to be
considered. And what will get me into his considera-
tion from this point of view.'' In some cases it may be
that I can speak : " Sir, you are standing on my toe,"

*P. 180.

404 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

and as the message encounters no obstacle in any fixed
purpose or temperamental bent the idea has no diffi-
culty in penetrating his mind. In other cases it may
interfere with his desire to raise himself as high as
possible, but I may convince him by the same logic
as that of an " approaching railway train " — that he
must regard me. In still other cases — and it is these
that always test Individualism — I am not myself aware
of the injury, or I am too faint to protest. How shall
those who have no voice to speak get " consideration ".''
Only by " intelligent sympathy," and by just those
emotions rooted in instinctive social tendencies which
an intellectualistic Individualism excludes or distrusts.

IV

What practical conclusion, if any, follows from this
interpretation of the moral consciousness and its cate-
gories.'' Moral progress involves both the formation of
better ideals and the adoption of such ideals as actual
standards and guides of life. If our view is correct
we can construct better ideals neither by logical deduc-
tion nor solely by insight into the nature of things —
if by this we mean things as they are. We must rather
take as our starting-point the conviction that moral
life is a process involving physical life, social inter-
course, measuring and constructive intelligence. We
shall endeavor to further each of these factors with the
conviction that thus we are most likely to reconstruct
our standards and find a fuller good.*

* Art and religion have doubtless their important parts in em-
bodying values, or in adding the consciousness of membership in

THE MORAL LIFE 405

Physical life, which has often been depreciated from
the moral point of view, is not indeed by itself supreme,
but it is certain that much evil charged to a bad will
is due to morbid or defective conditions of the physical
organism. One would be ashamed to write such a truism
were it not that our juvenile courts and our prison
investigations show how far we are from having sensed
it in the past. And our present labor conditions show
how far our organization of industry is from any decent
provision for a healthy, sound, vigorous life of all the
people. This war is shocking in its destruction, but
it is doubtful if it can do the harm to Great Britain
that her factory system has done. And if life is in
one respect less than ideals, in another respect it is
greater; for it provides the possibility not only of
carrying out existing ideals but of the birth of new
and higher ideals.

Social interaction likewise has been much discussed
but is still very inadequately realized. The great pos-
sibilities of cooperation have long been utilized in war.
With the factory and commercial organization of the
past century we have hints of their economic power.
Our schools, books, newspapers, are removing some of
the barriers. But how far different social classes are
from any knowledge, not to say appreciation, of each
other ! How far different races arc apart ! JIow easy
to inculcate national hatred and distrust ! The fourth
great problem which baffles Wells's hero in the Research

a larger union of spirits, or of relation to a cosmic order conceived
as ethical, but the limits of our discussion do not permit treat-
ment of these factors.

406 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Magnificent is yet far from solution. The great danger
to morality in America lies not in any theory as to the
subjectivity of the moral judgment, but in the conflict
of classes and races.

Intelligence and reason are in certain respects ad-
vancing. The social sciences are finding tools and
methods. We are learning to think of much of our
moral inertia, our waste of life, our narrowness, our
muddling and blundering in social arrangements, as
stupid — we do not like to be called stupid even if we
scorn the imputation of claiming to be " good." But
we do not organize peace as effectively as war. We
shrink before the thought of expending for scientific
investigation sums comparable with those used for mili-
tary purposes. And is scholarship entitled to shift the
blame entirely upon other interests.'' Perhaps if it
conceived its tasks in greater terms and addressed itself
to them more energetically it would find greater sup-
port.

And finally the process of judgment and appraisal,
of examination and revaluation. To judge for the
sake of judging, to analyze and evaluate for the sake
of the process hardly seems worth while. But if we
supply the process with the new factors of increased
life, physical, social, intelligent, we shall be compelled
to new valuations. Such has been the course of moral
development ; we may expect this to be repeated. The
great war and the changes that emerge ought to set
new tasks for ethical students. As medievalism, the
century of enlightenment, and the century of indus-
trial revolution, each had its ethics, so the century

THE MORAL LIFE 407

that follows ought to have its ethics, roused by the
problem of dealing fundamentally with economic, social,
racial, and national relations, and using the resources
of better scientific method than belonged to the ethical
systems which served well their time.

Only wilful misinterpretation will suppose' that the
method here set forth is that of taking every want
or desire as itself a final justification, or of making
morality a matter of arbitrary caprice. But some may
in all sincerity raise the question : " Is morality then
after all simply the shifting mores of groups stum-
bling forward — or backward, or sidewise — with no fixed
standards of right and good.'' If this is so how can we
have any confidence in our present judgments, to say
nothing of calling others to an account or of reasoning
with them .'' " What we have aimed to present as a
moral method is essentially this : to take into our reck-
oning all the factors in the situation, to take into
account the other persons involved, to put ourselves
into their places by sympathy as well as conceptually,
to face collisions and difficulties not merely in terms
of fixed concepts of what is good or fair, and what
the right of each party concerned may be, but with
the conviction that we need new definitions of the ideal
life, and of the social order, and thus reciprocally of
personality. Thus harmonized, free, and responsible,
life may well find new meaning also in the older intrinsic
goods of friendship, aesthetic appreciation and true
belief. And it is not likely to omit the satisfaction in
actively constructing new ideals and working for their
fulfilment.

408 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Frankly, if we do not accept this method what re-
mains? Can any one by pure reason discover a single
forward step in the treatment of the social situation
or a single new value in the moral ideal? Can any
analysis of the pure concept of right and good teach
us anything? In the last analysis the moral judgment
is not analytic but synthetic. The moral life is not
natural but spiritual. And spirit is creative.

VALUE AND EXISTENCE IN PHILOSOPHY,
ART, AND RELIGION

HORACE M. KALLEN

He who assiduously compares the profound and the
commonplace will find their difference to turn merely
on the manner of their expression ; a profundity is a
commonplace formulated in strange or otherwise ob-
scure and unintelligible terms. This must be my ex-
cuse for beginning with the trite remark that the world
we live in is not one which was made for us, but one
in which we happened and grew. I am much aware
that there exists a large and influential class of per-
sons who do not think so ; and I off'er this remark with
all deference to devotees of idealism, and to other such
pietists who persist in arguing that the trouble which
we do encounter in this vale of tears springs from the
inwardness of our own natures and not from that of
the world. I wish, indeed, that I could agree with them,
but unhappily their very arguments prevent me, since,
if the world were actually as they think it, they could
not think it as they do. In fact, they could not think.
Thinking — ^worse luck ! — came into being as response
to discomfort, to pain, to uncertainty, to problems,
such as could not exist in a world truly made for us;
while from time immemorial pure as distinct from human
consciousness has been identified with absolute certainty,
with self -absorption and self-sufficiency; as a god, a

409

410 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

goal to attain, not a fact to rest in. It is notable
that those who believe the world actually to have been
made for us devote most of their thinking to explaining
away the experiences which have made all men feel that
the world was actually not made for us. Their chief
business, after proving the world to be all good, is
solving " the problem of evil." Yet, had there really
been no evil, this evil consequence could not have en-
sued: existence would have emerged as beatitude and
not as adjustment; thinking might in truth have
been self-absorbed contemplation, blissful intuition,
not painful learning by the method of trial and
error.

Alas that what " might have been " cannot come into
being by force of discursive demonstration ! If it could,
goodness alone would have existed and been real, and
evil would have been non-existence, unreality, and ap-
pearance— all by the force of the Word. As it is, the
appearance of evil is in so far forth no less an evil
than its reality ; in truth, it is reality and its best wit-
nesses are the historic attempts to explain it away. For
even as " appearance " it has a definite and inexpugnable
character of its own which cannot be destroyed by sub-
sumption under the " standpoint of the whole," " the
absolute good," the " over-individual values." Nor, since
only sticks and stones break bones and names never
hurt, can it be abolished by the epithet " appearance."
To deny reality to evil is to multiply the evil. It is
to make two " problems " grow where only one grew
before, to add to the " problem of evil " the " problem
of appearance " without serving any end toward the

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 411

solution of the real problem how evil can be effectively
abolished.

I may then, in view of these reflections, hold myself
safe in assuming that the world we live in was not made
for us ; that, humanly speaking, it is open to improve-
ment in a great many directions. It will be compara-
tively innocuous to assume also, as a corollary, that
in so far as the Avorld was made for mind, it has been
made so by man, that civilization is the adaptation of
nature to human nature. And as a second corollary
it may be safely assumed that the world does not stay
made; civilization has brought its own problems and
peculiar evils.

I realize that, in the light of my title, much of what
I have written above must seem irrelevant, since the
" problem of evil " has not, within the philosophic tra-
dition, been considered part of a " problem of values "
as such. If I dwell on it, I do so to indicate that the
" problem of evil " can perhaps be best understood in
the light of another problem : the problem, namely, of
why men have created the " problem of evil." For
obviously, evil can be problematic only in an absolutely
good world, and the idea that the world is absolutely
good is not a generalization upon experience, but a
contradiction of experience. If there exists a meta-
physical " problem of evil," hence, it arises out of this
generalization ; it is secondary, not primary ; and the
primary problem requires solution before the secondary
one can be understood. And what else, under the cir-
cumstances, can the primary one be than this : " Why
do men contradict their own experience.'"'

412 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

II

So put, the problem suggests its own solution. It
indicates, first of all, that nature and human nature
are not completely compatible, that consequently, con-
clusions are being forced by nature on human nature
which human nature resents and rejects, and that traits
are being assigned to nature by human nature which
nature does not possess, but which, if possessed, would
make her congenial to human needs. All this is so
platitudinous that I feel ashamed to write it ; but then,
how can one avoid platitudes without avoiding truth?
And truth here is the obvious fact that since human
nature is the point of existence to which good and evil
refer, what is called value has its seat necessarily in
human nature, and what is called existence has its seat
necessarily in the nature of which human nature is a
part and apart. Value, in so far forth, is a content of
nature, having its roots in her conditions and its life
in her force, while the converse is not true. All nature
and all existence is not spontaneously and intrinsically
a content of value. Only that portion of it which is
human is such. Humanly speaking, non-human exist-
ences become valuable by their efficacious bearing
on humanity, by their propitious or their disastrous
relations to human consciousness. It is these relations
which delimit the substance of our goods dnd evils, and
these, at bottom, are indistinguishable from conscious-
ness. They do not, need not, and cannot connect all
existence with human life. They are inevitably impli-
cated only with those which make human life possible

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 413

at all. Of the environment, they pertain only to that
portion which is fit by the implicated conditions of life
itself. It may therefore be said that natural existence
produces and sustains some values, — at least the mini-
mal value which is identical with the bare existence of
mankind — on its own account, but no more. The residual
environment remains — irrelevant and menacing, wider
than consciousness and independent of it. Value, hence,
is a specific kind of natural existence among other ex-
istences. To say that it is non-existent in nature, is
to say that value is not coincident and coexistent with
other existences, just as when it is said that a thing
is not red, the meaning is that red is not copresent
with other qualities. Conversely, to say that value
exists in nature is to say that nature and human nature,
things and thoughts, are in some respect harmonious
or identical. Hence, what human nature tries to force
upon nature must be, by implication, non-existent in
nature but actual in mind, so that the nature of value
must be held inseparable from the nature of mind.*

It follows that value is, in origin and character,
completely irrational. At the foundations of our exist-
ence it is relation of their conditions and objects to
our major instincts, our appetites, our feelings, our
desires, our ambitions — most clearly, to the self-regard-
ing instinct and the instincts of nutrition, reproduc-
tion, and gregariousncss. Concerning those, as William
James writes, " Science may come and consider their
ways and find that most of them are useful. But it is
not for the sake of their utility that they are followed,

* Cf. my paper, " Goodness, Cognition, and Beauty," Journal of
Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. IX, p. 253.

414 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

but because at tlic moment of following them we feel
that it is the onlj' appropriate and natural thing to
do. Not a man in a billion when taking his dinner,
ever thinks of utility. He eats because the food tastes
good and makes him want more. If you ask him why
he should want to eat more of what tastes like that,
instead of revering you as a philosopher, he will prob-
ably laugh at you for a fool. The connection between
the savor}' sensation and the act it awakens is for him
absolute and selbstverstdndlich, an a priori synthesis of
the most perfect sort, needing no proof but its own
evidence. . . . To the metaphysician alone can such
questions occur as * Why do we smile when pleased, and
not scowl.? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as
we talk to a single friend.'* Why does a particular
maiden turns our wits upside down? ' The common man
can only say ' of course we smile, of course our heart
palpitates at the sight of a crowd, of course we love
the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that perfect
form, so palpably and flagrantly made from all eter-
nity to be loved.' And so, probably, does each animal
feel about the particular things it tends to do in the
presence of particular objects. . . . To the broody
hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that
there should be a creature in the world to whom a nest-
ful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious
and never-to-be-too-much-set-upon object it is to her."
In sum, fundamental values are relations, responses,
attitudes, immediate, simple, subjectively obvious, and
irrational. But everything else becomes valuable or
rational only by reference to them.

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 415

Study them or others empirically,* and they appear
as types of specific behavior, simple or complicated,
consisting of a given motor " set " of the organism,
strong emotional tone, and aggregates of connected
ideas, more or less systematized. In the slang of the
new medical psychology which has done so much to
uncover their method and mechanism, they are called
" complexes " ; ethics has called them interests, and
that designation will do well enough. They are the
primary and morally ultimate efficacious units of which
human nature is compounded, and it is in terms of the
world's bearing upon their destiny that we evaluate
nature and judge her significance and worth.

Now in interest, the important delimiting quality is
emotional tone. Whatever else is sharable, that is not.
It is the very stuff of our attitudes, of our acceptances
and rejections of the world and its contents, the very
essence of the relations we bear to these. That these
relations shall be identical for any two human beings
requires that the two shall be identical : two persons
cannot hold the same relation to the same or different
objects any more than two objects can occupy abso-
lutely the same space at the same time. Hence, all our
differences and disagreements. However socially-minded
we may be, mere numerical diversity compels us to act
as separate centers, to value things with reference to
separate interests, to orient our worlds severall}^ and
with ourselves as centers. This orienting is the relating

* Cf. Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man; S. Freud,
Die Trauittdeutung, Psyrhopathologie dcs AlUagsleben, etc.;
McDougall, Social Psychology.

41C CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

of the environment to our interests, the establishment
of our worlds of appreciation, the creation of our orders
of value. However much these cross and interpenetrate,
coincide thej never can.

Our interests, furthermore, are possibly as numerous
as our reJBiex arcs. Each may, and most do, constitute
distinct and independent valuations of their objects, to
which they respond, and each, with these objects, re-
mains an irreducible system. But reflex arcs and in-
terests do not act alone. They act like armies ; they
compound and are integrated, and when so integrated
their valuations fuse and constitute the more complex
and massive feelings, pleasures and pains, the emotions
of anger, of fear, of love ; the sentiments of respect, of
admiration, of sympathy. They remain, through all
degrees of complexity, appraisements of the environ-
ment, reactions upon it, behavior toward it, as subject to
empirical examination by the psychologist as the en-
vironment itself by the physicist.

With a difference, however, a fundamental difference.
When you have an emotion you cannot yourself exam-
ine it. Effectively as the mind may work in sections,
it cannot with sanity be divided against itself nor long
remain so. A feeling cannot be had and examined in
the same time. And though the investigator who
studies the nature of red does not become red, the inves-
tigator who studies the actual emotion of anger does
tend to become angry. Emotion is infectious ; anger
begets anger ; fear, fear ; love, love ; hate, hate ; actions,
relations, attitudes, when actual, integrate and fuse ;
as feelings, they constitute the sense of behavior, vary-

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 417

ing according to a changing and unstable equilibrium
of factors within the organism ; they are actually under-
neath the skin, and consequently, to know them alive is to
have them. On the other hand, to know things is sim-
ply to have a relation to them. The same thing may
be both loved and hated, desired or spurned, by differ-
ent minds at the same time or by the same mind at
different times. One, for example, values whiskey posi-
tively, approaches, absorbs it, aims to increase its quan-
tity and sale; another apprehends it negatively, turns
from it, strives to oust it from the world. Then, ac-
cording to these direct and immediate valuations of
whiskey, its place in the common world of the two minds
will be determined. To save or destroy it, they may
seek to destroy each other. Even similar positive val-
uations of the object might imply this mutual repug-
nance and destruction. Thus, rivals in love: they en-
hance and glorify the same woman, but as she is not
otherwise sharable, they strive to eliminate each other.
Throughout the world of values the numerical distinct-
ness of the seats or centers of value, whatever their
identity otherwise, keeps them ultimately inimical.
They may terminate in the common object, but they
originate in different souls and they are related to the
object like two magnets of like polarity to the same
piece of iron that lies between them. Most of what is
orderly in society and in science is the outcome of the
adjustment of just such oppositions: our civilization
is an unstable equilibrum of objects, through the coop-
eration, antipathy, and fusion of value-relations.

Individuals are no better off; personality is con-

418 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

structed in the same way. If, indeed, the world had
been made for us, we might have been spared this
warfare to man upon earth. Life might have been the
obvious irrational flow of bliss so vividly described by
William James; nature and human nature would have
been one ; bridging the gulf between them would never
have been the task of the tender-minded among philoso-
phers. Unfortunately our mere numerical difference,
the mere numerical difference of the interests which
compose our egos, makes the trouble, so that we are
compelled to devote most of our lives to converting the
different into the same. The major part of our in-
stincts serve this function recognizably, e.g., nutrition,
and the " higher powers " do so no less, if not so
obviously. Generalization is nothing more, thinking
nothing else. It is the assimilation of many instances
into one form, law, or purpose; the preservation of
established contents of value, just as nutrition is the
preservation of life by means of the conversion of for-
eign matter into the form and substance of the body.
By bowels and by brain, what is necessary, what will
feed the irrationally given interest, is preserved and
consumed: the rest is cast off as waste, as irrelevance,
as contradiction.

The relation may, of course, also reverse itself. Face
to face with the immovable and inexorable, the mind
may accept it with due resignation, or it may challenge
its tyranny and exclude it from its world. It may
seek or create or discover a substitute that it is con-
tent to accept, though tliis will in turn alter the course
and character of the interest which in such an instance

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 41^

defines the mind's action. Thus, a way out for one of
the lovers of the same girl might be to become a de-
pressed and yearning bachelor, realizing his potential
sexuality in the vicarious reproduction of reverie and
sentiment ; another might be to divert the stream of
his affections to another girl, reorganizing his life about
a different center and acquiring a nevs' system of prac-
tical values determined by this center; a third might
be a complete redirection of his sexual energies upon
objects the interest in which we would call, abnormal
and anti-social in one case, and in another lofty and
spiritual. In the latter case sexuality would have been
depersonalized; it would have changed into poetic and
humanitarian passion; it would have become love as
Plato means us to take the word. But each of these
processes would have been a conversion, through the
need defined by an identical instinct, of the same into
the different; the human nature which existed at the
beginning of the change would be deeply other than
the human nature in which the change culminated. In
each case a condition thrust upon the spirit by its
environment would have occasioned the creation and
maintenance of an environment demanded by the spirit.
Yet in so far as it was not truly the same as that
envisaged in the primitive demand, it would still imply
the tragedy of the world not made for us and the " prob-
lem of evil," in which the life of the spirit is persistently
a salvage of one of two always incompatible goods, a
saving by surrender.

And this is all that a mind is — an affair of saving
and rejecting, of valuing with a system of objects of

420 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

which a living body and its desires and operations, its in-
terests, are local and the objects marginal, for its
standard. Mind, thus, is neither simple, nor immutable,
nor stable ; it is a thing to be " changed," " confused,"
" cleared," " made-up," " trained." One body, I have
written elsewhere,* " in the course of its lifetime, has
many minds, only partially united. Men are all too
often " of two minds." The unity of a mind depends on
its consistent pursuit of one interest, although we then
call it narrow; or on the cooperation and harmony of
its many interests. Frequently, two or more minds
may struggle for the possession of the same body ; that
is, the body may be divided by two elaborately syste-
matized tendencies to act. The beginning of such divi-
sion occurs wherever there is a difficulty in deciding be-
tween alternative modes of behavior; the end is to be
observed in those cases of dual or multiple personality
in which the body has ordered a great collection of
objects and systematized so large a collection of inter-
ests in such typically distinct ways as to have set up
for itself different and opposed " minds." On the other
hand, two or fifty or a million bodies may be " of the
same mind."

"Unhappily, difference of mind, diversity and conflict
of interests is quite as fundamental, if not more so,
as sameness of mind, cooperation and unity of interests.
This the philosophical tradition sufficiently attests. To
Plato man is at once a protean beast, a lion, and an
intellect; the last having for its proper task to rule

* The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific
Methods, Vol. IX, p. 256.

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 421

the first and to regulate the second, which is always
rebellious and irruptive.* According to the Christian
tradition man is at once flesh and spirit, eternally in
conflict with one another, and the former is to be morti-
fied that the latter may have eternal life. Common
sense divides us into head and heart, never quite at
peace with one another. There is no need of piling
up citations. Add to the inward disharmonies of mind
its incompatibilities with the environment, and you per-
ceive at once how completely it is, from moment to
moment, a theater and its life a drama of which the
interests that compose it are at once protagonists and
directors. The catastrophe of this unceasing drama
is always that one or more of the players is driven from
the stage of conscious existence. It may be that the
environment — social conditions, commercial necessity,
intellectual urgency, allies of other interests — will drive
it off; it may be that its own intrinsic unpleasantness
will banish it, will put it out of mind ; whatever the
cause, it is put out. Putting it out does not, however,
end the drama ; putting it out serves to complicate the
drama. For the " new psychology " f shows that when-
ever an interest or a desire or impulsion is put out of
the mind, it is really, if not extirpated, put into the
mind ; it is driven from the conscious level of existence
to the unconscious. It retains its force and direction,
only its work now lies underground. Its life hence-
forward consists partly in a direct oppugnance to the

* Cf. Plato, Republic, IX, 571, 572, for an explicit anticipation
of Freud, t This " new psychology " is not so very new.

422 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

inhibitions that keep it down, partly in burrowing be-
neath and around them and seeking out unwonted chan-
nels of escape. Since life is long, repressions accumu-
late, the mass of existence of feeling and desire tends to
become composed entirely of these repressions, layer
upon layer, with every interest in the aggregate striv-
ing to attain place in the daylight of consciousness.

Now, empirically and metaph^'sicallj^ no one interest
is more excellent than an}' other. Repressed or patent,
each is, whether in a completely favorable environment
or in a completely indifferent universe, or before the
bar of an absolute justice, or under the domination of
an absolute and universal good, entitled to its free ful-
filment and perfect maintenance. Each is a form of
the good ; the essential content of each is good. That
any are not fulfilled, but repressed, is a fact to be re-
corded, not an appearance to be explained awa}'. And
it may turn out that the existence of the fact may
explain the effort to explain it away. For where in-
terests are in conflict with each other or with reality,
and where the loser is not extirpated, its revenge may
be just this self-fulfilment in unreality, in idea, which
philosophies of absolute values offer it. Dreams, some
of the arts, religion, and philosophy may indeed be con-
sidered as such fulfilments, w'orlds of luxuriant self-
realization of all that part of our nature which the
harsh conjunctions with the environment overthrow and
suppress. Sometimes abortive self-expressions of frus-
trated desires, sometimes ideal compensations for the
shortcomings of existence, the}' are alwa^'s equally ideal
reconstructions of the surrounding evil of the world

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 42S

into forms of the good. And because they are com-
pensations in idea, they are substituted for existence,
appraised as " true," and " good," and " beautiful,"
and " real," while the experiences which have suppressed
the desires they realize are condemned as illusory and
unreal. In them humanity has its freest play and am-
plest expression.

ra

This has been, and still to a very great extent re-
mains, most specifically true of philosophy. The en-
vironment with which philosophy concerns itself is noth-
ing less than the whole universe; its content is, within
the history of its dominant tradition, absolutely general
and abstract ; it is, of all great human enterprises, even
religion, least constrained by the direction and march
of events or the mandate of circumstance. Like music,
it expresses most truly the immediate and intrinsic in-
terests of the mind, its native bias and its inward goal.
It has been constituted, for this reason, of the so-called
" normative " sciences, envisaging the non-existent as
real, forcing upon nature pure values, forms of the
spirit incident to the total life of this world, unmixed
with baser matter. To formulate ultimate standards,
to be completely and utterly lyrical has been the pre-
rogative of philosophy alone. Since these standards
reappear in all other reconstructions of the environ-
ment and most clearly in art and in religion, it is perti-
nent to enumerate them, and to indicate briefly their
bearing on existence.

The foremost outstanding is perhaps " the unity of

424 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

the world." Confronted by the perplexing menace of
the variation of experience, the dichotomies and oppo-
sitions of thoughts and things, the fusion and diversifi-
cations of many things into one and one into many,
mankind has, from the moment it became reflective, felt
in the relation of the One and the Many the presence
of a riddle that engendered and sustained uneasiness,
a mystery that concealed a threat. The mind's own
preference, given the physiological processes that con-
dition its existence, constitution, and operation, could
hardly come to rest in a more fundamental normation
than Unity. A world which is one is easier to live in
and with; initial adjustment therein is final adjust-
ment ; in its substance there exists nothing sudden and in
its character nothing uncontrollable. It guarantees
whatever vital equilibrium the organism has achieved
in it, ill or good. It secures life in attainment and
possession, insuring it repose, simplicity, and spacious-
ness. A world which is many complicates existence: it
demands watchful consideration of irreducible discrete
individualities: it necessitates the integration and hu-
manization in a common system of adjustment of en-
tities which in the last analysis refuse all ordering and
reject all subordination, consequently keeping the mind
on an everlasting jump, compelling it to pay with eter-
nal vigilance the price of being. The preference for
unity, then, is almost inevitable, and the history of
philosophy, from the Vedas to the Brahma Somaj and
from Thales to Bergson, is significantly unanimous in
its attempts to prove that the world is, somehow,
through and through one. That the oneness requires

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 425

'proof is prima facie evidence that it is a value, a de-
siderate, not an existence. And how valuable it is may
be seen merely in the fact that it derealizes the inner
conflict of interests, the incompatibilities between na-
ture and man, the uncertainties of knowledge, and the
certainties of evil, and substitutes therefor the ultimate
happy unison which " the identity of the different "
compels.

Unity is the common desiderate of philosophic sys-
tems of all metaphysical types — neutral, materialistic,
idealistic. But the dominant tradition has tended to
think this unity in terms of interest, of spirit, of
mentality. It has tended, in a word, to assimilate na-
ture to human nature, to identify things with the values
of things, to envisage the world in the image of man.
To it, the world is all spirit, ego, or idea ; and if not
such through and through, then entirely subservient,
in its unhumanized parts, to the purposes and interests
of ego, idea, or spirit. Why, is obvious. A world of
which the One substance is such constitutes a totality
of interest and purpose which faces no conflict and has
no enemy. It is fulfilment even before it is need, and
need, indeed, is only illusion. Even wh^n its number
is many, the world is a better world if the |tufF of these
many is the same stuff as the spirit of man. For mind
is more at home with mind than with things ; the pathetic
fallacy is the most inevitable and most general. Al-
though the totality of spirit is conceived as good, that
is, as actualizing all our desiderates and ideals, it would
still be felt that, even if the totality were evil, and not
God, but the Devil ruled the roost, the world so con-

426 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

stituted must be better than one utterly non-spiritual.
We can understand and be at home with malevolence:
it offers at least the benefits of similarity, of compan-
ionship, of intimateness, of consubstantiality with will;
its behavior may be foreseen and its intentions influ-
enced; but no horror can be greater than that of utter
aliency. How much of religion turns with a persistent
tropism to the consideration of the devil and his works,
and how much it has fought his elimination from the
cosmic scheme! Yet never because it loved the devil.
The deep-lying reason is the fact that the humaniza-
tion of Evil into Devil mitigates Evil and improves the
world. Philosophy has been least free from this cor-
rective and spiritizing bias. Though it has cared less
for the devil, it has predominantly repudiated aliency,
has sought to prove spirit the cause and substance of
the world, and in that degree, to transmute the aliency
of nature into sameness with human nature.

With unity and spirituality, eternity makes a third.
This norm is a fundamental attribute of the One God
himself, and interchangeable with his ineffable name:
the Lord is Eternal, and the Eternal, even more than the
One, receives the eulogium of exclusive realness. To
the philosophical tradition it is the most real. Once
more the reason should be obvious. The underlying
urge which pushes the mind to think the world as a
unity pushes it even more inexorably to think the world
as timeless. For unity is asserted only against the per-
plexities of a manyness which may be static and
unchanging, and hence comparatively simple. But eter-
nity is asserted and set against mutability : it is the nega-

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 427

tion of change, of time, of novelty, of the suddenness and
slaughter of the flux of life itself, which consumes what
it generates, undermines what it builds and sweeps to
destruction what it founds to endure. Change is the
arch-enemy of a life which struggles for self-preserva-
tion, of an intellect which operates spontaneously by
the logic of identity, of a will which seeks to convert
others into sames. It substitutes a different self for
the old, it falsifies systems of thought and deteriorates
systems of life. It makes unity impossible and many-
ness inevitable. It upsets every actual equilibrium that
life attains. It opens the doors and windows of every
closed and comfortable cosmos to all transcosmic winds
that blow, with whatever they carry of possible danger
and possible ill. It is the very soul of chaos in which
the pleasant, ordered world is such a little helpless
thing. Of this change eternity is by primary intention
the negation, as its philological form shows. It is not-
time, without positive intrinsic content, and in its sec-
ondary significances, i.e., in those significances which
appear in metaphysical dialectic, without meaning;
since it is there a pure negation, intrinsically affirming
nothing, of the same character as " not-man " or " not-
donkey," standing for a nature altogether unspecific
and indeterminable in the residual universe. By a sort
of obverse implication it docs, however, possess, in the
philosophic tradition, a positive content which accrues
to it by virtue of what it denies. This content makes
it a designation for the persistence and perdurability
of desiderated quality — from metaphysical unity and
spirituality to the happy hunting-grounds or a woman's

428 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

affection. At bottom it means the assurance that the
contents of value cannot and will not be altered or
destroyed, that their natures and their relations to
man do not undergo change. There is no recorded at-
tempt to prove that evil is eternal: eternity is eternity
of the good alone.

Unity, spirituality, and eternity, then, are the forms
which contents of value receive under the shaping hands
of the philosophic tradition, to which they owe their
metaphj'sical designation and of which the business has
so largely and uniquely been to prove them the founda-
tions and ontological roots of universal nature. But
" the problem of evil " does not come to complete solu-
tion with these. Even in a single, metaphysically spirit-
ual and unchanging world, man himself may still be
less than a metaphysical absolute and his proper in-
dividuality doomed to absorption, his wishes to ob-
struction and frustration. Of man, therefore, the
tradition posits immortality and freedom, and even the
materialistic systems have sought to keep somehow room
for some form of these goods.

To turn first to immortality. Its source and matrix
is less the love of life than the fear of death — that fear
which Lucretius, dour poet of disillusion, so nobly de-
plored. That he had ever himself been possessed of it
is not clear, but it is perfectly clear that his altogether
sound arguments against it have not abolished its opera-
tion, nor its effect upon human character, society, and
imagination. Fear which made the gods, made also the
immortality of man, the denial of death. What the
fear's unmistakable traits may be has never been articu-

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 429

lately said, perhaps never can be said. Most of us
never may undergo the fear of death; we undergo com-
fort and discomfort, joy and sorrow, intoxication and
reaction, love and disgust ; we aim to preserve the one
and to abolish the other, but we do not knowingly un-
dergo the fear of death. Indeed, it is logically impossi-
ble that we should, since to do so would be to acquire
an experience of death such that we should be conscious
of being unconscious, sensible of being insensible, aware
of being unaware. We should be required to be and
not to be at the same instant, in view of which Lucre-
tius both logically and wisely advises us to remember
that when death is, we are not ; and when we are, death
is not.

Experience and feeling are, however, neither logical
nor wise, and to these death is far from the mere non-
being which the poet would have us think it. To these
it has a positive reality which makes the fear of it a
genuine cause of conduct in individuals and in groups,
with a basis in knowledge such as is realized in the dimin-
ishing of consciousness under anesthetic, in dreams of
certain types, and most generally in the nascent imi-
tation of the rigor mortis which makes looking upon
the dead such a horror to most of us. Even then, how-
ever, something is lacking toward the complete realiza-
tion of death, and children and primitive peoples never
realize it at all. Its full meaning comes out as an un-
satisfied hunger in the living rather than as a condition
of the dead, who, alive, would have satisfied this hun-
ger. And the realization of this meaning requires so-
phistication, requires a lengthy corporate memory and

430 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

the disillusions which civilization engenders. Primitive
peoples ask for no proof of immortality because they
have no notion of mortality; civilized thinking has
largely concerned itself about the proof of immortality
because its assurance of life has been shaken by the
realization of death through the gnawing of desire which
only the dead could still. The proof which in the his-
tory of thought is offered again and again, be it noted,
is not of the reality of life, but of the unreality and
inefficacy of death. Immortality is like eternity, a nega-
tive term ; it is mmortality. The experienced fact is
mortality; and the fear of it is only an inversion of the
desire which it frustrates, just as frustrated love be-
comes hatred. The doctrine of immortality, hence,
springs from the fear of death, not from the love of life,
and immortality is a value-form, not an existence. Now,
although fear of death and love of life are in constant
play in character and conduct, neither constitutes the
original, innocent urge of life within us. " Will to
live," " will to power," " struggle for existence," and
other Germanic hypostases of experienced events which
the great civil war in Europe is just now giving such
an airing, hardly deserve, as natural data, the high
metaphysical status that Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and
companj' have given them. They follow in fact upon a
more primary type of living, acting form, a type to
which the " pathetic fallacy " or any other manner of
psychologizing may not apply. The most that can
be said about this type is that its earlier stages
are related to its later ones as potential is to kinetic
energy. If, since we are discussing a metaphysical issue,

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 431

we must mythologize, we might call it the " will to self-
expression." Had this " will " chanced to happen in
a world which was made for it, or had it itself been the
substance of the world, " struggle for existence," " will
to live," and " will to power," never could have super-
vened. All three of these expressions designate data
which require an opposite, a counter-will, to give them
meaning. There can be a struggle for existence only when
there are obstacles thereto, a will to live only when
there are obstructions to life, a will to power only
when there is a resistance against which power may be
exercised. Expression alone is self-implying and self-
sufficient, and in an altogether favorable environment
we might have realized our instincts, impulses, interests,
appetites and desires, expressed and actualized our
potentialities, and when our day is done, have ceased,
as unconcerned about going on as about start-
ing.

Metchnikoff speaks somewhere of an instinct toward
death and the euphoria which accompanies its realiza-
tion. He cites, I think, no more than two or three cases.
To most of us the mere notion of the existence and
operation of such an instinct seems fanciful and un-
canny. Yet from the standpoint of biology nothing
should be more natural. Each living thing has its span,
which consists of a cycle from birth through matura-
tion and senescence to dissolution, and the latter half
of the process is as " fateful " and " inevitable " as the
former ! Dying is itself the inexpugnable conclusion
of that setting free of organic potentialities which we
call life, and if dying seems horrid and unnatural, it

432 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

seems so because for most of us death is violent, because
its occasion is a shock from without, not the realiza-
tion of a tendency from within. In a completely favor-
able environment we should not struggle to exist, we
should simply exist ; we should not will to live, we
should simply live, i.e., we should actualize our poten-
tialities and die.

But, once more alas, our environment is not com-
pletely favorable, and there's the rub. That disorderly
constellation of instincts and appetites and interests
which constitutes the personality of the best of us does
not work itself out evenly. At the most favorable, our
self-realizations are lopsided and distorted. For every
capacity of ours in full play, there are a score at least
mutilated, sometimes extirpated, always repressed. They
never attain the free fullness of expression which is
consciousness, or when they do, they find themselves
confronted with an opponent which neutralizes their
maturation at every point. Hence, as I have already
indicated, they remain in, or revert to, the subterranean
regions of our lives, and govern the making of our
biographies from their seats below. What they fail
to attain in fact they succeed in generating in imagina-
tion to compensate for the failure; they realize them-
selves vicariously. The doctrine of immortality is the
generic form of such vicarious self-realization, as fre-
quently by means of dead friends and relatives to whose
absolute non-being the mind will not assent, as by
means of the everlasting heaven in which the mind may
forever disport itself amid those delights it had to
forego on earth. Much of the underlying motive of

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 433

the doctrine is a sehnsucht and nostalgia after the
absent dead; little a concern for the continuity of the
visible living. And often this passion is so intense
that system after system in the philosophic tradition
is constructed to satisfy it, and even the most disillu-
sioned of systems — for example, Spinoza's — will pre-
serve its form if not its substance.

That the " freedom of the will " shall be a particu-
larized compensatory desiderate like the immortality
of the soul, the unity, the spirituality, and the eternity
of the world is a perversion worked upon this ideal
by the historic accident we call Christianity. The as-
sumptions of that theory concerning the nature of the
universe and the destiny of man, being through and
through compensatory, changed freedom from the possi-
ble fact and actual hope of Hellenic systems into the
" problem " of the Christian ones. The consequent
controversy over " free-will," the casuistic entangle-
ment of this ideal with the notion of responsibility, its
theological development in the problem of the relation
of an omnipotent God to a recalcitrant creature, have
completely obscured its primal significance. For the
ancients, the free man and the " wise man " were identi-
cal, and the wise man was one who all in all had so
mastered the secrets of the universe that there was no'
desire of his that was not actually realized, no wish
the satisfaction of which was obstructed. His way in
the world was a way without let or hindrance. Now
freedom and wisdom in this sense is never a fact and
ever a value. Its attainment ensues upon created dis-
tinctions between appearance and reality, upon the

434 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

postulation of the metaphysical existence of the value-
forms of the unity, spirituality, and the eternity of the
world, in the realization of which the wise man founded
his wisdom and gained his freedom. Freedom, then,
is an ideal that could have arisen only in the face of
obstruction to action directed toward the fulfilling and
satisfying of interests. It is the assurance of the smooth
and uninterrupted flow of behavior ; the flow of desire
into fulfilment, of thought into deed, of act into fact.
It is perhaps the most pervasive and fundamental of
all desiderates, and in a definite way the others may be
said to derive from it and to realize it. For the soul's
immortality, the world's unity and spirituality and
eternity, are but conditions which facilitate and assure
the flow of life without obstruction. They define a
world in which danger, evil, and frustration are non-
existent ; they so reconstitute our actual environment
that the obstructions it offers to the course of life are
abolished. They make the world " rational," and in
the great philosophic tradition the freedom of man is
held to be a function of the rationality of the world.
Thus, even deterministic solutions of the " problem of
freedom " are at bottom no more than the rationaliza-
tion of natural existence by the dialectical removal of
obstructions to human existence. Once more, Spinoza's
solution is typical, and its form is that of all idealisms
as well. It ensues by way of identification of the ob-
struction's interest with those of the obstructee: the
world becomes ego or the ego the world, with nothing
outside to hinder or to interfere. In the absolute, ex-
istence is declared to be value de facto; in fact, de jure.

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 435

And by virtue of this compensating reciprocity the
course of life runs free.

Is any proof necessary that these value-forms are
not the contents of the daily life? If there be, why this
unvarying succession of attempts to prove that they
are the contents of daily life that goes by the name
of history of philosophy? In fact, experience as it
comes from moment to moment is not one, harmonious
and orderly, but multifold, discordant, and chaotic. Its
stuff is not spirit, but stones and railway wrecks and
volcanoes and Mexico and submarines, and trenches,
and frightfulness, and Germany, and disease, and
waters, and trees, and stars, and mud. It is not eternal,
but changes from instant to instant and from season
to season. Actually, men do not live forever ; death
is a fact, and immortality is literally as well as in
philosophic discourse not so much an aspiration for the
continuity of life as an aspiration for the elimination
of death, purely immortality. Actually the will is not
free, each interest encounters obstruction, no interest
is completely satisfied, all are ultimately c^t off by
death.

Such are the general features of all human experi-
ence, by age unwithered, and with infinite variety for-
ever unstaled. The traditional philosophic treatment
of them is to deny their reality, and to call them ap-
pearance, and to satisfy the generic human interest
which they oppose and repress by means of the histori-
cal reconstruction in imaginative dialectic of a world
constituted by these most generalized value-forms and
thdn to eulogize the reconstruction with the epithet

436 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

" reality." WJien, in the course of human events, such
reconstruction becomes limited to the biography of
particular individuals, is an expression of their con-
crete and unique interest, is lived and acted on, it is
called paranoia. The difference is not one of kind, but
of concreteness, application, and individuality. Such
a philosophy applied universally in the daily life is a
madness, like Christian Science: kept in its proper
sphere, it is a fine art, the finest and most human of
the arts, a reconstruction in discourse of the whole
universe, in the image of the free human spirit. Phi-
losophy has been reasonable because it is so unpersonal,
abstract, and general, like music ; because, in spite of
its labels, its reconstructions remain pure desiderates
and value-forms, never to be confused with and sub-
stituted for existence. But philosophers even to this
day often have the delusion that the substitutions are
actually made.*

rv

It is the purity of the value-forms imagined in phi-
losophy that makes philosophy " normative." The
arts, which it judges, have an identical origin and an
indistinguishable intent, but they are properly its sub-
ordinates because they have not its purity. They, too,
aim at remodeling discordant nature into harmony with
human nature. They, too, are dominated by value-
forms which shall satisfy as nearly as possible all in-

* Cf. Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience,
for the most recent of these somnambulisms. But any idealistic
system will do, from Plato to Bradley.

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 437

terests, shall liberate and fulfil all repressions, and
shall supply to our lives that unity, eternity, spirit-
uality, and freedom which are the exfoliations of our
central desire — the desire to live. But where philosophy
has merely negated the concrete stuff of experience and
defined its reality in terms of desire alone, the arts
acknowledge the reality of immediate experience, accept
it as it comes, eliminating, adding, molding, until the
values desiderated become existent in the concrete im-
mediacies of experience as such. Art does not substi-
tute values for existence by changing their roles and
calling one appearance and the other reality : art con-
verts values into existences, it realizes values, injecting
them into nature as far as may be. It creates truth
and beauty and goodness. But it does not claim for
its results greater reality than nature's. It claims for
its results greater immediate harmony with human in-
terests than nature. The propitious reality of the phi-
losopher is the unseen: the harmonious reality of the
artist must be sensible. Philosophy says that apparent
actual evil is merely apparent : art compels potential
apparent good actually to appear. Philosophy realizes
fundamental values transcendentally beyond experi-
ence: art realizes them within experience. Thus, men
cherish no illusions concerning the contents of a novel,
a picture, a play, a musical composition. They are
taken for what they are, and are enjoyed for what
they are. The shopgirl, organizing her life on the
basis of eight dollars a week, wears flimsy for broadcloth
and the tail feather of a rooster for an ostrich plume.
She is as capable of wearing and enjoying broadcloth

438 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

and ostrich plume as My Lady, whose income is eight
dollars a minute. But she has not them, and in all
likelihood, without a social revolution she never will
have them. In the novels of Mr. Robert Chambers,
however, or of Miss Jean Libbey, which she religiously
reads in the street-car on her way to the shop ; in the
motion picture theater which she visits for ten cents
after her supper of corned beef, cabbage, and cream
puffs, she comes into possession of them forthwith,
vicariously, and of all My Lady's proper perquisites —
the Prince Charming, the motor-car, the Chinese pug,
the flowers, and the costly bonbons. For the time being
her life is liberated, new avenues of experience are ac-
tually opened to her, all sorts of unsatisfied desires are
satisfied, all sorts of potentialities realized. All that she
might have been and is not, she becomes through art,
here and now, and continuously with the drab workaday
life which is her lot, and she becomes this without any
compensatory derealization of that life, without any
transcendentalism, without any loss of grip on the neces-
sities of her experience: strengthened, on the contrary,
and emboldened, to meet them as they are.

I might multiply examples: for every object of fine
art has the same intention, and if adequate, accomplishes
the same end — from the sculptures of Phidias and the
dramas of Euripides, to the sky-scrapers of Sullivan
and the dances of Pavlowa. But there is need only to
consider the multitude of abstract descriptions of the
aesthetic encounter. The artist's business is to create
the other object in the encounter, and this object, in
Miss Puffer's words, which are completely representa-

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 439

tive and typical, is such that " the organism is in a
condition of repose and of the highest possible tone,
functional efficiency, enhanced life. The personality is
brought into a state of unity and self-completeness."
The object, when apprehended, awakens the active func-
tioning of the whole organism directly and harmoniously
with itself, cuts it off from the surrounding world, shuts
that world out for the time being, and forms a complete,
harmonious, and self-sufficient system, peculiar and
unique in the fact that there is no passing from this
deed into further adaptation with the object. Struggle
and aliency are at end, and whatever activity now goes
on feels self-conserving, spontaneous, free. The need
of readjustment has disappeared, and with it the feel-
ing of strain, obstruction, and resistance, which is its
sign. There is nothing but the object, and that is
possessed completely, satisfying, and as if forever.
Art, in a word, supplies an environment from which
strife, foreignness, obstruction, and death are elimi-
nated. It actualizes unity, spirituality, and eternity
in the environment ; it frees and enhances the life of the
self. To the environment which art successfully creates,
the mind finds itself completely and harmoniously
adapted by the initial act of perception.

In the world of art, value and existence are one.

V

If art may be said to create values, religion has been
said to conserve them. But the values conserved are
not those created: they are the values postulated by
philosophy as metaphysical reality. Whereas, how-

440 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

ever, philosophy substitutes these values for the world
of experience, religion makes them continuous with the
world of experience. For religion value and existence
are on the same level, but value is more potent and
environs existence, directing it for its own ends. The
unique content of religion, hence, is a specific imagina-
tive extension of the environment with value-forms : the
visible world is extended at either end by heaven and
hell ; the world of minds, by God, Satan, angels, demons,
saints, and so on. But where philosophy imaginatively
abolishes existence in behalf of value, where art realizes
value in existence, religion tends to control and to es-
cape the environment which exists by means of the
environment which is postulated. The aim of religion
is salvation from sin. Salvation is the escape from
experience to heaven and the bosom of God; while hell
is the compensatory readjustment of inner quality to
outer condition for the alien and the enemy, without
the knowledge of whose existence life in heaven could
not be complete.

In religion, hence, the conversion of the repressed
array of interests into ideal value-forms is less radical
and abstract than in philosophy, and less checked by
fusion with existence than in art. Religion is, therefore,
at one and the same time more carnal and less reason-
able than philosophy and art. Its history and pro-
tagonists exhibit a closer kinship to what is called in-
sanity * — that being, in essence, the substitution in
actual life of the creatures of the imagination which
satisfy repressed needs for those of reality which re-
* Cf. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience,

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 441

press them. It is a somnambulism which intensifies
rather than abolishes the contrast between what is de-
sired and what must be accepted. It offers itself ulti-
mately rather as a refuge from reality than a control
of it, and its development as an institution has turned
on the creation and use of devices to make this escape
feasible. For religion, therefore, the perception that
the actual world, whatever its history, is now not
adapted to human nature, is the true point of de-
parture. Thus religion takes more account of experi-
ence than compensatory philosophy; it does not de-
realize existent evil. The outer conflict between human
nature and nature, primitively articulated in conscious-
ness and conduct by the distress engendered through
the fact that the food supply depends upon the march
of the seasons,* becomes later assimilated to the inner
conflict between opposing interests, wishes, and desires.
Finally, the whole so constituted gets expressed in the
idea of sin. That idea makes outward prosperity de-
pendent upon inward purity, although it often transfers
the locus of the prosperity to another world. Through
its operation fortune becomes a function of conscience
and the one desire of religious thinking and religious
practice becomes to bring the two to a happy out-
come, to abolish the conflicts. This desiderated aboli-
tion is salvation. It is expressed in the ideas of a fall,
or a separation from heaven and reunion therewith.
The machinery of this reunion of the divided, the re-
conversion of the differentiated into the same, con-
sists of the furniture of religious symbols and cere-
* Cf. Jane Harrison, Ancient Art and Ritual.

442 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

monials — mjths, baptisms, sacraments, prayers, and
sacrifices : and all these are at the same time instruments
and expressions of desires. God is literally " the con-
servation of values." * " God's life in eternity," writes
Aristotle, who here dominates the earlier tradition, " is
that which we enjoy in our best moments, but are un-
able to possess permanently : its very being is delight.
And as actual being is delight, so the various functions
of waking, perceiving, thinking, are to us the pleasant-
est parts of our life. Perfect and absolute thought is
just this absolute vision of perfection."!

Even the least somnambulistic of the transcendental
philosophies has repeated, not improved upon Aristotle.
" The highest conceptions that I get from experience
of what goodness and beauty are," Royce declares, " the
noblest life that I can imagine, the completes! blessed-
ness that I can think, all these are but faint sugges-
tions of a truth that is infinitely realized in the Divine,
that knows all truth. Whatever perfection there is sug-
gested in these things, that he must fully know and
experience."

But this assthetic excellence, this maximum of ideality
is in and by itself inadequate. God, to be God, must
work. He is first of all the invisible socius, the ever-
living witness, in whose eyes the disharmonies and in-
justices of this life are enregistered, and who in the
life everlasting redresses the balances and adjusts the
account. Even his grace is not unconditional; it re-

* Cf. my paper, "Is Belief Essential in Religion?", Interna-
tional Journal of Ethics, October, 1910.
t " Metaphysics," Book Lambda.

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 443

quires a return, in deed or faith ; a payment by which
the fact of his salvation is made visible. But this pay-
ment is made identical by the great religions of disillu-
sion with nothing other than the concrete condition
from which the faithful are to be saved. If the self
is not impoverished, unkempt, and hungry, in fact, it
is made so. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but
self-defilement is godliness ; sainthood, if we are to trust
the lives of saints, whether in Asia or in Europe, is co-
incident with insanitation ; saintly virtues are depressed
virtues, — humility, hope, meekness, pity ; and such con-
ditions of life which define the holy ones are unwhole-
some— poverty, asceticism, squalor, filth. Hence, by
an ironic inversion, religions of disillusion, being other-
worldly, identify escape from an actual unpropitious
environment with submergence in it ; that being the
visible and indispensable sign of an operative grace. So
the beatitudes : the blessed are the poor, the mourners,
the meek. Beginning as a correction of the evils of
existence, religion ends by offering an infallible avenue
of escape from them through postulating a desiderated
type of existence which operates to gather the spirit to
itself. For this reason the value-forms of the spirit-
uality or spiritual control of the universe and of the
immortality of the soul have been very largely the prac-
tical concern of religion alone, since these are the
instruments indispensable to the attainment of salva-
tion. In so far forth religion has been an art and its
institutional association with the arts has been made
one of its conspicuous justifications. So far, however,
as it has declared values to be operative without making

444 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

them actually existent it has been only a black art,
a magic. It has ignored the actual causes in the nature
and history of things, and has substituted for them
non-existent desirable causes, ultimately reducible to a
single, eternal, beneficent spirit, omnipotent and free.
To convert these into existence, an operation which is
the obvious intent of much contemporary thinking in
religion,* it must, however, give up the assumption that
they already exist qua spirit. But when religion gives
up this assumption, religion gives up the ghost.

What it demands of the ghost, and of all hypostatized
or anthropomorphized ultimate value-forms, is that they
shall work, and its life as an institution depends
upon making them work. Christian Science becomes
a refuge from the failure of science, magic from mechan-
ism, and by means of them and their kind, blissful im-
mortality, complete self-fulfilment is to be attained —
after death. There is a " beautiful land of somewhere,"
a happy life beyond, but it is beyond life. In fact,
although religion confuses value and existence, it local-
izes the great value-forms outside of existence. Its
history has been an epic of the retreat and decimation

* This is accomplished usually by ignoring the differentia of
the term of religion, and using it simply as an adjective of eulogy,
as in the common practice the term " Christian " is made co-
extensive with the denotation of " good," or " social." For ex-
ample, a '* Christian gentleman " can differ in no discernible way
from a gentleman not so qualified save by believing in certain
theological propositions. But in usage, the adjective is simply
tautologous. Compare R. B. Perry, The Moral Economy; E. S.
Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience; J. H. Leuba,
A Psychological Study of Religion; H. M. Kallen, Is Belief
Essential in Religion?

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 445

of the gods from the world, a movement from animism
and pluralism to transcendentalism and monism ; and
concomitantly, of an elaboration and extension of in-
stitutional devices by which the saving value-forms are
to be made and kept operative in the world.

VI

Let us consider this history a little.

Consciousness of feeling, psychologists are agreed, is
prior to consciousness of the objects of feeling. The
will's inward strain, intense throbs of sensation, pangs
and pulses of pleasure and pain make up the
bulk of the undifferentiated primal sum of senti-
ence. The soul is aware of herself before she
is aware of her world. A childish or primeval
mind, face to face with an environment actual,
dreamt, or remembered, does not distinguish from
its privacy the objective or the common. All is
shot through with the pathos and triumph which come
unaccountably as desired good or evaded evil; all has
the same tensions and effects ends in the same manner
as the laboring, straining, volitional life within. These
feelings, residuary qualities, the last floating, unat-
tached sediment of a world organized by association
and classified by activity, these subtlest of all its beings,
finally termed mind and self, at first suffuse and domi-
nate the whole. Even when objects are distinguished
and their places determined these are not absent ; and
the so-called pre-animistic faiths are not the less suf-
fused with spirit because the spiritual has not yet re-
ceived a local habitation and name. They differ from

h6 creative intelligence

animism in tliis onlj, not in that their objects are char-
acterized by lack of animation and vital tonality. And
this is necessary. For religion must be anthropopathic
before it becomes anthropomorphic ; since feeling, elo-
quent of good and evil, is the first and deepest essence
of consciousness, and only by its wandering from home
are forms distinguished and man's nature separated
from that of things and beasts.

When practice has coordinated activity, and reflec-
tion distinguished places, animism proper arises. First
the environment is felt as the soul's kindred ; then its
operations are fancied in terms dramatic and personal.
The world becomes almost instinctively defined as a
hegemony of spirits similar to man, with powers and
passions like his, and directed for his destruction or con-
servation, but chiefly for their own glory and self-main-
tenance. The vast " pathetic fallacy " makes religion
of the whole of life. It is at this point indistinguisha-
ble from science or ethics. It is, in fact, the pregnant
matrix of all subsequent discourse about the uni-
verse. Its character is such that it becomes the deter-
minating factor of human adaptations to the con-
ditions imposed by the environment, by envisaging the
enduring and efficacious elements among these conditions
as persons. The satisfaction of felt needs is rendered
thereby inevitably social; and in a like manner fear
of their frustration cannot be unsocial. Life is con-
ceived and acted out as a miraculous traffic with the
universe; and the universe as a band of spirits who
monopolize the good and make free gifts of evil, who
can be feared, threatened, worshiped, scolded, wheedled,

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 447

coaxed, bribed, deceived, enslaved, held in awe, and
above all, used for the the prosecution of desiderated
ends and the fulfilment of instinctive desires. The first
recorded cognized order is a moral order in which frag-
mentary feelings, instinctive impulsions, and spontane-
ous imaginings are hypostatized, ideas are identified
with their causes, all the contents of the immature, sud-
den, primitive, blundering consciousness receive a vital
figure and a proper name. So man makes himself more
at home in the world without, — that world which en-
slaves the spirit so fearfully and with such strangeness,
and which just as miraculously yields such ecstasy, such
power, such unaccountable good ! In this immediate sense
the soul controls the world by becoming symbolic of it ;
it is the world's first language. It is, however, an in-
articulate, blundering, incoherent thing and the cues
which it furnishes to the nature of the environment are
as often as not dangerous and misleading. When bows
and arrows, crystals and caves, clouds and waters, dung
and' dew, mountains and trees, beasts and visions, are
treated as chiefs and men must be treated, then the
moral regimen initiated, taking little account of the
barest real qualities manifested by these things, and
attributing the maximum importance to the characters
postulated and foreign, is successful neither in allaying
evil nor in extending good. Its benefits are adventitious
and its malfeasance constant. Food buried with the
dead was food lost; blood smeared upon the bow to
make it shoot better served only to make the hands
unskilful by impeding their activity. Initiation, cere-
mony, sacrificial ritual, fasting, and isolation involved

448 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

privations for which no adequate return was recovered,
even by the medicine-man whose absolute and ephemeral
power needed only the betrayal of circumstances for its
own destruction, taking him along with it, oftener than
not, to disgrace or death.

As the cumulus of experience on experience grew
greater, chance violations of tradition, or custom, or
ritual, or formula achieving for the violator a mastery-
or stability which perforaiance and obedience failed to
achieve, the new heresy became the later orthodoxy, for
in religion, as in all other matters human, nothing suc-
ceeds like success. An impotent god has no divinity;
a disused potency means a dying life among the im-
mortals as on the earth. And as the gods themselves
seemed often to give their worshipers the lie, the fu-
tility of the personal and dramatic definitions of the
immediate environment became slowly recognized, the
recognition varying in extent, and clearer in practice
than in discourse.

Accordingly the most primitive of the animisms un-
derwent a necessary modification. The plasticity of
objects under destructive treatment, the impotence of
taboo before elementary needs, the adequate satisfac-
tions which violations of the divine law brought, — these
killed many gods and drove others from their homes
in the hearts of things. The objects so purged became
matters of accurate knowledge. Where animation is
denied the whole environment, wisdom begins to distin-
guish between spirit-haunted matter and the purely
material; knowledge of person and knowledge of things
differentiate, and science, the impersonal and more po-

I

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 449

tent knowledge of the environment, properly begins.
Familiarity leads to control, control to contempt, and
for the unreflective mind, personality is not, as for
the sophisticated, an attribute of the contemptible. The
incalculable appearance of thunder, the magic greed of
fire, the malice, the spontaneity, the thresh and pulse
as of life which seems to characterize whatever is ca-
pricious or impenetrable or uncontrollable are too much
like the felt throbs of consciousness to become dehu-
manized. To the variable alone, therefore, is transcen-
dent animation attributed. Not the seasonal variation
of the sun's heat, but the joy and the sorrow of which
his heat is the occasion made him divine. When the
gods appear, to take the place of the immanent spirits
immediately present in things, they appear, therefore,
as already transcendent, with habitations just beyond
the well-known : on high mountains, in the skies, in dark
forests, in caves, in all regions feared or unexplored.
But chiefly the gods inhabit those spaces whence issue
the power of darkness and destruction, particularly the
heaven, a word whose meaning is now, as it was primi-
tively, identical with divinity. The savage becomes a
pagan by giving concrete personality to the dreadful
unknown. Thence it is that the ancient poet assigns
the gods a lineage of fear; and fear may truly be said
to have made the gods, in so far as the gods personify
the fear which made them.

The moral level of these figments alters with the level
of their habitation ; their power varies with their re-
moteness ; Zeus lives in the highest heaven and is ar-
biter of the destiny of both gods and man. To him and

450 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

to his like there cannot be the relation of equality which
is sustained between men and spirits of the lower order.
His very love is blasting; interchange of commodities,
good for good and evil for evil is not possible where
he is concerned. Gods of the higher order he exempli-
fies, even all the gods of Olympus, of the Himalayas, of
Valhalla, are literally beings invoked and implored, as
well as dwellers in heaven. To them man pays a toll
on all excellence he gains or finds ; libations and burnt-
offerings, the fat and the first fruits: he exists by
their sufferance and serves their caprice. He is
their toy, born for their pleasure, and living by their
need.

But just because men conceive themselves to be play-
things of the gods, they define in the gods the ideals
of mankind. For the divine power is power to live
forever, and the sum of human desire is just the desire
to maintain its humanity in freedom and happiness
endlessly. And exactly those capacities and instru-
ments of self-maintenance, — all that is beauty, or truth,
or goodness, the very essence of value in any of its
forms, — the gods are conceived to possess and to con-
trol : these they may grant, withhold, destroy. They are
as eternal as their habitations, the mountains ; as ruth-
less as their element, the sea; as omnipresent as the
heavens, their home. To become like the gods, there-
fore, the masters and fathers of men, is to remain
eternally and absolutely human: so that who is most
like them on earth takes his place beside them in heaven.
Hercules and Elias and Krishna, Caka-Muni and Ish-
vara, Jesus and Baha Ullah. Nay, they are the very

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 451

gods themselves, manifest as men! The history of the
gods thus presents a double aspect: it is first a char-
acterization of the important objects and processes of
nature and their survival-values, — the sun, thunder,
rain, and earthquakes ; dissolution, rebirth, and love ;
and again it is the narration of activities native and
delightful to mankind. Zeus is a promiscuous lover as
well as a wielder of thunderbolts ; Apollo not only drives
the chariot of the sun ; he plays and dances, discourses
melody and herds sheep.

But while the portrait of the heart's desire in ficti-
tious adventures of divinity endears the gods to the
spirit, the exploration of the elements in the environ-
ment whose natures they dramatically express, destroys
their force, reduces their number, and drives them still
further into the unknown. Olympus is surrendered for
the planets and the fixed stars. With remoteness of
location comes transmutation of character. The forces
of the environment which were the divinity are now
conceived as instrumental to its uses. Its power is
more subtly described ; its nature becomes a more purely
ideal expression of human aspiration. Physical remote-
ness and metaphysical ultimacy are akin. God among
the stars is better than God on Olympus. If, as with the
Parsees, the unfavorable character of the environment
is expressed in another and equal being, — the devil,
then the god of good must, in the symbolic struggle, be-
come the ultimate victor and remain the more potent
director of man's destiny. In religion, therefore, when
the mind grows at all by experience, monism develops
spontaneously. For the character of the god becomes

452 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

increasingly more relevant to hope than to the condi-
tions of hope's satisfaction. And what man first of all
and beyond all aspires to, is that single, undivided good,
— the free flow of his unitary life, stable, complete,
eternal. There is hence always to be found a chief and
father among the gods who, as mankind gain in wisdom
and in material power, consumes his mates and his chil-
dren like Kronos or Jahweh, inherits their attributes
and performs their functions. The chief divinity be-
comes the only divinity ; a god becomes God. But
divinity, in becoming one and unique, becomes also tran-
scendent. Monotheism pushes God altogether beyond
the sensible environment. Personality, instead of being
the nature of the world, has become its ground and
cause, and all that mankind loves is conserved, in order
that man, whom God loves, may have his desire and live
forever. Life is eternal and happiness necessary, be-
yond nature, — in heaven. Finally, in transcendenta'
idealism, the poles meet; what has been put eternally
apart is eternally united; the immaterial, impalpable,
transcendent heaven is made one and continuous with
the gross and unhappy natural world. One is the other;
the other the one. God is the world and transcends it ; is
the evil and the good which conquers and consumes that
evil. The environment becomes thus described as a
single, eternal, conscious unity, in which all the actual
but transitory values of the actual but transitory life
are conserved and eternalized. In a description of God
such as Royce's or Aristotle's the environment is the
eternity of all its constituents that are dearest ta man.
Religion, which began as a definition of the environ-

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 453

ment as it moved and controlled mankind, ends by de-
scribing it as mankind desires it to be. The environ-
ment is now the aforementioned ideal socius or self which
satisfies perfectly all human requirements. Pluralistic
and quarrelsome animism has become monistic and har-
monious spiritism. Forces have turned to excellences
and needs to satisfactions. Necessity has been trans-
muted to Providence, sin has been identified with salva-
tion, value with existence, and existence with impotence
md illusion before Providence, salvation, and value.

vn
With this is completed the reply to the question:
Why do men contradict their own experience.'' Expe-
rience is, as Spinoza says, passion and action, both in-
extricably mingled and coincident, with the good and
vil of them as interwoven as they. That piecemeal
. onquest of the evil which we call civilization has not
•fen the promise of finality. It is a Penelope's web,
•ways needing to be woven anew. Now, in experience
^sire anticipates and outleaps action and fact rebuffs
esire. Desire realizes itself, consequently, in ideas
bjectifiod by the power of speech into independent and
utonomous subjects of discourse, whereby experience
i One, Eternal, a Spirit or Spiritually Controlled,
herein man has Freedom and Immortality. These, the
instantly desiderated traits of a perfect universe, are
^ fact the limits of what adequacy environmental sat-
sfactions can attain, ideas hypostatized, normative of
•xistence, but not constituting it. With them, in phl-
Dsophy and religion, the mind confronts the experiences

454 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

of death and obstruction, of manifoldness, change and
materialit}', and denies them, as Peter denied Jesus.
The visible world, being not as we want it, we imagine
an unseen one that satisfies our want, d '■daring the
visible one an illusion by its side. So we work a radical
substitution of desiderates for actualities, of ideals for
facts, of values for existences. Art alone acknowledges
the actual relations between these contrasting pairs.
Art alone so operates as in fact to convert their op-
pugnance into identit3\ Intrinsically, its whole purpose
and technique consists of transmutation of values intfi)
existences, in the incarnation the realization of values^
The philosophy and religion of tradition, on the con-v
trary, consists intrinsically in the flat denial of realit}, i
or at least, co-reality, to existence, and the transfer of
that eulogium to value-forms as such.

Metaphysics, theology, ethics, logic, aesthetics, dia-
lectic developments as they are of " norms " or " real i
ties " which themselves can have no meaning withou
the " apparent," changing world they measure and belie,
assume consequently a detachment and self-sufficiency '
they do not actually possess. Their historians have •
treated them as if they had no context, as if the elabora-
tion of the ideal tendencies of the successive systems
explained their origin, character, and significance. But
in fact they are unendowed with this pure intrinsicality,
and their development is not to be accounted for as
exteriorization of innate motive or an unfoldment of in-
ward implications. They have a context ; they are ?
crossed and interpenetrated by outer interests and ex-
traneous considerations. Their meaning, in so far as

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 455

it is not merely aesthetic, is nil apart from these interests
and considerations of which they are sometimes expres-
sions, sometimes reconstructions, and from which they
are persistently refuges.

Philosophy and religion are, in a word, no less than
art, social facts. They are responses to group situations
without which they cannot be understood. Although
analysis has shown them to be rooted in certain per-
sistent motives and conditions of human nature by
whose virtue they issue in definite contours and signifi-
cances, they acquire individuality and specific import-
ance only through interaction with the constantly vary-
ing social situations in which they arise, on which they
operate, and by which they are in turn operated on.
Philosophy has perhaps suffered most of all from
nescience of those and from devoting itself, at a mini-
mum, to the satisfaction of that passion for oneness,
for " logical consistency " without which philosophic
" systems " would never arise, nor the metaphysical
distinction between " appearance " and " reality "; and
with which the same systems have made up a historic ag-
gregate of strikingly repugnant and quarrelsome units.
It is this pursuit of consistency as against correctness
which has resulted in the irrelevance of philosophy that
the philosopher, unconscious of his motives and roots,
or naively identifying, through the instrumentality of
an elaborate dialectic, his instinctive and responsive
valuations of existence with its categoric essences, con-
fuses with inward autonomy and the vision of the " real."
Consequently, the systems of tradition begin as at-
tempts to transvalue social situations whose existence

456 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

is troublesome and end as utterances of which the spe-
cific bearing, save to the system of an opponent, is un-
discoverable. The attempt to correct the environment
in fact concludes as an abolition of it in words. The
philosophic system becomes a solipsism, a pure lyric
expression of the appetites of human nature.

For this perversity of the philosophic tradition Plato
is perhaps, more than any one else, answerable. He is
the first explicitly to have reduplicated the world, to
have set existences over against values, to have made
them dependent upon values, to have assigned absolute
reality to the compensatory ideals, and to have identified
philosophy with preoccupation with these ideals. Be-
hind his theory of life lay far from agreeable personal
experience of the attitude of political power toward
philosophic ideas. Its ripening was coincident with the
most distressing period of the history of his country.
The Peloponnesian War was the confrontation of two
social systems, radically opposed in form, method, and
outlook. Democracy, in Athens, had become synony-
mous with demagoguery, corruption, inefficiency, injus-
tice and unscrupulousness in every aspect of public
affairs. The government had no consistent policy and
no centralized responsibility ; divided counsel led to con-
tinual disaster without, and party politics rotted the
strength within. Beside Athens, Sparta, a communistic
oligarchy, was a tower of strength and effectiveness.
The Spartans made mistakes ; they were slow, inept,
rude, and tyrannical, but they were a unit on the war,
their policy was consistent, responsibilities were ade-
quately centered, good order and loyalty designated the

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 457

aims and habits of life.* The Republic is the response
to the confrontation of Spartan and Athenian; the at-
tempt to find an adequate solution of the great social
problem this confrontation expressed. The successful
state becomes in it the model for the metaphysical one,
and the difference between fact and ideal is amended by
dialectically forcing the implications of existence in the
direction of desire. Neither Athens nor Sparta pre-
sented a completely satisfactory social organization.
There must therefore exist a type of social organiza-
tion which is so satisfying. It must have existed from
eternity, and must be in essence identical with eternal
good, identical with that oneness and spirituality, lack-
ing which, nothing is important. This archetypal social
organization whose essence is excellence, it is the con-
genital vocation of the philosopher to contemplate and
to realize. Philosophers are hence the paragons among
animals, lovers of truth, haters of falsehood and of
multiplicity, spectators of all time and all existence.
In them the power to govern should be vested. Their
nature is of the same stuff as the Highest Good with
which it concerns itself, but being such, it appears,
merely " appears " alas ! irrelevant to the actual situa-
tions of the daily life. The philosopher is hence opposed
and expelled by that arch-sophist. Public Opinion: the
man on the street, failing to understand him, dubs him
prater, star-gazer, good-for-nothing.f He becomes an
ineffectual stranger, an outlaw, in a world in which he
should be master.

* The condition of England and Germany in the present civil
war in Europe echoes this situation.

t Cf. Republic, Books V and VI.

458 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Plato's description of the pliilosopher and philosophy
is, it will be seen, at once an apology and a program.
But it is a program which has been petrified into a
compensatory ideal. The confession of impotence, the
abandonment of the programmatic intent is due to iden-
tification of the ideal with metaphysical fact, to the
hypostasis of the ideal. With Christianism, that being
a philosophy operating as a religion, world-weariness
made the apology unnecessary and converted the hy-
postasis into the basis of that program of complete
surrender of the attempt to master the problems of ex-
istence upon which ensued the arrest of science and civi-
lization for a thousand years. The Greeks were not
world-weary, and consequently, their joy in life and
existence contributed a minimum of relevance to their
otherworldly dreams. Need it be reasserted that the
whole Platonic system, at its richest and best in the
Republic, is both an expression of and a compensation
for a concrete social situation .'' Once it was formu-
lated it became a part of that situation, altered it, served
as another among the actual causes which determined
the subsequent history of philosophy. Its historic and
efficacious significance is defined by that situation, but
philosophers ignore the situation and accept the sys-
tem as painters accept a landscape — as the thing in
itself.

Now, the aesthetic aspect of the philosophic system,
its autonomy, and consequent irrelevancy, are undenia-
ble. Once it comes to be, its intrinsic excellence may
constitute its infallible justification for existence, with
no more to be said; and if its defenders or proponents

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 459

claimed nothing more for it than this immediate satis-
factoriness, there would be no quarrel with them. There
is, however, present in their minds a sense of the other
bearings of their systems. They claim them, in any
event, to be true, that is, to be relevant to a situation
regarded as more important because more lastingly de-
terminative of conduct, more " real " than the situa-
tion of which they are born. Their systems are offered,
hence, as maps of life, as guides to the everlasting.
That they intend to define some method for the conserva-
tion of life eternally, is clear enough from their initial
motivation and formal issue: all the Socratics, with
their minds fixed on happiness or salvation according
to the prevalence of disillusionment among them ; the
Christian systems, still Socratic, but as resolutely other-
worldly as disillusioned Buddhists ; the systems of Spi-
noza, of Kant, the whole subsequent horde of idealisms,
up to the contemporary Germanoid and German ideal-
istic soliloquies, — they all declare that the vanity and
multiplicity of life as it is leads them to seek for the
permanent and the meaningful, and they each find it
according to the idiosyncrasies of the particular im-
pulses and terms they start with. That their Snark
turns out in every case to be a Boojum is another
story.

Yet this story is what gives philosophy, like religion,
its social significance. If its roots, as its actual biog-
raphy shows, did not reach deep in the soil of events,
if its issues had no fruitage in events made over by its
being, it would never have been so closely identified with
intelligence and its systematic hypostasis would never

460 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

have ensued The fact is that philosophy, like all forms
of creative intelligence, is a tool before it is a perfec-
tion. Its autonomy supervenes on its efficaciousness ; it
does not precede its efficaciousness. Men philosophize in
order to live before they live in order to philosophize.
Aristotle's description of the self-sufficiency of theory
is possible only for a life wherein theory had already
earned this self-sqfficiency as practice, in a life, that
is, which is itself an art, organized by the application
of value-forms to its existent psychophysical processes
in such a way that its existence incarnates the values
it desiderates and the values perfect the existence that
embodies them.

The biography of philosophy, hence, reveals it to have
the same possibilities and the same fate that all other
ideas have. Today ideas are the patent of our human-
ity, the stuff and form of intelligence, the differentia be-
tween us and the beasts. In so far forth, they express
the surplusage of vitality over need, the creative free-
dom of life at play. This is the thing we see in the
imaginings and fantasies of childhood, whose environ-
ment is by social intent formed to favor and sustain its
being. The capacity for spontaneity of idea appears
to decrease with maturity, and the few favored healthy
mortals with whom it remains are called men of genius.
William James was such a man, and there are a few
still among the philosophers. But in the mass and in
the long run, ideas are not a primary confirmation of
our humanity ; in the mass and long they are warnings
of menace to it, a sign of its disintegration. Even
so radical an intellectualist as Mr. Santayana cherishes

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 461

this observation to the degree of almost suggesting it as
the dogma that all ideas have their origin in inner or
outer maladjustment.* However this may be, that
the dominant philosophic ideas arise out of radical dis-
harmonies between nature and human nature need not
be here reiterated, while the provocative character of
minor maladjustments is to be inferred from the fer-
tility of ideas in unstable minds, of whatever type, from
the neurasthenic to the mad. Ideas represent in these
cases the limits of vital elasticity, the attempt of the
organism to maintain its organic balance ; it is as if a
balloon, compressed on one side, bulged on the other.

Ideas, then, bear three types of relations to organic
life, relations socially incarnated in traditional art,
religion, and philosophy. First of all they may be an
expression of innate capacities, the very essence of the
freedom of life. In certain arts, such as music, they
are just this. In the opposite case they may be the
effect of the compression of innate capacities, an out-
come of obstruction to the free flow of life. They are
then compensatory. Where expressive ideas are con-
fluent with existence, compensatory ideas diverge from
existence ; they become pure value-forms whose para-
mount realization is traditional philosophy. Their rise
and motivation in both these forms is unconscious. They
are ideas, but not yet intelligence. The third instance
falls between these orignal two. The idea is neither
merely a free expression of innate capacities, nor a
compensation for their obstruction or compression.
Arising as the effect of a disharmony, it develops as an
* Cf. Winds of Doctrine and Reason in Common Sense.

462 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

enchannclment of organic powers directed to the con-
version of the disharmony into an adjustment. It does
not use up vital energies like the expressive idea, it is
not an abortion of them, like the compensatory idea.
It uses them, and is aware that it uses them — that is,
it is a program of action upon the environment, of
conversion of values into existences. Such an idea
has the differentia of intelligence. It is creative; it
actually converts nature into forms appropriate to
human nature. It abolishes the Otherworld of the con-
pensatory tradition in philosophy by incarnating it
in this world; it abolishes the Otherworld of the re-
ligionist, rendered important by belittling the actual
one, by restoring the working relationships between
thoughts and things. This restoration develops as
reconstruction of the world in fact. It consists spe-
cifically of the art and science which compose the effica-
cious enterprises of history and of which the actual
web of our civilization is spun.

Manifest in its purity in art, it attends unconsciously
both religion and philosophy, for the strands of life
keep interweaving, and whatever is, in our collective
being, changes and is changed by whatever else may be,
that is in reach. The life of reason is initially uncon-
scious because it can learn only by living to seek a
reason for life. Once it discovers that it can become
self-maintaining alone through relevance to its ground
and conditions, the control which this relevance yields
makes it so infectious that it tends to permeate every
human institution, even religion and philosophy. Phi-
losophy, it is true, has lagged behind even religion in.

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 463

relevancy, but the lagging has been due not to the
intention of the philosopher but to the inherent char-
acter of the task he assumed. Both art and religion, we
have seen, possess an immediacy and concreteness which
philosophy lacks- Art reconstructs correlative portions
of the environment for the eye, the ear, the hopes and
fears of the daily life. Religion extends this reconstruc-
tion beyond the actual environment, but applies its sav-
ing technique at the critical points in the career of the
group or the individual; to control the food-supply, to
protect in birth, pubescence, marriage, and death. All
its motives are grounded in specific instincts and needs,
all its reconstructions and compensations culminate
with reference to these. Philosophy, on the other hand,
deals with the whole nature of man and his whole en-
vironment. It seeks primaries and ultimates. Its tra-
ditional task is so to define the universe as to articulate
thereby a theory of life and eternal salvation. It
establishes contact with reality at no individual, specific
point : its reals are " real in general." It aims, in a
word, to be relevant to all nature, and to express the
whole soul of man. The consequence is inevitable: it
forfeits relevance to everything natural ; touching noth-
ing actual, it reconstructs nothing actual. Its concret-
est incarnation is a dialectic design woven of words.
The systems of tradition, hence, are works of art, to be
contemplated, enjoyed, and believed in, but not to be
acted on. For, since action is always concrete and
specific, always determined to time, place, and occa-
sion, we cannot in fact adapt ourselves to the aggre-
gate infinitude of the environment, or that to ourselves.

464» CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Something always stands out, recalcitrant, invincible,
defiant. But it is just such an adaptation that philoso-
phy intends, and the futility of the intention is evinced
by the fact that the systems of tradition continue side
by side with the realities they deny, and live unmixed
in one and the same mind, as a picture of the ocean
on the wall of a dining room in an inland town. Our
operative relations to them tend always to be essentially
aesthetic. We may and do believe in them in spite of
life and experience, because belief in them, involving no
action, involves no practical risk. Where action is a
consequence of a philosophic system, the system seems
to dichotomize into art and religion. It becomes par-
ticularized into a technique of living or the dogma of
a sect, and so particularized it becomes radically self-
conscious and an aspect of creative intelligence.

So particularized, it is, however, no longer philoso-
phy, and philosophy has (I hope I may say this without
professional bias) an inalienable place in the life of
reason. This place is rationally defined for it by the
discovery of its ground and function in the making of
civilization ; and by the perfection of its possibilities
through the definition of its natural relationships.
Thus, it is, in its essential historic character at least,
as fine an art as music, the most inward and human of
all arts. It may be, and human nature being what it
is, undoubtedly will continue to be, an added item to
the creations wherewith man makes his world a better
place to live in, precious in that it envisages and pro-
jects the excellences and perfections his heart desires
and his imagination therefore defines. So taken, it is

VALUE AND EXISTENCE ^65

not a substitution for the world, but an addition to it,
a refraction of it through the medium of human nature,
as a landscape painting by Whistler or Turner is not
a substitution for the actual landscape, but an inter-
pretation and imaginative perfection of it, more suit-
able to the eye of man. A system like Bergson's is such
a work, and its aesthetic adequacy, its beauty, may be
measured by the acknowledgment it receives and the
influence it exercises. Choosing one of the items of
experience as its medium, and this item the most precious
in the mind's eye which the history of philosophy re-
veals, it proceeds to fabricate a dialectical image of
experience in which all the compensatory desiderates
are expressed and realized. It entices minds of all or-
ders, and they are happy to dwell in it, for the nonce
realizing in the perception of the system the values
it utters. By abandoning all pretense to be true, philo-
sophic systems of the traditional sort may attain the
simple but supreme excellence of beauty, and rest con-
tent therewith.

The philosophic ideal, however, is traditionally not
beauty but truth : the function of a philosophic system
is not presentative, but representative and causal, and
that the systems of tradition have had and still have
consequences as well as character, is obvious enough.
It is, however, to be noted that these consequences have
issued out of the fact that the systems have been spe-
cific items of existence among other equally and even
more specific items, thought by particular men, at par-
ticular times and in particular places. As such they
have been programs for meeting events and incar-

466 CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

nating values ; operative ideals aiming to recreate the
Morld according to determined standards. They have
looked forward rather than backward, have tacitly
acknowledged the reality of change, the irreducible
pluralism of nature, and the genuineness of the activi-
ties, oppugnant or harmonizing, between the items of
the Cosmic. Many they ostensibly negate. The truth,
in a word, has been experimental and prospective; the
desiderates they uttered operated actually as such and
not as already existing. Historians of philosophy,
treating it as if it had no context, have denied or ig-
nored this role of philosophy in human events, but his-
torians of the events themselves could not avoid observ-
ing and enregistering it.

Only within very recent years, as an effect of the
concept of evolution in the field of the sciences, have
philosophers as such envisaged this non-aesthetic aspect
of philosophy's ground and function in the making of
civilization and have made it the basis for a sober vision
which may or may not have beauty, but which cannot
have finality. Such a vision is again nothing more
than traditional philosophy become conscious of its
character and limitations and shorn of its pretense.
It is a program to execute rather than a metaphysic
to rest in. Its procedure is the procedure of all the arts
and sciences. It frankly acknowledges the realities of
immediate experience, the turbulence and complexity of
the flux, the interpenetrative confusion of orders, the
inward self-diversification of even the simplest thing,
which " change " means, and the continual emergence
of novel entities, unforeseen and unprevisible, from the

VALUE AND EXISTENCE 467

reciprocal action of the older aggregate. This per-
ceptual reality it aims to remould according to the
heart's desire. Accordingly it drops the pretense of
envisaging the universe and devotes itself to its more
modest task of applying its standards to a particular
item that needs to be remade. It is believed in, but no
longer without risk, for, without becoming a dogma, it
still subjects itself to the tests of action. So it ac-
knowledges that it must and will itself undergo constant
modification through the process of action, in which it
uses events, in their meanings rather than in their na-
tures, to map out the future and to make it amenable to
human nature. Philosophy so used is, as John Dewey
somewhere says, a mode and organ of experience among
many others. In a world the very core of which is
change, it is directed upon that which is not yet, to
previse and to form its character and to map out the
way of life within it. Its aim is the liberation and en-
largement of human capacities, the enfranchisement of
man by the actual realization of values. In its in-
tegrate character therefore, it envisages the life of
reason and realizes it as the art of life. Where it is
successful, beauty and use are confluent and identical
in it. It converts sight into insight. It infuses exist-
ence with value, making them one. It is the concrete
incarnation of Creative Intelligence.

BY WALTER LIPPMANN
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