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ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO. ILLINOIS
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
NEW YORK
THE CUNNINGHAM, CURTISS 4 WELCH COMPANY
LOS A.MJlLKH
THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONUOH AND KUINBUROB
THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
TOKYO, OSAKA, KIOTO
THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY
SHANGHAI
KARL W. HIERSEMANN
ESSAYS IN
EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
By
JOHN DEWEY
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
/ h$
COPYRIGHT 1916 Bv
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
All Rights Reserved
Published June igi6
Composed and Printed By
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
PREFATORY NOTE
In 1903 a volume was published by the University
of Chicago Press, entitled Studies in Logical Theory,
as a part of the "Decennial Publications" of the
University. The volume contained contributions by
Drs. Thompson (now Mrs. Woolley), McLennan,
Ashley, Gore, Heidel, Stuart, and Moore, in addition
to four essays by the present writer who was also
general editor of the volume. The edition of the
Studies being recently exhausted, the Director of the
Press suggested that my own essays be reprinted,
together with other studies of mine in the same field.
The various contributors to the original volume
cordially gave assent, and the present volume is the
outcome. Chaps, ii-v, inclusive, represent (with
editorial revisions, mostly omissions) the essays
taken from the old volume. The first and intro
ductory chapter has been especially written for the
volume. The other essays are in part reprinted and
in part rewritten, with additions, from various con
tributions to philosophical periodicals. I should like
to point out that the essay on "Some Stages of
Logical Thought" antedates the essays taken from the
volume of Studies, having been published in 1900;
vi PREFATORY NOTE
the other essays have been written since then. I
should also like to point out that the essays in their
psychological phases are written from the standpoint
of what is now termed a hphavinrigfif. pgY^Qfofiy-
though some of them antedate the use of that term
as a descriptive epithet.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
April 3, 1916
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION i
II. THE RELATIONSHIP OF THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-
MATTER 75
III. THE ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING . 103
. DATA AND MEANINGS 136
V. THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT 157
VI. SOME STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT . . . .183
VII. THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF IDEAS . . . .220
^ *- \Iir> THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS 230
L- IX. NAIVE REALISM vs. PRESENTATIVE REALISM . . 250
X. EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM: THE ALLEGED UBIQUITY
OF THE KNOWLEDGE RELATION 264
XL THE EXISTENCE OF THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL
PROBLEM 281
v v^IL WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS BY PRACTICAL . . 303
\XIII.) AN ADDED NOTE AS TO THE "PRACTICAL" . . . 330
XIV. THE LOGIC OF JUDGMENTS OF PRACTICE . . .335
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
The key to understanding the doctrine of the
essays which are herewith reprinted lies in the passages
regarding the temporal development ^ol experience.
Setting out from a conviction (more current at the
time when the essays were written than it now is)
that knowledge implies judgment (and hence, think
ing) the essays try to show (i) that such terms as/
"thinking," "reflection," "judgment" denote inquiries;
or the results of inquiry, and (2) that inquiry occupies ,]
an intermediate and mediating place in the develop-
ment of an experience. If this be granted, it follows
at once that a philosophical discussion of the dis
tinctions and relations which figure most largely in
logical theories depends upon a proper placing of
them in their temporal context; and that in default
of such placing we are prone to transfer the traits of
the subject-matter of one phase to that of another
with a confusing outcome.
i. An intermediary stage for knowledge (that is,
for knowledge comprising reflection and having a dis
tinctively intellectual quality) implies a prior stage
2 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of a different kind, a kind variously characterized
in the essays as social, affectional, technological,
aesthetic, etc. It may most easily be described from
a negative point of view: it is a type of experience
which cannot be called a knowledge experience without
/ doing violence to the term "knowledge" and to
experience. It may contain knowledge resulting from
prior inquiries; it may include thinking within itself;
but not so that they dominate the situation and give
it its peculiar flavor. Positively, anyone recognizes
the difference between an experience of quenching
thirst where the perception of water is a mere incident,
and an experience of water where knowledge of what
water is, is the controlling interest; or between the
enjoyment of social converse among friends and
a study deliberately made of the character of one of
the participants; between aesthetic appreciation of a
picture and an examination of it by a connoisseur to
establish the artist, or by a dealer who has a com
mercial interest in determining its probable selling
value. The distinction between the two types of
experience is evident to anyone who will take the
trouble to recall what he does most of the time when
not engaged in meditation or inquiry.
But since one does not think about knowledge,
except when he is thinking, except, that is, when the
intellectual or cognitional interest is dominant, the
professional philosopher is only too prone to think
of all experiences as if they were of the type he is
INTRODUCTION 3
specially engaged , in, and hence unconsciously or
intentionally to project Us traits into experiences to
which they are alien. Unless he takes the simple
precaution of holding before his mind contrasting
experiences like those just mentioned, he generally
forms a habit of supposing that no qualities or things J"
at all are present in experience except as objects of
some kind of apprehension or awareness. Over
looking, and afterward denying, that things and
qualities are present to most men most of the time
as things and qualities in situations of prizing and
aversion, of seeking and finding, of converse, enjoy
ment and suffering, of production and employment,
of manipulation and destruction, he thinks of
things as either totally absent from experience or
else there as objects of "consciousness" or knowing.
This habit is a tribute to the importance of reflec
tion and of the knowledge which accrues from it.
But a discussion of knowledge perverted at the
outset by such a misconception is not likely to
proceed prosperously.
All this is not to deny that some element of reflec
tion or inference may be required in any situation
to which the term "experience" is applicable in any
way which contrasts with, say, the "experience" of an
oyster or a growing bean vine. Men experience illness.
What they experience is certainly something very
different from an object of apprehension, yet it is
quite possible that what makes an illness into a
4 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
conscious experience is precisely the intellectual
elements which intervene a certain taking of some
things as representative of other things. My thesis
about the primary character of non-reflectional expe
rience is not intended to preclude this hypothesis-
which appears to me a highly plausible one. But it :
indispensable to note that, even in such cases, the
intellectual element is set in a context which is non-
cognitive and which holds within it in suspense a vast
complex of other qualities and things that in the
experience itself are objects of esteem or aversion,
of decision, of use, of suffering, of endeavor and revolt,
not of knowledge. When, in a subsequent reflective
experience, we look back and find these things and
qualities (quales would be a better word or values,
if the latter word were not so open to misconstruction) ,
we are only too prone to suppose that they were then
what they are nowobjects of a cognitive regard,
themes of an intellectual gesture. Hence, the errone
ous conclusion that things are either just out of ex
perience, or else are (more or less badly) known
objects.
In any case the best way to study the character of
those cognitional factors which are merely incidental
in so many of our experiences is to study them in the
type of experience where they are most prominent,
where they dominate; where knowing, in short, is
the prime concern. Such study will also, by a reflex
reference, throw into greater relief the contrasted
INTRODUCTION 5
characteristic traits of the non-reflectional types of
experience. In such contrast the significant traits
of the latter are seen to be internal organization:
(i) the factors and qualities hang together; there
is a great variety of them but they are saturated with
a pervasive quality. Being ill with the grippe is an
experience which includes an immense diversity of
factors, but none the less is the one qualitatively
unique experience which it is. Philosophers in their
exclusively intellectual preoccupation with analytic
knowing are only too much given to overlooking
the primary import of the term "thing": namely,
res, an affair, an occupation, a "cause"; something
which is similar to having the grippe, or conducting a
political campaign, or getting rid of an overstock of
canned tomatoes, or going to school, or paying atten
tion to a young woman: in short, just what is meant
in non-philosophic discourse by "an experience."
Noting things only as if they were objects that is,.
obje^ts^o_Jmowledge continuity is rendered a
mystery; qualitative, pervasive unity is too often
regarded as a subjective state injected into an object
which does not possess it, as a mental "construct,"
or else as a trait of being to be attained to only by
recourse to some curious organ of knowledge termed
intuition. In like fashion, organization is thought of
as the achieved outcome of a highly scientific knowl
edge, or as the result of transcendental rational syn
thesis, or as a fiction superinduced by association,
6 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
upon elements each of which in its own right "is a
separate existence." One advantage of an excursion
by one who philosophizes upon knowledge into pri
mary non-reflectional experience is that the excursion
serves to remind him that every empirical situation
has its own organization of a direct, non-logical J
character.
(2) Another trait of every res is that it has focus
and context: brilliancy and obscurity, conspicu-
ousness or apparency, and concealment or reserve,
with a constant movement of redistribution. Move
ment about an axis persists, but what is in focus con
stantly changes. " Consciousness," in other words,
is only a very small and shifting portion of experience.
The scope and content of the focused apparency
have immediate dynamic connections with portions
of experience not at the time obvious. The word
which I have just written is momentarily focal;
around it there shade off into vagueness my type
writer, the desk, the room, the building, the campus,
the town, and so on. In the experience, and in it
in such a way as to qualify even what is shiningly
apparent, are all the physical features of the envi
ronment extending out into space no one can say
how far, and all the habits and interests extending
backward and forward in time, of the organism
which uses the typewriter and which notes the writ
ten form of the word only as temporary focus in a
vast and changing scene. I shaU not dwell upon
INTRODUCTION 7
the import of this fact in its critical bearings upon
theories of experience which have been current. I
shall only point out that when the word "experience"
is employed in the text it means just such an immense
and operative world of diverse and interacting
elements.
It might seem wiser, in view of the fact that the
term "experience" is so frequently used by philoso
phers to denote something very different from such a
world, to use an acknowledgedly objective term: to
talk about the typewriter, for example. But experi
ence in ordinary usage (as distinct from its technical
use in psychology and philosophy) expressly denotes
something which a specific term like "typewriter"
does not designate: namely, the indefinite range of
context in which the typewriter is actually set, its
spatial and temporal environment, including the
habitudes, plans, and activities of its operator. And
if we are asked why not then use a general objective
term like "world," or "environment," the answer is
that the word "experience" suggests something indis
pensable which these terms omit: namely, an actual
focusing of the world at one point in a focus of
immediate shining apparency. In other words, in
its ordinary human usage, the term "experience" was
invented and employed previously because of the
necessity of having some way to refer peremptorily
to what is indicated in only a roundabout and
divided way by such terms as "organism" and
8 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
"environment," "subject" and "object," "persons"
and "things," "mind" and "nature," and so on. 1
II
Had this background of the essays been more
explicitly depicted, I do not know whether they
would have met with more acceptance, but it is
1 1 am indebted to an unpublished manuscript of Mr. S. Klyce
of Winchester, Massachusetts, for the significance of the fact that
our words divide into terms (of which more in the sequel) and into
names which are not (strictly speaking) terms at all, but which serve
to remind us of the vast and vague continuum, select portions of
which only are designated by words as terms. He calls such words
"infinity and zero" words. The word "experience" is a typical
instance of an "infinity word." Mr. Klyce has brought out very
clearly that a direct situation of experience ("situation" as I employ
it is another such word) has no need of any word for itself, the thing
to which the word would point being so egregiously there on its own
behalf. But when communication about it takes place (as it does,
not only in converse with others, but when a man attempts a mutual
reference of different periods of his own life) a word is needed to
remind both parties of this taken-for-granted whole (another infinity
term), while confusion arises if explicit attention is not called to the
fact that it is a very different sort of word from the definite terms of
discourse which denote distinctions and their relations to one another.
In the text, attention is called to the fact that the business man
wrestling with a difficulty or a scientific man engaged in an inquiry
finds his checks and control specifically in the situation in which he
is employed, while the theorizer at large leaves out these checks and
limits, and so loses his clews. Well, the words "experience," "sit
uation," etc., are used to remind the thinker of the need of reversion
to precisely something which never can be one of the terms of his
reflection but which nevertheless furnishes the existential meaning
and status of them all. "Intuition," mysticism, philosophized or
sophisticated monism, are all of them aberrant ways of protesting
INTRODUCTION 9
likely that they would not have met with so many
misunderstandings. But the essays, save for slight
incidental references, took this background for
granted in the allusions to the universe of non-
reflectional experience of our doings, sufferings,
enjoyments of the world and of one another. It was
their purpose to point out that/reflection ( and, hence,
against the consequences which result from failing to note what is
conveyed by words which are not terms. Were I rewriting these
essays in toto I should try to take advantage of these and other indis
pensable considerations advanced by Mr. Klyce; but as the essays
must stand substantially as they were originally written, and as an
Introduction to them must, in order to be intelligible, be stated in
not incongruous phraseology, I wish simply to ask the reader to bear
in mind this radical difference between such words as "experience,"
"reality," "universe," "situation," and such terms as "typewriter,"
"me," "consciousness," "existence," when used (as they must be used
if they are to be terms) in a differential sense. The term "reality" is
particularly treacherous, for the careless tradition of philosophy
(a carelessness fostered, I am sure, by failure to make verbally
explicit the distinction to which Mr. Klyce has called attention)
uses "reality" both as a term of indifferent reference, equivalent
to everything taken together or referred to en masse as over against
some discrimination, and also as a discriminative term with a highly
eulogistic flavor: as real money in distinction from counterfeit
money. Then, although every inquiry in daily life, whether tech
nological or scientific, asks whether a thing is real only in the sense
of asking what thing is real, philosophy concludes to a wholesale
distinction between the real and the unreal, the real and the appar
ent, and so creates a wholly artificial problem.
If the philosopher, whether idealistic or realistic, who holds that
it is self-contradictory to criticize purely intellectualistic conceptions
of the world, because the criticism itself goes on intellectualistic terms,
so that its validity depends upon intellectual (or cognitive) condi
tions, will but think of the very brute doings in which a chemist
io ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
knowledge having logical properties) arises because
of the appearance of incompatible factors within the
empirical situation just pointed at: incompatible not
in a mere structural or static sense, but in an active
and progressive sense. Then opposed responses are
engages to fix the meanings of his terms and to test his theories
and conceptions, he will perceive that all intellectual knowing is
but a method for conducting an experiment, and that arguments
and objections are but stimuli to induce somebody to try a certain
experiment to have recourse, that is, to a non-logical non-intel
lectual affair. Or again, the argument is an invitation to him to
f note that at the very time in which he is thinking, his thinking is set
in a continuum which is not an object of thought. The importance
attached to the word "experience," then, both in the essays and in
this Introduction, is to be understood as an invitation to employ
thought and discriminative knowledge as a means of plunging into
something which no argument and no term can express; or rather
as an invitation to note the fact that no plunge is needed, since
one s own thinking and explicit knowledge are already constituted
by and within something which does not need to be expressed or
made explicit. And finally, there is nothing mystical about this,
though mysticism doubtless roots in this fact. Its import is only
to call notice to the meaning of, say, formulae communicated by
a chemist to others as the result of his experiment. All that can
be communicated or expressed is that one believes such and such a
thing. The communication has scientific instead of merely social sig
nificance because the communicated formula is a direction to other
chemists to try certain procedures and see what they get. The
direction is capable of expression; the result of the experiment, the
experience, to which the propositions refer and by which they are
tested, is not expressible. (Poetry, of course, is a more competent
organ of suggesting it than scientific prose.) The word "experi
ence" is, I repeat, a notation of an inexpressible as that which
decides the ultimate status of all which is expressed; inexpressible
not because it is so remote and transcendent, but because it is so
immediately engrossing and matter of course.
INTRODUCTION n
provoked which cannot be taken simultaneously in
overt action, and which accordingly can be dealt
with, whether simultaneously or successively, only
after they have been brought into a plan of organized
action by means of analytic resolution and synthetic
imaginative conspectus; in short, by means of being
taken cognizance of. In other words, reflection.,
appears as the dominant trait of a situation when there]
is something seriously the matter, some trouble, due
to active discordance, dissentiency, conflict among the
factors of a prior non-intellectual experience; when,
in the phraseology of the essays, a situation becomes
tensional. 1
Given such a situation, it is obvious that the mean
ing of the situation as a whole is uncertain. Through
calling out two opposed modes of behavior, it presents
itself as meaning two incompatible things. The only
way out is through careful inspection of the situation,
1 There are certain points of similarity between this doctrine and
that of Holt regarding contradictions and that of Montague regard
ing "consciousness" as a case of potential energy. But the latter
doctrine seems to me to suffer, first, from an isolation of the brain
from the organism, which leads to ignoring the active doing, and,
secondly, from an isolation of the "moment" of reduction of
actual to potential energy. It appears as a curiously isolated and
self-sufficient event, instead of as the focus of readjustment in an
organized activity at the pivotal point of maximum "tension"
that is, of greatest inhibition in connection with greatest tendency
to discharge. And while I think Holt is wholly right in connecting
the possibility of error with objectively plural and conflicting forces,
I should hardly regard it as linguistically expedient to call counter
balancing forces "contradictory." The counterbalancing forces of
12 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
involving resolution into elements, and a going out
beyond what is found upon such inspection to be
given, to something else to get a leverage for under
standing it. That is, we have (a) to locate the diffi
culty, and (b) to devise a method of coping with it.
Any such way of looking at thinking demands more
over that the difficulty be located in the situation in
question (very literally in question). Knowing
always has a particular purpose, and its solution
must be a function of its conditions in connection
with additional ones which are brought to bear.
Every reflective knowledge, in other words, has a
specific task which is set by a concrete and empirical
situation, so that it can perform that task only by
detecting and remaining faithful to the conditions
in the situation in which the difficulty arises, while
its purpose is a reorganization of its factors in order
to get unity.
So far, however, there is no accomplished knowl
edge, but only knowledge coming to be learning,
the vaulting do not seem to me contradictory in the arch. But if
their presence led me to attempt to say "up" and "down" at the
same time there would be contradiction. But even admitting that
contradictory propositions are merely about forces which are con
tradictory heating and cooling it is still a long way to error.
For propositions about such "contradictions" are obviously true
propositions. It is only when we make that reaction to one factor
which is appropriate to dealing with the other that there is error;
and this can happen where there are no contradictory forces at all
beyond the fact that the agent is pulled two incompatible and
opposed ways at the same time.
INTRODUCTION 13
in the classic Greek conception. Thinking gets no
farther, as thinking, than a statement of elements
constituting the difficulty at hand and a statement
a propounding, a proposition of a method for
resolving them. In fixing the framework of every
reflective situation, this state of affairs also deter
mines the further step which is needed if there is to
be knowledge knowledge fin the eulogistic sense, as
distinct from opinion, dogma, and guesswork, or from
what casually passes current as knowledge. Overt
action is demanded if the worth or validity of the
reflective considerations is to be determined. Other
wise, we have, at most, only a hypothesis that the
conditions of the difficulty are such and such, and
that the way to go at them so as to get over or through
them is thus and so. This way must be tried in
action; it must be applied, physically, in the situa
tion. By finding out what then happens, we test
our intellectual findings our logical terms or pro
jected metes and bounds. If the required reorgani
zation is effected, they are confirmed, and reflection
(on that topic) ceases; if not, there is frustration,
and inquiry continues. That all knowledge, as I
issuing from reflection, is experimental (in the literal/
physical sense of experimental) is then a constituent
proposition of this doctrine.
Upon this view, thinking, or knowledge-getting,
is far from being the armchair thing it is often sup
posed to be. The reason it is not an armchair thing
I 4 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
, is that it is not an event going on exclusively within
i the cortex or the cortex and vocal organs. It involves
the explorations by which relevant data are procured
and the physical analyses by which they are refined
and made precise; it comprises the readings by which
information is got hold of, the words which are experi
mented with, and the calculations by which the
significance of entertained conceptions or hypotheses
is elaborated. Hands and feet, apparatus ^and
appliances of all kinds are as much a part of it as
changes in the brain. Since these physical opera
tions (including the cerebral events) and equipments I
are a part of thinking, thinking is mental, not
because of a peculiar stuff which enters into^ it or of .
peculiar non-natural activities which constitute it,
but because of what physical actsjmd appliances^:
the distinctive^ purrjose for which they are employed
and the distinctive results which they accomplish.
That reflection terminates, through a definitive
\ overt act, 1 in another non-reflectional situation,
within which incompatible responses may again ^ in
time be aroused, and so another problem in reflection
be set, goes without saying. Certain things about
this situation, however, do not at the present time
speak for themselves and need to be set forth. Let
me in the first place call attention to an ambiguity
in the term knowledge." The statement that all
For emphasis I am here exaggerating by condensing into a single
decisive act an operation which is continuously going on.
INTRODUCTION 15
knowledge involves reflection or, more concretely,
that it denotes an inference from evidence gives
offense to many; it seems a departure from fact as
well as a wilful limitation of the word "knowledge."
I have in this Introduction endeavored to mitigate
the obnoxiousness of the doctrine by referring to
" knowledge which is intellectual or logical in char
acter." Lest this expression be regarded as a futile
evasion of a real issue, I shall now be more explicit.
(i) It may well be admitted that there is a real sense
in which knowledge (as distinct from thinking or
inquiring with a guess attached) does not come into
existence till thinking has terminated in the experi
mental act which fulfils the specifications set forth in
thinking. But what is also true is that the object
thus determined is an object of
_
of the thirikingjtfhich^ it
sets a happy term. To run against a hard and painful
stone is not of itself, I should say, an act of knowing;
but if running into a hard and painful thing is an
outcome predicted after inspection of data and
elaboration of a hypothesis, then the hardness
and the painful bruise which define the thing as a
stone also constitute it emphatically an object of
knowledge. In short, the object of knowledge in the
strict sense is its olyective; and this objective isu
not constituted till it is reached. Now this conclusion
as the word denotes is thinking brought to a close,
done with. If the reader does not find this statement
1 6 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
satisfactory, he may, pending further discussion, at
least recognize that the doctrine set forth has no diffi
culty in connecting knowledge with inference, and at
the same time admitting that knowledge in the em
phatic sense does not exist till inference has ceased.
Seen from this point of view, so-called immediate
knowledge or simple apprehension or acquaintance-
knowledge represents a critical skill, a certainty
of response which has accrued in consequence of
reflection. A like sureness of footing apart from
prior investigations and testings is found in instinct
and habit. I do not deny that these may be better
than knowing, but I see no reason for complicating
an already too confused situation by giving them the
name knowledge" with its usual intellectual impli
cations. From this point of view, the subject-matter
of knowledge is precisely that which we do not think
of, or mentally refer to in any way, being that which
is taken as matter of course, but it is nevertheless
knowledge in virtue of the inquiry which has led up
to it.
(2) Definiteness, depth, and variety of meamn ,
attach to the objects of an experience just in the degree </
in which they have been previously thought about,
even when present in an experience in which they do
not evoke inferential procedures at all. Such terms as
"meaning," " significance," "value," have a double
sense. Sometimes they mean a function: the office
of one thing representing another, or pointing to it
INTRODUCTION 17
as implied; the operation, in short, of serving as
sign^ In the^wQJxLIis^anbpl " this meaning is prac
tically exhaustive. But the terms also sometimes
mean an inherent quality, a quality intrinsically
characterizing the thing experienced and making it
worth while. The word "sense," as in the phrase
"sense of a thing" (and non-sense) is devoted to this
use as definitely as are the words "sign" and "sym
bol" to the other. In such a pair as import" and
"importance," the first tends to select the reference to
another thing while the second names an intrinsic
content. In reflection, the extrinsic reference is
always primary. The height of the mercury means
rain; the color of the flame means sodium; the form
of the curve means factors distributed accidentally.
In the situation which follows upon reflection, mean
ings are intrinsic; they have no instrumental or
subservient office, because they have no office at
all. They are as much qualities of the objects in the
situation as are red and black, hard and soft, square
and round. And every reflective experience adds
new shades of such intrinsic qualifications. In other
words, while_reflective _knowing is instrumental to
gaining control in a troubled situation (and thus has
a practical or utilitarian force), it is also instrumental
to the enrichment of the immediate significance of
subsequent experiences. And it may well be that
this by-product, this gift of the gods, is incomparably
more valuable for living a life than is the primary and
1 8 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
intended result of control, essential as is that control
to having a life to live. Words are treacherous in
this field; there are no accepted criteria for assign
ing or measuring their meanings; but if one use the
term "consciousness" to denote immediate values of
objects, then it is certainly true that " consciousness
is a lyric cry even in the midst of business." But it is
equally true that if someone else understands by con
sciousness the function of effective reflection, then con
sciousness is a business even in the midst of writing
or singing lyrics. But the statement remains inade
quate until we add that knowing as a business, inquiry
and invention as enterprises, as practical acts, become
themselves charged with the meaning of what they
accomplish as their own immediate quality. There
exists no disjunction between aesthetic qualities
which are final yet idle, and acts which are practical
or instrumental. The latter have their own delights
and sorrows.
Ill
Speaking, then, from the standpoint of temporal
order, we find reflection, or thought, occupying an
intermediate and reconstructive position. It comes
between a temporally prior situation (an organized /
interaction of factors) of active and appreciative
experience, wherein some of the factors have become
discordant and incompatible, and a later situation,
which has been constituted out of the first situation
fl
k)
INTRODUCTION 19
by means of acting on the findings of reflective in
quiry. This final situation therefore has a richness
of meaning, as well as a controlled character lacking
to its original. By it is fixed the logical validity
or intellectual force of the terms and relations dis
tinguished by reflection. Owing to the continuity
of experience (the overlapping and recurrence of
like problems), these logical fixations become of the
greatest assistance to subsequent inquiries; they are
its working means. In such further uses, they get
further tested, defined, and elaborated, until the vast
and refined systems of the technical objects and
formulae of the sciences come into existence a
point to which we shall return later.
Owing to circumstances upon which it is unneces
sary tojlwell, the position thus sketched was not
developed primarily upon its own independent
account, but rather in the course of a criticism of
another type of logic, the idealistic logic found in
Lotze. It is obvious that the theory in question has
critical bearings. According to it, reflection in its
distinctions and processes can be understood only
when placed in its intermediate pivotal temporal
position as a process of control, through reorgani
zation, of aatSHal^alogical in character. It inti
mates that thinking would not exist, and hence
knowledge would not be found, in a world which pre
sented no troubles or where there are no "prob
lems of evil"; and on the other hand that a reflective
fc)
20 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
method is the only sure way of dealing with these
troubles. It intimates that while the results of
reflection, because of the continuity of experience,
may be of wider scope than the situation which calls
out a particular inquiry and invention, reflection
itself is always specific in origin and aim; it always
has something special to cope with. For troubles
are concretely specific. It intimates also that think
ing and reflective knowledge are never an end-all,
never their own purpose nor justification, but that
they pass naturally into a more direct and vital type
of experience, whether technological or appreciative
or social. This doctrine implies, moreover, that
logical theory in its usual sense is essentially a descrip
tive study; that it is an account of the processes and
tools which have actually been found effective in
inquiry, comprising in the term ^inquiry" both
deliberate discovery and deliberate invention.
Since the doctrine was propounded in an intel
lectual environment where such statements were not
commonplaces, where in fact a logic was reigning
which challenged these convictions at every point,
it is not surprising that it was put forth with a contro
versial coloring, being directed particularly at the
dominant idealistic logic. The point of contact and
hence the point of conflict between the logic set forth
and the idealistic logic are not far to seek. The logic
based on idealism had, as a matter of fact, treated
knowledgejrojn the standpoint of an account, of
INTRODUCTION 21
thought of thought in the sense of conception,
judgment, and inferential reasoning. But while it
had inherited this view from the older rationalism,
it had also learned from Hume, via Kant, that direct
sense or perceptual material must be taken into
account. Hence it had, in effect, formulated the
problem of logic as the problem of the connection of
logical thought with sense-material, and had at
tempted to set forth a. metaphysics of reality _based
upon various ascending stages oTlhT completeness
of the rationalization or idealization of given, brute,
fragmentary sense material by synthetic activity of
thought. While considerations of a much less formal
kind were chiefly influential in bringing idealism to
its modern vogue, such as the conciliation of a scientific
with a religious and moral point of view and the need
of rationalizing social and historic institutions so as
to explain their cultural effect, yet this logic consti
tuted the technique of idealism its strictly intel
lectual claim for acceptance.
The point of contact, and hence of conflict, between
it and such a doctrine of logic and reflective thought
as is set forth above is, I repeat, fairly obvious. Both
fix upon thinking as the key to the situation. I still
believe (what I believed when I wrote the essays)
that under the influence of idealism valuable analyses
and formulations of the work of reflective thought,
in its relation to securing knowledge of objects, were
executed. But and the but is one of exceptional
22
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
gravity thejde^listicjc^ic^^
tion betweejuimnaiiaie^luia^
izjn^jnpnpi^ as a distinction ready-made in experi-
ence, and it set up as the goal of knowledge (and hence
as the definition of true reality) a complete, exhaus
tive, comprehensive, and eternal system in which
plural and immediate data are forever woven into
a fabric and pattern of self-luminous meaning. In
short, it ignored the temporally intermediate and
- instrumental, plarg of reflection; and because it
ignored and denied this place, it overlooked its essen
tial feature: control of the environment in behalf of
human progress and well-being, the effort at control
being stimulated by the needs, the defects, the
troubles, which accrue when the environment coerces
and suppresses man or when man endeavors in
ignorance to override the environment. Hence it
misconstrued the criterion of the work of intelligence;
it set up as its criterion an Absolute and Non-
temporal reality at large, instead of using the crite
rion of se^ificJemOTa]_achi^^
thrill n Tfm frr>1 suppli^ h Y reflection. And with
this outcome, it proved faithless to the cause which
had generated it and given it its reason for being:
the magnification of the work of intelligence in our
actual physical and social world. For a theory which
ends by declaring that everything is, really and
eternally, thoroughly ideal and rational, cuts the
nerve of the specific demand and work of intelligence.
INTRODUCTION 23
From this general statement, let me descend to the
technical point upon which turns the criticism of
idealistic logic by the essays. Grant, for a moment,
as a hypothesis, that thinking starts neither from an
implicit force of rationality desiring to realize itself
completely in and through and against the limita
tions which are imposed upon it by the conditions
of our human experience (as all idealisms have taught),
nor from the fact that in each human being is a
"mind" whose business it is just to "know" to
theorize in the Aristotelian sense; but, rather, that
it starts from an effort to get out of some trouble,
actual or menacing. It is quite clear that the human
race has tried many another way out besides reflective
inquiry. Its favorite resort has been a combination
of magic and poetry, the former to get the needed
relief and control; the latter to import into imagi
nation, and hence into emotional consummation, the
realizations denied in fact. But as far as reflection
does emerge and gets a working foothold, the nature
of its job is set for it. On the one hand, it must
discover, it must find out, it must detect; it must
inventory what is there. All this, or else it will never
know what the matter is; the human being will not
find out what "struck him," and hence will have no
idea of where to seek for a remedy for the needed
control. On the other hand, it must invent, it must
project, it must bring to bear upon the given situ
ation what is not, as it exists, given as a part of it.
24 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
This seems to be quite empirical and quite evi
dent. The essays submitted the thesis that this
simple dichotomization of the practical situation of
power and enjoyment, when menaced, into what is
there (whether as obstacle or as resource), and into
suggested inventions projections of something else
to be brought to bear upon it, ways of dealing with
it is the explanation of the time-honored logical
determinations of brute fact, datum and meaning or
ideal quality; of (in more psychological terminology)
sense-perception and conception; of particulars
(parts, fragments) and universals-generics ; and also
of whatever there is of intrinsic significance in the
traditional subject-predicate scheme of logic. It
held, less formally, that this view explained the
eulogistic connotations always attaching to "reason"
and to the work of reason in effecting unity, harmony,
comprehension, or synthesis, and to the traditional
combination of a depreciatory attitude toward brute
facts with a grudging concession of the necessity
which thought is under of accepting them and taking
them for its own subject-matter and checks. More
specifically, it is held that this view supplied (and
I should venture to say for the first time) an expla
nation of the traditional theory of truth as a corre
spondence or agreement of existence and mind or
thought. It showed that the correspondence or
agreement was like that between an invention and
the conditions which the invention is intended to
INTRODUCTION 25
meet. Thereby a lot of epistemological hangers-on
to logic were eliminated; for the distinctions which
epistemology had misunderstood were located where
they belong: in the art of inquiry, considered as a
joint process of ascertainment and invention, projec
tion, or "hypothesizing" of which more below.
IV
The essays were published in 1903. At that time
(as has been noted) idealism was in practical com
mand of the philosophic field in both England and
this country; the logics in vogue were profoundly
influenced by Kantian and post-Kantian thought.
Empirical logics, those conceived under the influence
of Mill, still existed, but their light was dimmed by
the radiance of the regnant idealism. Moreover,
from the standpoint of the doctrine expounded in the
essays, the empirical logic committed the same logical
fault as did the idealistic, in taking sense-data to
be_rjrimitive (instead of being resolutions of the s>
things of prior experiences into elements for the aim *
of securing evidence); while it had no recognition
of the specific service rendered by intelligence in the
development of new meanings and plans of new
actions. This state of things may explain the contro
versial nature of the essays, and their selection in
particular of an idealistic logic for animadversion.
Since the essays were written, there has been an
impressive revival of realism, and also a development
26 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of a type of logical theory the so-called Analytic
Logic corresponding to the philosophical aspira
tions of the new realism. This marked alteration
of intellectual environment subjects the doctrine of
the essays to a test not contemplated when they were
written. It is one thing to develop a hypothesis in
view of a particular situation; it is another to test
its worth in view of procedures and results having
a radically different motivation and direction. It
is, of course, impossible to discuss the analytic logic
in this place. A consideration of how some of its
main tenets compare with the conclusions outlined
above will, however, throw some light upon the mean
ing and the worth of the latter^/ Although this was
formulated with the idealistic and sensationalistic
logics in mind, the hypothesis that knowledge can be
rightly understood only in connection with consider
ations of time and temporal position is a general one.
If it is valid, it should be readily applicable to a critical
placing of any theory which ignores and denies such
temporal considerations. And while I have learned
much from the realistic movement about the full
force of the position sketched in the essays when
adequately developed; and while later discussions
have made it clear that the language employed in the
essays was sometimes unnecessarily (though naturally)
infected by the subjectivism of the positions against
which it was directed, I find that the analytic logic
is also guilty of the fault of temporal dislocation.
INTRODUCTION 27
In one respect, idealistic logic takes cognizance
of a temporal contrast; indeed, it may fairly be said
to be based upon it. It seizes upon the contrast in
intellectual force, consistency, and comprehensive
ness between the crude or raw data with which science
sets out and the denned, ordered, and systematic
totality at which it aims and which in part it
achieves. This difference is a genuine empirical
difference. Idealism noted that the difference may
properly be ascribed to the intervention of thinking
that thought is what makes the difference. Now
since the outcome of science is of higher intellectual
rank than its data, and since the intellectualistic
tradition in philosophy has always identified degrees
of logical adequacy with degrees of reality, the con
clusion was naturally drawn that the real world
absolute reality was an ideal or thought-world, and
that the sense-world, the commonsense-world, the
world of actual and historic experience, is simply a
phenomenal world presenting a fragmentary manifes
tation of that thought which the process of human
thinking makes progressively explicit and articulate.
This perception of the intellectual superiority of
objects which are constituted at the conclusion of
thinking over those which formed its data may fairly
be termed the empirical factor in the idealistic logic.
The essence of the realistic reaction, on its logical side,
is exceedingly simple. It starts from those objects
with which science, approved science, ends. Since
i
28 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
they are the objects which are known, which are true,
they are the real objects. That they are also objects for
intervening thinking is an interesting enough historical
and psychological fact, but one quite irrelevant to their
natures, which are precisely what knowledge finds
them to be. In the biography of human beings it
may hold good that apprehension of objects is arrived
at only through certain wanderings, endeavors, exer
cises, experiments; possibly acts called sensation,
memory, reflection may be needed by men in reaching
a grasp of the objects. But such things denote facts
about the history of the knower, not about the nature
of the known object. Analysis will show, moreover,
that any intelligible account of this history, any veri
fied statement of the psychology of knowing assumes
objects which are unaffected by the knowing other
wise the pretended history is merely pretense and
not to be trusted. The history of the process of
knowing, moreover, implies also the terms and prop-
ositions-truths-of logic. That logic must there
fore be assumed as a science of objects real and true,
quite apart from any process of thinking them,
short, the requirement is that we shall think things
as they are themselves, not make them into objects
constructed by thinking.
This revival of realism coincided also with an
important movement in mathematics and logic:
the attempt to treat logical distinctions by mathe
matical methods; while at the same time mathe-
INTRODUCTION 29
matical subject-matter had become so generalized
that it was a theory of types and orders of terms and
propositions in short, a logic. Certain minds have
always found mathematics the type of knowledge,
because of its definiteness, order, and comprehensive
ness. The wonderful accomplishments of modern
mathematics, including its development into a type
of highly generalized logic, was not calculated to
lessen the tendency. And while prior philosophers
have generally played their admiration of mathematics
into the hands of idealism (regarding mathematical
subject-matter as the embodiment or manifestation
of pure thought), the new philosophy insisted that
the terms and types of order constituting mathe
matical and logical subject-matter were real in their
own right, and (at most) merely led up to and dis
covered by thinking an operation, moreover, itself
subjected (as has been pointed out) to the entities
and relationships set forth by logic.
The inadequacy of this summary account may
be pardoned in view of the fact that no adequate
exposition is intended; all that is wanted is such a
statement of the general relationship of idealism to
realism as may serve as the point of departure for a
comparison with the instrumentalism of the essays.
In bare outline, it is obvious that the two latter
agree in regarding thinking as instrumental, not as
constitutive. But this agreement turns out to be
a formal matter in contrast with a disagreement
3 o ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
concerning that to which thinking is instrumental.
The new realism finds that it is instrumental simply
to knowledge of objects. From this it infers ^ (with
perfect correctness and inevitableness) that thinking
(including all the operations of discovery and testing
as they might be set forth in an inductive logic) is
a mere psychological preliminary, utterly irrelevant
to any conclusions regarding the nature of objects
known. The thesis of the essays is that thinking
is instrumental to a control of the environment, a
control effected through acts which would not be
undertaken without the prior resolution of a complex
situation into assured elements and an accompanying
projection of possibilities without, that is to say,
thinking.
Such an instrumentalism seems to analytic realism
but a variant of idealism. For it asserts that pro
cesses of reflective inquiry play a part in shaping the
objects namely, terms and propositions which
constitute the bodies of scientific knowledge. Now
it must not only be admitted but proclaimed that the
doctrine of the essays holds that intelligence is not
an otiose affair, nor yet a mere preliminary to a
spectator-like apprehension of terms and propositions.
In so far as it is idealistic to hold that objects of
knowledge in their capacity of distinctive objects of
knowledge are determined by intelligence, it is ideal
istic. It believes that faith in the constructive, the
creative, competency of intelligence was the redeeming
INTRODUCTION 31
element in historic idealisms. Lest, however, we be
misled by general terms, the scope and limits of this
" idealism" must be formulated.
( z ) Its distinguishing trait_js that it defines
by function, by woj-k done,
It does not start with
a power, an entity or substance or activity which
is ready-made thought or reason and which as such
constitutes the world. Thought, intelligence, is to
jtjust a name for the events and acts which make UP
trjejprocesses of analytic inspection and projected
invention and testing which have been described.
These events, these* acts, are wholly natural; they
are "realistic"; they comprise the sticks and stones,
the bread and butter, the trees and horses, the eyes
and ears, the lovers and haters, the sighs and delights
of ordinary experience. Thinking is what some of the
actual_existences_^) They are in no sense consti
tuted by thinking; on the contrary, the problems of
thought are set by their difficulties and its resources
are furnished by their efficacies; its acts are their
doings adapted to a distinctive end.
(2) The reorganization, the modification, effected
by ^ thinking is, by this hypothesis, a physical one.
Thinking ends in experiment and experiment is an
actual alteration of a physicaUy antecedent situation
in those details or respects which called for thought
in order to do away with some evil. To suffer a
disease and to try to do something for it is a primal
32 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
experience; to look into the disease, to try and find
out just what makes it a disease, to invent or
hypothecate remedies is a reflective experience;
to try the suggested remedy and see whether the
disease is helped is the act which transforms the data
and the intended remedy into knowledge objeots.
And this transformation into knowledge objects is
also effected by changing physical things by physical
means.
Speaking from this point of view, the decisive
consideration as between instrumentalism and ana
lytic realism is whether the operation of experimen
tation is or is not necessary to knowledge. The
instrumental theory holds that it is; analytic realism
holds that even though it were essential in getting
knowledge (or in learning), it has nothing to do with
knowledge itself, and hence nothing to do with the
known object: that it makes a change only in the
knower, not in what is to be known. And for pre
cisely the same reason, instrumentalism holds that
an object as a knowledge-object is never a whole;
that it is surrounded with and inclosed by things
which are quite other than objects of knowledge, so
that knowledge cannot be understood in isolation
or when taken as mere beholding or grasping of
objects. That is to say, while it is making the sick man
better or worse (or leaving him just the same) which
determines the knowledge-value of certain findings of
fact and certain conceptions as to mode of treatment
INTRODUCTION 33
(so that by the treatment they become definitely
knowledge-objects), yet improvement or deterioration
of the patient is other than an object of cognitive appre
hension. Its knowledge-object phase is a selection
in reference to prior reflections. So the laboratory
experiment of a chemist which brings to a head a long
reflective inquiry and settles the intellectual status
of its findings and theorizings (thereby making them
into cognitive concerns or terms and propositions)
is itself much more than a knowledge of terms and
propositions, and only by virtue of this surplusage
is it even contemplative knowledge. He knows, say,
tin, when he has made tin into an outcome of his
investigating procedures, but tin is much more than
a term of knowledge.
Putting the matter in a slightly different way,
logical (as distinct from naive) realism confuses means
of knowledge with objects of knowledge. The means
are twofold: they are (a) the data of a particular
inquiry so far as they are significant because of prior
experimental inquiries; and (b) they are the meanings
which have been settled in consequence of prior
intellectual undertakings: on the one hand, particu
lar things or qualities as signs; on the other, general
meanings as possibilities of what is signified by given
data. Our physician has in advance a technique for
telling that certain particular traits, if he finds them,
are symptoms, signs; and he has a store of diseases
and remedies in mind which may possibly be meant
34 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
in any given case. From prior reflective experiments
he has learned to look for temperature, for rate of
heartbeats, for sore spots in certain places; to take
specimens of blood, sputum, of membrane, and subject
them to cultures, microscopic examination, etc. He
has acquired certain habits, in other words, in virtue
of which certain physical qualities and events are
more than physical, in virtue of which they are signs
or indications of something else.
On the other hand, this something else is a some
what not physically present at the time : it is a series of
events still to happen. It is suggested by what is
given, but is no part of the given. Now, in the
degree in which the physician comes to the examina
tion of what is there with a large and comprehensive
stock of such possibilities or meanings in mind, he
will be intellectually resourceful in dealing with a
particular case. They (the concepts or universals
of the situation) are (together with the sign-capacity
of the data) the means of knowing the case in hand;
they are the agencies of transforming it, through the
actions which they call for, into an object an object
of knowledge, a truth to be stated in propositions.
But since the professional (as distinct from the human)
knower is particularly concerned with the elaboration
of these tools, the professional knower of which the
class philosopher presents of course one case ungen
erously drops from sight the situation in its integrity
and treats these instrumentalities of knowledge as
INTRODUCTION 35
objects of knowledge. Each of these aspects signs
and things signified is sufficiently important to
deserve a section on its own account.
V
The position taken in the essays isjrankly reah stir
in acknowledging that certain brute existences,
detected or laid bare by thinking but in no way con
stituted out of thought or any mental process, set
every^^roblcm for~-i^njJQj]^jj ; dJ]ne serve to test
its otherwise merely speculative results. It is simply
insisted that as a matter of fact these brute existences
are equivalent neither to the objective content of the
situations, technological or artistic or social, in which
thinking originates, nor to the things to be known
of the objects of knowledge. Let us take the sequence
of mineral rock in place, pig iron and the manufactured
article, comparing the raw material in its undisturbed
place in nature to the original res of experience,
compare the manufactured article to the objective
and object of knowledge, and the brute datum to the
metal undergoing extraction from raw ore for the sake
of being wrought into a useful thing. And we should
add that just as the manufacturer always has a lot of
already extracted ore on hand for use in machine
processes as it is wanted, so every person of any
maturity, especially if he lives in an environment
affected by previous scientific work, has a lot of
extracted data or, what comes to the same thing, of
36 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
ready-made tools of extraction for use in inference
as they are required. We go about with a disposition
to identifycertain sfaaggsas tables, certain
~
words "^bllhe~?rendrianguage, certain cries as evi
dences of distress, certain massed colors as woods in
the distance, certain empty spaces as buttonholes, and
so on indefinitely. The examples are trivial enough.
But if more complicated matters were taken, it would
be seen that a large part of the technique of science
(all of science which is specifically " inductive"^ in
character) consists of methods of finding ^ out just
what qualities are unambiguous, economical, and
dependable signs of those other things which cannot be
got at as directly as can the sign-bearing elements.
And if we started from the more obscure and complex
difficulties of identification and diagnosis with which
the sciences of physiology, botany, astronomy,
chemistry, etc., deal, we should be forced to recognize
that the identifications of everyday life our "per
ceptions" of chairs, tables, trees, friends differ
only in presenting questions much easier of solution.
In every case, it is a matter of fixing some given
physical existence as a sign of some other existences
not given in the same way as is that which serves as a
sign. These words of Mill might well be made the
motto of every logic: "To draw inferences has been
said to be the great business of life. Everyone has
daily, hourly, and momentary need of ascertaining
facts which he has not directly observed ..... It
INTRODUCTION 37
is the only occupation in which the mind never ceases
to be engaged." Such being the case, the indis
pensable condition of doing the business well is the
careful determination of the_ si^n-forceof spprifir
things^in^experience^ And this condition can never
be fulfilled as long as a thing is presented to us, so to
say, in bulk. The complex organizations which are
the subject-matter of our direct activities and enjoy
ments are grossly unfit to serve as intellectual indi
cations or evidence. Their testimony is almost
worthless, they speak so many languages. In their
complexity, they point, equally in all directions; in
their unity, they run in a groove and point to what
ever is most customary. To break up the complexity,
to resolve it into a number of independent variables
each as irreducible as it is possible to make it, is the
only way of getting secure pointers as to what is indi
cated by the occurrence of the situation in question.
The "objects" of ordinary life, stones, plants, cats,
rocks, moon, etc., are neither the data of science nor
the objects at which science arrives.
We are here face to face with a crucial point in
analytic realism. Realism argues that we have no
alternative except either to regard analysis as falsi
fying (a la Bergson), and thus commit ourselves to
distrust of science as an organ of knowledge, or else
to admit that something eulogistically termed Real
ity (especially as Existence, Being as subject to space
and time determinations) is but a complex made up of
38 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
fixed, mutually independent simples : viz., that Reality
is truly conceived only under the caption of whole and
parts, where the parts are independent of each other
and consequently of the whole. For intrumentalism,
however, the alleged dilemma simply does not exist.
The results of abstractior^and_Miajyas_^&. perfectly
real; bu^jiej^rejealjike everything else, where
they are_ieali that is to say, in some particular
coexistence in the situation where they originate and
operate.
The remark is perhaps more cryptic than enlighten
ing. Its intent is that reflection is an actual occur- J
rence as much so as a thunderstorm or a growing plant,
and as an actual existence it is characterized by specific
existential traits uniquely belonging to it: the entities
of simple data as such. It is in control of the
evidential function that irreducible and independent
simples or elements exist. They certainly are found
there; as we have seen they are "common-sense"
objects broken up into expeditious and unambiguous
signs of conclusions to be drawn, conclusions about
other things with which they the elements are
continuous in some respects, although discrete 1 with
respect to their sensory conditions. But there is no
more reason for supposing that they exist elsewhere
in the same manner than there is for supposing that
1 1 would remark in passing that a recognition that a thing may
be continuous in one respect and discrete in another would obviate
a good many difficulties.
1
INTRODUCTION 39
centaurs coexist along with domestic horses and cows
because they coexist with the material of folk-tales
or rites, or for supposing that pigs of iron pre-existed
as pigs in the mine. There is no falsifying in analysis
because the analysis is carried on within a situation
which controls it. The fallacy and falsifying is on the
part of the philosopher who ignores the contextual
situation and who transfers the properties which
things have as dependable evidential signs over to
things in other modes of behavior.
It is no reply to this position to say that the
"elements" or simples were there prior to inquiry
and to analysis and abstraction. Of course their
subject-matter was in some sense " there "; and, being
there, was found, discovered, or detected hit upon.
I am not questioning this statement; rather, I have
been asserting it. But I am asking for patience and
industry to consider the matter somewhat further. I
would ask the man who takes the terms of logical
analysis (physical resolution for the sake of getting
assured evidential indications of objects as yet un
known) to be tilings which coexist with the things of
a non-inferential situation, to inquire in what way his
independent given ultimates were there prior to analv-
s?F Iwould point out that in any case they did not
pre-exist assigns, (a) Consequently, whatever traits
or properties they possess as signs must at least be
referred exclusively^ to the reflective situation. And
they must possess some distinguishing traits as signs;
40 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
otherwise they would be indistinguishable from any
thing else which happens to be thought of, and could
not be employed as evidence: could not be, in short,
what they are. If the reader will seriously ask just
what traits data do possess as signs, or evidence, I
shall be quite content to leave the issue to the results
of his own inquiries. (6) Any inquiry as to how the
data antecedently exist will, I am confident, show
that they do not exist in Jhe same purity, the same
external exclusiveness and internal homogeneity,
which they present .within the situation of inference,
any more than the iron which pre-existed in the rocks
in the mountains was just the same as the fluxed and
extracted ore. Hence they did not exist in the same
isolated simplicity. I have not the slightest interest
in exaggerating the scope of this difference. The
important matter is not its extent or range, but what
such a change however small indicates: namely,
that the material is entering into a new environment,
amj |ia.s been subjected to the changes which will
make it useful and_effetivp in that, environment. It
is trivial to suppose that the sole or even the primary
difficulty which an analytic realism has to face is the
occurrence of error and illusions, of "secondary"
qualities, etc. The difficulty resides in the contrast
of the world of a naive, say Aristotelian, realism with
that of a highly intellectualized and analytic dis
integration of the everyday world of things. If real
ism is generous enough to have a place within its
INTRODUCTION 41
world (as a res having social and temporal qualities
as well as spatial ones) for data in process of construc
tion of new objects, the outlook is radically different
from the case where, in the interests of a theory, a
realism insists that analytic determinations are the
sole real things. 1
If it be not only conceded but asserted that the
subject-matter generating the data of scientfic pro
cedure antedates the procedure,, it may be asked:
what is the point of insisting so much upon the fact that
data exist only within the procedure? Is not the
statement either a trivial tautology or else an attempt
to inject, sub rosa, a certain idealistic dependence
upon thought into even brute facts ? The question
is a fair one. And the cl&f to the reply may be found
in the consideration that it was not historically an
easy matter to reduce the iron of the rocks to the
iron which could freely and effectively be used in
the manufacture of articles. It involved hitting upon
a highly complicated art, but an art, nevertheless,
which anyone with the necessary capital and education
can command today as a matter of course, giving no
thought to the fact that one is using an art con
structed originally with vast pains. Similarly it
is by art, by a carefully determined technique,
that the things of our primary experience are resolved
into unquestioned and irreducible data, lacking in
1 In effect, the fallacy is the same as that of an idealistic theory
which holds that all objects are "really" associations of sensations.
o
42 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
inner complexity and hence unambiguous. There
is no call for the scientific man in the pursuit of his
calling to take account of this fact, any more than the
manufacturer need reckon with the arts which are
required to deliver him his material. But a logician,
a philosopher, is supposed to take a somewhat broader
survey; and for his purposes the fact which the
scientific inquirer can leave out of account, because
it is no part of his business, may be the important
fact. For the logician, it would seem, is concerned
not with the significance of these or those data, but
with the significance of therejjring suchjthings as
data, with their traits of irreducibleness, bruteness,
simplicity, etc. Now, as the special scientific in
quirer answers the question as to the significance of,
his special brute facts by discovering other facts with
which they are connected, so it would seem that the
logician can find out the significance of the exist
ence of data (the fact which concerns him) only by
finding out the other facts with which they coexist-
their significance being their fac^u^L_cojUiniiilies.
And the first step in the search for these other facts
which supply significance is the recognition that they
have been extracted for a purpose for the purpose
of guidingjniejence. It is this purposeful situation
of inquiry which supplies the other facts which give
the existence of brute data their significance. And
unless there is such a discovery (or some better one),
the logician will inevitably fail in conceiving the import
INTRODUCTION 43
of the existence of brute data. And this miscon
ception is, I repeat, just the defect from which an
analytic presentative realism suffers. To perceive
that the brute data laid bare in scientific proceedings
are always traits of an extensive situation, and of that
situation as one which needs control and which is to
undergo modification in some respects, is to be pro
tected from any temptation to turn logical speci
fication in&) mptaphysiraLaiamism. The need for
the protection is sufficiently great to justify spending
some energy in pointing out that the brute objective
facts of scientific discovery are discovered facts, dis
covered by physical manipulations which detach
them from their ordinary setting.
We have stated that, strictly speaking, dat<i (as
the immediate considerations from which, rontrollprl
inference ; proceeds) are_ not objects_Jmt_jneans ;
i^trumentalities^ of knowlprlgp^ things by which we
know rather than things known. It is by the color
stain that we know a cellular structure ; it is by marks
on a page that we know what some man believes; it is
by the height of the barometer that we know the
probability of rain; it is by the scratches on the rock
that we know that ice was once there; it is by quali
ties detected in chemical and microscopic exami
nation that we know that a thing is human blood and
not paint. Just what the realist asserts about so-
called mental states of sensations, images, and ideas,
namely, that they are not the subject-matter of
44 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
knowledge but its agencies, holds of the chairs
and tables to which he appeals in support of his
doctrine of an immediate cognitive presentation,
apart from any problem and any reflection. And
there is very solid ground for instituting the com
parison: the sensations, images, etc., of the idealist
are nothing but the chairs, tables, etc., of the realist
in their ultimate irreducible qualities. 1 The prob
lem in which the realist appeals to the immediate
apprehension of the table is the epistemological
problem, and he appeals to the table not as an object
of knowledge (as he thinks he does), hut as evidence,
as a means of knowing his conclusion his real object
of knowledge. He has only to examine his own evi
dence to see that it is evidence, and hence a term in
a reflective inquiry, while the nature of knowledge is
the object of his knowledge.
Again, the question may be asked: Since instru-
mentalism admits that the table is really " there, "j
why make such a fuss about whether it is there as
a means or as an object of knowledge ? Is not the
distinction mere hair-splitting unless it is a way of
smuggling in a quasi-idealistic dependence upon
thought? The reply will, I hope, clinch the sig
nificance of the distinction, whether or no it makes
1 This statement is meant literally. The "sensations" of color,
sound, etc., to which appeal is made in a scientific inquiry are nothing
mental in structure or stuff; they are actual, extra-organic things
analyzed down to what is so indubitably there that it may safely
be taken as a basis of inference.
INTRODUCTION 45
it acceptable. Respect for knowledge and its object
is the ground for insisting upon the distinction.
The object of knowledge is, so to speak, a more dig
nified, a more complete, sufficient, and self-sufficing
thing than any datum can be. To transfer the traits
of the object as known to the datum of reaching it,
is a material, not a merely verbal, affair. It is pre
cisely this shift which leads the presentative realist
to substitute for irreducibility and unambiguity of
logical function (use in inference) physical and meta
physical isolation and elementariness. It is this
shift which generates the need of reconciling the
deliverances of science with the structure and qualities
of the world in which we directly live, since it sets up
a rivalry between the claims of the data, of common- ^
sense objects, and of scientific objects (the results of V
adequate inquiry). Above all it commits us to a
view that change is in some sense unreal, since ulti
mate and primary entities, being simple, do not
permit of change. No; whatever is to be said about
the validity of the distinction contended for, it cannot C
be said to be insignificant. A theory which commits
us to the conception of a world of Eleatic fixities as
primary and which regards alteration and organi-
z ^iJ2 n as secondary has such profound consequences
for thought and conduct that a detection of its
motivating fallacy makes a substantial difference.
No more fundamental question can be raised than
the range and force of the applicability to nature,
4 6" ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
life, and society of the whole-and-part conception.
And if we confuse our premises by taking the existen-
, i tial instrumentalitiesof knowledgejor its real objects,
J a]I_disJjntimis~InT^relajtions injnature, life, and
society are thereby requisitioned to be really only
cases of the whole-and-part nature of things.
VI
The instrumental theory acknowledges the objec-
! tivity of meagjjigs as well as of data. They are
referred to and employed in reflective inquiry with the
confidence attached to the hard facts of sense. Prag
matic, as distinct from sensational, empiricism may
claim to have antedated neo-realism in criticism of
resolution of meanings into states or acts of con-
i sciousness. As previously noted, rneaniftgs^are_in-
disp^nsaiile_mstrumentalities of reflection, strictly
coincident with and correlative to what is analytically
detected to be given, or irremovably there. Data
in their fragmentary character pose a problem; they
also_jkfiue_Jt. They suggest possible meanings.
Whether they indicate them as well as suggest them
is a question to be resolved. But the meanings
suggested are genuinely and existentially suggested,
and the problem described by the data cannot be
solved without their acknowledgment and use.
That this instrumental necessity has led to a meta-
physical hypostatizing of meanings into essences or
subsistences having some sort of mysterious being
\
INTRODUCTION
47
apart from qualitative things and changes is a source
of regret; it is hardly an occasion for surprise.
To be sure of our footing, let us return to empirical
ground. It is as certain an empirical fact that one
thing juggests another as that fire alters the thing
burned. The suggesting thing has to be there or
given; something has to be there to do the suggesting.
The suggested thing is obviously not " there" in the
same way as that which suggests; if it were, it would
not have to be suggested. A suggestion tends, in the
natural man, to excite action, to operate as a stimulus.
I may respond more readily and energetically to a
suggested fire than to the thing from which the sug
gestion sprang: that is, the thing by itself may leave
me cold, the thing as suggesting something else may
move me vigorously. The response if effected has
all the force of a belief or conviction. It is as if we
believed, on intellectual grounds, that the thing is a
fire. But it is discovered that not all suggestions are
indications, or signifiers. The whale suggested by
the cloud form does not stand on the same level as
the fire suggested by smoke, and the suggested fire
does not always turn out fire in fact. We are led to
examine the original point of departure and we
find out that it was not really smoke. In a world
where skim-milk and cream suggestions, acted upon,
have respectively different consequences, and where
a thing suggests one as readily as the other (or skim-
milk masquerades as cream), the importance of
48 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
examination of the thing exercising the suggestive
force prior to acting upon what it suggests is obvious.
Hence the act of response naturally stimulated is
turned into channels of inspection and experimental
(physical) analysis. We move our body to get a
better hold on it, and we pick it to pieces to see what
it is.
This is the operation which we have been discussing
\ in the last section. But experience also testifies
\ that the thing suggested is worth attention on its
own account. Perhaps we cannot get very readily
at the thing which, suggesting flame, suggests fire. It
may be that reflection upon the meaning (or concep
tion), "fire," will help us. Fire here, there, or
anywhere, the "essence" fire means thus and so;
if this thing really means fire, it will have certain
traits, certain attributes. Are they there? There
are "flames" on the stage as part of the scenery.
Do they really indicate fire? Fire would mean
danger; but it is not possible that such a risk would
be taken with an audience (other meanings, risk,
audience, danger, being brought in). It must be
something else. Well, it is probably colored tissue-
paper in strips rapidly blown about. This meaning
leads us to closer inspection; it directs our observa
tions to hunt for corroborations or negations. If
conditions permitted, it would lead us to walk up
and get at the thing in close quarters. In short,
devotion to a suggestion, prior to accepting it as
INTRODUCTION 49
stimulus, leads first to other suggestions which may
be more applicable; and, secondly, it affords the stand
point and the procedure of a physical experimenta
tion to detect those elements which are the more
reliable signs, indicators (evidence). Suggestions j i
thus treated are precisely what constitute meanings J \y
subsistences, essences, etc. Without such developv
ment and handling of what is suggested, the process of
analyzing the situation to get at its hard facts, and
especially to get at just those which have a right to
determine inference, is haphazard ineffectively done.
In the actual stress of any such needed determination
it is of the greatest importance to have a large stock
of possible Tfleq.m ngs tn Hrax^jmij and to have them
ordered in such a way that we can develop each
promptly and accurately, and move quickly from one
to another. It is not to be wondered at then that
we not only conserve such suggestions as have been
previously converted successfully into meanings, but
also that we (or some men at least) turn professional
inquirers and thinkers; that meanings are elaborated
and ordered in related systems quite apart from any
immediately urgent situation; or that a realm of
"essences" is built up apart from that of existences.,
That suggestion occurs is doubtless a mystery,
but so is it a mystery that hydrogen and oxygen
make water. It is one of the hard, brute facts that
we have to take account of. We can investigate
the conditions under which the happening takes place,
u
50 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
we can trace the consequences which flow from the
happening. By these means we can so control the
happening that it will take place in a more secure and
fruitful manner. But all this depends upon the
hearty acceptance of the happening as fact. Sug
gestion does not of itself yield meanings; it yields
only suggested things. But the moment we take
a suggested thing and develop it in connection with
other meanings and employ it as a guide of investi
gation (a method of inquiry), that moment we have
a full-fledged meaning on our hands, possessing all
the verifiable features which have been imported at any
time to ideas, forms, species, essences, subsistences.
This empirical identification of meaning by means
of the specific fact of suggestion cuts deep if Occam s
razor still cuts.
A suggestion lies between adequate stimulation
and IqgicaLJndkaiion. A cry of fire may start us
running without reflection; we may have learned, as
children are taught in school, to react without ques
tioning. There is overt stimulation, but no suggest
ing. But if the response is held off or postponed, it
may persist as suggestion: the cry suggests fire and
suggests the advisability of flight. We may, in a
sense we must, call suggestion "mental." But it is
important to note what is meant by this term. Fire,
running, getting burned, are not mental; they are
physical. But in their status of being suggested
they may be called mental when we recognize this
INTRODUCTION 5I
distinctive status. This means no more than that
they are implicated in a specific way in a reflective
situation in virtue of wm ch they are susceptible" of
certain modes of treatment. Their status as sug
gested by certain features of the actual situation (and
possibly meant or indicated as well as suggested) may
be definitely fixed; then we get meanings, logical
terms determinations. 1
Words are of course the agencies of fixation chiefly
employed, though any kind of physical existence a
gesture, a muscular contraction in the finger or leg or
chest under ready command may be used. What is
essential is that there be a specific physical existence
at hand which may be used to concrete and hold on to
the^ suggestion, so that the latter may be handled
on its own account. Until thus detached and refixed
there are things suggested, but hardly a suggestion;
things meant, but hardly a meaning; things ideated,
but hardly an idea. And the suggested thing until
detached is still too literal, too tied up with other
things, to be further developed or to be successfully
used as a method of experimentation in new direc
tions so as to bring to light new traits.
A tei is not of course a mere word; a mere word is non-sense,
for a sound by itself is not a word at all. Nor is it a mere meaning
which is not even natural non-sense, being (if it be at all) super
natural or transcendental nonsense. "Terms" signify that certain
absent existences are indicated by certain given existences, in the
respect that they are abstracted and fixed for intellectual use by
>me Physically convenient means, such as a sound or a muscular
contraction of the vocal organs.
52 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
As data are signs which indicate other existences,
so meanings are signs which imply other meanings. 1
I am doubtful, for example, whether this is a man or
not; that is, I am doubtful as to some given traits when
they are taken as signs or evidences, but I am inclined
to the hypothesis of a man. Having such a tentative or
conceptual object in mind, I am enabled to explore
economically and effectively, instead of at random,
what is present, provided I can elaborate the implica
tions of the term " man." To develop its implications
is all one with telling its meaning in connection with
other meanings. Being a man means, for example,
speaking when spoken to another meaning which
need have been no part of "man" as originally sug
gested. This meaning of " answering questions" will
then suggest a procedure which the term "man" hi its
first meaning did not possess; it is an implication or
implied meaning which puts me in a new and possibly
more fruitful relation to the thing. (The process
of developing implications is usually termed "dis
course " or ratiocination.) Now, be it noted, replying
to questions is no part of the definition of man; it
would not be now an implication of Plato or of the
Russian Czar for me. In other words, there is some
thing in the actual situation which suggests inquiring
as well as man; and it is the interaction between these
This distinction of indication as existential and implication as
conceptual or essential, I owe to Mr. Alfred Sidgwick. See his
Fallacies, p. 50.
INTRODUCTION 53
two suggestions which is fruitful. There is conse
quently no mystery about the fruitfulness of deduc
tionthough this fruitfulness has been urged as
though it offered an insuperable objection to instru-
mentalism. On the contrary, instrumentalism is the
only theory to which deduction js not a mystery.
If a variety of wheels and cams and rods which have
been invented with reference to doing a given task
are put together, one expects from the assembled
parts a result which could not have been got from any
one of them separately or from all of them together
in a heap. Because they are independent and unlike
structures, working on one another, something new
happens. The same is true of terms in relation to
one another. When these are brought to bear upon
one another, something new, something quite un
expected happens, quite as when one tries an acid
with which he is not familiar upon a rock with which
he is unfamiliar that is, unfamiliar in such a con
junction, in spite of intimate acquaintance elsewhere.
A definition may fix a certain modicum of meaning in
the abstract, as we say; it is a specification of a mini
mum which gives the point of departure in every inter
action of a term with other terms. But nothing
follows from the definition by itself or in isolation.
It is explicit (boreingly so) and has no implica
tions. But bring it in connection with another term
with which it has not previously interacted and it
may behave in the most delightful or in the most
54 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
disgustingly disappointing way. The necessity for
independent terms is made obvious in the modern
theory of axioms. It escapes attention in much of the
contemporary logic of transitive and non- transitive,
symmetrical and non-symmetrical relations, because
the terms are so loaded that there are no propositions
at all, but only discriminations of orders of terms.
The terms which figure in the discussions, in other
words, are correlatives brother," "parent," "up,"
"to the right of," "like," "greater," "after." Such
terms are not logical terms; they are hakes of
such terms as "brother-other-offspring-of-the-same-
parents"; "parent-child"; "up-down"; "right-left ^;
"thing-similar-to-another-thing"; "greater -less";
" alter-before." They express positions in a determined
situation; they are relatives, not relations. They
lack implications, being explicit. But a man who
is a brother and also a rival in love, and a poorer
man than his rival brother, expresses an interaction
of different terms from which something might
happen: terms with implications, terms constituting
a proposition, which a correlative term never does-
till brought into conjunction with a term of which it
is not a relative. To have called a thing "up" or
"brother" is to have already solved its import in
some situation. It is dead till set to work in some
other situation.
Experience shows, moreover, that certain qualities
of things are much more fruitful and much more con-
INTRODUCTION 55
trollable than others when taken as meanings to be
used in drawing conclusions. The term must be of a
nature to develop a method of behavior by which to
test whether it is the meaning of the situation. Since
it is desirable to have a stock of meanings on hand
which are so connected that we can move readily from
one to another in any direction, the stock is effective
in just the degree in which it has been worked into a
system -a comprehensive and orderly arrangement.
Hence, while all meanings are derived from things
which antedate suggestion or thinking or " con
sciousness "not all qualities are equally fitted to be
meanings of a wide efficiency, and it is a work of art
to select the proper qualities for doing the work. This
corresponds to the working over of raw material into
an effective tool. A spade or a watchspring is made
out of antecedent material, but does not pre-exist as a
ready-made tool; and, the more delicate and com
plicated the work whichitJias_tQ do, the more art
intervenes. These summary remarks will have to
pass muster as indicating what a more extensive
treatment of a mathematical system of forms wou \^
show. Man began by working such qualities as hate
and love and fear and beauty into the meanings by
which to interpret and control the perplexities of
life. When they demonstrated their inefficacy, he
had recourse to such qualities as heavy and light, wet
and dry, making them into natural essences or
explanatory and regulatory meanings. That Greek
56 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
mediaeval science did not get very far on these lines
is a commonplace. Scientific progress and practical
control as systematic and deliberate matters date
from the century of Galileo, when qualities which
lend themselves to mathematical treatment were
seized upon. "The most promising of these ideal
systems at first were of course the richer ones, the
sentimental ones. The baldest and least promising
ones were the mathematical ones; but the history
of the latter s application is a history of steadily
advancing successes, while that of the sentimentally
richer ones is one of relative sterility and failure." 1
There is no problem of why and how the plow fits,
or applies to, the garden, or the watchspring to time
keeping. They were made for those respective pur
poses; the question is how well they do their work, and
how they can be reshaped to do it better. Yet they
were made out of physical material; men used
ready limbs or roots of trees with which to plow
before they used metal. We do not measure the
worth or reality of the tool by its closeness to its natu
ral prototype, but by its efficiency in doing its work-
which connotes a great deal of intervening art. The
theory proposed for mathematical distinctions and
relations is precisely analogous. They are not the
creations of mind except in the sense in which a tele
phone is a creation of mind. They fit nature because
they are derived from natural conditions. Things
1 James Psychology, II, 665.
INTRODUCTION 57
naturally bulge, so to speak, and naturally alter.
To seize upon these qualities, to develop them into
keys for discovering the meanings of brute, isolated
events, and to accomplish this effectively, to develop
and order them till they become economical tools
(and tools upon tools) for making an unknown and
uncertain situation into a known and certain one, is
the recorded triumph of human intelligence. The
terms and propositions of mathematics are not fictions ;
they are not called into being by that particular act
of mind in which they are used. No more is a self-
binding reaper a figment, nor is it called momentarily
into being by the man who wants to harvest his
grain. But both alike are works of art, constructed
for a purpose in doing the things which have to be
done.
We may say of terms what Santayana so happily
said of expression: " Expression is a misleading
term which suggests that something previously
known is imitated or rendered; whereas the expres
sion is itself an original fact, the values of which are
then referred to the thing expressed, much as the
honors of a Chinese mandarin are attributed retro
actively to his parents." The natural history of
imputation of virtue should prove to the philosopher
a profitable theme. Even in its most superstitious
forms (perhaps more obviously in them than else
where) it testifies to the sense of a service to be
performed and to a demand for application. The
58 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
superstition lies in making the application to ante
cedents and to ancestors, where it is but a shroud,
instead of to descendants, where it is a generating
factor.
Every reflection leaves behind it a double effect.
Its immediate outcome is (as I tried to show earlier)
the direct reorganization of a situation, a reorganiza
tion which confers upon its contents new increments
of intrinsic meaning. Its indirect and intellectual
product is the denning of a meaning which (when
fixed by a suitable existence) is a resource in subse
quent investigations. I would not despise the assist
ance lent by the words "term" and "proposition."
I As slang has it, a pitched baseball is to the batter a
."proposition"; it states, or makes explicit, what he
has to deal with next amid all the surrounding and
momentarily irrelevant circumstance. Every state-
. ment extracts and sets forth the net result of reflection /
up_to_date as a condition of subsequent reflection.
This extraction of the kernel of past reflections makes
possible a throwing to one side of all the consequences
of prior false and futile steps; it enables one to dis
pense with the experiences themselves and to deal only
with their net profit. In a favorite phrase of realism,
it gives an object "as if there were no experience."
It is unnecessary to descant upon the economy of
this procedure. It eliminates everything which in
spite of its immediate urgency, or vividness, or
weight of past authority, is rubbish for the purpose
INTRODUCTION 59
in hand. It enables one to get down to business
with just that which (presumably) is of importance
in subsequent procedure. It is no wonder thatl
these logical kernels have been elevated into meta-
physical essences.
The word "term" suggests the limiting condition
of every process of reflection. It sets a fence beyond
which it is, presumably, a waste to wander an error.
It sets forth that which must be taken into account
a limit which is inescapable, something which is to
ratiocination what the brute datum is to observation.
In classic phrase, it is a notion, that is, a noting,
of the distinctions which have been fixed for the
purposes of the kind of inquiry now engaged in. One
has only to compare the terms of present scientific
discourse with those of, say, Aristotle, to see that the
importance of terms as instruments of a proper
survey of and attack upon existential situations is
such that the terms resulting naturally and spon
taneously from reflection have been dropped and
more effective ones substituted. In one sense, they
are all equally objective; aquosity is as genuine, as
well as more obvious, a notion as the present chemical
conception. But the latter is able to enter a much
wider scope of inquiries and to figure in them more
prosperously.
As a special class of scientific inquirers develops,
terms that were originally by-products of reflection be
come primary objects for the intellectual class. The
60 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
"troubles" which occasion reflection are then intel
lectual troubles, discrepancies within some current
scheme of propositions and terms. The situation
which undergoes reorganization and increase of com
prised significance is that of the subject-matter
of specialized investigation. Nevertheless the same
general method recurs within it, and the resulting
objects the terms and propositions are for all,
except those who produce them, instruments, not
terminal objects. The objection to analytic realism
as a metaphysics of existence is not so much an
undue formalism as its affront to the commonsense-
, world of action, appreciation, and affection. The
affront, due to hypostatizing terms into objects, is
as great as that of idealism. A naive realism with
stands both affronts.
My interest, however, is not to animadvert upon
analytic realism. It is to show how the main tenets
of instrumental logic stand in relation to considera-V
tions which, although ignored by the idealism which
was current when the theory received its first formu
lation, demand attention: the objective status of
data and terms with respect to states of mind or acts
of awareness. I have tried to show that the theory,
without mutilation or torturing, makes provision for
these considerations. They are not objections to it;
they are considerations which are involved in it.
o There are questions at issue, but they concern not
matters of logic but matters of fact. They are
INTRODUCTION 61
questions of the existential setting of certain logical j]
distinctions and relations. As to the comparative |
merits of the two schemes, I have nothing to say
beyond what has been said, save that the tendency of
the analytic realism is inevitably to treat a difference
between the logic of inquiry and of dialectic as if it
were itself a matter to be settled by the logic of
dialectic. I confess to some fear that a philosophy^
which fails to identify science with terms and prop
ositions about things which are not terms and
propositions, will first exaggerate and then miscon- .
strue the function of dialectics, and land philosophy V
in a formalism like unto the scholasticism from
which the older empiricism with all its defects eman
cipated those who took it to heart.
VII
Return with me, if you please, to fundamentals.
The word "ergerience" is used freely in the essays
and without much explanation. In view of the cur
rency of subjectivistic interpretations of that term,
the chief wonder is probably that the doctrine of the
essays was not more misunderstood than was actually
the case. I have already said something designed
to clarify the sense in which the term was used. I
now come back to the matter. What is the reason
for using the term at all in philosophy ? The history
of philosophy supplies, I think, the answer. No
matter how subjective a turn was given to the word
17
62 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
by Hume and Kant, we have only to go to an earlier
period to see that the appeal to experience in phi
losophy was coincident with the emancipation of
science from occult essences and causes, and with the
substitution of methods of observation, controlled
by experimentation and employing mathematical
considerations, for methods of mere dialectic definition
and classification. The appeal to experience was the
cry of the man from Missouri the demand to be
shown. It sprang from the desire to command
nature by observing her, instead of anticipating her
in order to deck her with aesthetic garlands and
hold her with theological chains. The significance
of experience was not that sun and moon, stick and
stone, are creatures of the senses, but that men would
not put their trust any longer in things which are said,
however authoritatively, to exist, unless these things
are capable of entering into specifiable connections
with the organism and the organism with them. It
was an emphatic assertion that until men could see
- how things got into belief, and what they did when
they got there, intellectual acceptance would be
withheld.
Has not the lesson, however, been so well learned
that we can drop reference to experience? Would
that such were the case. But the time does not seem
to have come. Some things enter by way of the
imagination, stimulated by emotional preferences
and biases. For certain purposes, they are not
INTRODUCTION 63
the worse for having entered by that gate, instead of
through sensory-motor adjustments. Or they may
have entered because of the love of man for logical
form and symmetry and system, and because of the
emotional satisfaction which harmony awakens in a
sensitive soul. They too need not be any worse for
all that. But surely it is among the businesses of
philosophy to discriminate between the kinds of
goodness possessed by different kinds of things. And
how can it discriminate unless by telling by what
road they got into our experience and what they do
after they get there? Assuredly the difference is
not in intrinsic content. It is not because of self-
obvious and self-contained traits of the immediate
terms that Dante s world belongs to poetry and New
ton s to scientific astronomy. No amount of pure in
spection and excogitation could decide which belongs
to which world. The difference in status and claim is
made by what we call experience : by the place of the
two systems in experience with respect to their genera
tion and consequences. And assuredly any philosophy
which takes science to be not an account of the world
(which it is), but a literal and exhaustive apprehension
of it in its full reality, a philosophy which therefore
has no place for poetry or possibilities, still needs a
theory of experience.
If a scientific man be asked what is truth, he will
reply if he frame his reply in terms of his practice and
not of some convention that which is accepted upon
19
64 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
adequate evidence. And if he is asked for a descrip
tion of adequacy of evidence, he certainly will refer
to matters of observation and experiment. It is not
the self -inclosed character of the terms and proposiV
tions nor their systematic ordering which settles
the case for him; it is the way they were obtained and
what he can do with them in getting other things.
And when a mathematician or logician asks philosophy
to abandon this method, then is just the time to be
most vigorous in insisting upon the necessity of
reference to "experience" in order to fix the import
of mathematical and logical pretensions. When stu
dents influenced by the symmetry and system of
mathematics cease building up their philosophies in
terms of traits of mathematical subject-matter in
isolation, then empirical philosophers will have less
call to mention experience. Meantime, I know of no
way of fixing the scope and claims of mathematics in
philosophy save to try to point out just at what
juncture it enters experience and what work it does
after it has got entrance. I have made such an
attempt in my account of the fixation and handling
of suggestions as meanings. It is defective enough,
but the defects are to be remedied by a better empirical
account and not by setting up against experience
the claims of a logic aloof from experience.
The objection then to a logic which rules out
knowledge^getting, and which bases logic exclusively
upori~tne traits of known objects, is that it is self- /
INTRODUCTION 65
contradictory. There is no way to know what are the
traits of known objects, as distinct from imaginary
objects, or objects of opinion, or objects of unanalytic
common-sense, save by referring to the operations of
getting, using, and testing evidence the processes of
knowledge getting. I am making no appeal for skepti-
cism at large; I am not questioning the right of the
physicist, the mathematician, or the symbolic logicist
to go ahead with accepted objects and do what he can
with them. I am pointing out that anyone who pro
fesses to be concerned with finding out what knowl
edge is, has for his primary work the job of finding
out why it is so much safer to proceed with just these
objects, than with those, say, of Aristotelian science.
Aristotle was not lacking in acuteness nor in learning.
To him it was clear that objects of knowledge are
the things of ordinary perception, so far as they are
referred to a form which comparison of perceived
things, in the light of a final cause, makes evident.
If this view of the objects of knowledge has gone
into the discard, if quite other objects of knowledge
are now received and employed, it is because the
methods of getting knowledge have been transformed,
till, for the working scientist, "objects of knowledge"
mean precisely the objects which have been obtained
by approved processes of inquiry. To exclude con
sideration of these processes is thus to throw away the-"*
key to understanding knowledge and its objects.
There is a certain ironical humor in taking advantage
66 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of all the improved methods of experimental inquiry
with respect to all objects of knowledge save one,
knowledge itself; in denying their relevancy to know
ing knowledge, and falling back upon the method
everywhere else disavowed the method of relying
upon isolated, self-contained properties of subject-
matter.
One of the points which gave much offense in
the essays was the reference to genetic method to a
natural history of knowledge. I hope what has now
been said makes clearer the nature of that reference.
I was to blame for not making the point more explicit;
but I cannot altogether blame myself for my naivete
in supposing that others understood by a natural
history of knowledge what I understood by it. It had
not occurred to me that anyone would think that the
history by which human ignorance, error, dogma, and
superstition had been transformed, even in its
present degree of transformation, into knowledge
was something which had gone on exclusively inside
of men s heads, or in an inner consciousness. I
thought of it as something going on in the world,
in the observatory and the laboratory, and in the
application of laboratory results to the control of
human health, well-being, and progress. When a
biologist says that the way to understand an organ, or
the sociologist that the way to know an institution,
resides in its genesis and history, he is understood to
mean its history. I took the same liberty for knowl-
INTRODUCTION 67
edge, that is, for science. The accusation of "sub-
jectivisim" taken in this light appears as a depres
sing revelation of what the current opinion about the
processes of knowledge is. To stumble on a stone
need not be a process of knowledge; to hit it with a
hammer, to pour acid upon it, to put pieces in the
crucible, to subject things to heat and pressure to
see if one can make a similar stone, are processes of
knowledge. So is fixing suggestions by attaching
names, and so is devising ways of putting these terms
together so that new suggestions will arise, or so that
suggestions may be transferred from one situation to
another. But not one of these processes is "sub
jective" in any sense which puts subjectivity in
opposition to the public out-of-doors world of nature
and human companionship. To set genesis in
opposition to analysis is merely to overlook the fact
that the sciences of existence have found that con
siderations of genesis afford their most effective
methods of analysis. 1
The same kind of consideration applies to the
favorable view taken of psychology. If reference
to modes and ways of experience to experiencing
is important for understanding the things with which
philosophy deals, then psychology is useful as a
matter of course. For what is meant by psychology is
1 1 have even seen, in a criticism of the essays, the method of gene
sis opposed to the method of experimentation as if experimentation
were anything but the generation of some special object!
h
68 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
precisely a discrimination of the acts and attitudes
of the organism which have a bearing upon re
spective subject-matters and which have accord
ingly to be taken account of before the subject-
matters can be properly discriminated. The matter
was especially striking in the case of Lotze. He
protested constantly against the use of psychology,
and yet his own data and procedures were infected
at every turn by psychology, and, if I am at all
correct, by a false psychology. The particular
separation which he made between psychology and
logic rested indeed upon a particular psychological
assumption. The question is worth asking: Is
not the marked aversion on the part of some philoso
phers to any reference to psychology a Freudian
symptom ?
A word more upon the place assigned by the essays
to need, and purpose and the humanistic factor gener
ally. To save time I may quote a sentence from
an early review which attributes to the essays the
following doctrine: "If the plan turns out to be
i useful for our need, it is correct the judgment is
true. The real-ideal distinction is that between
stimulus of environment and plan of action or tenta
tive response. Both real and ideal are equally experi
ences of the individual man." These words can be
interpreted either so as to convey the position fairly,
or so as radically to misconceive it; the latter course
is a little easier, as the words stand. That "real
INTRODUCTION 69
and ideal" are experiences of the individual man in
the sense that they actually present themselves as
specifications which can be studied by any man who
desires to study them is true enough. That such a
study is as much required for determining their
characters as it is for determining those of carbon
dioxide or of the constitution of Great Britain is also
the contention of the paper. But if the words
quoted suggest to anyone that the real or even the
ideal are somehow possessions of an individual man,
things secreted somewhere about him and then
ejected, I can only say that I cannot understand the
doctrine. I know of no ready-made and antecedent
conception of "the individual man." Instead of
telling about the nature of experience by means of
a prior conception of individual man, I find it neces
sary to go to experience to find out what is meant by
"individual" and by "man"; and also by "the."
Consequently even in such an expression as "my
experience," I should wish not to contradict this
idea of method by using the term "my" to swallow
up the term "experience," any more than if I said
"my house," or "my country." On the contrary,
I should expect that any intelligible and definite
use of such phrases would throw much more light
upon "me" than upon "house" or "country" or
"experience."
The possible misunderstanding is, I think, actual
in the reference to "our deeds" as a criterion of the
70 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
correctness of truth of an idea or plan. According
to the essays, it is the^needs of a situation which are
determinative. They evoke thought and the need
of knowing, and it is only within the situation that
the identification of the needs with a self occurs;
and it is only by reflection upon the place of the
agent in the encompassing situation that the nature of
his needs can be determined. In fact, the actual
occurrence of a disturbed, incomplete, and needy
situation indicates that my present need is precisely
to investigate, to explore, to hunt, to pull apart
things now tied together, to project, to plan, to invent,
and then to test the outcome by seeing how it works as
a method of dealing with hard facts. One source of
the demand, in short, for reference to experience as
the encompassing universe of discourse is to keep us
from taking such terms as "self," "my," "need,"
"satisfaction," etc., as terms whose meanings can be
accepted and proved either by themselves or by even
the most extensive dialectic reference to other terms.
Terms like "real" and "ideal," "individual,"
"man," "my," certainly allow of profitable dialectic
(or purely prepositional) clarification and elaboration.
But nothing is settled until these discursive findings
have been applied, through action, to things, and an
experience has been effected, which either meets or
evades the specification conceptually laid down. To
suppose, for example, that the import of the term
"ideal" can be settled apart from exhibiting in
INTRODUCTION 71
experience some specific affair, is to maintain in
philosophy that belief in the occult essence and hidden
cause which science had to get rid of before it got
on the right track. Because idealism misconceived
experience is no reason for throwing away its signifi
cant point of contact with modern science and for
having recourse then to objects distinguished from
old-fashioned Dinge an Sick only because they involve
just that reference to those experiences by which they
were established and to which they are applied that
prepositional or analytic realism professedly and
elaborately ignores. In revenge, this ignoring leaves
on our hands the "me," or knowing self, as a separate
thing within which experience falls (instead of its
falling in a specifiable place within experience), and
generates the insoluble problem of how a subjective
experience can beget objective knowledge.
In concluding, let me say that reference to experi
ence seems at present to be the easiest way of realiz
ing the continuities among subject-matters that are
always getting split up into dualisms. A creation of
a world of subsistences or essences which are quite
other than the world of natural existences (which
are other than natural existences adapted to the
successful performance of inference) is in itself a
technical matter, though a discouraging one to a
philosopher expertly acquainted with all the diffi
culties which that view has generated from the
time of Plato down. But the assistance which such a
72 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
philosophy lends to the practical and current divorce
of the "ideal" from the natural world makes it a
thing to be dreaded for other than professional
reasons. God only knows how many of the sufferings
of life are due to a belief that the natural scene
and operations of our life are lacking in ideal import,
and to the consequent tendency to flee for the lacking
ideal factors to some other world inhabited exclu
sively by ideals. That such a cut-off, ideal world is
impotent for direction and control and change of the
natural world follows as a matter of course. It is a
luxury; it belongs to the "genteel tradition" of life,
the persistence of an "upper " class given to a detached
and parasitic life. Moreover, it places the scientific
inquirer within that irresponsible class. If philoso
phers could aid in making it clear to a troubled
humanity that ideals are continuous with natural
events, that they but represent their possibilities, and
that recognized possibilities form methods for a con
duct which may realize them in fact, philosophers
would enforce the sense of a social calling and respon
sibility. I do not say that pointing out the continuity
and interaction of various attitudes and interests in
experience is the only way of effecting this consumma
tion. But for a large number of persons today it is
the readiest way.
Much may be said about that other great rupture
of continuity which analytic realism would maintain:
that between the world and the knower as something
INTRODUCTION 73
outside of it, engaged in an otiose contemplative
survey of it. I can understand the social conditions
which generated this conception of an aloof knower.
I can see how it protected the growth of responsible
inquiry which takes effect in change of the environ
ment, by cultivating a sense of the innocuousness of
knowing, and thus lulling to sleep the animosity of
those who, being in control, had no desire to permit
reflection which had practical import. I can see how
specialists at any time, professional knowers, so to
speak, find in this doctrine a salve for conscience a
solace which all thinkers need as long as an effective
share in the conduct of affairs is not permitted them.
Above all, I can see how seclusion and the absence of
the pressure of immediate action developed a more
varied curiosity, greater impartiality, and a more
generous outlook. But all this is no reason for con
tinuing the idealization of a remote and separate mind
or knower now that the method of intelligence is per
fected, and changed social conditions not only permit
but demand that intelligence be placed within the
procession of events. An intellectual integrity, an
impartiality and detachment, which is maintained
only in seclusion is unpleasantly reminiscent of other
identifications of virtue with the innocence of igno
rance. To placejmowledge where it arises and oper-^
ates in experience is to know that, as it arose because
oTthe troubles of man, it is confirmed in reconstruct
ing the conditions whlcli^cTa^iolie^those troubles.
74
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
Genuine intellectual integrity is found in experimental
knowing. Until this lesson is fully learned, it is not
safe to dissociate knowledge from experiment nor
experiment from experience.
II
THE RELATIONSHIP OF THOUGHT AND ITS
SUBJECT-MATTER
No one doubts that thought, at least reflective as
distinct from what is sometimes called constitutive
thought, is derivative and secondary. It comes
*"" * - "^^" ~" ^ a
after something and out of something, and for the
sake of something. No one doubts that the thinking
of everyday practical life and of science is of this
reflective type. We think about; we reflect over.
If we ask what it is which is primary and radical to
thought; if we ask what is the final objective for the
sake of which thought intervenes; if we ask in what
sense we are to understand thought as a derived
procedure, we are plunging ourselves into the very,
heart of t.hp. Wical problem : the relation of thought
to its empirical antecedents and to its consequent
truth, and the relation of truth to reality.
Yet from the naive point of view no difficulty
attaches to these questions. The antecedents of
thought are our universe of life and love; of appre
ciation and struggle. We think about anything and
everything: snow on the ground; the alternating
clanks and thuds that rise from below; the relation
of the Monroe Doctrine to the embroglio in Vene
zuela; the relation of art to industry; the poetic
75
76 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
quality of a painting by Botticelli; the battle of
Marathon; the economic interpretation of history;
the proper definition of cause; the best method of
reducing expenses; whether and how to renew the
ties of a broken friendship; the interpretation of an
equation in hydrodynamics, etc.
Through the madness of this miscellaneous citation
there appears so much of method: anything event,
act, value, ideal, person, or place may be an object
of thought. Reflection busies itself alike with pjiysi-
cal nature, the recoro^of social achievement, and the
endeavors of social aspiration. It is with reference
to Sucfy affairs that thought is derivative; it is with
reference to them that it intervenes or mediates.
Taking some part of the universe of action, of affec
tion, of social construction, under its special charge,
and having busied itself therewith sufficiently to meet
the special difficulty presented, thought releases that
topic and enters into further more direct experience.
Sticking for a moment to this naive standpoint, we j
jr^-riiy^^^ *
^
derived theory; of primary construction and of
secondary criticism; of living appreciation and of
abstract description; of active endeavor and of pale
reflection. We find that every more direct primary
attitude passes upon occasion into its secondary^
deliberative and discursive counterpart. We find
that when the latter has done its work it passes away
and passes on. From the naive standpoint such
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 77
rhythm is taken as a matter of course. There is
no attempt either to state the nature of the occasion
which demands the thinking attitude, or to formu-
.late a theory of the standard by which is judged its
success. No general theory is propounded as to the
exact relationship between thinking and what ante-
cedes and succeeds it. Much less do we ask how
empirical circumstances can generate rationality of
thought; nor how it is possible for reflection to lay
claim to power of determining truth and thereby
of constructing further reality.
If we were to ask the thinking of naive life to
present, with a minimum of theoretical elaboration,
its conception of its own practice, we should get
an answer running not unlike this: Thirikingjsa
which we pprfo rrn
_ .^
J us t ^jit^QlhejLjie^d^e_en^age in other sorts of
activity: as converse with a friend; draw a plan for
a house; take a walk; eat a dinner; purchase a suit
of clothes, etc. In general, its material is anything
in the wide universe which seems to be relevant to
this need anything which may serve as a resource
in denning the difficulty or in suggesting modes of
dealing effectively with it. The measure of its suc
cess, the standard of its validity, is precisely the
degree in which the thinking actually disposes of
the difficulty and allows us to proceed with more
direct modes of experiencing, that are forthwith
possessed of more assured and deepened value.
78 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
If we inquire why the naive attitude does not go
on to elaborate these implications of its own practice
into a systematic theory, the answer, on its own basis,
is obvious. Thought arises in response to its own
occasion. And this occasion is so exacting that there
is time, as there is need, only to do the thinking which
is needed in that occasion not to reflect upon the
thinking itself. Reflection follows so naturally upon
its appropriate cue, its issue is so obvious, so practical,
the entire relationship is so organic, that once grant
the position that thought arises in reaction to specific
demand, and there is not the particular type of think
ing called logical theory because there is not the
practical demand for reflection of that sort. Our
attention is taken up with particular questions and
specific answers. What we have to reckon with is
not the problem of, How can I think iiberhaupt?
but, How shall I think right here and now? Not
what is the test of thought at large, but what validates
and confirms this thought ?
In conformity with this view, it follows that a
generic account of our thinking behavior, the generic
account termed logical theory, arises at historic
periods in which the situation has lost the organic
character above described. The general theory of
reflection, as over against its concrete exercise, appears
when occasions for reflection are so overwhelming and
so mutually conflicting that specific adequate response
in thought is blocked. Again, it shows itself when
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 79
practical affairs are so multifarious, complicated, and
remote from control that thinking is held off from
successful passage into them.
Anyhow (sticking to the nai ve standpoint), it is
true that the stimulus to that particular form of
reflective thinking termed logical theory is found
when circumstances require the act of thinking and
nevertheless impede clear and coherent thinking in
detail; or when they occasion thought and then
prevent the results of thinking from exercising direct
ive influence upon the immediate concerns of life.
Under these conditions we get such questions as the
following: What is the relation of rational thought
to crude or unreflective experience? What is the
relation of thought to reality? What is the barrier
which prevents reason from complete penetration
into the world of truth ? What is it that makes us
live alternately in a concrete world of experience in
which thought as such finds not satisfaction, and in a
world of ordered thought which is yet only abstract
and ideal ?
It is not my intention here to pursue the line of
historical inquiry thus suggested. Indeed, the point
would not be mentioned did it not serve to fix atten-
tion upon the nature of the logical problem.
It is in dealing with this latter type of question
that logical theory has taken a turn which separates
it widely from the theoretical implications of prac
tical deliberation and of scientific research. The
80 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
two latter, however much they differ from each other
in detail, agree in a fundamental principle.
both assume that every reflective problem and opera
tion arises with reference to some specific situation,
and has to subserve a specific purpose dependent
upon its own occasion. They assume and observe j
distinct limits-limits from which and to which.
There is the limit of origin in the needs of the parti
lar situation which evokes reflection. There is the
limit of terminus in successful dealing with the par
ticular problem presented-or in retiring, baffled, to
take up some other question. The query that
once faces us regarding the nature of logical theory j
is whether refle^iefl-ttpen- reflection shall recognize
these limits, endeavoring to formulate them mor
exactly and to define their relationships to each other
more adequately; or shall it abolish limits, do away
with the matter of specific conditions and specif
aims of thought, and discuss thought and its relation
antecedents and rational consequer
(truth) at large?
At first blush, it might seem as if the very nature
of logical theory as generalization of the reflective
process must of necessity disregard the matter of
particular conditions and particular results as irrel
vant How, the implication runs^_cjmkLj^ection
become generalized save by elimination of details
as frrelfijHUii? Such a conception in fixing the central
problem of logic fixes once for all its future career
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 81
and material. The essential business of logic is
henceforth to discuss the_relation of thought as such
to_jgality._a5 s irh- It may, indeed, involve much
psychological material, particularly in the discussion
of the processes which antecede thinking and which
call it out. It may involve much discussion of the
concrete methods of investigation and verification
employed in the various sciences. It may busily
concern itself with the differentiation of various types
and forms of thought different modes of conceiving,
various conformations of judgment, various types
of inferential reasoning. But it concerns itself with
any and all of these three fields, not on their own
account or as ultimate, but as subsidiary to the main
problem: thej-elation of thought as such^orjit large,
to reali_ty_as such, or^ajLlarge. Some of the detailed
considerations referred to may throw light upon the
terms under which thought transacts its business with
reality; upon, say, certain peculiar limitations it has
to submit to as best it may. Other considerations
throw light upon the ways m_which thought gets at
reality. Still other considerations throw light upon
the forms which thought assumes in attacking and
apprehending reality. But in the end all this is
incidental. In the end the one problem holds: How
do the specifications of thought as such hold good
of reality as such ? In fine, logic is supposed to grow
out of the epistemological inquiry and to lead up to
its solution.
82 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
From this point of view various aspects of logical
theory are well stated by an author whom later on we
shall consider in some detail. Lotze 1 refers to "uni
versal forms and principles of thought which hold
good everywhere both in judging of reality and in\
weighing possibility, irrespective of any difference in
the objects." This defines the -business of pure_ logic.
This is clearly the question of thought as such of^
thought at large or in general. Then we have the
question "of how far the most complete structure
of thought .... can claim to be an adequate
account of that which we seem compelled to assume
as the object and occasion of our ideas." This is^
clearly the question of the relation of thought at
large to reality at large. It^s epistemology. Then
comes "applied logic," having to do with the actual
employment of concrete forms of thought with refer
ence to investigation of specific topics and subjects.
This "applied" logic would, if the standpoint of
practical deliberation and of scientific research were
adopted, be the sole genuine logic. But the existence
of thought in itself having been agreed upon, we have
in this "applied" logic only an incidental inquiry of
how the particular resistances and oppositions which
"pure" thought meets from particular matters may
best be discounted. It is concerned with methods
of investigation which obviate defects in the relation
ship of thought at large to reality at large, as these
1 Logic (translation, Oxford, 1888), I, 10, n. Italics mine.
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 83
present themselves under the limitations of human
experience. It deals merely with hindrances, and
with devices for overcoming them; it is directed by
considerations of utility. When we reflect that this
field includes the entire procedure of practical delibera
tion and of concrete scientific research, we begin to
realize something of the significance of the theory of
logic which regards the limitations of specific origina
tion and specific outcome as irrelevant to its main
problem, which assumes an activity of thought
"pure" or "in itself," that is, "irrespective of any
difference in its objects."
This suggests, by contrast, the opposite mode of
stating the problem of logical theory. Generaliza
tion of the nature of the reflective process certainly
involves elimination of much of the specific material
and contents of the thought-situations of daily life
and of critical science. Quite compatible with this,
however, is the notion that it seizes upon certain
specific conditions and factors, and aims to bring
them to clear consciousness not to abolish them.
While eliminating the particular material of par
ticular practical and scientific pursuits, (i) it may
strive to hit upon the common denominator in the
various situations which are antecedent or primary
to thought and which evoke it; (2) it may attempt
to show how typical features in the specific ante
cedents of thought call out diverse typical modes
of thought-reaction; (3) it may attempt to state
84 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
the nature of the specific consequences in which
thought fulfils its career.
(i) It does not eliminate dependence upon specific
occasions as provocative of thought, but endeavors
to define what in the various occasions renders them
thought-provoking. The j>pejMfir orrasiorL_is not
eliminated, but in^ st.pH upon and brought iato the
foreground. Consequently, empirical considerations
are not subsidiary incidents, but are of essential impor
tance so far as they enable us to trace the generation
of the thought-situation. (2) From this point of
view the various types and modes of conceiving, judg
ing, and inference are treated, not as qualifications
of thought J>er se or at large, but of reflection engaged
in its specific, most economic, effective response to its
own particular occasion; they-axe adaptations f o
control of stimuli. The distinctions and classifica
tions that have been accumulated in " formal" logi:
are relevant data; but they demand interpretation
from the standpoint of use as organs of adjustment
to material antecedents and stimuli. (3) Finally]
the question of validity, or ultimate objective of
thought, is relevant; but relevant as a matter of the
specific issue of the specific career of a thought-
function. All the typical investigatory and verifica-
tory procedures of the various sciences indicate the
ways in which thought actually brings to suc
cessful fulfilment its dealing with various types of
problems.
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 85
While the epistemological type of logic may, as
we have seen, leave (under the name of applied logic)
a subsidiary place open for the instrumental type, the
type which deals with thinking as a specific procedure
relative to a specific antecedent occasion and to a
subsequent specific fulfilment is not able to recipro
cate the favor. From its point of view, an attempt to
discuss the antecedents, data, forms, and objectives
of thought, apart from reference to particular position
occupied and particular part played in the growth
of experience, is to reach results which are not so
much either true or false as they are radically mean- /
ingless because they are considered, apart from!
limits. Its results are not only abstractions (for all \
theorizing ends in abstractions), but abstractions \
without possible reference or bearing. From this
point of view, the taking of something (whether that
something be a thinking activity, its empirical
stimulus, or its objective goal), apa.rt from the limits
of a historic or developing situation, is the essence
oi_meta^hysical procedure in that sense of meta
physics which makes a gulf between it and science. ,
As the reader has doubtless anticipated, it is the
object of this chapter to present the problem and ^
industry of reflective thought from the standpoint
of na ive experience, using the term in a sense wide
enough to cover both practical procedure and con-
crete scientific research. I resume by saying that
this point of view knows n^fi^eddistinction between
86 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
the empirical things and values of unreflective life
and the most abstract process of rational thought.
It knows no fixed gulf between the highest flight of
theory and a control of the details of practical con
struction and behavior. It passes, according to the
occasion and opportunity of the moment, from the
attitude of loving and struggling and doing to that
of thinking and the reverse. Its contents or material
shift their values back and forth from technological
or utilitarian to aesthetic, ethical, or affectional. It
utilizes data of perception of meaning or of discursive
ideation as need calls, just as an inventor now utilizes
heat, now mechanical strain, now electricity, accord
ing to the demands set by his aim. Anything from
past experience may be taken which appears to be
an element in either the statement or the solution
of the present problem. Thus we understand the
coexistence, without ^Qntsadiction, of an indeter
minate j3ossible_jieJjd_anjijJi^^ The
undefined range of possible rnaterials becomes specific
through reference to an end.
In all this, there is no difference of kind between the
methods of science and those of the plain man. The
difference is the greater control by science of the state
ment of the problem, and of the selection and use of
relevant material, both sensible and conceptual. The
two are related to each other just as the hit-or-miss,
trial-and-error inventions of uncivilized man stand
to the deliberate and consecutively persistent efforts
J
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 87
of a modern inventor to produce a certain compli
cated device for doing a comprehensive piece of work.
Neither the plain man nor the scientific inquirer is
aware, as he engages in his reflective activity, of any
transition from one sphere of existence to another.
He knows no two fixed worlds rea lity oti one sicle and
mere subjective ideas on the other; he is aware of no
gulf to cross. He assumes uninterrupted, free, and
fluid passage from ordinary experience to abstract
thinking, from thought to fact, from things to theories
and back again. Observation passes into develop
ment of hypothesis; deductive methods pass into
use in description of the particular; inference passes
into action, all with no sense of difficulty save those
found in the particular task in question. The funda
mental assumption is continuity.
This does not mean^iat fact is confused with
idea, or observed datum with voluntary hypothesis, "
theory with doing, any more than a traveler con
fuses land and water when he journeys from one to
the other. It simply means that each is placed and
used with reference to service rendered the other,
and with reference to the future use of the other.
Only the epistemological spectator of traditional
controversies is aware of the fact that the everyday
man and the scientific man in this free and easy
intercourse are rashly assuming the right to, glide
over ajcjeft in the_\^ejy^ructujre^fj^ality. This fact
raises a query not favorable to the epistemologist.
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
Why is it that the scientific man, who is constantly
plying his venturous traffic of exchange of facts for
ideas, of theories for laws, of real things for hypothe
ses, should be so wholly unaware of the radical
and generic (as distinct from specific) difficulty
of the undertakings in which he is engaged ? We thus
come afresh to our inquiry: Does not the epistemo-
logical logician unwittingly transfer the specific
difficulty which always faces the scientific man the
difficulty in detail of ^grrec^Bld adequate translation
back and forth of this set of facts and this group of
reflective consideration into a totally different
problem of the wholesale relation of thought at large
to reality in general ? If such be the case, it is
clear that the very way in which the epistemological
type of logic states the problem of thinking, in relation
both to empirical antecedents and to objective truth,
makes that problemjnsoluble. Working terms, term
which as working are flexible and historic, relative and
methodological, are transformed into absolute, fixd,
and predetermined properties of being.
We come a little closer to the problem when we
recognize that every scientific inquiry passes histori
cally through at least four stages, (a) The first of
these stages is, if I may be allowed the bull, that in
which scientific inquiry does not take place at all,
because no problem or difficulty in the quality of the
experience presents itself to provoke reflection. We
have only to cast our eye back from the existing
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER
status of any science, or back from the status of any
particular topic in any science, to discover a time
when no reflective or critical thinking busied itself
with the matter when the facts and relations were
taken for granted and thus were lost and absorbed
in the net meaning which accrued from the experience.
(6) After the dawning of the problem there comes a
period of occupation with relatively crude and unor
ganized facts hunting for, locating, and collect
ing raw material. This is the empiric stage, which
no existing science, however proud in its attained
rationality, can disavow as its own progenitor.
(c) Then there is also a speculative stage: a period
of guessing, of making hypotheses, of framing ideas
which later on are labeled and condemned as only
ideas. There is a period of distinction-making and
classification-making which later on is regarded as
only mentally gymnastic in character. And no
science, however proud in its present security of
experimental assurance, can disavow a scholastic
ancestor, (d) Finally, there comes a period of fruit
ful interaction between the mere ideas and the mere
facts: a period when observation is determined by
experimental conditions depending upon the use of
certain guiding conceptions; when reflection is
directed and checked at every point by the use of
experimental data, and by the necessity of finding
such a form for itself as will enable it to serve in a
deduction leading to evolution of new meanings, and
QO ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
ultimately to experimental inquiry which brings to
light new facts. In the emerging of a more orderly
and significant region of fact, and of a more coherent
and self-luminous system of meaning, we have the
natural limit of evolution of the logic of a given
science.
But consider what has happened in this historic
record. Unanalyzed experience has broken up into
distinctionT o.fjacts andjdeas; the factual side has
been developed by indefinite and almost miscellane
ous descriptions and cumulative listings; the con
ceptual side has been developed by unchecked and
speculative elaboration of definitions, classifications,
etc. Then there has been a relegation of accepted
meanings to the limbo of mere ideas; there has been a
passage of some of the accepted facts into the region
of mere hypothesis and opinion. Conversely, there has
been a continued issuing of ideas from the region of
hypotheses and theories into that of facts, of accepted
objective and meaningful objects. Out of a world I
of only seeming facts, and of only doubtful ideas, there /
emerges a world continually growing in definiteness, (
order, and luminosity.
This progress, verified in every record of science >
is an absolute monstrosity from the standpoint of the
epistemology which assumes a thought in general, on
one side, and a reality in general, on the other. The
reason that it does not present itself as such a monster
and miracle to those actually concerned with it is
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 91
because continuity of reference and of use controls all
diversities in the modes of existence specified and the
types of significance assigned. The distinction of
meaning and fact is treated in the growth of a science,
^>r of any particular scientific problem, as an induced
and intentional practical division of labor; as assign
ments of relative position with reference to perform-A
ance of a task; as deliberate distribution of forces
at command for their more economic use. The
absorption of bald fact and hypothetical idea into the
formation of a single world of scientific apprehension
and comprehension is but the successful achieving of
the aim on account of which the distinctions in ques
tion were instituted.
Thus we come back to the problem of logical
theory. To take the distinctions of thought and
fact, etc., as ontological, as inheren,tly_fixed in the
makeup of the structure of being, results in treating
the actual technique of scientific inquiry and scientific
control as a mere subsidiary topic ultimately of
only utilitarian worth. It also states the terms upon
which thought and being transact business in a way
so totally alien to concrete experience that it creates
a problem which can be discussed only in terms of ^
itself not in terms of the conduct of life. As against
this, the logic which aligns itself with the origin
and employ of reflective thought in everyday life
and critical science follows the natural history of
thinking as a life-process having its own generating
92 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
S
s
antecedents and stimuli, its own states and career,
and its own specific objective or limit.
J This point of view makes it possible for logical
theory to come to terms with psychology. When
logic is considered as having to do with the wholesale
activity of thoughtless, the question of the historic
process by which this or that particular thought
came to be, of how its object happens to present itself
as sensory, or perceptual, or conceptual, is quite
A irrelevant. These things are mere temporal acci
dents. The psychologist (not lifting his gaze from
^ the realm of the changeable) may find in them matters
of interest. His whole industry is just with natural
history to trace events as they mutually excite and
inhibit one another. But the logician, we are told,
has a deeper problem and an outlook of more un
bounded horizon. He deals with the question of the
eternal nature of thought and its eternal validity
in relation to an eternal reality. He is concerned,^
not with genesis, but with value, not with a historic
cycle, but with absolute entities and relations.
Still the query haunts us: Is this so in truth ? Or
has the logician of a certain type arbitrarily made it
so by taking his terms apart from reference to the
specific occasions in which they arise and situations
in which they function? If the latter, then the
very denial of historic relationship, the denial of the
significance of historic method, is indicative of the
unreal character of his own abstraction. It means
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 93
in effect that the affairs under consideration have
been isolated from the conditions in which alone they
have determinable meaning and assignable worth.
It is astonishing that, in the face of the advance of
the ey^hitioriary method in natural science, any
logician can persist in the assertion of a rigid difference
between the problem of origin and of nature; between
genesis and analysis; between history and validity.
Such assertion simply reiterates as final a distinction
which grew up and had meaning in pre-evolutionary
science. It asserts, against the most marked advance
which scientific method has yet made, a survival of a
crude period of logical scientific procedure. We have
no choice save either to conceive of thinking as a
response to a specific stimulus, or else to regard it <-
as something "in itself," having just in and of itself
certain traits, elements, and laws. If we give up
the last view, we must take the former. In this case
it will still possess distinctive traits, but they will be
traits of a specific response to a specific stimulus.
The significance of the evolutionary method in
biology and social history is that every Distinct organ,
structure, or formation, every grouping of cells or A
elements, is to be treated as an instrument of adjust
ment or adaptation to a particular environing situa
tion. Its meaning, its character, its force, is known
when, and only when, it is considered as an arrange
ment for meeting the conditions involved in some
specific situation. This analysis is carried out by
94 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
tracing successive stages of development by endeav
oring to locate the particular situation in which each
structure has its origin, and by tracing the successive
modifications through which, in response to changing
media, it has reached its present conformation. 1 To
persist in condemning natural history from the stand
point of what natural history meant before it identi
fied itself with an evolutionary process is not so much
to exclude the natural-history standpoint from philo
sophic consideration as it is to evince ignorance of
what it signifies.
Psychology as the natural history of the various
attitudes and structures through which experiencing
passes, as an account of the conditions under which
this or that attitude emerges, and of the way in which
it influences, by stimulation or inhibition, production
of other states or conformations of reflection, is
indispensable to logical evaluation the moment we
treat logical theory as an account of thinking as a
response to its own generating conditions, and con-
Vsequently judge its validity by reference to its effi
ciency in meeting its problems. The historical point
of view describes the sequence; the normative follows
the history to its conclusion, and then turns back
and judges each historical step by viewing it in refer
ence to its own outcome.
In the course of changing experience we keep our
balance in moving from situations of an affectional
1 See Philosophical Review, XI, 117-20.
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 95
quality to those which are practical or appreciative
or reflective, because we bear constantly in mind the
context in which any particular distinction presents
itself. As we submit each characteristic function
and situation of experience to our gaze, we find it L/
has a dual aspect. Wherever there is striving there
are obstacles; wherever there is affection there
are persons who are attached; wherever there is
doing there is accomplishment; wherever there is
appreciation there is value; wherever there is think
ing there is material-in-question. We keep our
footing as we move from one attitude to another,
from one characteristic quality to another, because of
the position occupied in the whole movement by the
particular function in which we are engaged.
The distinction between each attitude and function
and its predecessor and successor is serial, dynamic,
operative. The distinctions within any given opera
tion or function are structural, contemporaneous,
and distributive. Thinking follows, we will say,
striving, and doing follows thinking. Each in the
fulfilment of its own function inevitably calls out its
successor. But coincident, simultaneous, and cor
respondent within doing is the distinction of doer
and of deed ; within the function of thought, of think
ing and material thought upon; within the function
of striving, of obstacle and aim, of means and end. We
keep our paths straight because we do not confuse
the sequential and functional relationship of types
96 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of experience with the contemporaneous and struc
tural distinctions of elements within a given func
tion. In the seeming maze of endless confusion and
unlimited shiftings, we find our way by the means of
the stimulations and checks occurring within the
process in which we are actually engaged. Operating
within empirical situations we do not contrast or
confuse a condition which is an element in the forma
tion of one operation ^ith the status which is one of
the distributive terms of another function. When we
ignore these specific empirical clews and limitations,
we have at once an insoluble, because meaningless,
problem upon our hands.
Now the epistemological logician deliberately shuts
himself of! from those cues and checks upon which the
plain man instinctively relies, and which the scientific
man deliberately searches for and adopts as consti
tuting his technique. Consequently he is likely to
set the attitude which has place and significance only
in one of the serial functional situations of experience
over against the active attitude which describes part
of the structural constitution of another situation; or
with equal lack of justification to assimilate materials
characteristic of different stages to one another. He
sets the agent, as he is found in the intimacy of love or
appreciation, over against the externality of the fact,
as that is defined within the reflective process. He
takes the material which thought selects as its prob
lematic data as identical with the significant con-
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 97
tent which results from successful pursuit of inquiry;
and this in turn he regards as the material which was
presented before thinking began, whose peculiarities
were the means of awakening thought. He identi- jw>
fies the finaLdeposit of the thought-function with its
own generating antecedent, and then disposes of the
resulting surd by reference to some metaphysical
consideration, which remains when logical inquiry,
when science (as interpreted by him), has done its
work. He does this, not because he prefers confusion
to order, or error to truth, but simply because, when
the chain of historic sequence is cut, the vessel of
thought is afloat to veer upon a sea without soundings
or moorings. There are but two alternatives: either
there is an object "in itself" of mind "in itself," or else
there are a series of situations where elements vary % -
with the varying functions to which they belong. If
the latter, the only way in which the characteristic
terms of situations can be denned is by discriminating
the functions to which they belong. And the epistemo-
logical logician, in choosing to take his question as* one
of thought which has its own form just as "thought,"
apart from the limits of the special work it has to do,
has deprived himself of these supports and stays.
The problem of logic has a more general and a more
specific phase. In its generic form, it deals with this
question: How does one type of functional situation
and attitude in experience pass out of and into
another; for example, the technological or utilitarian
98 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
into the aesthetic, the aesthetic into the religious,
the religious into the scientific, and this into the socio-
ethical and so on? The more specific question is:
How does the particular functional situation termed
the reflective behave? How shall we describe it?
What in detail are its diverse contemporaneous dis
tinctions, or divisions of labor, its correspondent
statuses; in what specific ways do these operate with
reference to each other so as to effect the specific
aim which is proposed by the needs of the affair ?
This chapter may be brought to conclusion by
reference to the more ultimate value of the logic of
experience, of logic taken in its wider sense; that is,
as an account of the sequence of the various typical
functions or situations of experience in their deter
mining relations to one another. Philosophy, defined
as such a logic, makes no pretense to be an account
\/ of a closed and finished universe. Its business is
not to secure or guarantee ^nvjparticular reality or
value. Per contra, it gets the significance of a method.
The right relationship and adjustment of the various
typical phases of experience to one another is a prob
lem felt in every department of life. Intellectual
rectification and control of these adjustments cannot
fail to reflect itself in an added clearness and security
on the_r2racticaUide. It may be that general logic
cannot become an instrument in the immediate
direction of the activities of science or art or industry;
but it is of value in criticizing and organizing tools of
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 99
immediate research. It also has direct significance
in the valuation for social or life-purposes of results
achieved in particular branches. Much of the imme
diate business of life is badly done because we do not
know the genesis and outcome of the work that occu
pies us. The manner and degree of appropriation
of the goods achieved in various departments of
social interest and vocation are partial and faulty
because we are not clear as to the due rights and
responsibilities of one function of experience in refer
ence to others.
The value of research for social progress; the bear
ing of psychology upon educational procedure; the
mutual relations of fine and industrial art; the ques
tion of the extent and nature of specialization in
science in comparison with the claims of applied
science; the adjustment of religious aspirations to
scientific statements; the justification of a refined
culture for a few in face of economic insufficiency for
the mass, the relation of organization to individuality
such are a few of the many social questions whose
answer depends upon the possession and use of a
general logic of experience as a method of inquiry and
interpretation. I do not say that headway cannot be
made in such questions apart from the method indi
cated: a logic of experience. But unless we have a
critical and assured view of the juncture in which and
with reference to which a given attitude or interest
arises, unless we know the service it is thereby called
ioo ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
upon to perform, and hence the organs or methods by
which it best functions in that service, our progress
is impeded and irregular. We take a part for a
whole, a means for an end; or we attack wholesale
some interest because it interferes with the deified
sway of the one we have selected as ultimate. A
clear and comprehensive consensus of social convic
tion and a consequent concentrated and economical
direction of effort are assured only as there is some
way of locating the position and role of each typical
interest and occupation. The domain of opinion
is one of conflict; its rule is arbitrary and costly.
Only intellectual method affords a substitute for
opinion. A general logic of experience alone can
do for social qualities and aims what the natural
sciences after centuries of struggle are doing for
activity in the physical realm.
This does not mean that systems of philosophy
which have attempted to state the nature of thought
and of reality at large, apart from limits of particular
situations in the movement of experience, have been
worthless though it does mean that their industry
has been somewhat misapplied. The unfolding of
metaphysical theory has made large contributions
to positive evaluations of the typical situations and
relationships of experience even when its conscious
intention has been quite otherwise. Every system of
philosophy is itself a mode of reflection; consequently
(if our main contention be true), it too has been evoked
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER 101
out of specific social antecedents, and has had its
use as a response to them. It has effected something
in modifying the situation within which it found its
origin. It may not have solved the problem which it
consciously put itself; in many cases we may freely
admit that the question put has been found afterward
to be so wrongly put as to be insoluble. Yet exactly
the same thing is true, in precisely the same sense, in
the history of science. For this reason, if for no other,
it is impossible for the scientific man to cast the first
stone at the philosopher.
The progress of science in any branch continually
brings with it a realization that problems in their
previous form of statement are inaaLuble__because put
in terms of unreal conditions; because the real con
ditions have been mixed up with mental artifacts
or misconstructions. Every science is continually
learning that its supposed solutions are only appar
ent because the "solution" solves, not the actual
problem, but one which has been made up. But the
very putting of the question, the very giving of the
wrong answer, induces modification of existing intel
lectual habits, standpoints, and aims. Wrestling
with the problem, there is evolution of new technique
to control inquiry, there is search for new facts, insti
tution of new types of experimentation; there is gain
in the methodic control of experience. And all this
is progress. It is only the worn-out cynic, the de
vitalized sensualist, and the fanatical dogmatist who
102 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
interpret the continuous change of science as proving
that, since each successive statement is wrong, the
whole record is error and folly; and that the present
truth is only the error not yet found out. Such draw
the moral of caring naught for all these things, or of
flying to some external authority which will deliver
once for all the fixed and unchangeable truth. But
historic philosophy even in its aberrant forms has
proved a factor in the valuation of experience; it has
brought problems to light, it has provoked intellectual
conflicts without which values are only nominal; even
through its would-be absolutistic isolations it has
secured recognition of mutual dependencies and
reciprocal reinforcements. Yet if it can define its
work more clearly, it can concentrate its energy upon
its own characteristic problem: the genesis and func
tioning in experience of various typical interests and
occupations with reference to one another.
Ill
THE ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF
THINKING
We have discriminated logic in its wider sense-
concerned with the sequence of characteristic func
tions and attitudes in experience from logic in its
stricter meaning, concerned with the function of
reflective thought. We must avoid yielding to the
temptation of identifying logic with either of these to
the exclusion of the other; or of supposing that it is
possible to isolate one finally from the other. The
more detailed treatment of the organs and methods
of reflection cannot be carried on with security save
as we have a correct idea of the position of reflection
amid the typical functions of experience. Yet it is
impossible to determine this larger placing, save as
we have a defined and analytic, as distinct from a
merely vague and gross, view of what we mean by
reflection what is its actual constitution. It is
necessary to work back and
and thejnar rower fields, transforming every increment
upon one side into a method of work upon the other,
and thereby testing it/ The evident confusion of
existing logical theory, its uncertainty as to its own
bounds and limits, its tendency to oscillate from larger
questions of the meaning of judgment and the validity
103
A
104 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of inference over to details of scientific technique,
and to translate distinctions of formal logic into acts
in an investigatory or verificatory process, are indi
cations of the need of this double movement.
In the next three chapters it is proposed to take up
some of the considerations that lie on the borderland
between the larger and the narrower conceptions of
i logical theory. I sh^l3^gUscu^s_^,Jfi^-QUhe func
tion of thQii g ht.in^e J ^nence_so_M^s such locus
enables us to characterize some of the most funda
mental distinctions, or divisions of labor, within the
reflective process. In taking up the problem of the
subject-matter of thought, I shall try to make clear
v/ that it assumes three quite distinct forms according
to the epochal moment reached in control of experi
ence. I shall attempt to show that we must consider
subject-matter from the standpoint, first, of
antecedents or conditions that evoke thought; sec
ondly of the datum or immediate material presented
to thought; and, thirdly, of the
,
thought. Of these three distinctions the first, that
of antecedent and stimulus, clearly refers to the situa
tion that is immediately prior to the thought-functi
as such. The second, that of datum or immediately
given matter, refers to a distinction which is made
within the thought-process as a part of and for 1
sake of its own modus operand*. It is a status in t
scheme of thinking. The third, that of content or
object, refers to the progress actually made in any
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 105
thought-function; material which is organized by
inquiry so far as inquiry has fulfilled its purpose. This
chapter will get at the matter of preliminary condi
tions of thought indirectly rather than directly, by
indicating the contradictory positions into which
one of the most vigorous and acute of modern
logicians, Lotze, has been forced through failing to
define logical distinctions in terms of the history
of readjustment and control of things in experience,
and being thereby compelled to interpret certain
notions as absolute instead of as historic and
methodological.
Before passing directly to the exposition and criti
cism of Lotze, it will be well, however, to take the
matter in a somewhat freer way. We cannot ap
proach logical inquiry in a wholly direct and uncom-
promised manner. Of necessity we bring to it certain
distinctions distinctions partly the outcome of con
crete experience; partly due to the logical theory
which has got embodied in ordinary language and in
current intellectual habits ; partly results of deliberate
scientific and philosophic inquiry. These more or
less ready-made results are resources; they are the
only weapons with which we can attack the new
problem. Yet they are full of unexamined assump
tions; they commit us to all sorts of logically pre
determined conclusions. In one sense our study
of the new subject-matter, let us say logical theory, is
in truth only a review, a retesting and criticizing of
io6 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
the intellectual standpoints and methods which we
bring with us to the study.
Nowadays everyone comes with certain distinctions
already made between the subjective and the objec
tive, between the physical and the mental, between
the intellectual and the factual, (i) We have learned
to regard the region of emotional disturbance, of
uncertainty and aspiration, as belonging peculiarly
to ourselves; we have learned to set over against
this the world of observation and of valid thought as
something unaffected by our moods, hopes, fears, and
opinions. (2) We have also come to distinguish
between what is immediately present in our experi
ence and the past and the future; we contrast the
realms of memory and anticipation with that of sense
perception; more generally we contrast the given
with the inferential. (3) We are confirmed in i
habit of distinguishing between what we call actual
fact and our mental attitude toward that fact-
attitude of surmise or wonder or reflective investiga
tion. While one of the aims of logical theory is pre
cisely to make us critically conscious of the significance
and bearing of these various distinctions, to change
them from ready-made assumptions into controlled
conceptions, our mental habits are so set that they
tend to have their own way with us; we read into
logical theory conceptions that were formed before
we had even dreamed of the logical undertaking which
after all has for its business to assign to the terms in
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 107
question their proper meaning. Our conclusions are
thus controlled by the very notions which need
criticism and revision.
We find in Lotze an unusually explicit inventory
of these various preliminary distinctions, and an un
usually serious effort to deal with the problems which
arise from introducing them into the structure of
logical theory, (i) He expressly separates the matter
of logical worth from that of psychological genesis.
He consequently abstracts the subject-matter of
logic as such wholly from the question of historic
locus and situs. (2) He agrees with common-sense
in holding that logical thought is reflective and thus
prpsnrjpnsps a giwn material. He occupies himself
with the nature of the antecedent conditions. (3) He
wrestles with the problem of how a material formed
prior to thought and irrespective of it can yet afford
stuff upon which thought may exercise itself.
(4) He expressly raises the question of how thought
working independently and from without upon a
foreign material can shape the latter into results
which are valid that is, objective.
If this discussion is successful; if Lotze can provide *
the intermediaries which span the gulf between the
exercise of logical functions by thought upon a
material wholly external to it; if he can show that
the question of the origin of subject-matter of thought
and of thought-activity is irrelevant to the question
of its meaning and validity, we shall have to surrender
io8 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
the position already taken. But if we find that
Lotze s elaborations only elaborate the fundamental
difficulty, presenting it now in this light and now in
that, but always presenting the problem as if it were
its own solution, we shall be confirmed in our idea of
the need of considering logical questions from a differ
ent point of view. If we find that, whatever his
formal treatment, he always, as a matter of fact, falls
back upon some organized situation or function as
the source of both the material and the process of
inquiry, we shall have in so far an elucidation and
even a corroboration of our theory.
We begin with the question of the material ante
cedents of thought antecedents which condition
reflection, and which call it out as reaction or response,
by giving its cue. Lotze differs from many logicians
of the same type in furnishing an explicit account of
these antecedents.
i. The ultimate material antecedents of thought
are found in impressions which are due to external
objects as stimuli. Taken in themselves, these
impressions are mere psychical states or events.
They exist in us side by side, or one after the other,
according as the objects which excite them operate
simultaneously or successively. The occurrence of
these various psychical states is not, however,
entirely dependent upon the presence of the exciting
thing. After a state has once been excited, it gets
the power of reawakening other states which have
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 109
accompanied it or followed it. The associative
mechanism of revival plays a part. If we had a
complete knowledge of both the stimulating object
and its effects, and of the details of the associative
mechanism, we should be able from given data to
predict the whole course of any given train or current
of ideas (for the impressions as conjoined simultane
ously or successively become ideas and a current of
ideas) .
Taken in itself, a sensation or impression is nothing
but a "state of our consciousness, a mood of our
selves." Any given current of ideas is a necessary
sequence of existences (just as necessary as any suc
cession of material events), happening in some par
ticular sensitive soul or organism. "Just because,
under their respective conditions, every such series
of ideas hangs together by the same necessity and
law as every other, there would be no ground for
making any such distinction of value as that between
truth and untruth, thus placing one group in opposi
tion to all the others." 1
2. Thus far, as the last quotation clearly indicates,
there is no question of reflective thought, and hence
no question of logical theory. But further examina r
tion reveals a peculiar property of the current of ideas.
rp merely coincident, while others may
1 Lotze, Logic (translation, Oxford, 1888), I, 2. For the pre
ceding exposition see I, i, 2, 13, 14, 37, 38; also Microkosmus, Book
V, chap. iv.
no ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
be termed coherent. That is to say, the exciting
"causes of some of our simultaneous and successive
ideas really belong together; while in other Ceases
they simply happen to act at the same time, without
there being a real connection between them. By
the associative mechanism, however, both the coher
ent and the merely coincident combinations recur.
The first type of recurrence supplies positive material
for knowledge; the second gives occasion for _error._
3. It is a peculiar mixture of the coincident and
the coherent which sets the peculiar problem of
reflective thought. The business of thought is to
recover and confirm the coherent, the really con
nected, adding to its reinstatement an accessory
justifying notion of the real ground of coherence,
while it eliminates the coincident as such. While
the mere current of ideas is something which just
happens within us, the process of elimination and of
confirmation by means of statement of real ground
and basis of connection is an activity which mind, as
such, exercises. This distinction marks off thought
as activity from any psychical event and from the
associative mechanism as mere happenings. One
is concerned with mere de facto coexistences and
sequences; the other with the cognitive worth of
these combinations. 1
Consideration of the peculiar work of thought in
going over, sorting out, and determining various ideas
1 Lotze, Logic, I, 6, 7.
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING in
according to a standard of value will occupy us in our
next chapter. Here we are concerned with the
material antecedents of thought as they are described
by Lotze. At first glance, he seems to propound a
satisfactory theory. He avoids the extravagancies
of transcendental logic, which assumes that all the
matter jjjLjsxrjgrience is determined from the very
start by rational thought; and he also avoids the
pitfall _of^ purely empirical logic, which_makes no
distinction between the mere occurrence and usso-
ciation of ideas and the real worth and validity of the
various conjunctions thus produced. He allows
unreflective experience, defined in terms of sensations
and their combinations, to provide material condi
tions for thinking, while he reserves for thought a
distinctive work and dignity of its own. Sense
experience furnishes the antecedents; thought has
to introduce and develop systematic connection-
rationality.
A further analysis of Lotze s treatment may, how
ever, lead us to believe that his statement is riddled
through and through with inconsistencies and self-
contradictions; that, indeed, any one part of it can
be maintained only by the denial of some other
portion.
i. The impression is the ultimate antecedent in
its purest or crudest form (according to the angle
from which one views it) . It is that which has never
felt, for good or for bad, the influence of thought.
112 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
Combined into ideas, these impressions stimulate
or arouse the activities of thought, which are forth
with directed upon them. As the recipient of the
Activity which they have excited and brought toj)gar
upon themselves, they furnisj^_also_the material con
tent of thought its actual stuff. As Lotze says over
and over again : " It is the relations themselves already
subsisting between impressions, when we become con
scious of them, by which the action of thought which
is never anything but reaction, is attracted; and this
action consists merely in interpreting relations which
we find existing between our passive impressions into
aspects of the matter of impressions." 1 And again:
" Thought can make no difference where it finds none
already in the matter of the impressions." 2 And
again: "The possibility and the success of thought s
procedure depends upon this original constitution and
organization of the whole world of ideas, a constitu
tion which, though not necessary in thought, is all
the more necessary to make thinking possible." 3
The impressions and ideas thus play a versatile role;
they now assume the part of ultimate antecedents
and provocative conditions; of crude material; and
somehow, when arranged, of content for thought.
This very versatility awakens suspicion.
While the impression is merely subjective and a
bare state of our own consciousness, yet it is deter-
1 Lotze, Logic (translation, Oxford, 1888), I, 25.
Ibid., 36. J Ibid.
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 113
mined, both as to its existence and as to its relation
to other similar existences, by external objects as
stimuli, if not as causes. It is also determined by a
psychical mechanism so thoroughly objective or regu
lar in its workings as to give the same necessary char
acter to the current of ideas that is possessed by any
physical sequence. Thus that which is "nothing but
a state of our consciousness" turns out straightway
to be a specifically determined objective fact in a
system of facts.
That this absolute transformation is a contradiction
is no clearer than that just such a contradiction is
indispensable to Lotze. If impressions were jnothing
JiL^consciousness, moods of oursej/yes,
istenceSj^it is sure enough that we
should never even know them to be such, to say
nothing of conserving them as adequate conditions
and material for thought. It is only by treating them
as real facts in a real world, and only by carrying
over into them, in some assumed and unexplained
way, the capacity of representing the cosmic facts
which cause them, that impressions or ideas come in
any sense within the scope of thought. But if the
antecedents are really impressions-in-their-objective-
setting, then Lotze s whole way of distinguishing
thought-worth from mere existence or event without
objective significance must be radically modified.
The implication that impressions have actually a
quality or meaning of their own becomes explicit
n 4 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
when we refer to Lotze s theory that the immediate
antecedent of thought is found in the matter of ideas.
When thought is said to "take cognizance of relations
which its own activity does not originate, but which
have been prepared for it by the unconscious mechan
ism of the psychic states," 1 the attribution of objective
content, of reference and meaning to ideas, is unam
biguous. The idea forms a most convenient half
way house for Lotze. On one hand, as absolutely
prior to thought, as material antecedent condition,
it is merely psychical, bald subjective event. But
as subject-matter for thought, as antecedent which
affords stuff for thought s exercise, it characteristically
qualifies content.
Although we have been told that the impression
is a mere receptive irritation without participation
of mental activity, we are not surprised, in view of
this capacity of ideas, to learn that the mind actually,
a determining
^
stimuli and in,thejr^furt^_a^ociative ^combinations.
The subject always enters into the presentation of
any mental object, even the sensational, to say
nothing of the perceptional and the imaged. The
perception of a given state of things is possible only
on the assumption that "the perceiving subject is
at once enabled and compelled by its own nature to
combine the excitations which reach it from objects
into those forms which it is to perceive in the objects,
1 Microkosmus, Book V, chap. iv.
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 115
and which it supposes itself simply to receive from
them." 1
It is only by continual transition from impression
and ideas as mental states and events to ideas as <
logical objects or contents, that Lotze bridges the gul
from bare exciting antecedent to concrete material
conditions of thought. This contradiction, again, is
necessary to Lotze s standpoint. To set out frankly
with objects as antecedents would demand recon
sideration of the whole viewpoint, which supposes
that the difference between the logical and its ante
cedent is a matter of the difference between worth
and mere existence or occurrence. It would indicate
that since meaning or value is already there, the task
of thought must be that of the transformation or
reconstruction of meaning through an intermediary
process. On the other hand, to stick by the stand
point of mere existence is not. to get anything which
can be called even antecedent of thought.
2. Why is there a task of transformation? Con
sideration of the material in its function of evoking
thought, giving it its cue, will serve to complete the
picture of the contradiction and of the real facts. It
is the conflict between ideas as mprply-cQlrjrjfjpnf and
ideas as, coherent which constitutes the need-that
provokes the response of_thouht. Here Lotze
vibrates (a) between considering both coincidence
and coherence as psychical events; (b) considering
1 Logic, II, 235; see the whole discussion, 325-327.
n6 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
coincidence as purely psychical and coherence as at
least quasi-logical, and (c) making them both deter
minations within the sphere of reflective thought.
In strict accordance with his own premises, coinci
dence and coherence ought both to be mere peculiari
ties of the current of ideas as events within ourselves.
But so taken the distinction becomes absolutely
meaningless. Events do not cohere; at the most
certain sets of them happen more or less frequently
than other sets; the only intelligible difference is one
of frequency of coincidence. And even this attrib
utes to an event the supernatural trait of reappear
ing after it has disappeared. Even coincidence has
to be denned in terms of relation of the objects which
are supposed to excite the psychical events that hap
pen together.
As recent psychological discussion has mad<
enough, it is the matter, meaning, or content of ideas
that is associated, not the ideas as states or existences.
Take such an idea as sun-revolving-about-earth. We
may say it means the conjunction of various sense
impressions, but it is connection, or mutual reference,
of attributes that we have in mind in the assertion
It is absolutely certain that our psychicaljmagej
the sun is not psycMcally^ J en g 3g^djn_rewlyJM^out
Wr psychicaHnia^e_o^Ieithrit would be amus-
ing if S uclT^e7e~Se~c^eT theaters and all dramatic
representations would be at a discount. But in
truth, sun-revolving-about-earth is a single meaning
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 117
or intellectual object; it is a unified subject-matter
within which certain distinctions of reference appear.
It is concerned with what we intend when we think
earth and sun, and think them in their relation to
each other. It is a rule, specification, or direction of
how to think when we have occasion to think a certain
subject-matter. To treat this mutual reference as
if it were simply a case of conjunction of mental
events produced by psycho-physical irritation and
association is a profound case of the psychological
fallacy. We may, indeed, analyze an experience
involving belief in an object of a certain kind and find
that it had its origin in certain conditions of the sensi
tive organism, in certain peculiarities of perception
and of association, and hence conclude that the belief
involved in it was not justified by the facts themselves.
But the significance of the belief in sun-revolving-
about-earth by those who held it, consisted precisely
in the fact that it was taken not as a mere association
of feelings, but as a definite portion of the whole
structure of objective experience, guaranteed by
other parts of the fabric, and lending its support and
giving its tone to them. It was to them part of the
experienced frame of things of the real world.
Putthe other way, if such an instance meant a mere
conjunction of psychical states, there would be in it.
absolutely nothing to evoke thought. Each idea
as event, as Lotze himself points out (I, 2), may be
regarded as adequately and necessarily determined
n8 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
to the place it occupies. There is absolutely no
question on the side of events of mere coincidence
versus genuine connection. As event, it is there and
it belongs there. We cannot treat something as at
once a bare fact of existence and a problematic subject-
matter of logical inquiry. To take the reflective
point of view is to consider the matter in a totally
new light; as Lotze says, it is to raise the question
of rightful claims to a position or relation.
The point becomes clearer when we contrast coin
cidence with connection. To consider coincidence
as simply psychical, and coherence as at least quasi-
logical, is to put the two on such different bases that
no question of contrasting them can arise. The
coincidence which precedes a valid or grounded coher
ence (the conjunction which as coexistence of objects
and sequence of acts is perfectly adequate) never is,
as antecedent, the coincidence which is set over
against coherence. The side-by-sideness of books on
my bookshelf, the succession of noises that rise
through my window, do not trouble me logically.
They do not appear as errors or even as problems.
One coexistence is just as good as any other until
some new point of view, or new end, presents itself.
If it is a question of the convenience of arrangement
of books, then the value of their present collocation
becomes a problem. Then I contrast their present
state as bare conjunction over against another scheme
as one which is coherent. If I regard the sequence
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 119
of noises as a case of articulate speech, their order
becomes important it is a problem to be determined.
The inquiry whether a given combination presents
apparent or real connection shows that reflective
inquiry is already going on. Does this phase of the
moon really mean rain, or does it just happen that
the rain-storm comes when the moon has reached this
phase ? Xo_ask such questions shows that a certain
portion of the universe of objective experience is_
subjected to critical analysis for purposes of definitive
_restajtement._ The tendency to regard some com
bination as mere coincidence is absolutely a part
of the movement of mind in its search for the real
connection.
If coexistence as such is to be set against coherence
as such, as the non-logical against the logical, then,
since our whole spatial universe is one of collocation,
and since thought in this universe can never get
farther than substituting one collocation for another,
the whole realm of space-experience is condemned
offhand and in perpetuity to anti-rationality. But,
in truth, coincidence as over against coherence, con
junction as over against connection, is just suspected
coherence, one which is under the fire of active inquiry.
The distinction is one which arises only within the
logical or reflective function.
3. This brings us explicitly to the fact that there
is neither coincidence nor coherence in terms of the
elements or meanings contained in any couple or pair
120
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of ideas taken by itself. It is only when they are
co-factors in a situation or function which includes
more than either the "coincident" or the "coherent"
and more than the arithmetical sum of the two, that
thought s activity can be evoked. Lotze is con
tinually in this dilemma: 2fcoaght_ei&er_*8eesJfe
own material_or_else .just__accejDts__it, _InJhe_first
ca^ (^^o^^^^L^^^L^J^^^
TiolTth^Ilh^Ig ht must ^ iave a k^ read^^made
antecedent) its_a^tmtjLCajLJMily_altexl^ jtu_fiLand
^houghtlustlcceptsjtsjriatoiaj^^
As we have seen, Lotze endeavors to escape this
dilemma by supposing that, while thought receives
its material yet checks it up, it eliminates certain
portions of it and reinstates others, plus the stamp and
seal of its own validity.
Lotze objects most strenuously to the Kantian
notion that thought awaits its subject-matter with
certain ready-made modes of apprehension,
notion would raise the insoluble question of how
thought contrives to bring the matter of each impres
sion under that particular form which is appropriate
to it (I. 24). But he has not avoided the difficulty.
How does thought know which of the combinations
are merely coincident and which are merely coherent r
How does it know which to eliminate as irrelevant
and which to confirm as grounded? Either this
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 121
evaluation is an imposition of its own, or else gets its
cue and clue from the subject-matter. Now, if the
coincident and the coherent taken in and of themselves
are competent to give this direction, they are already
labeled. The further work of thought is one of super
erogation. It has at most barely to note and seal
the material combinations that are already there.
Such a view clearly renders thought s work as unneces
sary in form as it is futile in force.
But there is no alternative except to recognize
that an entire situation or environment, within which
exist both that which is afterward found to be mere
coincidence and that found to be real connection,
actually provokes thought. It is only as an experi
ence previously accepted comes up in its wholeness
against another one equally integral; and only
as some larger experience dawns which requires each
as a part of itself and yet within which the required
factors show themselves mutually incompatible, that
thought arises. It is not bare coincidence, or bare
connection, or bare addition of one to the other, that
excites thought. The stimulus is a situation which
is organized or constituted as a whole, and yet which
is falling to pieces in its parts a situation which is
in conflict within itself that arouses the search to
find what really goes together, and a correspondent
effort to shut out what only seemingly goes together.
And real coherence means precisely capacity to exist
within the comprehending whole. To read back into
122 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
the preliminary situation those distinctions of mere
conjunction of material and of valid coherence which
get existence, to say nothing of fixation, only within
the process of inquiry is a fallacy.
We must not leave this phase of the discussion,
however, until it is quite clear that our objection is
not to Lotze s position that reflective thought arises
from an antecedent which is not reflectional in char
acter; nor yet to his idea that this antecedent has a
certain structure and content of its own setting the
peculiar problem of thought, giving the cue to its
specific activities and determining its object. On the
contrary, it is this latter point upon which we would
insist; so as (by insisting) to point out, negatively,
that this view is absolutely inconsistent with Lotze s
theory that psychical impressions and ideas are the
true antecedents of thought; and, positively, to show
that it is the situation as a whole, and not any one
isolated part of it, or distinction within it, that calls
forth and directs thinking. We must beware the
fallacy of assuming that some one element in the prior
situation in isolation or detachment induces the
reflection which in reality comes forth only from the
whole disturbed situation. On the negative^ side,
characterizations of impression and idea are distinc
tions which arise only within reflection upon that
situation which is the genuine antecedent of thought.
Positively, it is the whole dynamic experience with
its qualitative and pervasive continuity, and its
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 123
inner active distraction, its elements at odds with each
other, in tension against each other, each contending
for its proper placing and relationship, which generates
the thought-situation.
From this point of view, at this period of develop
ment, the distinctions of objective and subjective
have a characteristic meaning. The antecedent,_tp
repeat, is a situation in which the various factors._aie_
actively incompatible with each other, and yet jn_and_
through the striving tend to a re-formation of the.
wholejmd to a restatement of the_p_arts. This situa
tion as such is clearly objective. It is there; it is
there as a whole; the various parts are there; and
their active incompatibility with one another is there.
Nothing is conveyed at this point by asserting that
any particular part of the situation is illusory or
subjective, or mere appearance; or that any other
is truly real. The experience exists as one of vital
and active confusion and conflict among its elements.
The conflict is not only objective in a de facto sense
(that is, really existent), but is objective in a logical
sense as well; it is just this conflict which effects a
transition into the thought-situation this, in turn,
being only a constant movement toward a defined
equilibrium. The conflict has objective worth be
cause it is the antecedent condition and cue of thought.
Deny an organization of things within which compet
ing incompatible tendencies appear and thinking
becomes merely "mental."
124 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
Every rejjetj#jittltude and function, whether of
naive life, deliberate invention, or controlled scientific
research, has risen through the medium of some such
tntaj_ objective situation. The abstract logician may
tell us that sensations or impressions, or associated
ideas, or bare physical things, or conventional sym
bols, are antecedent conditions. But such statements
cannot be verified by reference to a single instance of
thought in connection with actual practice or actual
/scientific research. Of course, by extreme mediation
symbols may become conditions of evoking thought.
They get to be objects in an active experience. But
they are stimuli to thinking only in case their manipu
lation to form a new whole occasions resistance, and
thus reciprocal tension. Symbols and their defini
tions develop to a point where dealing with them
becomes itself an experience, having its own identity;
just as the handling of commercial commodities,^ or
arrangement of parts of an invention, is a specific
experience.
There is always as antecedent to thought an experi
ence of subject-matter of the physical or social world,
nor the previously organized intellectual world, whose
parts are actively at war with each other so much
so that they threaten to disrupt the situation, which
accordingly for its own maintenance requires delib
erate redefinition and re-relation of its tensional parts.
This redefining and re-relating is the constructive
process termed thinking: the reconstructive situation,
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 125
with its parts in tension and in such movement toward
each other as tends to a unified arrangement of
things, is the thought-situation.
This at once suggests the subjective phase. The
situation, the experience as such, is objective. There
is an experience of the confused and conflicting
tendencies. But just what in particular is objective,
just what form the situation shall take as an organized
harmonious whole, is unknown; that is the problem.
It is the uncertainty as to the what of the experience
_together with the certainty that there is such an expe-
rience, that evokes the thought-function. Viewed
from this standpoint of uncertainty, the situation as
a whole is subjective. No particular content or
reference can be asserted offhand. Definite assertion
is expressly reserved it is to be the outcome of the
procedure of reflective inquiry now undertaken.
This holding off of contents from definitely asserted
position, this viewing them as candidates for reform,
is what we mean, at this stage of the natural history
of thought, by the subjective.
We have followed Lotze through his tortuous course
of inconsistencies. It is better, perhaps, to run the
risk of vain repetition than that of leaving the impres
sion that these are mere dialectical contradictions.
It is an idle task to expose contradictions unless
we realize them in relation to the fundamental assump
tion which breeds them. /Lotze is bound to differ
entiate thought from its- antecedents. He is intent
126 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
upon doing this, however, through a preconception
that marks off the thought-situation radically from
its predecessor, through a difference that is complete,
fixed and absolute, or at large. It is a total contrast
of thought as such to something else as such that he
requires, not a c^nJja&t-jadthiiL experience_of_one
temporalphase of a process, one period of a rhythm,
from others./
This complete and rigid difference Lotze finds in
the difference between an experience which is mere
existence or occurrence, and one which has to do with
wdnS", truth, right relationship. Now things have
connection, organization, value or force, practical
and aesthetic meaning, on their own account. The
same is true of deeds, affections, etc. Only states of
feelings, bare impressions, etc., seem to fulfil the pre
requisite of being given as existence, and yet without
qualification as to worth, etc. Then the current of
ideas offers itself, a ready-made stream of events, of
existences, which can be characterized as wholly
innocent of reflective determination, and as the
natural predecessor of thought.
But this stream of existences is no sooner regarded
than its total incapacity
_
dition and-xue of -thought appears. It is about as
relevant to thinking as are changes that may be
happening on the other side of the moon. So, one
by one, the whole series of determinations of force
and worth already traced are introduced into the very
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 127
make-up, the inner structure, of what was to be mere
existence: viz., (i) things of whose spatial and
temporal relations the mere impressions are some
how representative; (2) meaning the idea as signifi
cant, possessed of jguality, and not a mere event;
(3) distinguished traits of coincidence and coherence
within the stream. All these features are explicitly
asserted, as we have seen; underlying and running
through them all is the recognition of the supreme
value of a situation which has been organized as a
whole, yetJsjTnw_cpnm cting in its inner constitution.
These contradictions all arise in the attempt to
put thought s work, as concerned with objective
validity, over againsJLXejder4ceas^a_jn^^
happening, or occurrence. This contrast arises be
cause of the attempt to consider thought as an inde
pendent somgwjiajL-in-engraL which nevertheless, in
our experience, is dependent upon a raw material of
mere impressions given to it. Hence the sole radical
avoidance of the contradictions can be secured only
when thinking is seen to be a spsdfic event in the
movement _of_exprinced_jthings, having its own
specific occasion or demand, and its own specific
place.
The nature of the organization and force that the
antecedent conditions of the thought-function possess
is too large a question here to enter upon in detail.
Lotze himself suggests the answer. He speaks of
the current of ideas, just as a current, supplying us
128 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
with the "mass of well-grounded information which
regulates daily life" (I, 4). It gives rise to "useful
combinations," "correct expectations," "seasonable
reactions" (I, 7). He speaks of it, indeed, as if it
were just the ordinary world of naj^e_exrjerience, the
so-called empirical world, as distinct from the world
as critically revised and rationalized in scientific and
philosophic inquiry. The contradiction between this
interpretation and that of a mere stream of psychical
impressions is only another instance of the difficulty
already discussed. But the phraseology suggests the
real state of things. The unreflective world is a
world of practical things; of ends and means, of their
effective adaptations; of control and regulation of
conduct in view of results. The world of uncritical
experience also is a world of social aims and means,
involving at every turn the goods and objects of
affection and attachment, of competition and co
operation. It has incorporate also in its own being
the surprise of aesthetic values the sudden joy of
light, the gracious wonder of tone and form.
I do not mean that this holds in gross of the unre
flective world of experience over against, the critical
thought-situationsuch a contrast implies the very
wholesale, at large, consideration of thought which I
am striving to avoid. Doubtless many and many an
act of thought has intervened in effecting the organiza
tion of our commonest practical-affectional-aesthetic
environment. I only mean to indicate that thought
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 129
does take place in such a world; not after a world
of bare existences ; and that while the more system
atic reflection we call organized science may, in some
fair sense, be said to come after, it comes after affec-
tional, artistic, and technological interests which have
found realization.
Having entered so far upon a suggestion which
cannot be followed out, I venture one other digression.
The notion that value or significance as distinct from
mere existentiality is the product of thought or reason,
and that the source of Lotze s contradictions lies in
the effort to find any situation prior or antecedent
to thought, is a familiar one it is even possible that
my criticisms of Lotze have been interpreted by some
readers in this sense. 1 This is the position frequently
called neo-Hegelian (though, I think, with question
able accuracy), and has been developed by many
writers in criticizing Kant. This position and that
1 We have a most acute and valuable criticism of Lotze from this
point of view in Professor Henry Jones, Philosophy of Lotze, 1895.
My specific criticisms agree in the main with his, and I am glad to
acknowledge my indebtedness. But I cannot agree in the belief
that the business of thought is to qualify reality as such; its occupa
tion appears to me to be determining the reconstruction of some
asp^ctojr_p^)rtion_of_reality, and to fall within the course of ^reality
itself; being, indeed, the characteristic medium of its activity. And
I cannot agree that reality as such, with increasing fulness of knowl
edge, presents itself as a thought-system, though, as just indicated,
I have no doubt that practical existence presents itself in its temporal f
course as thought-specifications, just as it does as affectional and*
aesthetic and the rest of them.
1 3 o ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
taken in this chapter do indeed agree in certain general
regards. They_a.re_a^one in denial of the factuality
and the possibility of developing fruitful reflection
out of antecedent bare existence or mere events.
They unite in denying that there is or can be any such
thing as mere existence phenomenon unqualified as
respects organization and force, whether such phe
nomenon be psychic or cosmic. They agree that
reflective thought grows organically out of an experi
ence which is already organized, and that it functions
within such an organism. But they part company
I when a fundamental question is raised: Is all
M organized meaning the work of thought?
therefore follow that the organization out of which
reflective thought grows is the work of thought of
some other type-of Pure Thought, Creative or Con
stitutive Thought, Intuitive Reason, etc. ?
indicate briefly the reasons for divergence at this
point.
To cover all the practical-social-aesthetic objed
involved, the term "thought" has to be so stretched
that the situation might as well be called by any
other name that describes a typical form of experience.
More specifically, when the difference is minimized
between the organized and arranged scheme out^of
which reflective inquiry proceeds, and reflective
inquiry itself (and there can be no other reason for
insisting that the antecedent of reflective thought
is itself somehow thought), exactly the same type of
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 131
problem recurs which presents itself when the distinc
tion is exaggerated into one between bare existences
and rational coherent meanings.
For the more one insists that the antecedent situa
tion is constituted by thought, the more one has to
wonder why another type of thought is required; what
need arouses it, and how it is possible for it to improve
upon the work of previous constitutive thought.
This difficulty at once forces idealists from a logic
of experience as it is concretely experienced into a
metaphysic of a purely hypothetical experience.
Constitutive thought precedes our conscious thought-
operations; hence it must be the working of some
absolute universal thought which, unconsciously to
our reflection, builds up an organized world. But
this recourse only deepens the difficulty. How does
it happen that the absolute constitutive and intuitive \
Thought does such a poor and bungling job that it
requires a finite discursive activity to patch up its/
products ? Here more metaphysic is called for: The
Absolute Reason is now supposed to work under
limiting conditions of finitude, of a sensitive and
temporal organism. The antecedents of reflective
thought are not, therefore, determinations of thought
pure and undefiled, but of what thought can do when
it stoops to assume the yoke of change and of feeling.
I pass by the metaphysical problem left unsolved by
this flight: Why and how should a perfect, absolute,
complete, finished thought find it necessary to submit
I 3 2 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
to alien, disturbing, and corrupting conditions in
order, in the end, to recover through reflective thought
in a partial, piecemeal, wholly inadequate way what
it possessed at the outset in a much more satisfactory
way?
I confine myself to the logical difficulty. How can
thought relate itself to the fragmentary sensations, f
impressions, feelings, which, in their contrast with
and disparity from the workings of constitutive
thought, mark it off from the latter; and which in
their connection with its products give the cue to
reflective thinking? Here we ham again exactly the
problem with which Lotze has been wrestling: we have
the same insoluble question of the reference of \
thought-activity to a wholly indeterminate unra- \
tionalized, independent, prior existence. The abso
lute idealist who takes up the problem at this point
will find himself forced into the same continuous
seesaw, the same scheme of alternate rude robbery
and gratuitous gift, that Lotze engaged in. The
simple fact is that here is just where Lotze began; he
saw that previous transcendental logicians had left
untouched the specific question of relation of our
supposedly finite, reflective thought to its own ante
cedents, and he set out to make good the defect,
reflective thought is required because constitutive
thought works under externally limiting conditions
of sense, then we have some elements which are, after
all mere existences, events, etc. Or, if they have
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 133
organization from some other source than thought,
and induce reflective thought not as bare impressions,
etc., but through their place in some whole, then we
have admitted the possibility of organization in
experience, apart from Reason, and the ground for
assuming Pure Constitutive Thought is abandoned.
The contradiction appears equally when viewed
from the side of thought-activity and its character
istic forms. All our knowledge, after all, of thought
as constitutive is gained by consideration of the
operations of reflective thought. The perfect system
of thought is so perfect that it is a luminous, harmo
nious whole, without definite parts or distinctions
or, if there are such, it is only reflection that brings
them out. The categories and methods of constitu
tive thought itself must therefore be characterized
in terms of the modus operandi of reflective thought.
Yet the latter takes place just because of the peculiar
problem of the peculiar conditions under which it
arises. Its work is progressive, reformatory, recon
structive, synthetic, in the terminology made familiar
by Kant. We are not only not justified, accordingly,
in transferring its determinations over to "constitu
tive" thought, but are prohibited from attempting
any such transfer. To identify logical processes,
states, devices, results which are conditioned upon
the primary fact of resistance to thought as constitu
tive with the structure of constitutive thought is
as complete an instance of the fallacy of recourse
134 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
from one genus to another as could well be found.
Constitutive and reflective thought are, first, defined
in terms of their dissimilarity and even opposition,
and then without more ado the forms of the descrip
tion of the latter are carried over bodily to the former!
This is not a merely controversial criticism. It
points positively toward the fundamental thesis of
these chapters: All the distinctions discovered within
thinking, of conception as over against sense percep
tion, of various modes and forms of judgment, of
inference in its vast diversity of operation all
these distinctions come within the thought-situation
as growing out of a characteristic antecedent typical
formation of experience; and have for their purpose
the solution of the peculiar problem with respect
to which the thought-function is generated or evolved:
the restoration of a deliberately integrated experience
from the inherent conflict into which it has fallen.
The failure of transcendental logic has the same
origin as the failure of the empiristic (whether taken
pure or in the mixed form in which Lotze presents
it). It makes into absolute and fixed distinctions of
existence and meaning, and of one kind of meaning
and another kind, things which are historic or tem
poral in their origin and their significance. It views
thought as attempting to represent or state reality
once for all, instead of trying to determine some
phases or contents of it with reference to their more
effective and significant employ instead of as recon-
ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING 135
structive. The rock against which every such logic
splits is that either existence already has the state
ment which thought is endeavoring to give it, or else
it has not. In the former case, thought is futilely
reiterative; in the latter, it is falsificatory.
The significance of Lotze for critical purposes is
that his peculiar effort to combine a transcendental
view of thought (i.e., of Thought as active in forms
of its own, pure in and of themselves) with certain
obvious facts of the dependence of our thought upon
specific empirical antecedents, brings to light funda
mental defects in both the empiristic and the transcen
dental logics. We discover a common failure in both :
the failure to view logical terms and distinctions with
respect to their necessary function in the redintegra
tion of experience.
IV
DATA AND MEANINGS
We have reached the point of conflict in the matters
of an experience. It is in this conflict and because
of it that the matters, or significant quales, stand out
as matters. As long as the sun revolves about earth
without question, this "content" is not in any way
abstracted. Its distinction from the form or mode of
experience as its matter is the work of reflection.
The same conflict makes other experiences assume
discriminated objectifkation; they, too, cease to be
ways of living, and become distinct objects of observa
tion and consideration. The movements of planets,
eclipses, etc., are cases in point. 1 The maintenance of
a unified experience has become a problem, an end,
for it is no longer secure. But this involves such
restatement of the conflicting elements as will enabl
them to take a place somewhere in the world of
This is but to say that the presentation of objects as specifically
different things in experience is the worJLJiLj^ectio^ and that the
discrimination of something experienced from modes of expenenanj
is also the work of reflection. The latter statement ,s, of course but
a particular case of the first; for an act of experiencing is one o
among others, which may be discriminated out of the ongmal exj
ence When so discriminated, it has exactly the same exbtentU
Status as any other discriminated object; seeing and thing seen stand
on the same level of existentiality. But P^-. e -^ nc ?
innocent of the discrimination of the what exceed and the how,
136
DATA AND MEANINGS 137
new experience; they must be disposed of somehow,
and they can be disposed of finally only as they are
provided for. That is, they cannot be simply denied
or excluded or eliminated; they must be taken into
the fold. But such introduction clearly demands
more or less modification or transformation on their
part. The thought-situation is the deliberate main
tenance of an organization in experience, with a
critical consideration of the claims of the various
conflicting contents to a place, and a final assign
ment of position.
The conflicting situation inevitably polarizes or
dichojtumizes itself. There is somewhat which is
untouched in the contention of incompatibles. There
is something which remains secure, unquestioned.
On the other hand, there are elements which are
doubtful and precarious. This gives the framework of
the general distribution of the field into "facts," the
giyej}, the presented, the Datum; and ideas, the
Quaesitum, the conceived, the Inferential.
a) There is always something unquestioned in
any problematic situation at any stage of its process, 1
or mode, of experiencing. We are not in it aware of the seeing, nor
yet of objects as something seen. Any experience in all of its non-
reflective phases is innocent of any discrimination of subject and
object. It involves within itself what may be reflectively dis
criminated into objects located outside the organism and objects
referred to the organism. [Note added in revision.]
1 Of course, this very element may be the precarious, the ideal,
and possibly fanciful of some other situation. But it is to change the
138 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
even if it be only the fact of conflict or tension. For
this is never mere tension at large. It is thoroughly
qualified, or characteristically toned and colored, by
the particular elements which are in strife. Hence
it is this conflict, unique and irreplaceable. That it
comes now means precisely that it has never come
before; that it is now passed in review and some sort
of a settlement reached, means that just this conflict
will never recur. In a word, the conflict is imme
diately of just this and no other sort, and this imme
diately given quality is an irreducible datum. It is
fact, even if all else be doubtful. As it is subjected to
examination, it loses vagueness and assumes more
definite form.
Only in very extreme cases, however, does the
assured, unquestioned element reduce to terms as low
as we have here imagined. Certain things come to
stand forth as facts, no matter what else may be
doubted. There are certain apparent diurnal changes
of the sun; there is a certain annual course or track.
There are certain nocturnal changes in the planets, and
certain seasonal rhythmic paths. The significance
of these may be doubted: Do they mean real change
in the sun or in the earth ? But change, and change
of a certain definite and numerically determinate
historic into the absolute to conclude that therefore everything is
uncertain, all at once, or as such. This gives metaphysical skepticism
as distinct from the working skepticism which is an inherent factor
in all reflection and scientific inquiry.
DATA AND MEANINGS 139
character, is there. It is clear that such out-standing
facts (ex-istences) constitute the data, the given or
presented, in the thought- function.
b) It is obvious that this is only one correspondent,
or status, in the total situation. With the conscious
ness of this as certain, as given to be reckoned with,
goes the consciousness of uncertainty as to what it
means of how it is. to be understood or interpreted,
fnat is, of its reference and connection. The facts
qua presentations or existences aie_snre ; qua meanings
(position and relationship in an experience yet to be
secured) tjjpy arp^rlnnhjjVil Yet doubt does not^
preclude memory or anticipation. Indeed, it is
possible only trirough them. The memory of past
experience makes sun-revolving-about-earth an object
of attentive regard. The recollection of certain other
experiences suggests the idea of earth-rotating-daily-
on-axis and revolving-annually-about-sun. These
contents are as much present as is the observation
of change, but as respects connection they are only
possibilities. Accordingly, they are categorized or
disposed of as ideas, meanings, thoughts, ways of
conceiving, comprehending, interpreting facts.
Correspondence of reference here is as obvious as
correlation of existence. In the logical process, the
datum is not just external existence, and the idea
mere psychical existence. Both are modes of_exist>
ence: oneof given existence, the other of possible^ of
inferred existence. And if the latter is regarded, from
I 4 o ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
the standpoint of the unified experience aimed at, as
having only possible existence, the datum also is
regarded as incomplete and unassured. Or, as we
/ commonly put it, while the ideas are impressions,
suggestions, guesses, theories, estimates, etc., facts
are crude, raw, unorganized, brute. They lack rela
tionship, that is, assured place; they are deficient as
to continuity. Mere change of relative position of
sun, which is absolutely unquestioned as datum, is a
sheer abstraction from the standpoint either of the
organized experience left behind, or of the reorganized
experience which is the end the objective. It is
impossible as a persistent object. In other words,
datum and ideatum are divisions of labor, co-operative
instrumentalities, for economical dealing with the
problem of the maintenance of the integrity of experi
ence.
Once more, and briefly, both datum and ideatum
may (and positively, veritably, do) break up, each
for itself, into physical and mental. In so far as the
conviction gains ground that the earth revolves about
the sun, the old fa^t is broken up into a new cosmic
existence, and a new psychological condition the
recognition of a process in virtue of which movements
of smaller bodies in relation to very remote larger
bodies are interpreted in a reverse sense. We do
not just eliminate the source of error in the old con
tent. We reinterpret it as valid in its own place, viz.,
a case of the psychology of perception, although
DATA AND MEANINGS 141
invalid as a matter of cosmic structure. Until we
have detected the source of error as itself a perfectly
genuine existence, we are not, scientifically, satisfied.
If we decide that the snake is but a hallucination, our
reflection is not, in purport, complete until we have
found some fact just as existential as the snake would
have been had it been there, which accounts for the
hallucination. We never stop, except temporarily,
with a reference to the mind or knower as source of
an error. We hunt for a specific existence. In other ,
words, /with increasing accuracy of Hptprminaj;mrL nf "
the given, there j^mes^ajiistinction^. for methodo
logical purposes, between the quality . or matter of
the sense experience and its form the sense perceiv
ing, as itself a psychological fact, having its own
place and laws or relations. Moreover, the old experi
ence, that of sun-revolving, abides. But it is regarded
as belonging to "me" to this experiencing individual
rather than to the cosmic world.
Here, then, within the growth of the thought-
situation and as a part of the process of determining
specific truth under specific conditions, we get for
the first time the clue to that distinction with which,
as ready-made and prior to all thinking, Lotze started
out, namely, the separation of the matter of impres
sion from impression as a personal event. The separa
tion which, taken at large, engenders an insoluble prob- ,
lem, appears within a particular reflective inquiry, as u
an inevitable differentiation of a scheme of existence.
i 4 2 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
The same sort of thing occurs on the side of thought,
or meaning. The meaning or idea which is growing
in acceptance, which is gaining ground as meamng-of- , j
datum, gets logical or intellectual or objective force;
that which is losing standing, which is increasingly
doubtful, gets qualified as just a notion, a fancy, a
prejudice, misconception-or finally just an error, a
mental slip.
Evaluated as fanciful in validity it becomes a mere
fancy in its existence. 1 It is not eliminated, but re
ceives a new reference or meaning./ Thus the distmc-
. tion between subjectivity and objectivity is not one
between meaning as such and datum as such.
specification that emerges, correspondent^, m_^
datum and ideatum. That which is left behind in
the evolution of accepted meaning is still characterize
as real, but real now in relation only to a way of ex-
periencing-to a peculiarity of the organism.
which is moved toward is regarded as i
cosmic or extra-organic sense.
i The data of ****. When we turn to Lotze, we
find that he makes a clear distinction between the
presented material of thought, its datum, and
typical characteristic modes of thinking in virtue of
which the datum gets organization or system.
of personal experiencing.
DATA AND MEANINGS 143
interesting to note also that he states the datum in
terms different from those in which the antecedents
of thought are defined. From the point of view of
the data or material upon which ideas exercise them
selves, it is not coincidence, collocation, or succession
that counts, but gradation of _de^s_LQ_a scale. It
is not things in spatial or temporal arrangement that
are emphasized, but qualities as mutually dis
tinguished, yet resembling and classed. There is no
inherent inconceivability in the idea that every im
pression should be as incomparably different from
every other as sweet is from warm. But by a remark
able circumstance such is not the case. We have
series, and networks of series. We have diversity of
a common diverse colors, sounds, smells, tastes,
etc. In other words, the data are sense qualities
which, fortunately for thought, are given arranged as
shades, degrees, variations, or qualities of somewhat
that is identical. 1
All this is given, presented, to our ideational
activities. Even the universal, the common color
which runs through the various qualities of blue,
green, white, etc., is not a product of thought, but
something which thought finds already in existence.
It conditions comparison and reciprocal distinction.
Particularly all mathematical determinations, whether
of counting (number), degree (more or less), and
quantity (greatness and smallness), come back to
1 1, 28-34.
144
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
this peculiarity of the datum. Here Lotze dwells
at considerable length upon the fact that the very
possibility, as well as the success, of thought is due
to this peculiar universalization or prima facie order
ing with which its material is given to it. Such pre-
established fitness in the meeting of two things that
have nothing to do with each other is certainly cause
enough for wonder and congratulation.
It should not be difficult to see why Lotze uses
different categories in describing the material of
thought from those employed in describing its ante
cedent conditions, even though, according to him,
the two are absolutely the same. 1 He has different
functions in mind. In one case, the material must
be characterized as evoking, as incentive, as stimulus
from this point of view the peculiar feature of
spatial and temporal arrangement in contrast with
1 It is interesting to see how explicitly Lotze is compelled finally
to differentiate two aspects in the antecedents of thoughts, one of
which is necessary in order that there may be anything to call out
thought (a lack, or problem) ; the other in order that when thought
is evoked it may find data at hand that is, material in shape to
receive and respond to its exercise. "The manifold matter of ideas
is brought before us, not only in the systematic order of its qualitative
relationships, but in the rich variety of local and temporal combinations.
.... The combinations of heterogeneous ideas .... form the
problems, in connection with which the efforts of thought to reduce
coexistence to coherence will subseqiiently be made. The homoge
neous or similar ideas, on the other hand, give occasion to separate,
to connect, and to count their repetitions" (I, 33, 34; italics mine).
Without the heterogeneous variety of the local and temporal juxta-
DATA AND MEANINGS 145
coherence or connection is emphasized. But in the
other case the material must be characterized as
affording stuff, actual subject-matter. Data are
not only what is given to thought, but they are also
the food, the raw material, of thought. They must
be described as, on the one hand, wholly outside of
thought. This clearly puts them into the region of
sense perception. They are matters of sensation given
free from all inferring, judging, relating influence.
Sensation is just what is not called up in memory or
in .anticipated projection it is the immediate, the
irreducible. On the other hand, sensory-matter is
qualitative, and quales are made up on a common
basis. They are degrees or grades of a common
quality. Thus they have a certain ready-made
setting of mutual distinction and reference which is
already almost, if not quite, the effect of comparing,
of relating, effects which are the express traits of
thinking.
positions there would be nothing to excite thought. Without the
systematic arrangement of quality there would be nothing to meet
thought and reward it for its efforts. The homogeneity of qualitative
relationships, in the pre-lhought material, gives the tools or instru
ments by which thought is enabled successfully to tackle the hetero
geneity of collocations and conjunctions also found in the same
material! One would suppose that when Lotze reached this point
he might have been led to suspect that in his remarkable adjustment
of thought-stimuli, thought-material, and thought-tools to one
another, he must after all be dealing, not with something prior to
the thought-function, but with the necessary structures and tools
of the thought-situation.
146 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
It is easy to interpret this miraculous gift of grace
in the light of what has been said. The data are in
truth precisely that which is selected and set aside as
present, as immediate. Thus they are given to further
thought. But the selection has occurred in view of
the need for thought; it is a listing of the capital in
the way of the undisturbed, the undiscussed, which
thought can count upon in this particular problem.
Hence it is not strange that it has a peculiar fitness
of adaptation for thought s further work. Having
been selected with precisely that end in view, the
wonder would be if it were not so fitted. A man may
coin counterfeit money for use upon others, but hardly
with the intent of passing it off upon himself.
Our only difficulty here is that the mind flies away
from the logical interpretation of sense datum to a
ready-made notion of it brought over from abstract
psychological inquiry. The belief in isolated sensory
quales which are somehow forced upon us, and forced
upon us at large, and thus conditioning thought wholly
ab extra, instead of determining it as instrumentalities
or elements selected from experienced things for that
very purpose, is too fixed. Sensory qualities are
forced upon us, but not at large. The sensory data
qf_Xmence always come in_a context; they always
appear as variations in a continuum. Even the
thunder which breaks in upon me (to take the extreme
of apparent discontinuity and irrelevancy) disturbs
me because it is taken as thunder: as a part of the
DATA AND MEANINGS
147
same space-world as that in which my chair and
room and house are located; and it is taken as an
influence which interrupts and disturbs, because it is
part of a common world of causes and effects. The
solution of continuity is itself practical or teleological,
and thus presupposes and affects continuity of purpose,
occupations, and means in a life-process. It is not
metaphysics, it is bidlegyjwhich enforces the idea that
actual sensation is not only determined as an event
in a world of events, 1 but is an occurrence occurring
at a certain period in the control and use of stimuli. 2
2. Forms of thinking data. As sensory datum
is material set for work of thought, so the ideational
forms with which thought does its work are apt
and prompt to meet the needs of the material. The
"accessory" 3 notion of ground of coherence turns
out, in truth, not to be a formal, or external, addi
tion to the data, but a requalification of them.
Thought is ...accessary a-* arrornplice, not as aidden-
dum. "Thought" is to eliminate mere coincidence,
and to assert grounded coherence. Lotze makes
it clear that he does not at bottom conceive of
"thought" as an activity "in itself" imposing a
1 Supra, p. 113.
1 For the identity of sensory experience with the point of greatest
strain and stress in conflicting or tensional experience, see "The
Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," Psychological Review, III, 57.
3 For the "accessory" character of thought, see Lotze, I, 7, 25-27,
61, etc.
148 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
form of coherence; but that the organizing work
of " thought" is only the progressive realization of
an inherent unity, or system, in the material experi
enced. The specific modes in which thought brings
its "accessory" power to bear names, conception,
judgment, and inference are successive stages in
the adequate organization of the matter which comes
to us first as data; they are successive stages of the
effort to overcome the original defects of the data.
Conception starts from the universal (the common
element) of sense. Yet (and this is the significant
point) it does not simply abstract this common ele
ment, and consciously generalize it over against its
own differences. Such a "universal" is not coherence
just because it does not include and dominate the
temporal and local heterogeneity. The true concept
(see I, 38) is a system of attributes, held together on
the basis of some ground, or determining, dominating
principle a ground which so controls all its own
instances as to make them into an inwardly connected
whole, and which so specifies its own limits as to be
exclusive of all else. If we abstract color as the com
mon element of various colors, the result is not a
scientific idea or concept. Discovery of a process of
light-waves whose various rates constitute the various
colors of the spectrum gives the concept. And when
we get such a concept, the former mere temporal
abruptness of color experiences gives way to ordered
parts of a color system. The logical product the
DATA AND MEANINGS 149
concept, in other words is not a formal seal or stamp ;
it is a thoroughgoing connection of data in a dynamic
continuity of existence.
The form or mode of thought which marks the
continued transformation of the data and the idea
in reference to each other is judgment. Judgment
makes explicit the assumption of a principle which
determines connection within an individualized whole.
It definitely states red as this case or instance of the
law or process of color, and thus further overcomes
the defect in subject-matter or data still left by con
ception. 1 Now judgment logically terminates in dis
junction. It gives a universal which may determine
1 Bosanquet (Logic, I, 30-34) and Jones (Philosophy of Lotze,
1895, chap, iv) have called attention to a curious inconsistency in
Lotze s treatment of judgment. On one hand, the statement is as
given above. Judgment grows out of conception in making explicit
the determining relation of universal to its own particular, implied
in conception. But, on the other hand, judgment grows not out
of conception at all, but out of the question of determining con
nection in change. Lotze s nominal reason for this latter view is
that the conceptual world is. purely static; since the actual world
is one of change, we need to pass upon what really goes together (is
causal) in the change as distinct from such as are merely coincident.
But, as Jones clearly shows, it is also connected with the fact that,
while Lotze nominally asserts that judgment grows out of conception,
be treats conception as the result of judgment since the first view
makes judgment a mere explication of the content of an idea, and
hence merely expository or analytic (in the Kantian sense) and so of
more than doubtful applicability to reality. The affair is too large
to discuss here, and I will content myself with referring to the oscilla
tion between conflicting contents and gradation of sensory qualities
already discussed (p. 144, note). It is judgment which grows out
i S o ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
any one of a number of alternative defined particu
lars but which is arbitrary as to what one is selected
Systematic inference brings to light the mater,
conditions under which the law, or dominating urn
versal, applies to this, rather than that alternate
particular" and so completes the idea. orgamzaUon
of the subject-matter. If this act were complete v
should finally have present to us a whole on wh,
quantitative erminations see I, 43, &
cussed here.
7 Of
DATA AND MEANINGS 151
should know the determining and effective or author
izing elements, and the order of development or
hierarchy of dependence, in which others follow from
them. 1
In this account by Lotze of the operations of the
forms of thought, there is clearly put before us the
picture of a continuous correlative determination of
datum on one side and of idea or meaning on the other,
till experience is again integral, data being thoroughly
defined and connected, and ideas being the relevant
meanings of subject-matter. That we have here in
outline a description of what actually occurs there can
be no doubt. But there is as little doubt that the
description is thoroughly inconsistent with Lotze s
supposition that the material or data of thought is
precisely the same as the antecedent of thought; or
that ideas, conceptions, are purely mental somewhats
extraneously brought to bear, as the sole essential
characteristics of thought, upon a material provided
ready-made. It means but one thing: The mainte
nance of unity and wholeness in experience through
conflicting contents occurs by means of a strictly
correspondent setting apart of facts to be accurately
described and properly related, and meanings to be
adequately construed and properly referred. The
datum is given in the thought-situation, and to further
qualification of ideas or meanings. But even in this
See I, 38, 59, 61, 105, 129, 197, for Lotze s treatment of these
distinctions.
I
152 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
aspect it presents a problem. To find out what is
given is an inquiry which taxes reflection to the utter
most. Every important advance in scientific method
means better agencies, more skilled technique for
simply detaching and describing what is barely there,
or given. To be able to find out what can safely be
taken as there, as given in any particular inquiry, and
hence be taken as material for orderly and verifiable
inference, for fruitful hypothesis-making, for enter
taining of explanatory and interpretative ideas, is one
phase of the effort of systematic scientific inquiry. It
marks its inductive phase. To take what is discovered
to be reliable evidence within a more complex situation
as if it were given absolutely and in isolation, or apart
from a particular historic situs and context, is the
fallacy of empiricism as a logical theory. To regard
the thought-forms of conception, judgment, and
inference as qualifications of "pure thought, apart
from any difference in objects," instead of as succes
sive dispositions in the progressive organization of the
material (or objects), is the fallacy of rationalism.
Lotze, like Kant, attempts to combine the two, think
ing thereby to correct each by the other.
Lotze recognizes the futility of thought if the sense
data as data are final, if they alone are real, the truly
existent, self-justificatory and valid. He sees that,
if the empiricist were right in his assumption as to the
real worth of the given data, thinking would be a
ridiculous pretender, either toilfully and poorly doing
DATA AND MEANINGS 153
over again what needs no doing, or making a wilful
departure from truth. He realizes that thought is
evoked because it is needed; and that it has a work
to do which is not merely formal, but which effects
a modification of the subject-matter of experience.
Consequently he assumes a thought-in-itself, with
certain forms and modes of action of its own, a realm
of meaning possessed of a directive and normative
worth of its own the root- fallacy of rationalism.
His attempted compromise between the two turns
out to be based on the assumption of the indefensible
ideas of both the notion of an independent matter
given to thought, on one side, and of an independent
worth or force of thought-forms, on the other.
This pointing out of inconsistencies becomes stale
and unprofitable save as we bring them back into
connection with their root-origin the erection of
distinctions that are genetic and historic, and working
or instrumental divisions of labor, into rigid and
ready-made structural differences of reality. Lotze
clearly recognizes that thought s nature is dependent
upon its aim, its aim upon its problem, and this upon
the situation in which it finds its incentive and excuse.
Its work is cut out for it. It does not what it would,
but what it must. As Lotze puts it, "Logic has to do
with thought, not as it would be under hypothetical
conditions, but as it is" (I, 33), and this statement is
made in explicit combination with statements to the
effect that the peculiarity of the material of thought
I 5 4 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
conditions its activity. Similarly he says, in a passage
already referred to: "The possibility and the suc
cess of thought s production in general depends upon
this original constitution and organization of the whole
world of ideas, a constitution which, though not neces
sary in thought, is all the more necessary to make
thought possible." 1
As we have seen, the essential nature of concept*
judgment, and inference is dependent upon peculiari
ties of the propounded material, they being forms
dependent for their significance upon the stage of
organization in which they begin.
From this only one conclusion is possible,
thought s nature is dependent upon its actual con
ditions and circumstances, the primary logical prob-
\ lem is to study thought-in-its-conditioning; it i
detect the crisis within which thought and its subject-
* matter present themselves in their mutual distinction
and cross-reference./ But Lotze is so thoroughly
committed to a ready-made antecedent of some sort,
that this genetic consideration is of no account
him The historic method is a mere matter of psy
chology, and has no logical worth (I, 2). We must
presuppose a psychological mechanism and psych
M logical material, but logic is concerned not with origin
or history, but with authority, worth, value (I, io ;
Again- "Logic is not concerned with the manner m
which the elements utilized by thought come into
1 1, 36; see also II, 290, 291.
DATA AND MEANINGS 155
existence, but their value after they have somehow
come into existence, for the carrying out of intellec
tual operations " (I, 34) . And finally : " I have main
tained throughout my work that logic cannot derive
any serious advantage from a discussion of the con
ditions under which thought as a psychological process
comes about. The significance of logical forms ....
is to be found in the utterances of thought, the laws
which it imposes, after or during the act of thinking,
not in the conditions which lie back of any which
produce thought." 1
Lotze, in truth, represents a halting-stage in the
evolution of logical theory. He is too far along to be
contented with the reiteration of the purely formal
distinctions of a merely formal thought-by-itself.
He recognizes that thought as formal is the form of
some matter, and has its worth only as organizing
that matter to meet the ideal demands of reason;
and that "reason" is in truth only an adequate sys-
tematization of the matter or content. Consequently
he has to open the door to admit "psychical pro
cesses" which furnish this material. Having let in
the material, he is bound to shut the door again in
the face of the processes from which the material
proceeded to dismiss them as impertinent intruders.
1 II, 246; the same is reiterated in II, 250, where the question of
origin is referred to as a corruption in logic. Certain psychical acts
are necessary as "conditions and occasions" of logical operations,
but the "deep gulf between psychical mechanism and thought
remains unfilled."
156 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
If thought gets its data in such a surreptitious manner,
there is no occasion for wonder that the legitimacy of
its dealings with the material remains an open ques
tion. Logical theory, like every branch of the
philosophic discipl^waits upon a surrender of the
obstinate conviction that, while the work and aim
of thought is conditioned by the material supplied
to it, yet the worth of its performances is something to
be passed upon in complete abstraction from condi
tions of origin and development.
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT
In the foregoing discussion, particularly in the last
chapter, we were repeatedly led to recognize that
thought has its own distinctive objects. At times
Lotze gives way to the tendency to define thought
entirely in terms of modes and forms of activity which
are exercised by it upon a strictly foreign material.
But two motives continually push him in the other
direction, (i) Thought has a distinctive work to do,
one which involves a qualitative transformation of
(at least) the relationships of the presented matter;
as fast as it accomplishes this work, the subject-matter
becomes somehow thou^hJ^s-^ubjeet-matter. As we
have just seen, the data are progressively organized
to meet thought s ideal of a complete whole, with its
members interconnected according to a determining
principle. Such progressive organization throws
backward doubt upon the assumption of the original
total irrelevancy of the data and thought-forms to
each other. (2) A like motive operates from the side
of the subject-matter. As merely foreign and exter
nal, it is too heterogeneous to lend itself to thought s
exercise and influence. The idea, as we saw in the
first chapter, is the convenient medium through which
Lotze passes from the purely heterogeneous psychical
i S 8 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
impression or event, which is totally irrelevant to
thought s purpose and working, over to a state
affairs which can reward thought. Idea as meaning
forms the bridge over from the brute factuahty of
the psychical impression to the coherent valu
thought s own content.
We have, in this chapter, to consider the question o
the idea or content of thought from two points c
view first the possibility of such a content-its con
sistency with Lotze s fundamental premises; secondly,
its objective character-its validity and test. ^
I The question of the possibility of a specific co:
tent of thought is the question of the nature of the
idea as meaning. Meaning is the characteristic
object of thought. We have thus far left unques
tioned Lotze s continual assumption of meaning as
a sort of thought-unit; the building-stone of thought s
construction. In his treatment of meaning, Lot
contradictions regarding the antecedents, data, an<
content of thought reach their full conclusion,
expressly makes meaning to be the product of
thought s activity and also the unreflective material
out of which thought s operations grow.
This contradiction has been worked out in accurat,
and complete detail by Professor Jones. 1 He
marizes it as follows (p. 99): "No other way was left
to him [Lotze] excepting this of first attributing all
< Philosophy of Lotze, chap, in, "Thought and the Preliminary
Process of Experience."
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT 159
to sense and afterwards attributing all to thought,
and, finally, of attributing it to thought only because
it was already in its material. This seesaw is essential
to his theory; the elements of knowledge as he de
scribes them can subsist only by the alternate robbery
of each other." We have already seen how strenu
ously Lotze insists upon the fact that the given
subject-matter of thought is to be regarded wholly
as the work of a physical mechanism, "without any
action of thought." 1 But Lotze also states that if
the products of the psychical mechanism "are to
admit of combination in the definite form of a thought,
they each require some previous shaping to make
them into logical building-stones and to convert them
from impressions into ideas. Nothing is really more
familiar to us than this first operation of thought; the
only reason why we usually overlook it is that in the
language which we inherit, it is already carried out,
and it seems, therefore, to belong to the self-evident
presuppositions of thought, not to its own specific work"*
And again (I, 23), judgments "can consist of nothing
but combinations of ideas which are no longer mere
impressions: every such idea must have undergone at
least the simple formation mentioned above." Such
ideas are, Lotze goes on to urge, already rudimentary
concepts that is to say, logical determinations.
The obviousness of the logical contradiction of
attributing to a preliminary specific work of thought
1 1, 38. 3 1, 13; last italics mine.
160 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
exactly the condition of affairs which is elsewhere
explicitly attributed to a psychical mechanism prior
to any thought-activity, should not blind us to its
import and relative necessity. The impression, it will
be recalled, is a mere state of our own consciousness
a mood of ourselves. As such it has simply de facto
relations as an event to other similar events. But
reflective thought is concerned with the relationship
of a content or matter to other contents. Hence the
impression must have a matter before it can come at
all within the sphere of thought s exercise. How
shall it secure this ? Why, by a preliminary activity
of thought which objectifies the impression. Blue
as a mere sensuous irritation or feeling is given a
quality, the meaning "blue" blueness; the sense
impression is objectified; it is presented "no longer
as a condition which we undergo, but as a something
which has its being and its meaning in itself, and which
continues to be what it is, and to mean what it means
whether we are conscious of it or not. It is easy to
see here the necessary beginning of that activity which
we above appropriated to thought as such: it has not
yet got so far as converting coexistence into coherence.
It has first to perform the previous task of investing
each single impression with an independent validity,
without which the later opposition of their real coher
ence to mere coexistence could not be made in any
intelligible sense." 1
1 1, 14; italics mine.
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT 161
This objectification, which converts a sensitive
state into a sensible matter to which the sensitive
state is referred, also gives this matter "position," a
certain typical character. It is not objectified in a
merely general way, but is given a specific sort of
objectivity. Of these sorts of objectivity there are
three mentioned : that of a substantive content; that
of an attached dependent content; that of an active
relationship connecting the various contents with each
other. In short, we have the types of meaning em
bodied in language in the form of nouns, adjectives,
and verbs. It is through this preliminary formative
activity of thought that reflective or logical thought
has presented to it a world of meanings ranged in an v
order of relative independence and dependence, and
arranged as elements in a complex of meanings
whose various constituent parts mutually influence
one another s meanings. 1
As usual, Lotze mediates the contradiction between
material constituted by thought and the same material
just presented to thought, by a further position so
disparate to each that, taken in connection with each
by turns, it seems to bridge the gulf. After describing
the prior constitutive work of thought as above, he
goes on to discuss a second phase of thought which
is intermediary between this and the third phase,
viz., reflective thought proper. This second activity
1 See I, 16-20. On p. 22 this work is declared to be not only the
first but the most indispensable of all thought s operations.
1 62 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
is that of arranging experienced quales in series and
groups, thus ascribing a sort of universal or common
somewhat to various instances (as already described;
see p. 144). On one hand, it is clearly stated that this
second phase of thought s activity is in reality the
same as the first phase: since all objectification
involves positing, since positing involves distinction
of one matter from others, and since this involves
placing it in a series or group in which each is measur
ably marked off, as to the degree and nature of its
diversity, from every other. We are told that we
are only considering "a really inseparable opera
tion" of thought from two different sides: first, as
to the effect which objectifying thought has upon the
matter as set over against the feeling subject; sec
ondly, the effect which this objectification has upon
the matter in relation to other matters. 1 Afterward,
however, these two operations are declared to be
radically different in type and nature. The first is
determinant and formative; it gives ideas "the shape
without which the logical spirit could not accept
them." In a way it dictates "its own laws to its
object-matter." 2 The second activity of thought
is rather passive and receptive. It simply recognizes
what is already there. "Thought can make no differ
ence where it finds none already in the matter of
impressions." 3 "The first universal, as we saw, can
"1,26. 1, 35.
3 1, 36; see the strong statements already quoted, p. 112. What
if this canon were applied in the first act of thought referred to
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT lf , 3
only be experienced in immediate sensation It fa
no product of thought, but something that though
finds already in existence "
unle< it gets its start and cue from actual experi-
Hence the necessity of insisting unon t.hm hf
ty f insistin S U P
zing the c nte
a work of thought to detach anrom
e flux of sense irritations and invest it v4h a
of
of experience. Viewed from such
standpoint the principle of solution is
As we have already seen (p. I2l) , the
transforms tl
-mu.m.j, U1 meaning f Sunnnsp th->+ -.
that the first objectifying act can ^ u PP se > that is, it were said
quale out of a mere 2*3 feel * SUbstantiaI < or attached)
makes there already! It is clelrTe should ^"^ thC distinction k
*<* rfijiftltiiffii,. Vv C here finH T c^t f " o c ^ ** ifs&TCSS HS
or else just repeats what k xlr^ri n, m own Distinctions,
This same con SdiZ. ^ft^l^" faUif ^"8 >*.
ben discussed. See p. ,, 4 the lm P ress on, has already
1 64 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
sion of an experience leads to detaching certain
factors previously integrated in the concrete experi
ence as aspects of its own qualitative coloring, and
to relegating them, for the time being (pending inte
gration into further immediate qualities of a recon
stituted experience), into a world of bare meanings,
a sphere qualified as ideal throughout. These mean
ings then become the tools of thought in interpret
ing the data, just as the sense qualities which define
the presented situation are the immediate matter
for thought. The two as mutually referred are con
tent. That is, the datum and the meaning as
reciprocally qualified by each other constitute the
objective of thought.
To reach this unification is thought s objective or
goal. Every successive cross-section of reflective
inquiry presents what may be taken for granted as
the outcome of previous thinking, and as the deter
minant of further reflective procedure. Taken as
defining the point reached in the thought-function
and serving as constituent unit in further thought,
it is content or logical object. Lotze s instinct
is sure in identifying and setting over against
each other the material given to thought and the
content which is thought s own " building-stone."
His contradictions arise simply from the fact that
his absolute, non-historic method does not permit
him to interpret this joint ^^JdentiJ^L_aJld^ distinction
in a working, and hence relative, sense.
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT 165
II. The question of how the existence of meanings,
or thought-contents, is to be understood merges im
perceptibly into the question of the real objectivity or
validity of such contents. The difficulty for Lotze is
the now familiar one: So far as his logic compels him
to insist that these meanings are the possession and
product of thought (since thought is an independent
activity), the ideas are merely ideas; there is no
test of objectivity beyond the thoroughly unsatis
factory and formal one of their own mutual consist
ency. In reaction from this Lotze is thrown back
upon the idea of these contents as the original matter
given in the impressions themselves. Here there
seems to be an objective or external test by which
the reality of thought s operations may be tried; a
given idea is verified or found false according to its
measure of correspondence with the matter of experi
ence as such. But now we are no better off. The
original independence and heterogeneity of impres
sions and of thought is so great that there is no way
to compare the results of the latter with the former.
We cannot compare or contrast distinctions of worth
with bare differences of factual existence (I, 2). The
standard or test of objectivity is so thoroughly
external that by original definition it is wholly out
side- the realm of thought. How can thought com
pare meanings with existences?
Or again, the given material of experience apart
from thought is precisely the relatively chaotic and
1 66 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
unorganized; it even reduces itself to a mere sequence
of psychical events. What sense is there in directing
us to compare the highest results of scientific inquiry
with the bare sequence of our own states of feeling;
or even with the original data whose fragmentary
and uncertain character was the exact motive for
entering upon scientific inquiry? How can the
former in any sense give a check or test of the value
of the latter ? This is professedly to test the validity
of a system of meanings by comparison with that
whose defects call forth the construction of the system
of meanings.
Our subsequent inquiry simply consists in tracing
some of the phases of the characteristic seesaw from
one to the other of the two horns of the now familiar
dilemma: either thought is separate from the matter
of experience, and then its validity is wholly its own
private business, or else the objective results of
thought are already in the antecedent material, and
then thought is either unnecessary or else has no way
of checking its own performances.
i. Lotze assumes, as we have seen, a certain inde
pendent validity in each meaning or qualified content,
taken in and of itself. " Blue " has a certain meaning,
in and of itself; it is an object for consciousness as
such, not merely its state or mood. After the original
sense irritation through which it was mediated has
entirely disappeared, it persists as a valid meaning.
Moreover, it is an object or content of thought for
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT
167
others as well. Thus it has a double mark of validity :
in the comparison of one part of my own experience
with another, and in the comparison of my experience
as a whole with that of others. Here we have a sort
of validity which does not raise at all the question of
metaphysical reality (I, 14, 15). Lotze thus seems
to have escaped from the necessity of employing as
check or test for the validity of ideas any reference
to a real outside the sphere of thought itself. Such
terms as "conjunction," "franchise," " constitution,"
"algebraic zero," etc., claim to possess objective
validity. Yet none of these professes to refer to a
reality beyond thought. Generalizing this point of
view, validity or objectivity of meaning means simply
that which is "identical for all consciousness" (I, 3);
"it is quite indifferent whether certain parts of the
world of thought indicate something which has beside
an independent reality outside of thinking minds, or
whether all that it contains exists only in the thoughts
of those who think it, but with equal validity for them
all" (I, 16).
So far it seems clear sailing. Difficulties, however,
show themselves the moment we inquire what is
meant by a self-identical content for all thought. Is
this to be taken in a static or in a dynamic way?
That is to say: Does it express the fact that a given
content or meaning is de facto presented to the con
sciousness of all alike? Does this coequal presence
guarantee an objectivity? Or does validity attach
1 68 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
to a given meaning or content in the sense that it
directs and controls the further exercise of thinking,
and thus the formation of further new objects of
knowledge ?
The former interpretation is alone consistent with
Lotze s notion that the independent idea as such is
invested with a certain validity or objectivity. It
alone is consistent with his assertion that concepts
precede judgments. It alone, that is to say, is con
sistent with the notion that reflective thinking has a
sphere of ideas or meanings supplied to it at the out
set. But it is impossible to entertain this belief.
The stimulus which, according to Lotze, goads
thought on from ideas or concepts to judgments and
inferences is in truth simply the lack of validity, of
objectivity in its original independent meanings or
contents. A meaning as independent is precisely
that which is not invested with validity, but which is
a mere idea, a "notion," a fancy, at best a surmise
which may turn out to be valid (and of course this
indicates possible reference) ; a standpoint to have its
value determined by its further active use. "Blue"
as a mere detached floating meaning, an idea at large,
would not gain in validity simply by being enter
tained continuously in a given consciousness, or
by being made at one and the same time the persistent
object of attentive regard by all human conscious
nesses. If this were all that were required, the
chimera, the centaur, or any other subjective con-
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT
169
struction could easily gain validity. "Christian
Science" has made just this notion the basis of its
philosophy.
The simple fact is that in such illustrations as
"blue," "franchise," "conjunction," Lotze instinc
tively takes cases which are not mere independent
and detached meanings, but which involve reference
to a region of experience, to a region of mutually
determining social activities. The conception that
reference to a social activity does not involve the
same sort of reference of a meaning beyond itself that
is found in physical matters, and hence may be taken
quite innocent and free of the problem of reference
to existence beyond meaning, is one of the strangest
that has ever found lodgment in human thinking.
Either both physical and social reference or neither
is logical; if neither, then it is because the meaning
functions, as it originates, in a specific situation which
carries with it its own tests (see p. 96). Lotze s con
ception is made possible only by unconsciously sub
stituting the idea of an object as a content of thought
for a large number of persons (or a de facto somewhat
for every consciousness), for the genuine definition
of object as a determinant in a scheme of activity.
The former is consistent with Lotze s conception of
thought, but wholly indeterminate as to validity or
intent. The latter is the test used experimentally
in all concrete thinking, but involves a radical trans
formation of all Lotze s assumptions. A given idea
f
170 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of the conjunction of the franchise, or of blue, fe
valid not because everybody happens to entertaii it,
but because it expresses the factor of control or di,
tion in a given movement of experience,
of validity of idea 1 is its functional or instrumental use
in effecting the transition from a relatively conflicting
experience to a relatively integrated one.
view were correct, "blue" valid once would be vahc
always-even when red or green were actually called
for to fulfil specific conditions. This is to say va hdity
really refers to rightfulness or adequacy of perform
ance in an asserting of connection-not to a meaning
as contemplated in detachment.
If we refer again to the fact that the genuine ante
cedent of thought is a situation which is disorganize
in its structural elements, we can easily understand
how certain contents may be detached and held apart
as meanings or references, actual or possible
can understand how such detached contents may 1
of use in effecting a review of the entire experience,
and as affording standpoints and methods of ^a re con
struction which will maintain the integrity of behavic
We can understand how validity of meaning i
measured by reference to something which is na
4 mere meaning; by reference to something which h
H beyond it as such-viz., the reconstitute of an
logical subject, or datum of perception.
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT 171
experience into which it enters as method of control,/
That paradox of ordinary experience and of scientific
inquiry by which objectivity is given alike to matter
of perception and to conceived relations to facts
and to laws affords no peculiar difficulty because
the test of objectivity is everywhere the same /any-
thing is objective in so far as, through the medium of /- 7*
conflict, it controls the movement of experience in
its reconstructive transition. There is not first an
object, whether of sense perception or of conception,
which afterward somehow exercises this controlling
influence; but the objective is any existence exercis-]
ing the function of control. It may only control
the act of inquiry; it may only set on foot doubt,
but this is direction of subsequent experience, and, in
so far, is a token of objectivity./ It has to be reckoned
with.
So much for the thought-content or meaning as
having a validity of its own. It does not have it as
isolated or given or static; it has it in its dynamic
reference, its use in determining further movement
of experience. In other words, the "meaning," hav
ing been selected and made up with reference to per
forming a certain office in the evolution of a unified
experience, can be tested in no other way than by dis-
covering whether it does what it was intended to do
and what it purports to do. 1
1 Royce, in his World and Individual, I, chaps, vi and vii, has
criticized the conception of meaning as valid, but in a way which
172 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
2. Lotze has to wrestle with this question of valid
ity in a further respect: What constitutes the objec
tivity of thinking as a total attitude, activity, or
function? According to his own statement, the
meanings or valid ideas are after all only building-
stones for logical thought. Validity is thus not a
property of them in their independent existences, but
of their mutual reference to each other. Thinking is
the process of instituting these mutual references; of
building up the various scattered and independent
building-stones into the coherent system of thought.
What is the validity of the various forms of thinking
which find expression in the various types of judgment
and in the various forms of inference ? Categorical,
hypothetical, disjunctive judgment; inference by
induction, by analogy, by mathematical equation;
classification, theory of explanation all these are
processes of reflection by which connection in an
organized whole is given to the fragmentary meanings
with which thought sets out. What shall we say of
the validity of such processes ?
implies that there is a difference between validity and reality, in the
sense that the meaning or content of the valid idea becomes real
only when it is experienced in direct feeling. The foregoing implies,
of course, a difference between validity and reality, but finds the
test of validity in exercise of the function of direction or control to
which the idea makes pretension or claim. The same point of view
would profoundly modify Royce s interpretation of what he terms
"inner" and "outer" meaning. See Moore, University of Chicago
Decennial Publications, III, on "Existence, Meaning, and Reality."
I
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT 173
On one point Lotze is quite clear. These various
logical acts do not really enter into the constitution
of the valid world. The logical forms as such are
maintained only in the process of thinking. The
world of valid truth does not undergo a series of con
tortions and evolutions, paralleling in any way the
successive steps and missteps, the succession of tenta
tive trials, withdrawals, and retracings, which mark
the course of our own thinking. 1
Lotze is explicit upon the point that only the
thought-content in which the process of thinking
issues has objective validity; the act of thinking
is "purely and simply an inner movement of our own
minds, made necessary to us by reason of the con
stitution of our nature and of our place in the world"
(II, 279).
Here the problem of validity presents itself as the
problem of the relation of the act of thinking to its
own product. In his solution Lotze uses two meta
phors: one derived from building operations, the
other from traveling. The construction of a building
requires of necessity certain tools and extraneous
constructions, stagings, scaffoldings, etc., which are
necessary to effect the final construction, but which
1 II, 257, 265, and in general Book III, chap. iv. It is significant
that thought itself, appearing as an act of thinking over against its
own content, is here treated as psychical rather than as logical. Con
sequently, as we see in the text, it gives him one more difficulty to
wrestle with : how a process which is ex officio purely psychical and
subjective can yet yield results which are valid in a logical, to say
nothing of an ontological, sense.
174 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
do not enter into the building as such. The activ
ity has an instrumental, though not a constitutive,
value as regards its product. Similarly, in order to
get a view from the top of a mountain this view
being the objective the traveler has to go through
preliminary movements along devious courses. These
again are antecedent prerequisites, but do not con
stitute a portion of the attained view.
The problem of thought as activity, as distinct
from thought as content, opens up altogether too
large a question to receive complete consideration
at this point. Fortunately, however, the previous
discussion enables us to narrow the point which is in
issue just here. The question is whether the activity
of thought is to be regarded as an independent func
tion supervening entirely from without upon ante
cedents, and directed from without upon data, or
whether it marks the phase of the transformation
which the course of experience (whether practical, or
artistic, or socially affectional or whatever) undergoes
for the sake of its deliberate control. If it be the
latter, a thoroughly intelligent sense can be given
to the proposition that the activity of thinking is
instrumental, and that its worth is found, not in its
own successive states as such, but in the result in
which it comes to conclusion. But the conception of
thinking as an independent activity somehow occur
ring after an independent antecedent, playing upon
an independent subject-matter, and finally effecting
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT
an independent result, presents us with just one
miracle the more.
I do not question the strictly instrumental char
acter of thinking. The problem lies not here, but
in__the interpretation of t]\p. nafurg^nf the instrument.
The difficulty with Lotze s position is that it forces
us into the assumption of a means and an end which
are simply and only external to each other, and yet
necessarily dependent upon each other a position
which, whenever found, is thoroughly self-contradic
tory. Lotze vibrates between the notion of thought as
a tool in the external sense, a mere scaffolding to a
finished building in which it has no part nor lot, and
the notion of thought as an immanent tool, as a scaf
folding which is an integral part of the very operation
of building, and which is set up for the sake of the
building-activity which is carried on effectively only
with and through a scaffolding. Only in the former
case can the scaffolding be considered as a mere tool.
In the latter case the external scaffolding is not the in
strumentality; the actual tool is the action of erecting
the building, and this action involves the scaffolding
as a constituent part of itself. The work of building
is not set over against the completed building as
mere means to an end; it is the end taken in process
or historically, longitudinally, temporally viewed.
The scaffolding, moreover, is not an external means to
the process of erecting, but an organic member of it.
It is no mere accident of language that "building"
176 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
has a double sense meaning at once the process and
the finished product. The outcome of thought is
the thinking activity carried on to its own com
pletion; the activity, on the other hand, is the out
come taken anywhere short of its own realization, and
thereby still going on.
The only consideration which prevents easy and
immediate acceptance of this view is the notion of
thinking as something purely formal. It is strange
that the empiricist does not see that his insistence
upon a matter accidentally given to thought only
strengthens the hands of the rationalist with his
claim of thinking as an independent activity, separate
from the actual make-up of the affairs of experience.
Thinking as a merely formal activity exercised upon
certain sensations or images or objects sets forth an
absolutely meaningless proposition. The psycho
logical identification of thinking with the process of
association is much nearer the truth. It is, indeed,
on-the way to the truth. We need only to recognize
that association is of matters or meanings, not of
ideas as existences or events; and that the type of
association we caTTthinking differs from casual fancy
and revery by control in reference to an end, to appre
hend how completely thinking is a reconstructive
movement of actual contents of experience in rela
tion to each other.
There is no miracle in the fact that tool and
material are adapted to each other in the process of
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT 177
reaching a valid conclusion. Were they external
in origin to each other and to the result, the whole
affair would, indeed, present an insoluble problem
so insoluble that, if this were the true condition of
affairs, we never should even know that there was a
problem. But, in truth, both material and tool have
been secured and determined with reference to
economy and efficiency in effecting the end desired
the maintenance of a harmonious experience. The
builder has discovered that his building means build
ing tools, and also building material. Each has been
slowly evolved with reference to its fit employ in the
entire function; and this evolution has been checked
at every point by reference to its own correspondent.
The carpenter has not thought at large on his building
and then constructed tools at large, but has thought
of his building in terms of the material which enters
into it, and through that medium has come to the
consideration of the tools which are helpful.
This is not a formal question, but one of the place
and relations of the matters actually entering into
experience. And they in turn determine the taking
up of just those mental attitudes, and the employing
of just those intellectual operations which most
effectively handle and organize the material. Think
ing is adaptation to an end through the adjustment
of particular objective contents.
The thinker, like the carpenter, is at once stimu
lated and checked in every stage of his procedure by
178 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
the particular situation which confronts him. A
person is at the stage of wanting a new house: well,
then, his materials are available resources, the price
of labor, the cost of building, the state and needs
of his family, profession, etc.; his tools are paper
and pencil and compass, or possibly the bank as a
credit instrumentality, etc. Again, the work is
beginning. The foundations are laid. This in turn
determines its own specific materials and tools.
Again, the building is almost ready for occupancy.
The concrete process is that of taking away the scaf
folding, clearing up the grounds, furnishing and
decorating rooms, etc. This specific operation again
determines its own fit or relevant materials and tools.
It defines the time and mode and manner of beginning
* and ceasing to use them. Logical theory will get
along as well as does the practice of knowing when
it sticks close by and observes the directions and
checks inherent in each successive phase of the evolu
tion of the cycle of experience. The problem in
general of validity of the thinking process as distinct
from the validity of this or that process arises only
when thinking is isolated from its historic position
and its material context (see ante, p. 95).
3. But Lotze is not yet done with the problem of
validity, even from his own standpoint. The ground
shifts again under his feet. It is no longer a question
of the validity of the idea or meaning with which
thought is supposed to set out; it is no longer a ques-
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT 179
tion of the validity of the process of thinking in refer
ence to its own product; it is the question of the valid
ity of the product. Supposing, after all, that the final
meaning, or logical idea, is thoroughly coherent and
organized; supposing it is an object for all conscious
ness as such. Once more arises the question: What
is the validity of even the most coherent and complete
idea? a question which arises and will not down.
We may reconstruct the notion of the chimera until
it ceases to be an independent idea and becomes a
part of the system of Greek mythology. Has it
gained in validity in ceasing to be an independent
myth, in becoming an element in systematized
myth? Myth it was and myth it remains. My
thology does not get validity by growing bigger.
How do we know the same is not the case with the
ideas which are the product of our most deliberate
and extended scientific inquiry ? The reference again
to the content as the self-identical object of all con
sciousness proves nothing; the subject-matter of a
hallucination does not gain validity in proportion to
its social contagiousness.
According to Lotze, the final product is, after all,
still thought. Now, Lotze is committed once for all
to the notion that thought, in any form, is directed
by and^_aji_aatside_reality. The ghost haunts him
to the last. How, after all, does even the ideally
perfect valid thought apply or refer to reality ? Its
genuine subject is still beyond itself. At the last
i8o ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
Lotze can dispose of this question only by regarding
it as a metaphysical, not a logical, problem (II, 281,
282). In other words, logically speaking, we are at
the end just exactly where we were at the beginning
in the sphere of ideas, and of ideas only, plus a con
sciousness of the necessity of referring these ideas to a
reality which is beyond them, which is utterly inac
cessible to them, which is out of reach of any influ
ence which they may exercise, and which transcends
any possible comparison with their results. "It is
vain," says Lotze, "to shrink from acknowledging
the circle here involved .... all we know of the
external world depends upon the ideas of it which are
within us" (II, 185). "It is then this varied world
of ideas within us which forms the sole material
directly given to us" (II, 186). As it is the only
material given to us, so it is the only material with
which thought can end. To talk about knowing the
external world through ideas which are merely
within us is to talk of an inherent self-contradiction.
There is no common ground in which the external
world and our ideas can meet. In other words, the
original separation between an independent thought-
material and an independent thought-function and
purpose lands us inevitably in the metaphysics of
subjective idealism, plus a belief in an unknown
reality beyond, which although unknowable is yet
taken as the ultimate test of the value of our ideas.
At the end, after all our maneuvering we are where we
THE OBJECTS OF THOUGHT
181
began : with two separate disparates, one of meaning,
but no existence, the other of existence, but no meaning.
The other aspect of Lotze s contradiction which
completes the circle is clear when we refer to his
original propositions, and recall that at the outset
he was compelled to regard the origination and con
junctions of the impressions, the elements of ideas, as
themselves the effects exercised by a world of things
already in existence (see p. 31). He sets up an inde
pendent world of thought, and yet has to confess that
both at its origin and at its termination it points with
absolute necessity to a world beyond itself. Only
the stubborn refusal to take this initial and terminal
reference of thought beyond itself as having a historic
or temporal meaning, indicating a particular place
of generation and a particular point of fulfilment,
compels Lotze to give such objective references a
transcendental turn.
When Lotze goes on to say (II, 191) that the
measure of truth of particular parts of experience is
found in asking whether, when judged by thought,
they are in harmony with other parts of experience;
when he goes on to say that there is no sense in trying
to compare the entire world of ideas with a reality
which is non-existent (excepting as it itself should
become an idea), he lands where he might better
have frankly commenced. 1 He saves himself from
1 Lotze even goes so far in this connection as to say that the
antithesis between our ideas and the objects to which they are directed
182
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
utter skepticism only by claiming that the explicit
assumption of skepticism the need of agreement of a
ready-made idea as such with an extraneous ready-
made material as such is meaningless. He defines
correctly the work of thought as consisting in harmo
nizing the various portions of experience with each
other. In this case the test of thought is the har
mony or unity of experience actually effected. The^
test of validity, of thought is beyond thought, just
as at the other limit thought originates out of a situa
tion which is not dependent upon thought. Interpret
this before and beyond in a historic sense, as an affair
of the place occupied and role played by thinking as
a function in experience in relation to other non-
intellectual experiences of things, and then the inter
mediate and instrumental character of thought, its
dependence upon unreflective antecedents for its exist
ence, and upon a consequent experience for its final
test, becomes significant and necessary. Taken at
large, apart from temporal development and control,
it plunges us in the depths of a hopelessly complicated
and self-revolving metaphysic.
is itself a part of the world of ideas (II, 192). Barring the phrase
"world of ideas" (as against world of continuous experience), he
need only have commenced at this point to have traveled straight
and arrived somewhere. But it is absolutely impossible to hold both
this view and that of the original independent existence of something
given to and in thought and an independent existence of a thought-
activity, thought-forms, and thought-contents.
VI
SOME STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT
The man in the street, when asked what he thinks
about a certain matter, often replies that he does not
think at all; he knows. The suggestion is that think
ing is a case of active uncertainty set over against
conviction or unquestioning assurance. When he
adds that he does not have to think, but knows, the
further implication is that thinking, when needed,
leads to knowledge; that its purpose or object is to
secure stable equilibrium. It is the purpose of this
paper to show some of the main stages through which
thinking, understood in this way, actually passes in
its attempt to reach its most effective working; that
is, the maximum of reasonable certainty.
, I wish to show how a variety of modes of thinking,
easily recognizable in the progress of both the race
and the individual, may be identified and arranged
as successive species of the relationship which doubt
ing bears to assurance; as various ratios, so to speak,
which the vigor of doubting bears to mere acquies
cence. The presumption is that the function of
questioning is one which has continually grown in
intensity and range, that doubt is continually chased
back, and, being cornered, fights more desperately,
and thus clears the ground more thoroughly. Its
183
1 84 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
successive stations or arrests constitute stages of
thinking. Or to change the metaphor, just in the
degree that what has been accepted as fact the
object of assurance loses stable equilibrium, the
tension involved in the questioning attitude increases,
until a readjustment gives a new and less easily
shuken equilibrium.
The natural tendency of man is not to press home
a doubt, but to cut inquiry as short as possible.
The practical man s impatience with theory has
become a proverb; it expresses just the feeling that,
since the thinking process is of use only in substi
tuting certainty for doubt, any apparent prolonga
tion of it is useless speculation, wasting time and
diverting the mind from important issues. To follow
the line of least resistance is to cut short the stay in
the sphere of doubts and suggestions, and to make
the speediest return into the world where one can act.
The result, of course, is that difficulties are evaded
or surmounted rather than really disposed of. Hence,
in spite of the opposition of the would-be practical
man, the needs of practice, of economy, and of effi
ciency have themselves compelled a continual deepen
ing of doubt and widening of the area of investigation.
It is within this evolution that we have to find our
stages of thinking. The initial stage is where the
doubt is hardly endured but not entertained; it is
no welcome guest but an intruder, to be got rid of
as speedily as possible. Development of alternative
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 185
and competitive suggestions, the forming of suppo
sitions (of ideas), goes but a little way. The mind
seizes upon the nearest or most convenient instru
ment of dismissing doubt and reattaining security.
At the other end is the definitive and conscious search
for problems, and the development of elaborate and
systematized methods of investigation the industry
and technique of science. Between these limits
come processes which have started out upon the path
of doubt and inquiry, and then halted by the way.
In the first stage of the journey, beliefs are treated
as something fixed and static. To those who are
using them they are simply another kind of fact.
They are used to settle doubts, but the doubts are
treated as arising quite outside the ideas themselves.
Nothing is further from recognition than that ideas
themselves are open to doubt, or need criticism and
revision. Indeed, the one who uses static meanings
is not even aware that they originated and have been
elaborated for the sake of dealing with conflicts and
problems. The ideas are just " there," and they
may be used like any providential dispensation to
help men out of the troubles into which they have
fallen.
are_ -generally held responsible. for_jthis
fixatiojL-Qf the idea, for this substantiation of it into
a kind of thing. A long line of critics has made us
familiar with the invincible habit "of supposing that
wherever there is a name there is some reality
1 86 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
corresponding to it"; of supposing that general and
abstract words have their equivalent objects sor
where in rerum natura, as have also singular and proper
names We know with what simplicity of sell
confidence the English empirical school has accounted
for the ontological speculation of Plato. Words
tend to fix intellectual contents, and give them a
certain air of independence and individuality,
some truth is here expressed there can be no question.
Indeed, the attitude of mind of which we are speaki
is well illustrated in the person who goes to the <
tionary in order to settle some problem in morals,
politics, or science; who would end some discussion
regarding a material point by learning what meaning
is attached to terms by the dictionary as authority.
The question is taken as lying outside of the sph
of science or intellectual inquiry, since the meaning c
the word the idea is unquestionable and fixed.
But this petrifying influence of words is after all
only a superficial explanation. There must be sor
meaning present or the word could not fix it; \
must be something which accounts for the disposition
to use names as a medium of fossilization.
in truth, a certain real fact-
Ill uiuni, . -
behind both the word and the meaning it stands 1<
Ecial usage. The person who consults
getting an established fact when he
d vJ- H- Li-vllc* - - j* *"** o T /* J 4-1-k
turns there for the definition of a term. He finds tl
sense in which the word is currently used.
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 187
customs are no less real than physical events. It is
not possible to dispose of this fact of common usage
by reference to mere convention, or any other arbi
trary device. A form of social usage is no more an
express invention than any other social institution.
It embodies the permanent attitude, the habit taken
toward certain recurring difficulties or problems in
experience. Ideas, or meanings fixed in terms, show
the scheme of values which the community uses in
appraising matters that need consideration and which
are indeterminate or unassured. They are held up
as standards for all its members to follow. Here is
the solution of the paradox. The fixed or static idea
is a_ faj[Jt-xriressing_jji established _social attitude, ,
a cusiom. It is not merely verbal, because it denotes
a force which operates, as all customs do, in controlling
particular cases. But since it marks a mode of inter
pretation, a scheme for assigning values, a way of
dealing with doubtful cases, it falls within the sphere
of ideas. Or, coming to the life of the individual, the
fixed meaning represents, not a state of consciousness
fixed by a name, but_a recognition of a habitual
waoTbelief :
^
We find an apt illustration of fixed ideas in the
rules prevalent in primitive communities, rules which
minutely determine all acts in which the community
as a whole is felt to have an interest. These rules
are facts because they express customs, and carry
with them certain sanctions. Their meaning does
1 88 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
not cease with judicial utterance. They are made
valid at once in a practical way against anyone who
departs from them. Yet as rules they are ideas, for
they express general ways of denning doubtful matters
in experience and of re-establishing certainty. An
individual may fail in acknowledgment of them and
explicit reference is then necessary. For one who has
lost himself in the notion that ideas are psychical and
subjective, I know of no better way to appreciate the
significance of an idea than to consider that a social
rule of judgment is nothing but a certain way of
viewing or interpreting facts; as such it is an idea.
The point that is of special interest to us here,
however, is that these ideas are taken as fixed and
unquestionable, and that the cases to which they are
to apply are regarded as in themselves equally fixed.
So far as concerns the attitude of those who employ
this sort of ideas, the doubt is simply as to what idea
should be in a particular case. Even the Athenian
Greeks, for instance, long kept up the form of indict
ing and trying a tree or implement through which
some individual had been killed. There was a rule
a fixed idea for dealing with all who offended against
the community by destroying one of its citizens.
The fact that an inanimate object, a thing without
intention or volition, offended was not a material
circumstance. It made no difference in the case;
that is, there was no doubt as to the nature of the
fact. It was as fixed as was the rule.
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 189
With advance in the complexity of life, however,
rules accumulate, and discrimination that is, a
certain degree of inquiring and critical attitude-
enters in. Inquiry takes effect, however, in seeking
among a collection of fixed ideas just the one to be
used, rather than in directing suspicion against any
rule or idea as such, or in an attempt to discover or
constitute a new one. It is hardly necessary to refer
to the development of casuistry, or to the multipli
cation of distinctions within dogmas, or to the growth
of ceremonial law in cumbrous detail, to indicate
what the outcome of this logical stage is likely to be.
The essential thing is that doubt and inquiry are
directed neither at the nature of the intrinsic fact
itself, nor at the value of the idea as such, but simply
at the manner in which one is attached to the other.
Thinking falls outside both fact and idea, and into
the sphere of their external connection. It is still
a fiction of judicial procedure that there is already in
existence some custom or law under which every
possible dispute that is, every doubtful or unassured
case falls, and that the judge only declares which
law is applicable in the particular case. This point
of view has tremendously affected the theory of logic
in its historic development.
One of the chief, perhaps the most important,
instrumentalities in developing and maintaining
fixed ideas is the need of instruction and the way in
which it is given. If ideas were called into play only
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
when doubtful cases actually arise, they could not
help retaining a certain amount of vitality and
flexibility; but the community always instructs its
new members as to its way of disposing of these cases
before they present themselves. Ideas are proffered,
in other words, separated from present doubt and re
mote from application, in order to escape future diffi
culties and the need of any thinking. In primitive
communities this is the main purport of instruction,
and it remains such to a very considerable degree.
There is a prejudgment rather than judgment proper.
When the community uses its resources to fix certain
ideas in the mind that is, certain ways of interpret
ing and regarding experience ideas are necessarily
formulated so as to assume a rigid and independent
form. They are doubly removed from the sphere of
doubt. The attitude is uncritical and dogmatic in the
extreme so much so that one might question whether
it is to be properly designated as a stage of thinking.
In this form ideas become the chief instruments of
social conservation. Judicial decision and penal
correction are restricted and ineffective methods of
maintaining social institutions unchanged, com
pared with instilling in advance uniform ideas fixed
modes of appraising all social questions and issues.
These set ideas thus become the embodiment of the
values which any group has realized and intends to
perpetuate. The fixation supports them against
dissipation through attrition of circumstance, and
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 191
against destruction through hostile attack. It would
be interesting to follow out the ways in which such
values are put under the protection of the gods and
of religious rites, or themselves erected into quasi-
divinities as among the Romans. This, however,
would hardly add anything to the logic of the dis
cussion, although it would indicate the importance
attached to the fixation of ideas, and the thorough
going character of the means used to secure immo
bilization.
The conserving value of the dogmatic attitude, the
point of view which takes ideas as fixed, is not to be
ignored. When society has no methods of science
for protecting and perpetuating its achieved values,
there is practically no other resort than such crystal
lization. Moreover, with any possible scientific
progress, some equivalent of the fixed idea must
remain. The nearer we get to the needs of action
the greater absoluteness must attach to ideas. The
necessities of action do not await our convenience.
Emergencies continually present themselves where
the fixity required for successful activity cannot be
attained through the medium of investigation. The
alternative to vacillation, confusion, and futility of
action is importation to ideas of a positive and secured
character, not in strict logic belonging to them. It
is this sort of determination that Hegel seems to have
in mind in what he terms Verstand the under
standing. "Apart from Verstand," he says, "there
i Q2 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
is no fixity or accuracy in the region either of
theory or practice"; and, again, "Verstand sticks
to fixity of characters and their distinctions from
one another; it treats every meaning as having a
subsistence of its own." In technical terminology,
also, this is what is meant by " positing" ideas-
hardening meanings,
In recognizing, however, that fixation of intellectual
content is a precondition of effective action, we must
not overlook the modification that comes with the
advance of thinking into more critical forms. At the
outset fixity is taken as the rightful possession of the
ideas themselves; it belongs to them and is their
"essence." As the scientific spirit develops, we see
that it is we who lend fixity to the ideas, and that
this loan is for a purpose to which the meaning of the
ideas is accommodated. Fixity ceases to be a matter
of intrinsic structure of ideas, and becomes an affair
of security in using them. Hence the important
thing is the way in which we fix the idea the manner
of the inquiry which results in definition. We take
the idea as if it were fixed, in order to secure the
necessary stability of action. The crisis past, the
idea drops its borrowed investiture, and reappears
as surmise.
When we substitute for ideas as uniform rules by
which to decide doubtful cases that making over of
ideas which is requisite to make them fit, the quality
of thought alters. We may fairly say that we have
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 193
come into another stage. The idea is now regarded
as essentially subject to change, as a manufactured
article needing to be made ready for use. To deter
mine the conditions of this transition lies beyond my
purpose, since I have in mind only a descriptive setting
forth of the periods through which, as a matter of
fact, thought has passed in the development of the
inquiry function, without raising the problem of its
"why" and "how." At this point we shall not do
more than note that, as the scheduled stock of fixed
ideas grows larger, their application to specific ques
tions becomes more difficult, prolonged, and round
about. There has to be a definite hunting for the
specific idea which is appropriate; there has to be
comparison of it with other ideas. This comes to
involve a certain amount of mutual compromise and
modification before selection is possible. The idea
thus gets somewhat shaken. It has to be made over
so that it may harmonize with other ideas possessing
equal worth. Often the very accumulation of fixed
ideas commands this reconstruction. The dead
weight of the material becomes so great that it cannot
sustain itself without a readjustment of the center of
gravity. Simplification and systematization are re
quired, and these call for reflection. Critical cases
come up in which the fiction of an idea or rule already
in existence cannot be maintained. It is impossible
to conceal that old ideas have to be radically modified
before the situation can be dealt with. The friction
194 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of circumstance melts away their congealed fixity.
Judgment becomes legislative.
Seeking illustrations at large, we find this change
typified in Hebrew history in the growing importance
of the prophet over the judge, in the transition from
a justification of conduct through bringing particular
cases into conformity with existent laws, into that
effected by personal right-mindedness enabling the
individual to see the law in each case for himself.
Profoundly as this changed conception of the relation
between law and particular case affected moral life,
it did not, among Semites, directly influence the
logical sphere. With the Greeks, however, we find
a continuous and marked departure from positive
declaration of custom. We have assemblies meeting
to discuss and dispute, and finally, upon the basis of
the considerations thus brought to view, to decide.
The man of counsel is set side by side with the man
of deed. Odysseus was much experienced, not only
because he knew the customs and ways of old, but
even more because from the richness of his experience
he could make the pregnant suggestion to meet the
new crisis. It is hardly too much to say that it was
the emphasis put by the Greek mind upon discussion
at first as preliminary to decision, and afterward
to legislation which generated logical theory.
Discussion is thus an apt name for this attitude of
thought. It is bringing various beliefs together;
shaking one against another and tearing down their
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT
195
rigidity. It is conversation of thoughts ; it is dialogue
the mother of dialectic in more than the etymo
logical sense. No process is more recurrent in history
than the transfer of operations carried on between
different persons into the arena of the individual s
own consciousness. The discussion which at first
took place by bringing ideas from different persons
into contact, by introducing them into the forum
of competition, and by subjecting them to critical
comparison and selective decision, finally became a
habit of the individual with himself. He became a
miniature social assemblage, in which pros and cons
were brought into play struggling for the mastery
for final conclusion. In some such way we conceive
reflection to be born.
It is evident that discussion, the agitation of ideas,
if judged from the standpoint of the older fixed ideas,
is a destructive process. Ideas are not only shaken
together and apart, they are so shaken in themselves
that their whole validity becomes doubtful. Mind,
and not merely beliefs, becomes uncertain. The
attempt to harmonize different ideas means that in
themselves they are discrepant. The search for
a conclusion means that accepted ideas are only points
of view, and hence personal affairs. Needless to
say it was the Sophists who emphasized and gener
alized this negative aspect this presupposition of
loss of assurance, of inconsistency, of "subjectivity."
They took it as applying not only to this, that, and
196 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
the other idea, but to ideas as ideas. Since ideas are
no longer fixed contents, they are just expressions of
an individual s way of thinking. Lacking inherent
value, they merely express the interests that induce
the individual to look this way rather than that.
They are made by the individual s point of view, and
hence will be unmade if he can be led to change his
point of view. Where all was fixity, now all is
instability: where all was certitude, nothing now
exists save opinion based on prejudice, interest, or
arbitrary choice.
The modern point of view, while condemning
sophistry, yet often agrees with it in limiting the
reflective attitude as such to self -in volution and self-
conceit. From Bacon down, the appeal is to obser
vation, to attention to facts, to concern with the
external world. The sole genuine guaranty of truth
is taken to be appeal to facts, and thinking as such is
something different. If reflection is not considered
to be merely variable matter, it is considered to be
at least an endless mulling over of things. It is the
futile attempt to spin truth out of inner conscious
ness. It is introspection, and theorizing, and mere
speculation.
Such wholesale depreciation ignores the value
inherent even in the most subjective reflection, for
it takes the settled estate which is proof that thought
is not needed, or that it has done its work, as if it
supplied the standard for the occasions in which
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 197
problems are hard upon us, and doubt is rife. It
takes the conditions which come about after and
because we have thought to measure the conditions
which call out thinking. Whenever we really need
to reflect, we cannot appeal directly to the "fact,"
for the adequate reason that the stimulus to thinking
arises just because "facts" have slipped away from
us. The fallacy is neatly committed by Mill in his
discussion of Whewell s account of the need of mental
conception or hypothesis in "colligating" facts.
He insists that the conception is "obtained" from the
: facts" in which "it exists," is "impressed upon us
from without," and also that it is the "darkness and
confusion" of the facts that make us want the con
ception in order to create "light and order." 1
Reflection involves running over various ideas,
sorting them out, comparing one with another, trying
to get one which will unite in itself the strength of
two, searching for new points of view, developing
new suggestions; guessing, suggesting, selecting, and
rejecting. The greater the problem, and the greater
the shock of doubt and resultant confusion and uncer
tainty, the more prolonged and more necessary is the
process of "mere thinking." It is a more obvious
phase of biology than of physics, of sociology than of
chemistry; but it persists in established sciences.
If we take even a mathematical proposition, not
after it has been demonstrated and is thus capable
1 Logic, Book IV, chap, ii, 2.
198 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of statement in adequate logical form but while
in process of discovery and proof, the operation of
this subjective phase is manifest, so much so, indeed,
that a distinguished modern mathematician has said
that the paths which the mathematical inquirer
traverses in any new field are more akin to those of
the experimentalist, and even to those of the poet and
artist, than to those of the Euclidean geometer.
What makes the essential difference between
modern research and the reflection of, say, the Greeks,
is not the absence of "mere thinking," but the pres
ence of conditions for testing its results; the elabo
rate system of checks and balances found in the
technique of modern experimentation. The thinking
process does not now go on endlessly in terms of itself,/
but seeks outlet through reference to particular expe
riences. It .is tested by. this reference; not, however,
as if a theory could be tested by directly comparing
it with facts an obvious impossibility but through
use in facilitating commerce with facts. It is tested
as glasses are tested ; things are looked at through the
medium of specific meanings to see if thereby they
assume a more orderly and clearer aspect, if they are
less blurred and obscure.
The reaction of the Socratic school against the
Sophistic may serve to illustrate the third stage of
thinking. This movement was not interested in the
de facto shaking of received ideas and a discrediting
of all thinking. It was concerned rather with the
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 199
virtual appeal to a common denominator involved in
bringing different ideas into relation with one another.
In their comparison and mutual modification it saw
evidence of the operation of a standard permanent
meaning passing judgment upon their conflict, and
revealing a common principle and standard of refer
ence. It dealt not with the shaking and dissolution,
but with a comprehensive permanent Idea finally to
emerge. Controversy and discussion among different
individuals may result in extending doubt, mani
festing the incoherency of accepted ideas, and so
throwing an individual into an attitude of distrust.
But it also involves an appeal to a single thought to
be accepted by both parties, thus putting an end to
the dispute. This appeal to a higher court, this
possibility of attaining a total and abiding intellectual
object, which should bring into relief the agreeing
elements in contending thoughts, and banish the
incompatible factors, animated the Socratic search
for the concept, the elaboration of the Platonic
hierarchy of Ideas in which the higher substantiate
the lower, and the Aristotelian exposition of the sys
tematized methods by which general truths may be
employed to prove propositions otherwise doubtful.
At least, this historic development will serve to illus
trate what is involved in the transition from the second
to the third stage; the transformation of discussion
into reasoning, of subjective reflection into method
of proof.
2 oo ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
Discussion, whether with ourselves or others, goes
on by suggestion of clues, as the uppermost objed
interest opens a way here or there. It is discursive
and haphazard. This gives it the devious tendency
indicated in Plato s remark that it needs to be tied
to the post of reason. It needs, that is, to have 1
ground or basis of its various component statements
brought to consciousness in such a way as to define
the exact value of each. The Socratic contention is
the need of compelling the common denominator,
the common subject, underlying the diversity of views
to exhibit itself. It alone gives a sure standard
which the claims of all assertions may be measure
Until this need is met, discussion is a self-deceiving
play with unjudged, unexamined matters, which,
confused and shifting, impose themselves upon us
We are familiar enough with the theory that
Socratic universal, the Platonic idea, was generate,
by an ignorant transformation of psychology
abstractions into self-existent entities. To
upon this as the key to the Socratic logic is r
caricature. The objectivity of the universal
for the sense of something decisive and control h
in all reflection, which otherwise is just mampula
of personal prejudices. This sense is as active in
modern science as it was in the Platonic dialec i.
What Socrates felt was the opinionated, conceits
quality of the terms used in the moral and political
discussion of his day, as that contrasted with the
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 201
subject-matter, which, if rightly grasped, would put
an end to mere views and argumentations.
By Aristotle s time the interest was not so much
in the existence of standards of decision in cases of
doubt and dispute as in the technique of their use.
The judge was firmly seated on the bench. The
parties in controversy recognized his jurisdiction, and
their respective claims were submitted for adjudi-
cature. The need was for rules of procedure by
which the judge might, in an obvious and impartial
way, bring the recognized universal or decisive law
to bear upon particular matters. Hence the elabo
ration of those rules of evidence, those canons of
demonstrative force, which are the backbone of the
Aristotelian logic. There was a code by which to
decide upon the admissibility and value of proffered
testimony the rules of the syllogism. The figures
and terms of the syllogism provided a scheme for
deciding upon the exact bearing of every statement
propounded. The plan of arrangement of major and
minor premises, of major, minor, and middle terms,
furnished a manifesto of the exact procedure to be
followed in determining the probative force of each
element in reasoning. The judge knew what testi
mony to permit, when and how it should be intro
duced, how it could be impeached or have its
competence lessened, and how the evidence was
to be arranged so that a summary would also be
an exhibit of its value in establishing a conclusion.
202 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
This means that there now is a distinctive type of
thinking marked off from mere discussion and reflec
tion. It may be called either reasoning or proof. It
is reasoning when we think of the regularity of the
method for getting at and employing the unques
tioned grounds which give validity to other state
ments. It is proof as regards the degree of logical
desert thereby measured out to such propositions.
Proof is the acceptance or rejection justified through
the reasoning. To quote from Mill: "To give
credence to a proposition as a conclusion from some
thing else is to reason in the most extensive sense of
the term. We say of a fact or statement, it is proved,
when we believe its truth by reason of some other fact
or statement from which it is said to follow." 1
Reasoning is marshaling a series of terms and propo
sitions until we can bind some doubtful fact firmly
:to an unquestioned, although remote, truth; it is the
regular way in which a certain proposition is brought
to bear on a precarious one, clothing the latter with
something of the peremptory quality of the former.
So far as we reach this result, and so far as we can
exhibit each step in the nexus and be sure it has been
rightly performed, we have proof.
But questions still face us. How about that truth
upon which we fall back as guaranteeing the credibility
of other statements how about our major premise ?
1 Logic, Book II, chap, i, i. I have changed the order of the
sentences quoted, and have omitted some phrases.
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 203
Whence does it derive its guaranty? Quis custodes
custodiet ?
We may, of course, in turn subsume it under some
further major premise, but an infinite regress is
impossible, and on this track we are finally left hang
ing in the air. For practical purposes the unques
tioned principle may be taken as signifying mutual
concession or agreement it denotes that as a matter
of fact its truth is not called in question by the parties
concerned. This does admirably for settling argu
ments and controversies. It is a good way of ami
cably arranging matters among those already friends
and fellow-citizens. But scientifically the wide
spread acceptance of an idea seems to testify to cus
tom rather than to truth; prejudice is strengthened
in influence, but hardly in value, by the number who
share it; conceit is none the less self-conceit because
it turns the heads of many.
Great interest was indeed afterward taken in the
range of persons who hold truths in common. The
quod semper ubique omnibus became of great impor
tance. This, however, was not, in theory at least,
because common agreement was supposed to consti
tute the major premise, but because it afforded con
firmatory evidence of its self-evident and universal
character.
Hence the Aristotelian logic necessarily assumes
certain first or fundamental truths unquestioned
and unquestionable, self-evident and self -evidencing,
204 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
. neither established nor modified by thought, but
standing firm in their own right. This assumption
was not, as modern dealers in formal logic would
sometimes have it, an external psychological or meta
physical attachment to the theory of reasoning, to be
omitted at will from logic as such. It was an essential
factor of knowledge that there should be necessary
propositions directly apprehended by reason and par-
t ticular ones directly apprehended by sense. Reason
ing could then join them. Without the truths we
have only the play of subjective, arbitrary, futile
opinion. Judgment has not taken place, and assertion
is without warrant. Hence the scheduling of first
truths is an organic part of any reasoning which is
occupied with securing demonstration, surety of
assent, or valid conviction. To deny the necessary
place of ultimate truths in the logical system of
Aristotle and his followers is to make them players
in a game of social convention. It is to overlook, to
invert, the fact that they were sincerely concerned
with the question of attaining the grounds and pro
cess of assurance. Hence they were obliged to assume
primary intuitions, metaphysical, physical, moral,
and mathematical axioms, in order to get the pegs of
certainty to which to tie the bundles of otherwise
contingent propositions.
It would be going too far to claim that the regard
for the authority of the church, of the fathers, of the
Scriptures, of ancient writers, of Aristotle himself, so
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT
205
characteristic of the Middle Ages, was the direct out
come of this presupposition of truths fixed and
unquestionable in themselves. But the logical con
nection is sure. The supply of absolute premises that
Aristotle was able to proffer was scant. In his own
generation and situation this paucity made compara
tively little difference; for to the mass of men the
great bulk of values was still carried by custom, by
religious belief, and social institution. It was only
in the comparatively small sphere of persons who had
come under the philosophic influence that need for
the logical mode of confirmation was felt. In the
mediaeval period, however, all important beliefs
required to be concentrated by some fixed principle
giving them stay and power, for they were contrary
to obvious common-sense and natural tradition.
The situation was exactly such as to call into active
use the Aristotelian scheme of thought. Authority
supplemented the meagerness of the store of uni-
versals known by direct intuition, the Aristotelian
plan of reasoning afforded the precise instrumentality
through which the vague and chaotic details of life
could be reduced to order by subjecting them to
authoritative rules.
It is not enough, however, to account for the ulti
mate major premises, for the unconditioned grounds
upon which credibility is assigned. We have also to
report where the other side comes from : matters so un
certain in themselves as to require that they have their
206
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
grounds supplied from outside. The answer in the
Aristotelian scheme is an obvious one. It is the very
nature of sense, of ordinary experience, to supply us
with matters which in themselves are only contingent.
There is a certain portion of the intellectual sphere,
that derived from experience, which is infected
throughout by its unworthy origin. It stands for
ever condemned to be merely empirical particular,
more or less accidental, inherently irrational. You
cannot make gold from dross, and the best that can
be done for and with material of this sort is to bring
it under the protection of truth which has warrant
and weight in itself.
We may now characterize this stage of thinking
with reference to our original remark that different
stages denote various degrees in the evolution of the
doubt-inquiry function. As compared with the period
of fixed ideas, doubt is awake, and inquiry is active,
but in itself it is rigidly limited. On one side it is
bounded by fixed ultimate truths, whose very nature
is that they cannot be doubted, which are not products
or functions in inquiry, but bases that investigation
fortunately rests upon. In the other direction all
"matters of fact," all "empirical truths" belong to
a particular sphere or kind of existence, and one
intrinsically open to suspicion. The region is con
demned in a wholesale way. In itself it exhales
doubt; it cannot be reformed; it is to be shunned,
or, if this is not possible, to be escaped from by climb-
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 207
ing up a ladder of intermediate terms until we lay
hold on the universal. The very way in which doubt
is objectified, taken all in a piece, marks its lack of
vitality. It is arrested and cooped up in a particular
place. As with any doubtful character, the less of
its company the better. Uncertainty is not realized
as a necessary instrument in compelling experienced
matters to reveal their meaning and inherent order.
This limitation upon inquiry settles the interpre
tation to be given thought at this stage it is of
necessity merely connective, merely mediating. It
goes between the first principles themselves, as to
their validity, outside the province of thought and
the particulars of sense also, as to their status and
worth, beyond the dominion of thought. Thinking
is subsumption just placing a particular proposition
under its universal. It is inclusion, finding a place
for some questioned matter within a region taken as
more certain. It is use of general truths to afford
support to things otherwise shaky an application
that improves their standing, while leaving their
content unchanged. This means that thought has
only a formal value. It is of service in exhibiting
and arranging grounds upon which any particular
proposition may be acquitted or condemned, upon
which anything already current may be assented to,
or upon which belief may reasonably be withheld.
The metaphor of the law court is apt. There
is assumed some matter to be either proved or
208 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
disproved. As matter, as content, it is furnished. It
is not to be found out. In the law court it is not a
question of discovering what a man specifically is, but
simply of finding reasons for regarding him as guilty
or innocent. There is no all-around play of thought
directed to the institution of something as fact, but
a question of whether grounds can be adduced justi
fying acceptance of some proposition already set
forth. The significance of such an attitude comes
into relief when we contrast it with what is done in
the laboratory. In the laboratory there is no question
of proving that things are just thus and so, or that
we must accept or reject a given statement; there is
simply an interest in finding out what sort of things
we are dealing with. Any quality or change that
presents itself may be an object of investigation, or
may suggest a conclusion; for it is judged, not by
reference to pre-existent truths, but by its suggestive-
ness, by what it may lead to. The mind is open to
inquiry in any direction. Or we may illustrate by
the difference between the auditor and an actuary in
an insurance company. One simply passes and
rejects, issues vouchers, compares and balances state
ments already made out. The other investigates
any one of the items of expense or receipt; inquires
how it comes to be what it is, what facts, as regards,
say, length of life, condition of money market, activity
of agents, are involved, and what further researches
and activities are indicated.
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT
209
The illustrations of the laboratory and the expert
remind us of another attitude of thought in which
investigation attacks matters hitherto reserved. The
growth, for example, of freedom of thought during
the Renaissance was a revelation of the intrinsic
momentum of the thought-process itself. It was not
a mere reaction from and against mediaeval scholasti
cism. It was the continued operation of the machin
ery which the scholastics had set a-going. Doubt
and inquiry were extended into the region of par
ticulars, of matters of fact, with the view of reconsti
tuting them through discovery of their own structure,
no longer with the intention of leaving that unchanged
while transforming their claim to credence by con
necting them with some authoritative principles.
Thought no longer found satisfaction in appraising
them in a scale of values according to their nearness
to, or remoteness from, fixed truths. Such work had
been done to a nicety, and it was futile to repeat it.
Thinking must find a new outlet. It was out of
employment, and set to discover new lands. Galileo
and Copernicus were travelers as much so as the
crusader, Marco Polo, and Columbus.
Hence the fourth stage covering what is popu
larly known as inductive and empirical science.
Thought takes the form of inference instead of proof. \
Proof, as we have already seen, is accepting or
rejecting a given proposition on the ground of its
connection or lack of connection with some other
210 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
proposition conceded or established. But inference
does not terminate in any given proposition ; it is after
precisely those not given. It wants more facts,
different facts. Thinking in the mode of inference
insists upon terminating in an intellectual advance,
in a consciousness of truths hitherto escaping us.
Our thinking must not now "pass" certain proposi
tions after challenging them, must not admit them
because they exhibit certain credentials, showing
a right to be received into the upper circle of intel-
lectual society. Thinking endeavors to compel
things as they present themselves, to yield up some
thing hitherto obscure or concealed. This advance
and extension of knowledge through thinking seems
to be well designated by the term "inference." It does
not certify what is otherwise doubtful, but "goes
from the known to the unknown." It aims at push
ing out the frontiers of knowledge, not at marking
those already attained with signposts. Its technique
is not a scheme for assigning status to beliefs already
possessed, but is a method for making friends with
facts and ideas hitherto alien. Inference reaches out,
fills in gaps. Its work is measured not by the patents
of standing it issues, but by the material increments
of knowledge it yields. Inventio is more important
than judicium, discovery than "proof."
With the development of empirical research, uncer
tainty or contingency is no longer regarded as infecting
in a wholesale way an entire region, discrediting it
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 211
save as it can be brought under the protecting aegis
of universal truths as major premises. Uncertainty
is now a matter of detail. It is the question whether
the particular fact is really what it has been taken to
be. It involves contrast, not of a fact as a fixed
particular over against some fixed universal, but of
the existing mode of apprehension with another
possible better apprehension.
From the standpoint of reasoning and proof the
intellectual field is absolutely measured out in ad
vance. Certainty is located in one part, intellectual
indeterminateness or uncertainty in another. But
when thinking becomes research, when the doubt-
inquiry function comes to its own, the problem is
just: What is the fact?
Hence the extreme interest in details as such;
in observing, collecting, and comparing particular
causes, in analysis of structure down to its constituent
elements, interest in atoms, cells, and in all matters of
arrangement in space and time. The microscope,
telescope, and spectroscope, the scalpel and micro
tome, the kymograph and the camera are not mere
material appendages to thinking; they are as integral
parts of investigative thought as were Barbara,
Celarent, etc., of the logic of reasoning. Facts must
be discovered, and to accomplish this, apparent * facts"
must be resolved into their elements. Things must
be readjusted in order to be held free from intru
sion of impertinent circumstance and misleading
212
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
suggestion. Instrumentalities of extending and recti-
fying research are, therefore, of themselves organs
of thinking. The specialization of the sciences, the
almost daily birth of a new science, is a logical neces-
sity not a mere historical episode. Every phase of
experience must be investigated, and each character
istic aspect presents its own peculiar problems which
demand, therefore, their own technique of investi
gation. The discovery of difficulties, the substitution
of doubt for quiescent acceptance, are more important
than the sanctioning of belief through proof. Hence
the importance of noting apparent exceptions, nega
tive instances, extreme cases, anomalies. The interest
is in the discrepant because that stimulates inquiry,
not in the fixed universal which would terminate
it once for all. Hence the roaming over the earth and
through the skies for new facts which may be incom
patible with old theories, and which may suggest new
points of view.
To illustrate these matters in detail would be to
write the history of every modern science. The
interest in multiplying phenomena, in increasing the
area of facts, in developing new distinctions of quan
tity, structure, and form, is obviously characteristic
of modern science. But we do not always heed its
logical significance that it makes thinking to consist
in the extension and control of contact with new
material so as to lead regularly to the development of
new experience.
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT
213
The elevation of the region of facts the formerly
condemned region of the inherently contingent and
variable to something that invites and rewards
inquiry, defines the import, therefore, of the larger
aspects of modern science. This spirit prides itself
upon being positivistic it deals with the observed
and the observable. It will have naught to do with
ideas that cannot verify themselves by showing them
selves in propria persona. It is not enough to present
credentials from more sovereign truths. These are
hardly acceptable even as letters of introduction.
Refutation of Newton s claim, that he did not make
hypotheses, by pointing out that no one was busier
in this direction than he, and that scientific power is
generally in direct ratio to ability to imagine pos
sibilities, is as easy as it is irrelevant. The
hypotheses, the thoughts, that Newton employed
were of and about fact; they were for the sake of
exacting and extending what can be apprehended.
Instead of being sacrosanct truths affording a redemp
tion by grace to facts otherwise ambiguous, they
were the articulating of ordinary facts. Hence the
notion of law changes. It is no longer something
governing things and events from on high; it is the
statement of their own order.
Thus the exiling of occult forces and qualities is
not so much a specific achievement as it is a demand
of the changed attitude. When thinking consists in
the detection and determination of observable detail,
e>
214
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
J
forces, forms, qualities at large, are thrown out of
employment. They are not so much proved non
existent as rendered nugatory. Disuse breeds their
degeneration. When the universal is but the order
of the facts themselves, the mediating machinery dis
appears along with the essences. There is substituted
for the hierarchical world in which each degree in the
scale has its righteousness imputed from above a world
homogeneous in structure and in the scheme of its parts ;
the same in heaven, earth, and the uttermost parts of
the sea. The ladder of values from the sublunary world
with its irregular, extravagant, imperfect motion up to
the stellar universe, with its self -returning perfect or
der, corresponded to the middle terms of the older logic.
The steps were graduated, ascending from the in
determinate, unassured matter of sense up to the
eternal, unquestionable truths of rational perception.
But when interest is occupied in finding out what any
thing and everything is, any fact is just as good as its
fellow. The observable world is a democracy. The
difference which makes a fact what it is is not an
exclusive distinction, but a matter of position and
quantity, an affair of locality and aggregation, traits
which place all facts upon the same level, since all
other observable facts also possess them and are,
indeed, conjointly responsible for them. Laws are
not edicts of a sovereign binding a world of sub
jects otherwise lawless; they are the agreements,
the compacts of facts themselves, or, in the familiar
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT
215
language of Mill, the common attributes, the resem
blances.
The emphasis of modern science upon control
flows from the same source. Interest is in the new,
in extension, in discovery. Inference is the advance
into the unkown, the use of the established to win
new worlds from the void. This requires and em
ploys regulation that is, method in procedure.
There cannot be a blind attack. A plan of campaign
is needed. Hence the so-called practical applica
tions of science, the Baconian "knowledge is power,"
the Comteian "science is prevision," are not extra-
logical addenda or supererogatory benefits. They
are intrinsic to the logical method itself, which is just
the orderly way of approaching new experiences so
as to grasp and hold them.
The attitude of research is necessarily toward the
future. The application of science to the practical
affairs of life, as in the stationary engine, or telephone,
does not differ in principle from the determination of
wave-lengths of light through the experimental control
of the laboratory. Science lives only in arranging
for new contacts, new insights. The school of Kant
agrees with that of Mill in asserting that judgment
must, in order to be judgment, be synthetic or
instructive; it must extend, inform, and purvey.
When we recognize that this service of judgment in
effecting growth of experience is not accidental, but
that judgment means exactly the devising and using
216 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of suitable instrumentalities for this end, we remark
that the so-called practical uses of science are only
V the further and freer play of the intrinsic movement
of discovery itself.
We began with the assumption that thought is
to be interpreted as a doubt-inquiry function, con
ducted for the purpose of arriving at that mental
equilibrium known as assurance or knowledge. We
assumed that various stages of thinking could be
marked out according to the amount of play which
they give to doubt, and the consequent sincerity with
which thinking is identified with free inquiry.
Modern scientific procedure, as just set forth, seems
to define the ideal or limit of this process. It is
inquiry emancipated, universalized, whose sole aim
and criterion is discovery, and hence it marks the
terminus of our description. It is idle to conceal
from ourselves, however, that scientific procedure
as a practical undertaking, has not as yet reflected
itself into any coherent and generally accepted theory
of thinking, into any accepted doctrine of logic which
is comparable to the Aristotelian. Kant s conviction
that logic is a "complete and settled" science,
which with absolutely " certain boundaries has
gained nothing and lost nothing since Aristotle," is
startlingly contradicted by the existing state of dis
cussion of logical doctrine. The simple fact of the
case is that there are at least three rival theories on
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT 217
the ground, each claiming to furnish the sole proper
interpretation of the actual procedure of thought.
The Aristotelian logic is far from having with
drawn its claim. It still offers its framework as that
into which the merely "empirical" results of obser
vation and experimental inquiry must be fitted if
they are to be regarded as really "proved." Another
school of logicians, starting professedly from modern
psychology, discredits the whole traditional industry
and reverses the Aristotelian theory of validity; it
holds that only particular facts are self-supporting,
and that the authority allowed to general principles
is derivative and second hand. A third school of
philosophy claims, by analysis of science and expe
rience, to justify the conclusion that the universe
itself is a construction of thought, giving evidence
throughout of the pervasive and constitutive action
of reason, and holds, consequently, that our logical
processes are simply the reading off or coming to con
sciousness of the inherently rational structure already
possessed by the universe in virtue of the presence
within it of this pervasive and constitutive action of
thought. It thus denies both the claim of the tradi
tional logic, that matters of experienced fact are
mere particulars having their rationality in an external
ground, and the claim of the empirical logic, that
thought is just a gymnastic by which we vault from
one presented fact to another remote in space and
time.
218 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
Which of the three doctrines is to be regarded as
the legitimate exponent of the procedure of thought
manifested in modern science? While the Aristo
telian logic is willing to waive a claim to be regarded
as expounder of the actual procedure, it still insists
upon its right to be regarded as the sole ultimate
umpire of the validity or proved character of the
results reached. But the empirical and trans
cendental logics stand face to face as rivals, each
asserting that it alone tells the story of what science
does and how it does it.
With the consciousness of this conflict my discus
sion in its present, or descriptive, phase must cease.
Its close, however, suggests a further question. In so
far as we adopt the conception that thinking is itself
a doubt-inquiry process, must we not deny the claims
of all of the three doctrines to be the articulate
voicing of the methods of experimental science ? Do 1
they not all agree in setting up something fixed out
side inquiry, supplying both its material and its limit ?
That the first principle and the empirical matters of
fact of the Aristotelian logic fall outside the thinking
process, and condemn the latter to a purely external
and go-between agency, has been already sufficiently
descanted upon. But it is also true that the fixed
particulars, given facts, or sensations whatever the
empirical logician starts from are material given
ready-made to the thought-process, and externally
limiting inquiry, instead of being distinctions arising
STAGES OF LOGICAL THOUGHT
219
within and because of search for truth. Nor, as
regards this point, is the transcendental in any posi
tion to throw stones at the empirical logic. Thought
"in itself" is so far from a process of inquiry that it is
taken to be the eternal, fixed structure of the universe;
our thinking, involving doubt and investigation, is due
wholly to our "finite," imperfect character, which
condemns us to the task of merely imitating and re
instating "thought" in itself, once and forever com
plete, ready-made, fixed.
The practical procedure and practical assumptions
of modern experimental science, since they make
thinking essentially and not merely accidentally a
process of discovery, seem irreconcilable with both
the empirical and transcendental interpretations. At
all events there is here sufficient discrepancy to give
occasion for further search: Does not an account of
thinking, basing itself on modern scientific procedure,
demand a statement in which all the distinctions and
terms of thought judgment, concept, inference, sub
ject, predicate, and copula of judgment, etc., ad
infmitum shall be interpreted simply and entirely
as distinctive functions or divisions of labor within
the doubt-inquiry process?
VII
THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF IDEAS
Said John Stuart Mill: "To draw inferences has
been said to be the great business of life It
is the only occupation in which the mind never ceases
to be engaged." If this be so, it seems a pity that
Mill did not recognize that this business identifies
what we mean when we say "mind." If he had
recognized this, he would have cast the weight of his
immense influence not only against the conception that
mind is a substance, but also against the concep
tion that it is a collection of existential states or
attributes without any substance in which to inhere;
and he would thereby have done much to free logic
from epistemological metaphysics. In any case, an
account of intellectual operations and conditions from
the standpoint of the role played and position occupied
by them in the business of drawing inferences is a
different sort of thing from an account of them as
having an existence per se, from treating them as
making up some sort of existential material distinct
from the things which figure in inference-drawing.
This latter type of treatment is that which underlies
the psychology which itself has adopted uncritically
the remnants of the metaphysics of soul substance:
THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF IDEAS 221
the idea of accidents without the substance. 1 This
assumption from metaphysical psychology the as-
sumption of consciousnesses an existent stuff or
existent processis then carried over into an exami
nation of knowledge, so__as to make the theory of
knowledge not logic (an account of the ways in which
valid inferences or conclusions from things to other
things are made), but epistemology.
We have, therefore, the result (so unfortunate for
logic) that logic is not free to go its own way, but is
compromised by the assumption that knowledge goes
on not in terms of things (I use "things" in the
broadest sense, as equaling res, and covering affairs,
concerns, acts, as well as "things" in the narrower
sense) , but in terms of a relation between things and
i a peculiar existence made up of consciousness, or
else between things and functional operations of this
existence. If it could be shown that psychology^
^ssentially not a^cience of states of consciousness,
but of jjghavior, conceived as ajrocess of continuous
readjustment, then the undoubted facts which_go
by the name of sensation, perception, image, emotion,i
concepjt, would b_interpreted to mean peculiar (i.e.-.
This conception of "consciousness" as a sort of reduplicate
world of things comes to us, I think, chiefly from Hume s conception
that the "mind is nothing but a heap, a collection of different per
ceptions, united together by certain relations." Treatise of Human
Nature, Book I, Part IV, sec. 2. For the evolution of this
sort of notion out of the immaterial substance notion, see Bush, "A
Factor in the Genesis of Idealism," in the James Festschrift.
222 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
specifically qualitative) epochs, phases, and crises
in the scheme of behavior. The supposedly scientific
basis for the belief that states of consciousness in
herently define a separate type of existence would
be done away with. Inferential knowledge, knowl
edge involving reflection, psychologically viewed,
would be assimilated to a certain mode of readaptation
of functions, involving shock and the need of control ;
knowledge in the sense of direct non-reflective pres
ence of things would be identified (psychologically)
with relatively stable or completed adjustments. I
can not profess to speak for psychologists, but it is an
obvious characteristic of the contemporary status
of psychology that one school (the so-called functional
or dynamic) operates with nothing more than a con
ventional and perfunctory reference to " states of
consciousness"; while the orthodox school makes
constant concessions to ideas of the behavior type.
It introduces the conceptions of fatigue, practice,
and habituation. It makes its fundamental classifica
tions on the basis of physiological distinctions (e.g.,
the centrally initiated and the peripherally initiated),
which, from a biological standpoint, are certainly
distinctions of structures involved in the performance
of acts.
One of the aims of the Studies in Logical Theory
was to show, on the negative or critical side, that the
type _oj_jogical__theory wjucji^pjofessedly starts its
account of knowledge from mere states erf conscious-
THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF IDEAS 223
compelled at every crucial juncture tQ__a t ss_ume
things, and to define its so-called mental states in
things; 1 and, on the positive side, to show
that, logically considered, such distinctions as sensa
tion, image, etc., mark instruments and crises in the
development of controlled judgment, i.e., of inferential
conclusions. It was perhaps not surprising that this
effort should have been criticized not on its own
merits, but on the assumption that this correspond
ence of the (functional) psychological and the logical
points of view was intended in terms of the psychol
ogy which obtained in the critic s mind to wit, the
psychology based on the assumption of consciousness
as a separate existence or process.
These considerations suggest that before we can
intelligently raise the question of the truth of ideas
we must consider their status in judgment, judgment
being regarded as the typical expression of the infer
ential operation, (i) Do ideas present themselves
except in situations which are doubtful and inquired
into ? Do they exist side by side with the facts when
the facts are themselves known ? Do they exist
except when judgment is in suspense? (2) Are
" ideas" anything else except the suggestions, con
jectures, hypotheses, theories (I use an ascending
1 See, for example, p. 113. "Thus that which is nothing but a
state of our consciousness turns out straightway to be a specifically
determined objective fact in a system of facts," and, p. 147, "actual
sensation is determined as an event in a world of events."
224 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
scale of terms) tentatively entertained during a
suspended conclusion ? (3) Do they have any part
to play in the conduct of inquiry ? Do they serve to
direct observation, colligate data, and guide experi
mentation, or are they otiose P 1 (4) If the ideas have
a function in directing the reflective process (expressed
in judgment), does success in performing the function
(that is, in directing to a conclusion which is stable)
have anything to do with the logical worth or validity
of the ideas? (5) And, finally, does validity have
anything to do with truth? Does "truth" mean
something inherently different from the fact that the
conclusion of one judgment (the known fact, pre
viously unknown, in which judging terminates) is
itself applicable in further situations of doubt and in
quiry ? And is judgment properly more than tenta
tive save as it terminates in a known fact, i.e., a
fact present without the intermediary of reflection ?
When these questions I mean, of course, ques
tions which are exemplified in these queries are
answered, we shall, perhaps, have gone as far as it is
possible to go with reference to the logical character
of ideas. The question may then recur as to whether
the "ideas" of the epistemologist (that is, existences
1 When it is said that an idea is a "plan of action," it must be
remembered that the term "plan of action" is a formal term. It
throws no light upon what the action is with respect to which an idea
is the plan. It may be chopping down a tree, finding a trail, or
conducting a scientific research in mathematics, history, or chemistry.
THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF IDEAS 225
in a purely "private stream of consciousness") remain
as something over and above, not yet accounted for;
or whether they are perversions and misrepresenta
tions of logical characters. I propose to give a brief
dogmatic reply in the latter sense: Where, and in
so far as, there are unquestioned objects, there is no
" consciousness." There are just things. When there
is uncertainty, there are dubious^ suspected objects
things hinted at, guessed at. Such objects have a
distinct status T and it is the part of good sense to
them, as occupying that status, a distinct cap-
_tion. ^Consciousness" is a term often used for this
jmrpose; and I see no objection to that term, pro
vided it is recognized to mean such objects as are
problematic, plus the fact that in their problematic
character they may be used, as effectively as ac-
credited objects, to direct observations and experi
ments which finally relieve the doubtful features of^
Jbhe situation. Such "objects" may turn out to be
valid, or they may not. But, in any case, they may
be used. They may be internally manipulated and
developed through ratiocination into explicit state
ment of their implications; they may be employed
as standpoints for selecting and arranging data, and
as methods for conducting experiments. In short,
they are not merely hypothetical; they are working
hypotheses. Meanwhile, their aloofness from ac
credited objectivity may lead us to characterize them
as merely ideas, or even as "mental states," provided
226 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
once more we mean by mental state just this logical
status.
We have examples of such ideas in symbols. A
symbol, I take it, is always itself, existentially, a partic
ular object. A word, an algebraic sign, is just as much
a concrete existence as is a horse, a fire-engine, or a
fly speck. But its value resides in its representative
character: in its suggestive and directive force for
operations that when performed lead us to non-
symbolic objects, which without symbolic operations
would not be apprehended, or ar least would not be
so easily apprehended. It is, I think, worth noting
that the capacity (a) for regarding objects as mere
symbols and (b) for employing symbols instru-
mentally furnishes the only safeguard against dog
matism, i.e., uncritical acceptance of any suggestion
that comes to us vividly; and also that it furnishes
the only basis for intelligently controlled experi
ments.
I do not think, however, that we should have the
tendency to regard ideas as private, as personal, if we
stopped short at this point. If we had only words
or other symbols uttered by others, or written, or
printed, we might call them, when in objective
suspense, mere ideas. But we should hardly think
of these ideas as our own. Such extra-organic stimuli,
however, are not adequate logical devices. They
are too rigid, too "objective" in their own existential
status. Their meaning and character are too defi-
THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF IDEAS 227
nitely fixed. For effective discovery we need things
which are more easily manipulated, which are more
transitive, more easily dropped and changed. Intra-
organic events, adjustments within the organism,
that is, adjustments of the organism considered not
with reference to the environment but with reference
to one another, are much better suited to stand as
representatives of genuinely dubious objects. An
object which is really doubted is by its nature pre
carious and inchoate, vague. What is a thing when
it is not yet discovered and yet is tentatively enter
tained and tested ?
Ancient logic never got beyond the conception of
an object whose logical place, whose subsumptive
position as a particular with reference to some uni
versal, was doubtful. It never got to the point where
it could search for particulars which in themselves as
particulars are doubtful. Hence it was a logic of
proof, of deduction, not of inquiry ; of-discQYery, and
nf jnrlnrtirm It was hard up against its own
dilemma: How can a man inquire? For either he
knows that for which he seeks, and hence does not
seek: or he does not know, in which case he can not
seek, nor could he tell if he found. The individual
istic movement of modern life detached, as it were, the
individual, and allowed personal (i.e., intra-organic)
events to have, transitively and temporarily, a worth
of their own. These events are continuous with
extra-organic events (in origin and eventual outcome) ;
228 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
but they may be considered in temporary displace
ment as uniquely existential. In this capacity they
serve as means for the elaboration of a delayed but
more adequate response in a radically different direc
tion. So treated, they are tentative, dubious but
experimental, anticipations of an object. They are
"subjective" (i.e., individualistic) surrogates of
public, cosmic things, which may be so manipulated
and elaborated as to terminate in public things
which without them would not exist as empirical
objects. 1
The recognition then of intra-organic events, which
are not merely effects nor distorted refractions of
cosmic objects, but inchoate future cosmic ; objects
in process of experimental construction, resolves, to
my mind, the paradox of so-called subjective and
private things that have objective and universal
reference, and that operate so as to lead to objective
consequences which test their own value. When a
man can say: This color is not necessarily the color of
the glass nor the picture nor even of an object reflected
but is at least an event in my nervous system, an
event which I may refer to my organism till I get
surety of other reference he is for the first time
emancipated from the dogmatism of unquestioned
reference, and is set upon a path of experimental
inquiry.
1 1 owe this idea, both in its historical and in its logical aspects,
to my former colleague, Professor Mead, of the University of Chicago.
THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF IDEAS 229
I am not here concerned with trying to demonstrate
that this is the correct mode of interpretation. I am
only concerned with pointing out its radical difference
from the view of a critic who, holding to the two-
wgrlH theory rrf-fyfctences which from the start are
divided into the fixedly objective and the fixedly
psychical, interprets in terms of his own theory the
view that the distinction between the objective and
the subjective is a logical-practical distinction.
Whether the logical, as against the ontological, theory
be true or false, it can hardly be fruitfully discussed
without a preliminary apprehension of it as a logical
conception.
VIII
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS
I
There is something a little baffling in much of the
current discussion regarding the reference^of ideas
to facts. The not uncommon assumption is that there
was a satisfactory and consistent theory of their
relation in existence prior to the somewhat imperti
nent intrusion of a functional and practical interpreta
tion of them. The way the instrumental logician has
been turned upon by both idealist and realist is sug
gestive of the way in which the outsider who inter
venes in a family jar is proverbially treated by both
husband and wife, who manifest their unity by berat
ing the third party.
I feel that the situation is due partlyXto various
misapprehensions, inevitable perhaps in rhe first
presentation of a new point of view 1 and multiplied
in this instance by the coincidence of the presentation
of this logical point of view with that of the larger
philosophical movements, humanism and pragmatism.
I wish here to undertake a summary statement of the
logical view on its own account, hoping it may receive
clearer understanding on its own merits.
1 Studies in Logical Theory, University of Chicago Press, 1903.
230
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS 231
In the first place it was (apart from the frightful
confusion of logical theories) precisely the lack of an
adeqi^e_and^generally accepted theory of the nature
of fact and idea^ andjjf the kind of agreement or corres
pondence between them which constitutes the truth of
the idea, that led to the development^f a functional
Jtheory of logic. A brief statement of the difficulties
in the traditional views may therefore be pertinent.
That fruitful thinking thought that terminates in
valid knowledge goes on in terms of the distinction
of facts and judgment, and that valid knowledge is
precisely genuine correspondence or agreement, of
some sort, of fact and judgment, is the common and
undeniable assumption. J3ut_jthe_ discussions are
largely carried on in terms of an epistemological
dualism, rendering the solution of the problem impos
sible in virtue of the very terms in which it is stated. ^
The distinction is at once identified with that between
mind and matter, consciousness and objects, the
psychical and the physical, where each of these terms
is supposed to refer to some fixed order of existence, a
world in itself. Then, of course, there comes up the
question of the nature of the agreement, and of the
recognition of it. What is the experience in which the
survey of both idea and existence is made and their
jiggement recognized _? Is it an idea ? Is the agree- ,
ment ultimately a matter of self-consistency of ideas ?
Then what has become of the postulate that truth
is agreement of idea with existence beyond idea ?
232 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
Is it an absolute which transcends and absorbs the
difference? Then, once more, what is the test of
any specific judgment? What has become of the
correspondence of fact and thought ? Or, more
urgently, since the pressing problem of life, of prac
tice and of science, is the discrimination of the rela
tive, or superior, validity of this or that theory, plan,
or interpretation, what is the criterion of truth within
present non-absolutistic experience, where the distinc
tion between factual conditions and thoughts and the
necessity of some working adjustment persist ?
Putting the problem in yet another way, either
both fact and idea are present all the time or else
only one of them is present. But if the former,
why should there be an idea at all, and why should
it have to be tested by the fact ? When we already
have what we want, namely, existence, reality, why
should we take up the wholly supernumerary task of
forming more or less imperfect ideas of those facts, and
then engage in the idle performance of testing them
by what we already know to be ? But if only ideas
are present, it is idle to speak of comparing an idea
with facts and testing its validity by its agreement.
The elaboration and refinement of ideas to the utter
most still leaves us with an idea, and while a self-
consistent idea stands a show of being true in a way
in which an incoherent one does not, a self-consistent
idea is still but a hypothesis, a candidate for truth.
Ideas are not made true by getting bigger. But if
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS 233
only facts are present, the whole conception of
agreement is once more given up not to mention
that such a situation is one in which there is by defini
tion no thinking or reflective factor at all. ,
This suggests that a strictly monistic epistemology,
whether idealistic or realistic, does not get rid of the
problem. Suppose for example we take a sensational-
istic idealism. It does away with the ontological gulf
between ideas and facts, and by reducing both terms
to a common denominator seems to facilitate fruitful
discussion of the problem. But the problem of the
distinction and reference (agreement, correspondence)
of two types or sorts of sensations still persists. Jf I
say the box there is square, and call "box" one of a
group of ideas or sensations and "square" another
sensation or "idea," the old question comes up:
Is "square" already a part of the "facts" of the box,
or is it not ? If it is, it is a supernumerary, an idle
thing, both as an idea and as an assertion of fact;
if it is not, how can we compare the two ideas, and
what on earth or in heaven does their agreement or
correspondence mean? If it means simply that we
experience the two "sensations" in juxtaposition, then
the same is true, of course, of any casual association or
hallucination. On the sensational basis, accordingly,
there is still a distinction of something "given,"
"there," brutally factual, the box, and something
else which stands on a different level, ideal, absent,
intended, demanded, the "square," which is asserted
234 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
to hold good or be true of the thing "box." The
fact that both are sensations throws no light on the
logical validity of any proposition or belief, because
by theory a like statement holds of every possible
proposition. 1
The same problem recurs on a realisticjbasis. For
example, there has recently been propounded 2 the
doctrine of the distinction between relations of space
and time and relations of meaning or significance, as
a key to the problem of knowledge. Things exist
in their own characters, in their temporal and spatial
relations. When knowledge intervenes, there is
nothing new of a subjective or psychical sort, but
simply a new rejaion ofjjie things; the suggesting or
signifying of one thing by another. Now this seems
1 Mill s doctrine of the ambiguity of the copula (Logic, Book I,
chap. IV, i) is an instance of one typical way of evading the
problem. After insisting with proper force and clearness upon the
objective character of our intellectual beliefs and propositions, viz.,
that when we say fire cayseshea^we mean actual phenomena, not
our ideas of fire and heat "~[ Jookl, chap. II and chap. XI, i,
and chap. V, i), he thinks to dispose of the whole problem of
the "is" in judgment by saying that it is only a sign of affirmation
(chap. I, 2, and chap. IV, i). Of course it is. But unless
the affirmation (the sign of thought) "agrees" or "corresponds with"
the relations of the phenomena, what becomes of the doctrine of the
objective import of propositions ? How otherwise shall we maintain
with Mill (and with common-sense and science) the difference between
asserting "a fact of external nature" and "a fact in my mental
history"?
3 Studies in Philosophy and Psychology, article by Woodbridge
on "The Problem of Consciousness," especially pp. 159-60.
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS 235
to be an excellent way of stating the logical problem,
but, I take it, it states and does not solve. For the
characteristic of such situations, claiming to terminate
m knowledge, is precisely that the meaning-relation
is predicated of the other relations; it is referred to
is not simply a supervention existing side
by side with them, like casual suggestions or the play
f phantasy. It i s something which the facts, the
qualitative space and time things, must bear the
burden of must accept and take unto themselves as
el - Until this haens have
onlv < > ave
thinking," not accomplished knowledge
Hence logically, th^^stential^Iations play the
vTry 5 ? and ^-^^^
l^yt^ from fact and yet > if valid < to
This appears quite clearly in the following quota-
It is the ice which means that it will cool the
er, just as much as it is the ice which does cool the
water when put into it." There is, however, a pos
sible ambiguity in the statement, to which we shall
return later. That the "ice" (the thing regarded
as ice) suggests cooling is as real as is a case of actual
v Th >>
The ice" may be a crystal, and it will not
he C nCeP " n f H " te "-
psy CeP n " te "-I"*, entities or
236 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
cool water at all. So far as it is already certain that
this is ice, and also certain that ice, under all circum
stances, cools water, the meaning-relation stands on
the same level as the physical, being not merely sug
gested, but part of the facts ascertained. It is not a
meaning-relation as such at all. We already have
truth; the entire work of knowing as logical is done;
we have no longer the relation characteristic of reflect
ive situations. Here again the implication of the
thinking situation is of some "correspondence" or
"agreement" between two sets of distinguished rela
tions; the problem of valid determination remains
the central question of any theory of knowing in
its relation to facts and truth. 1
II
I hope this statement of the difficulty, however
inadequate, will serve at least to indicate that _a
functional logic inherits the^problem in question and
does not create it: that/if has never for a moment
denied the prima facie working distinction between
^ideas^" ^thoughts," "meanings." and "facts,"
"existences," "the environment." nor the necessity
of a control of meaning by facts. It is concerned not
with denying, but with understanding. What is
denied is not the genuineness of the problem of the
1 Of course, the monistic epistemologies have an advantage in the
statement of the problem over the dualistic they do not state it in
terms which presuppose the impossibility of the solution.
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS 237
terms in which it is stated, but the reality and value
of the orthodox interpretation. What is insisted
upon is the relative, instrumental, or working char
acter of the distinction that it is a logical distinction,
instituted and maintained in the interests of intel
ligence, with all that intelligence imports in the
exercise of the life functions. / To this positive side
I now turn.
In the analysis it may prove convenient to take an
illustration of a man lost in the woods, taking this
case as typical of any reflective situation in so far as
it involves perplexity :a problem to be solved. The "
problem is to find a correct idea of the way home a
practical idea or plan of action which will lead to
success, or the realization of the purpose to get home.
Now the critics of the experimental theory of logic
make the point that this practical idea, the truth
of which is evidenced in the successful meeting of a
need, is dependent for its success upon a purely pre-
sentative idea, thatoHlie_xistent pnviEeBmjit, whose
validity^has nothing to do witlL-.su cress but depends
onagreement with jthe_giyen^t^t_of_aff airs. It is
said that what makes a man s idea of his environment
true is its agreement with the actual environment,
and "generally a true idea in any situation consists
in its agreement with reality." , I have already indi
cated my acceptance of this formula. But it was
long my misfortune not to be possessed offhand of
those perfectly clear notions of just what is meant
25 8 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
in this formula by the terms "idea," "existence,"
and "agreement" which are possessed by other
writers on epistemology; and when I analyzed these
notions I found the distinction between the practical
idea and the theoretical not fixed nor final, and I
found a somewhat startling similarity between the
notions of "success" and "agreement."^
Just what is the environment of which an idea is
to be formed: i.e., what is the intellectual content
or objective detail to be assigned to the term "environ
ment"? It can hardly mean the actual visible
environment the trees, rocks, etc., which a man is
actually looking at. These things are there and it
seems superfluous to form an idea of them; moreover,
the wayfaring man, though lost, would have to be
an unusually perverse fool if under such circumstances
he were unable to form an idea (supposing he chose
to engage in this luxury) in agreement with these
facts. .The environment must be ajajgei^ejiviron-
menjLlhan jthe^yqsjblejacts ; it must include things
not within the direct ken of the lost man; it must, for
instance, extend from where he is now to his home,
or to the point from which he started. It must
include unperceived elements in their contrast with
the perceived. Otherwise the man would not be lost.
Now we are at once struck with the facts that the
lost man has no alternative except either to wander
aimlessly or else to conceive this inclusive environment;
and that this conception is just what is meant by
\
1
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS 239
idea. It is not some little psychical entity or piecg
ofconsciousness-stuff, but is the interpretation oj_
the locally present environment in reference to its
absent portion, that part to which it is referred as
another part so as to give a view of a whole. Just
how such an idea would differ from one s plan of
action in finding one s way, I do not know. For
one s plan (if it be really a plan, a method) is a con
ception of what is given in its hypothetical relations
to what is not given, employed as a guide to that act
which results in the absent being also given. It is
a map constructed with one s self lost and one s self
found, whether at starting or at home again, as its
two limiU. If this map in its specific character is
not also the only guide to the way home, one s only-
plan of action, then I hope I may never be lost. It is
the practical facts of being lost and desiring to be
found which constitute the limits and the content
of the "environment. }
Then conies the test of agreement of the idea and
the environment. Supposing the individual stands
still and attempts to compare his idea with the reality,
with what reality is he to compare it ? Not with the
presented reality, for that reality is the reality of
himself lost; not with the complete reality, for at
this stage of proceedings he has only the idea to stand
for the complete theory. What kind of comparison
is possible or desirable then, save to treat the mental
layout of the whole situation as a working hypothesis,
idea as
$40 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
as a plan of action, and proceed to act upon it, to use
it as a director and controller of one s divagations
instead of stumbling blindly around until one is
either exhausted or accidentally gets out? Now
supEQsejjne uses the ideathat is to say, thejpresent
facts_prpjected into a whole ki the lightjof_absen^
jacts^-as a guidgjof_action. ^^uppose, by means_of
_ _
its specifications, one works one s way along until
one comes upon familiar ground finds one s self.
N&WI one may say, my idea was right, it was in accord
with facts; it agrees with reality. That is, acted
upon sincerely, it has led to the desired conclusion;
it has, through action, worked out the state of things
which it contemplated or intended. The agreement,
correspondence, is between purgose, j)lan, and its
own executionjulfillment ; between a map of a course
constructed for the sake of guiding behavior and the
result attained in acting upon the indications of the
map^Just how does such agreement differ from
success ?
Ill
If we exclude acting upon the idea, no conceivable
amount or kind of intellectualistic procedure can con
firm or refute an idea, or throw any light upon its
validity. How does the non-pragmatic view con
sider that verification takes place ? Does it suppose
that we first look a long while at the facts and then
a long time at the idea, until by some magical process
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS
241
the degree and kind of their agreement become
visible ? Unless there is some such conception as
this, what conception of agreement is possible except
the experimental or practical one? And if it be
admitted that verification involves action, how can
that action be relevant to the truth of an idea, unless
the idea is itself already relevant to action? /If by
acting in accordance with the experimental definition
of facts, viz., as obstacles and conditions, and the
experimental definition of the end or intent, viz., as
plan and method of action, a harmonized situation
effectually presents itself, we have the adequate and
the only conceivable verification of the intellectual
factors. If the action indicated be carried out and
the disordered or disturbed situation persists, then
// we have not merely confuted the tentative positions
of intelligence, but we have in the very process of
acting introduced new data and eliminated some of the
old ones, and thus afforded an opportunity for the
resurvey of the facts and the revision of the plan of
action. By acting faithfully upon an inadequate
reflective presentation, we have at least secured the
elements for its improvement.,,/ This, of course, gives
no absolute guaranty that the reflection will at any
time be so performed as to prove its validity in fact.
But the self-rectification of intellectual content
through acting upon it in good faith is the "absolute"
of knowledge, loyalty to which is the religion of
intellect.
242
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
The intellectual definition or delimitation assigned^
to the "given" is thus as tentative and experimental
as that ascribed to the idea. In form both are cate
gorical, and in content both are hypothetical. Facts
really exist just as facts, and meanings exist as mean
ings. One is no more superfluous, more subjective,
or less necessitated than the other. In and of them
selves as existences both are equally realistic and
compulsive. But on the basis of existence, there is
no element in either which may be strictly described
as intellectual or cognitional. There is only a practi
cal situation in its brute and unrationalized form.
What is uncertain about the facts as given at any
moment is whether the right exclusions and selections
have been made. Since that is a question which can
be decided finally only by the experimental issue, this
ascription of character is itself tentative and experi
mental. If it works, the characterization and deline
ation are found to be proper ones ; but every admission
prior to inquiry, of unquestioned, categorical, rigid
objectivity, compromises the probability that it will
work. The character assigned to the datum must
be taken as hypothetically as possible in order to
preserve the elasticity needed for easy and prompt
reconsideration. Any other procedure virtually in
sists that all facts and details anywhere happening
to exist and happening to present themselves (all
being equally real) must all be given equal status and
equal weight, and that their outer ramifications and
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS
243
internal complexities must be indefinitely followed
up. The worthlessness of this sheer accumulation of
realities, its total irrelevancy, the lack of any way of
judging the significance of the accumulations, are good
proofs of the fallacy of any theory which ascribes
objective logical content to facts wholly apart from
the needs and possibilities of a situation.
The more stubbornly one maintains the full reality
of either his facts or his ideas, just as they stand, the
more accidental is the discovery of relevantly signi
ficant facts and of valid ideas the more accidental,
the less rational, is the issue of the knowledge situ
ation. Due progress is reasonably probable in just
the degree in which the meaning, categorical in its
existing imperativeness, and the fact, equally cate
gorical in its brute coerciveness, are assigned only a
provisional and tentative nature with reference to
control of the situation. That this surrender of a
rigid and final character for the content of knowledge
on the sides both of fact and of meaning, in favor
of experimental and functioning estimations, is pre
cisely the change which has marked the development
of modern from mediaeval and Greek science, seems
undoubted. To learn the lesson one has only to
contrast the rigidity of phenomena and conceptions
in Greek thought (Platonic ideas, Aristotelian forms)
with the modern experimental selection and deter
mining of facts and experimental employment of
hypotheses. The former have ceased to be ultimate
244 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
realities of a nondescript sort and have become pro
visional data; the latter have ceased to be eternal
meanings and have become working theories. The
fruitful application of mathematics and the evolution
of a technique of experimental inquiry have coincided
with this change. That realities exist independently
of their use as intellectual data, and that meanings
exist apart from their utilization as hypotheses, are
the permanent truths of Greek realism as against the
exaggerated subjectivism of modern philosophy; but
the conception that this existence is to be denned in
the same way as are contents of knowledge, so that
perfect being is object of perfect knowledge and
imperfect being object of imperfect knowledge, is
the fallacy which Greek thought projected into
modern. Science has advanced in its methods in just
the degree in which it has ceased to assume that I
prior realities and prior meanings retain fixedly and IT"
finally, when entering into reflective situations, the ]
characters they had prior to this entrance, and in
which it has realized that their very presence within
the knowledge situation signifies that they have to
be redefined and revalued from the standpoint of the
new situation.
IV
This conception does not, however, commit us to
the view that there is any conscious situation which
is totally non-reflective. It may be true that any
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS 245
experience which can properly be termed such com
prises something which is meant over and against
what is given or there. But there are many situations
into which the rational factor the mutual distinction
and mutual reference of fact and meaning enters
only incidentally and is slurred, not accentuated.
Many disturbances are relatively trivial and induce
only a slight and superficial redefinition of contents.
This passing tension of facts against meaning may
suffice to call up and carry a wide range of meaningful
facts which are quite irrelevant to the intellectual
problem. Such is the case where the individual is
finding his way through any field which is upon the
whole familiar, and which, accordingly, requires only
an occasional resurvey and revaluation at moments
of slight perplexity. We may call these situations,
if we will, knowledge situations (for the reflective
function characteristic of knowledge is present), but
so denominating them does not do away with their
sharp difference from those situations in which the
critical qualification of facts and definition of mean
ings constitute the main business. To speak of the
, passing attention which a traveler has occasionally
! to give to the indications of his proper path in a fairly
familiar and beaten highway as knowledge, in just
the same sense in which the deliberate inquiry of a
mathematician or a chemist or a logician is knowledge,
is as confusing to the real issue involved as would be
the denial to it of any reflective factor. If, then, one
246 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
bears in mind these two considerations (i) the
unique problem and purpose of every reflective situ
ation, and (2) the difference as to range and thorough
ness of logical function in different types of reflective
situations one need have no difficulty with the
doctrine that the great obstacle in the development of
scientific knowing is that facts and meanings enter
such situations with stubborn and alien character
istics imported from other situations.
This affords an opportunity to speak again of the
logical problem to which reference and promise of
return were made earlier in this paper. Facts may
be regarded as existing qualitatively and in certain
spatial and temporal relations; when there is knowl
edge another relation is added, that of one thing
meaning or signifying another. Water exists, for
example, as water, in a certain place, in a certain
temporal sequence. But it may signify the quench
ing of thirst; and this signification-relation consti
tutes knowledge. 1 This statement may be taken in a
way congruous with the account developed in this
paper. But it may also be taken in another sense,
consideration of which will serve to enforce the point
1 This view was originally advanced in the discussion of quit
another problem than the one here discussed, viz., the problem of
consciousness; and it may not be quite just to dissever it from that
context. But as a formula for knowledge it has enough similarity
with the one brought out in this paper to suggest further treatment;
it is not intended that the results reached here shall apply to the
problem of consciousness as such.
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS 247
regarding the tentative nature of the characterization
of the given, as distinct from the intended and absent.
Water means quenching thirst; it is drunk, and death
follows. It was not water, but a poison which
"looked like" water. Or it is drunk, and is water,
but does not quench thirst, for the drinker is in an ab
normal condition and drinking water only intensifies
the thirst. Or it is drunk and quenches thirst; but
it also brings on typhoid fever, being not merely water,
but water plus germs. Now all these events demon
strate that error may appertain quite as much to the
characterization of existing things, suggesting or sug
gested, as to the suggestion qua suggestion. There
is no ground for giving the "things" any superior
reality. In these cases, indeed, it may fairly be
said that the mistake is made because qualitative
thing and suggested or meaning-relation were not
discriminated. The "signifying" force was regarded
as a part of the direct quality of the given fact, quite
as much as its color, liquidity, etc.; it is only in
another situation that it is discriminated as a rela
tion instead of being regarded as an element.
It is quite as true to say that a thing is called water
because it suggests thirst-quenching as to say that
it suggests thirst-quenching because it is characterized
as water. The knowledge function, becomes prominent
or dominant in the degree in which there is a conscious
discrimination between the fact-relations and the
meaning-relations. And this inevitably means that the
248 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
"water" ceases to be surely water, just as it becomes
doubtful or hypothetical whether this thing, whatever
it is, really means thirst-quenching. If it really
means thirst-quenching, it is water; so far as it may
not mean it, it perhaps is not water. It is now just
as much a question what this is as what it means.
Whatever will resolve one question will resolve the
other. In just the degree, then, in which an existence
or thing gets intellectualized force or function, it
becomes a fragmentary and dubious thing, to be
circumscribed and described for the sake of operating
as sign, or clue of a. future reality to be realized through
action. Only as "reality" is reduced to a sign, and
questions of its nature as sign are considered, does
it get intellectual or cognitional status. The bearing
of this upon the question of practical character of the
distinctions of fact and idea is obvious. No one, I
take it, would deny that action of some sort does follow
upon judgment; no one would deny that this action
does somehow serve to test the value of the intellectual
operations upon which it follows. But if this sub
sequent action is merely subsequent, if the intellectual
categories, operations, and distinctions are complete
in themselves, without inherent reference to it, what
guaranty is there that they pass into relevant action,
and by what miracle does the action manage to test
the worth of the idea ? But if the intellectual identi
fication and description of the thing are as tentative
and instrumental as is the ascription of significance,
THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS 249
then the exigencies of the active situation are opera
tive in all the categories of the knowledge situation.
Action is not a more or less accidental appendage or
afterthought, but is undergoing development and
giving direction in the entire knowledge function.
In conclusion, I remark that the ease with which
the practical character of these fundamental logical
categories, fact, meaning, and agreement, may be
overlooked or denied is due to the organic way in
which practical import is incarnate in them. It can
be overlooked because it is so involved in the terms
themselves that it is assumed at every turn. The
pragmatist is in the position of one who is charged
with denying the existence of something because, in
pointing out a certain fundamental feature of it, he
puts it in a strange light. Such confusion always
occurs when the familiar is brought to definition. The
difficulties are more psychological difficulties of
orientation and mental adjustment than logical,
and in the long run will be done away with by our
getting used to the different viewpoint, rather than
by argument.
IX
NAIVE REALISM VS. PRESENTATIVE
REALISM 1
I
In spite of the elucidations of contemporary real
ists, a number of idealists continue to adduce in behalf
of idealism certain facts having an obvious physical
nature and explanation. The visible convergence of
the railway tracks, for example, is cited as evidence
that what is seen is a mental "content." Yet this
convergence follows from the physical properties of
light and a lens, and is physically demonstrated in a
camera. Is the photograph, then, to be conceived
as a psychical somewhat? That the time of the
visibility of a light does not coincide with the time
at which a distant body emitted the light is employed
to support a similar idealistic conclusion, in spite of the
fact that the exact difference in time may be deduced
1 1 am indebted to Dr. Bush s article on "Knowledge and Percep
tion," Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods,
Vol. VI, p. 393, and to Professor Woodbridge s article on "Percep
tion and Epistemology " in the James Memorial Volume, as well as
to his paper on "Sensations," read at the 1910 meeting of the Ameri
can Philosophical Association. Since my point of departure and
aim are somewhat different, I make this general acknowledgment in
lieu of more specific references.
250
NAIVE 75. PRESENTATIVE REALISM 251
from a physical property of light its rate. The dis
location in space of the light seen and the astronomical
star is used as evidence of the mental nature of the
former, though the exact angular difference is a
matter of simple computation from purely physical
data. The doubling of images of, say, the finger when
the eyeball is pressed, is frequently proffered as a
clincher. Yet it is a simple matter to take any body
that reflects light, and by a suitable arrangement of
lenses to produce not only two but many images,
projected into space. If the fact that jmder definite
physical conditions (misplacement ofjenses), a finger
yields twojmages proves the JjsyjchicaL .diaractgr_ol
The latter ,jdienjhejactjthatjander certain conditions,
a soimdin|j3ody_yjeld^
of reasoning, progfjhat jthe^ echo is made ojMngntal.
If, once more, the differences in form and color of a
table to different observers, occupying different physi
cal positions, is proof that what each sees is a psychi
cal, private, isolated somewhat, then the fact that one
and the same physical body has different effects upon,
or relations with, different physical media is proof
1 Plato s use of shadows, of reflections in the water, and other
"images" or "imitations" to prove the presence in nature of non-
being was, considering the state of physical science in his day, a
much more sensible conclusion than the modern use of certain images
as proof that the object in perception is a psychical content. Hobbes
expressly treats all images as physical, as on the same plane as
reflections in the water and echoes; the comparison is his.
252 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of the mental nature of these effects. Take a lump
of wax and subject it to the same heat, located at
different positions; now the wax is solid, now liquid-
it might even be gaseous. How psychical" these
phenomena ! It almost seems as if the transformation
of the physical into the mental in the cases cited
exemplifies an interesting psychological phenomenon.
In each case the beginning is with a real and physical
existence. Taking "the real object," the astronomi
cal star, on the basis of its physical reality, the idealist
concludes to a psychical object, radically different!
Taking the single object, the finger, from the premise
of its real singleness, he concludes to a double mental
content, which then takes the place of the original
single thing! Taking one-and-the-same-object, the
table, presenting its different surfaces and reflections
of light to different real organisms, he eliminates the
one-table-in-its-different-relations in behalf of a multi
plicity of totally separate psychical tables ! The logic
reminds us of the story of the countryman who, after
gazing at the giraffe, remarked, "There ain t no such
animal." It almost seems, I repeat, as if this self-
contradiction in the argument creates in some minds
the impression that the object not the argument-
is undergoing the extraordinary reversal of form.
However this may be, the problem indicated in the
foregoing cases is simply the good old problem of
the many in one, or, less cryptically, the problem of the
maintenance of a continuity of process throughout
NAIVE 75. PRESENTATIVE REALISM 253
differences. I do not pretend that this situation,
though the most familiar thing in life, is wholly with
out difficulties. But its difficulty is not one of episte-
mology, that is, of the relation of known to a knower;
to take it as such, and then to use it as proof of the
psychical nature of a final term, is also to prove that
the trail the rocket stick leaves behind is psychical, or
that the flower which comes in a continuity of process
from a seed is mental.
II
Contemporary realists have so frequently and
clearly expounded the physical explanation of such
cases as have been cited that one is at a loss as to
why idealists go on repeating the cases without even
alluding to the realistic explanation. One is moved
to wonder whether this neglect is just one of those
circumstances which persistently dog philosophical
discussions, or whether something in the realistic posi
tion gives ground (from at least an ad hominem point
of view) for the neglect. There is a reason for adopt
ing the latter alternative. Many realists, in offering
the type of explanation adduced above, have treated
the cases of seen light, doubled imagery, as perception
in a way that ascribes to perception an inherent cog
nitive status. They have treated the perceptions as
cases of knowledge, instead of as simply natural events
having, in themselves (apart from a use that may be
made of them), no more knowledge status or worth
254 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
than, say, a shower or a fever. What I intend to
show is that if " perceptions " are regarded as cases
of knowledge, the gate is opened to the idealistic
interpretation. The physical explanation holds of
them as long as they are regarded simply as natural
events a doctrine I shall call naive realism; it does
not hold of them considered as cases of knowledge
the view I call pjSHtative realism.
The idealists attribute to the realists the doctrine
I that "the perceived object is the real object." Please
note the wording; it assumes that there is the real
object, something which stands in a contrasting rela
tion with objects not real or else less real. Since
it is easily demonstrable that there is a numerical
duplicity between the astronomical star and its effect of
visible light, between the single finger and the doubled
images, the latter evidently, when the former is
dubbed "the" real object, stands in disparaging
contrast to its reality. // it is a case of knowledge,
the knowledge refers to the star; and yet not the
, star, but something more or less unreal (that is,
if the star be " the" real object), is known.
Consider how simply the matter stands in what I
have called naive realism. The ajtroj]^m$aLsiar is a
real object, but not ""the" real object; the visible
light is another real object, found, when knowledge
supervenes, to be an occurrence standing in a process
continuous with the star. Since the seen light is an
event within a continuous process, there is no point
NAIVE 75. PRESENTATIVE REALISM 255
of view from which its "reality" contrasts with that
of the star.
But suppose that the realist accepts the tradi
tionary psychology according to which every event
in the way of a perception is also a case of knowing
something. Is the way out now so simple ? In the
case of the doubled fingers or the seen light, the thing
known in perception contrasts with the physical
source and cause of the knowledge. There is a
numerical duplicity. Moreover the thing known by
perception is by this hypothesis in relation to a knower,
while the physical cause is not. /Is not the most
plausible account of the difference between the physi
cal cause of the perceptive knowledge and what the
latter presents precisely this latter difference-
namely, presentation to a knower ? If perception is a
case of knowing, it must be a case of knowing the star;
but since the "real" star is not known in the percep
tion, the knowledge relation must somehow have
changed the "object" into a "content." Thus when
perceptual occurrence as
case of knowledge or of presentation
to a_mind or knower, he lets the nose of the idealist
_camel into the tent. He has then no great cause for
surprise when the camel comes in and devours the
tent.
Perhaps it will seem as if in this last paragraph I
had gone back on what I said earlier regarding the
physical explanation of the difference between the
256 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
visible light and the astronomical star. On the con
trary, my point is that this explanation, though wholly
adequate as long as we conceive the perception to be
itself simply a natural event, is not at all available
when we conceive it to be an attempt at knowing its
cause. In the former case, we are dealing with a rela
tion between natural events. In the latter case, we are
dealing with the difference between an object as a
cause of knowledge and an object as known, and hence
in relation to mind. By the "method of difference"
the sole explanation of the difference between the two
objects is then the absence or presence of relation to
a knower.
In the case of the seen light, 1 reference to the
velocity of light is quite adequate to account for its
time and space differences from the star. But viewed
as a case of what is known (on the supposition that
perception is knowing), reference to it only increases
the contrast between the real object and the object
known in perception. For, being just as much a part
of the object that causes the perception as is the star
itself, it (the velocity of light) ought logically to be
part of what is known in the perception, while it is
1 It is impossible, in this brief treatment, to forestall every mis
apprehension and objection. Yet to many the use of the term "seen "
will appear to be an admission that a case of knowledge is involved.
But is smelling a case of knowledge ? Or (if the superstition persists
as to smell) is gnawing or poking a case of knowledge ? My poiqt,
oj course ; ,Js_thalJ- ( -seepJ, anxQlY.es_a relatioji_to organic activity,. ooJ;
to a jbio
NAIVE VS. PRESENTATIVE REALISM 257
not. Since the velocity of light is a constituent
element in the star, it should be known in the per
ception; since it is not so known, reference to it only
increases the discrepancy between the object of the
perception the seen light and the real, astronomi
cal star. The same is true of any physical condition
that might be referred to : The very things that, from
the standpoint of perception as a natural event, are
conditions that account for Us happening are, from the
standpoint of perception as a case of knowledge, part
of the object which, if knowledge is to be valid, ought to
be known, but is not.
In this fact we have, perhaps, the ground of the
idealist s disregard of the oft-proffered physical
explanation of the difference between the perceptual
event and the (so-called) real object. And it is quite
possible that some realists who read these lines will
feel that in my last paragraphs I have been making
a covert argument for idealism. Not so, I repeat;
they are an argument for a truly naive realism. The
presentative realist, in his appeal to "common-sense"
and the "plain man," first sophisticates the umpire
and then appeals. He stops a good way short of a
genuine naivete. The plain man, for a surety, does
not regard noises heard, lights seen, etc., as mental
existences ; but neither does he regard them as things
known. That they are just things is good enough
for him. That they are in relation to mind, or in rela
tion to mind as their "knower," no more occurs to
258 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
him than that they are mental. By this I mean much
more than that the formulae of epistemology are
foreign to him; I mean that his attitude to these
things as things involves their not being in relation to
e him as a mind or a knower. He is in the attitude of ji
>^ lH i liker or hater, a doer or an appreciate*. When he
^ takes the attitude of a knower he begins to inquire.
V Once depart from thorough naivete, and substitute for
it the psychological theory that perception is a cogni
tive presentation to a mind of a causal object, and
the first step is taken on the road which ends in an
idealistic system.
Ill
For simplicity s sake, I have written as if my main
problem were to show how, in the face of a supposed
difficulty, a strictly realistic theory of the perceptual
event may be maintained. But my interest is
primarily in the facts, and in the theory only because
of the facts it formulates. The significance of the
facts of the case may, perhaps, be indicated by a
consideration which has thus far been ignored. In
regarding a perception as a case of knowledge, the
presentative realist does more than shove into it a
relation to mind which then, naturally and inevitably,
becomes the explanation of any differences that exist
between its subject-matter and some causal object
with which it contrasts. In many cases very impor
tant cases, too, in the physical sciences the con-
NAIVE VS. PRESENTATIVE REALISM 259
trasting "real object" becomes known by a logical
process, by inference as the contemporary position
of the star is determined by calculations from data,
not by perception. This, then, is the situation of the
presentative realist: If perception is knowledge of
its cause, it stands in unfavorable contrast with
another indirect mode of knowledge; Us object is
less valid than the object of inference. I do not
adduce these considerations as showing that the case
is hopeless for the presentative realist; 1 I am willing
to concede he can find a satisfactory way out. But
the difficulty exists; and in existing it calls emphatic
attention to a case which is certainly and indisputably
a case of knowledge namely, propositions arrived
at through inference, judgments as logical assertions.
With relation to the unquestionable case of knowl
edge, the logical or inferential case, perceptions occupy
a unique status, one which readily accounts for their
being regarded as cases of knowledge, although in
themselves they are natural events, (i) They are
the sole ultimate data, the sole media, of inference to
all natural objects and processes. While we do not,
in any intelligible or verifiable sense, know them, we
know all things that we do know with or by them.
They furnish the only ultimate evidence of the
1 This is the phase of the matter, of course, which the rationalistic
or objective realist, the .realist of the type of T. H. Green, emphasizes.
Put in terms of systems, the difficulty is that in escaping the sub
jectivism latent in treating perception as a case of knowledge, the
realist runs into the waiting arms of the objective idealist.
260
existence and nature of the objects which we infer,
and they are the sole ultimate checks and tests of the
inferences. The visible light is a necessary part of
the evidence on the basis of which we infer the exist
ence, place, and structure of the astronomical star,
and some other perception is the verifying check
on the value of the inference. Because of this char
acteristic use of perceptions, the perceptions them
selves acquire, by "second intention," a knowledge
status. They become objects of minute, accurate,
and experimental scrutiny. Since the body of propo
sitions that forms natural science hangs upon them,
for scientific purposes their nature as evidence, as
signs, entirely overshadows their natural status, that
of being simply natural events. The scientific man,
as scientific, cares for perceptions not in themselves,
but as they throw light upon the nature of some object
reached by evidence. And since every such inference
tries to terminate in a further perception (as its test
of validity), the value of inferential knowing depends
on perception. (2) Independently of science, daily
life uses perceptions as signs of other perceptions.
When a perception of a certain kind frequently recurs
and is constantly used as evidence of some other
impending perceptual event, the function of habit (a
natural function, be it noted, not a psychical or episte-
mological function) often brings it about that the
perception loses its original quality in acquiring a
sign-value. Language is, of course, the typical case.
NAIVE VS. PRESENTATIVE REALISM 261
Noises, in themselves mere natural events, through
habitual use as signs of other natural events become
integrated with what they mean. What they stand
for is telescoped, as it were, into what they are. This
happens also with other natural events, colors, tastes,
etc. Thus, for practical purposes, many perceptual
events are cases of knowledge; that is, they have
been used as such so often that the habit of so using
them is established or automatic.
In this brief reference to facts that are perfectly
familiar, I have tried to suggestjthree points of crucial
imrjortance fojrjjjoaiye realism : jirst, that Jniejential_ G)
or evidential knowledge (that involyingjogical rela-
ti_on)Jsjn. IhfiJield. as.
of_knowjeilge ; second, that this function, although V,
embodying the logical relation, is itself a natural and /
specifically detectable process among natural things /
it is not a non-natural or epistemological relation;
third, that the use, practical and scientific, of per- (g>
ceptual events in the evidential or inferential function
is such as to make them become objects of inquiry and
limits of knowledge, and to such a degree that this
acquired characteristic quite overshadows, in many
cases, their primary nature.
If we add to what has been said the fact that, like
every natural function, the inferential function turns
out better in some cases and worse in others, we get
a naturalistic or naively realistic conception of the
"problem of knowledge": Control of the conditions
262 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
of inference the only type of knowledge detectable
in direct existence so as to guide it toward better
conclusions.
IV
I do not flatter myself that I will receive much
gratitude from realists for attempting to rescue
them from that error of fact which exposes their
doctrine to an idealistic interpretation. The super
stition, growing up in a false physics and physiology
and perpetuated by psychology, that sensations-
perceptions are cases of knowledge, is too ingrained.
But crede ex per to let them try the experiment of
conceiving perceptions as pure natural events, not
as cases of awareness or apprehension, and they will
be surprised to see how little they miss save the
burden of carrying traditionary problems. Mean
time, while philosophic argument, such as this, will
do little to change the state of belief regarding per
ceptions, the development of biology and the refine
ment of physiology will, in due season, do the work.
In concluding my article, I ought to refer, in order
to guard against misapprehension, to a reply that the
presentative realist might make to my objection. He
might say that while the seen light is a case of knowl
edge or presentative awareness, it is not a case of
knowledge of the star, but simply of the seen light, just
as it is. In this case the appeal to the physical expla
nations of the difference of the seen light from its
NAIVE VS. PRESENTATIVE REALISM 263
objective source is quite legitimate. At first sight,
such a position seems innocent and tenable. Even
if innocent, it would, however, be ungrounded, since
there is no evidence of the existence of a knower, and
of its relation to the seen light. But further con
sideration will reveal that there is a most fundamental
objection. If the notion of perception as a case of
adequate knowledge of its own object-matter be
accepted, the knowledge relation is absolutely
ubiquitous; it is an all-inclusive net. The "ego
centric predicament" is inevitable. This result
of making perception a case of knowing will now
occupy us.
X
EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM:
THE ALLEGED UBIQUITY OF THE KNOWL
EDGE RELATION
I have pointed out that if perception be treated as
a case of knowledge, knowledge of every form and
kind must be treated as a case of a presentation to a
knower. The alleged discipline of epistemology is then
inevitable. In common usage, the term "knowledge"
tends to be employed eulogistically; its meaning
approaches the connotation of the term "science."
More loosely, it is used, of course, to designate all
beliefs and propositions that are held with assurance,
especially with the implication that the assurance
is reasonable, or grounded. In its practical sense,
it is used as the equivalent of "knowing how" of
skill or ability involving such acquaintance with
things and persons as enables one to anticipate how
they behave under certain conditions and to take
steps accordingly. Such usages of the term are all
differential; they all involve definite contrasts with
ungrounded conviction, or with doubt and mere guess
work, or with the inexpertness that accompanies
lack of familiarity. In its epistemological use, the
} term "knowledge" has a blanket value which is
264
EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM 265
absolutely unknown in common life. It covers any
and every "presentation" of any and every thing to
a knower, to an "awarer," if I may coin a word for
the sake of avoiding some of the pitfalls of the term
"consciousness." And, I repeat, this indiscriminate
use of the term "knowledge," so foreign to science
and daily life, is absolutely unavoidable if perception
be regarded as, in itself, a mode of knowledge. And
then and only then the problem of "the possibility,
nature, and extent of knowledge in general" is also
inevitable. I hope I shall not be regarded as offen
sively pragmatic if I suggest that this undesirable
consequence is a good reason for not accepting the
premise from which it follows, unless that premise
be absolutely forced upon us.
At all events, Upon the supposition of the ubiquity
of the knowledge relation in respect to a self, presenta-
tive realism is compelled to accept the genuineness
of the epistemological problem, and thus to convert
itself into an epistemological realism, getting one
more step away from both na ive and naturalistic
realism. The problem is especially acute for a pre-
sentative realism because idealism has made precisely >
this ubiquity of relationship its axiom, its short-cut.
One sample is as good as a thousand. Says Bain:
"There is no possible knowledge of a world except
in relation to our minds. Knowledge means a state
of mind; the notion of material things is a mental
fact. We are incapable even of discussing the
266
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
existence of an independent material world; the
very act is a contradiction. We can speak only
of a world presented to our own minds."
On the supposition of the ubiquity of the relation,
realism and idealism exhaust the alternatives; if
the ubiquity of the relation is a myth, both doctrines
are unreal, because there is no problem of which they
are the solution. My first step in indicating the
unreality of both "solutions" is formal. I shall try
to show that if the knowledge relation of things to a
self is the exhaustive and inclusive relation, there is
no intelligible point at issue between idealism and
realism; the differences between them are either
verbal or else due to a failure on the part of one or
the other to stick to their common premise.
To my mind, Professor Perry rendered philosophic
discussion a real service when he coined the phrase
"egocentric predicament." The phrase designated
something which, whether or no it be real in itself,
is very real in current discussion, and designating it
rendered it more accessible to examination. In
terming the alleged uniform complicity of a knower a
predicament, it is intended, I take it, to suggest,
among other things, that we have here a difficulty
with which all schools of thought alike must reckon,
so that it is a difficulty that cannot be used as an
argument in behalf of one school and against another.
EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM 267
If the relation be ubiquitous, it affects alike every
view, every theory, every object experienced; it is
no respecter of persons, no respecter of doctrines.
Since it cannot make any difference to any particular
object, to any particular logical assertion, or to any
particular theory, it does not support an idealistic
as against a realistic theory. Being a universal
common denominator of all theories, it cancels out
of all of them alike. It leaves the issue one of subject-
matter, to be decided on the basis of that subject-
matter, not on the basis of an unescapable attendant
consideration that the subject-matter must be known
in order to be discussed. In short, the moral is quite
literally, "Forget it," or "Cut it out."
But the idealist may be imagined to reply somewhat
as follows: "If the ubiquity were of any kind other
than precisely the kind it is, the advice to disregard
it as a mere attendant circumstance of discussion
would be relevant. Thus, for example, we disregard
gravitation when we are considering a particular
chemical reaction; there is no ground for supposing
that it affects a reaction in any way that modifies
it as a chemical reaction. And if the ego-centric
relation were cited when the point at issue is some
thing about one group of facts in distinction from
another group, it ought certainly to be canceled from
any statement about them. But since the point at
issue is precisely the most universally defining trait
of existence as known, the invitation deliberately
268 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
to disregard the most universal trait is nothing more
or less than an invitation to philosophic suicide."
If the idealist I have imagined as making the fore
going retort were up in recent realistic literature, he
might add the following argument ad hominem:
"You, my realistic opponent, say that the doctrine of
the external relation of terms expresses a ubiquitous
mark of every genuine proposition or relational com
plex, and that this ubiquity is a strong presumption
in favor of realism. Why so uneven, so partial, in
your attitude toward ubiquitous relations ? Is it per
chance that you were so uneasy at our possession of
a ubiquitous relation that gives a short cut to ideal
ism that you felt you must also have a short cut to
realism?"
If I terminate the controversy at this point, it is
not because I think the realist is unable to "come
back." On the contrary, I stop here because I
believe (for reasons that will come out shortly) that
both realist and idealist, having the same primary
assumption, can come back at each other indefinitely.
Consequently, I wish to employ the existence of this
tu quoque controversy to raise the question: Under
what conditions is the relation of knower to known
an intelligible question ? And I wish to show that
it is not intelligible, if the knowledge relation be
ubiquitous and homogeneous.
The controversy back and forth is in fact a warn
ing of each side by the other not to depart from their
EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM 269
common premise. If the idealist begins to argue (as
he constantly does) as if the relation to_"mind" or
to "consciousness" made some difference oFaTspecific
sort, like that between error and fact, or between
sound perception and hallucination, he may be
reminded that, since this relation is uniform, it sub
stantiates and nullifies all things alike. And the
realist is quite within the common premise when he
points out that every special fact must be admitted
for what it is specifically known to be; no idealistic
doctrine can turn the edge of the fact that knowledge
has evolved historically out of a state in which there
was no mind, or of the fact that knowledge is even
now dependent on the brain, provided that specific
evidence shows these to be facts. The realist, on the
other hand, must admit that, after all, the entire body
of known facts, or of science, including such facts as
the above, is held fast and tight in the net of relation
to a mind or consciousness. In specific cases this
relation may be ignored, but the exact ground for
such an ignoring is precisely that the relation is
not a specific fact, but a uniform relation of facts.
And to call it an external relation makes no practical
difference if it is universal and uniform. So the ideal
ist might reply.
Imagine a situation like the following: The sole
relation an organism bears to things is that of eater;
the sole relation the environment bears to the organ
ism is that of food, that is, things- to-eat. This
270 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
relation, then, is exhaustive. It defines, or identifies,
each term in relation to the other. But this means
that there are not, as respects organism and environ
ment, two terms at all. Eater-of-food and fcuxU
being.-je.aten are two names for one and the same situ
ation. Could there be imagined a greater absurdity
than to set to work to discuss the relation of eater to
food, of organism to the environment, or to argue as
to whether one modifies the other or not ? Given the
premise, the statements in such a discussion could
have only a verbal difference from one another.
Suppose, however, the discussion has somehow got
under way. Sides have been taken; the philosophi
cal world is divided into two great camps, "foodists"
and "eaterists." The eaterists (idealists) contend
that no object exists except in relation to eating;
hence that everything is constituted a thing by its
relation to eating. Special sciences exist indeed which
discuss the nature of various sorts of things in relation
to one another, and hence in legitimate abstraction
from the fact that they are all foods. But the dis
cussion of their nature an sich depends upon "eat-
ology," which deals primarily with the problem of
the possibility, nature, and extent (or limits) of
eating food in general, and thereby determines what
food in general, iiberhaupt, is and means.
Nay, replies the foodist (realist). Since the eat
ing relation is uniform, it is negligible. All proposi
tions which have any intelligible meaning are about
EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM 271
objects just as they are, and in the relations they
bear to one another. Foods pass in and out of the
relation to eater with no change in their own traits.
Moreover, the position of the eaterists is self-
contradictory. How can a thing be eaten unless it
is, in and of itself, a food ? To suppose that a food
is constituted by eating is to presuppose that eating j
eats eating, and so on in infinite regress. In short,
to be an eater is to be an eater of food; take away the
independent existence of foods, and you deny the
existence and the possibility of an eater.
I respectfully submit that there is no terminus to
such a discussion. For either both sides are saying
the same thing in different words, or else both of them
depart from their common premise, and unwittingly
smuggle in some relations between the organism and
environment other than that of food-eater. If to
be an eater means that an organism which is more
and other than an eater is doing something distinctive,
because contrasting with its other functions, in eating
then, and then only, is there an issue. In this latter
case, the thing which is food may, of course, be proved
to be something besides food, because of some differ
ent relation to the organism than that of eating. But
if both stick consistently to their common premise, we
get the following trivial situation. The idealist says:
"Every philosophy purports to be knowledge,
knowledge of objects; all knowledge implies rela
tion to mind; therefore every object with which
272 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
philosophy deals is object-in-relation-to-mind." The
realist says: "To be a mind is to be a knower; to be
a knower is to be a knower-of-objects. Without the
objects to be known, mind, the knower, is and means
nothing."
The difficulties attending the discussion of episte-
mology are in no way attendant upon the special
subject-matter of "epistemology." They are found
wherever any reciprocal relation is taken to define,
exclusively and exhaustively, all the connections
between any pair of things. If there are two things
that stand solely as buyer and seller to each other, or
as husband and wife, then that relation is "unique,"
and undefinable; to discuss the relation of the rela
tion to the terms of which it is the relation, is an
obvious absurdity; to assert that the relation does not
modify the "seller," the "wife," or the "object
known," is to discuss the relation of the relation just
as much as to assert the opposite. The only reason,
I think, why anyone has ever supposed the case of
knower-known to differ from any case of an alleged ex
haustive and exclusive correlation is that while the
knower is only one just knower the objects known
are obviously many, and sustain many relations to one
another which vary independently of their relation
to the knower. This is the undoubted fact at the
bottom of epistemological realism. But the idealist
is entitled to reply that the objects in their variable
relations to one another nevertheless fall within a
EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM 273
relation to a knower, as long as that relation is re
garded by both as exhaustive or ubiquitous.
II
Nevertheless, I do not conceive that the realistic
assertion and the idealistic assertion in this dilemma
stand on the same level, or have the same value. The
fact that objects vary in relation to one another
independently of their relation to the "knower" is
a fact, and a fact recognized by all schools. The
idealistic assertion rests simply upon the presupposi
tion of the ubiquity of the knowledge relation, and
consequently has only an ad hominem force, that is a
force as against epistemological realists against those
who admit that the sole and exhaustive relation of the
"self" or "ego" to objects is that of knower of them. 1
Professor Perry says (The New Realism, p. 115): "Professor
Dewey is mistaken in supposing that realism assumes the ubiquity
of the knowledge-relation. Realism does not argue from the ego
centric predicament, i.e., from the bare presence of the knowledge-
relation in all cases of knowledge." If the text has not made my
point clear, it is probably too much to expect that a footnote will
do so. But I have not accused the realist of arguing from the ego
centric predicament. I have said that if any realist holds that the
sole and exclusive relation of the one who is knower to things is that
of being their knower, then the realist cannot escape the impact of the
predicament. But if the one who knows things also stands in other
connections with them, then it is possible to make an intelligible
contrast between things as known and things as loved or hated or
appreciated, or seen or heard or whatever. The argument, it should
be noted, stands in connection with that of the last section as to
whether hearing a sound and seeing a color are of themselves (apart
from the use made of them in inference) cases of knowledge. It is
274 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
The relation oi buyer and seller is a discussable rela
tion- for buyer does not exhaust one party and sell
does not exhaust the other. Each is a man or a
woman, a consumer or a producer or a rmddleman
I green-grocer or a dry-goods merchant, a taxpaye
or a voter, and so on indefinitely. Nor B it true that
such additional relations are borne merely to .(to
things; the buyer-sellers are more than and other
than buyer-seller to each other. They may be fellow-
Ibmen" belong to opposite political part.es, dishke
each other s looks, and be second cousins:
t that Perry holds (New ReMw, p. 15) that "sensing"
significant that 1 __ it must be in relation to a knower;
is P er:e a case of knowing. Hence
it 1st fall within the "predicament, ^^ , may be
of a characteristic of the >^J,^ he environment,
used) to make us f^^. by the mind o, a
th ere is no P~* m o, error -e as ^ta^
over, since errors in into nee are
adequate evidence to the contrary ,s produced
EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM 275
the buyer-seller relation stands in intelligent connec
tion and contrast with other relations, so that it can
be discriminated, defined, analyzed. Moreover, there
are specific differences in the buying-selling relation.
Because it is not ubiquitous, it is not homogeneous.
If wealthy and a householder, the one who buys is a
different buyer i.e., buys differently than if poor
and a boarder. Consequently, the seller sells differ
ently, has more or less goods left to sell, more or less
income to expend on other things, and so on indefi
nitely. Moreover, in order to be a buyer the man
has to have been other things; i.e., he is not a buyer
per se, but becomes a buyer because he is an eater,
wears clothes, is married, etc.
It is also quite clear that the organism is something
else than an eater, or something in relation to food
alone. I will not again call the roll of perfectly
familiar facts; I will lessen my appeal to the reader s
patience by confining my reiteration to one point.
Even in relation to the things that are food, the organ
ism is something more than their eater. He is their
acquirer, their pursuer, their cultivator, their beholder,
taster, etc.; he becomes their eater only because he
is so many other things, and his becoming an eater
is a natural episode in the natural unfolding of these
other things.
Precisely the same sort of assertions may be made
about the knower-known relation. If the one who is
knower is something else and more than the knower
J J
276 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
\
of objects, and if objects are, in relation to the one
who knows them, something else and other than things
in a knowledge relation, there is somewhat to define
and discuss; otherwise we are raising, as we have
already seen, the quite foolish question as to what
! is the relation of a relation to itself, or the equally
foolish question of whether being a thing modifies the
thing that it is. And, moreover, epistemological
realism and idealism both say the same thing: realism
that a thing does not modify itself, idealism that, since
the thing is what it is, it stands in the relation that it
does stand in.
There are many facts which, prima facie, support
the claim that knowing is a connection of things which
depends upon other and more primary connections
between a self and things; a connection which grows
out of these more fundamental connections and which
operates in their interests at specifiable crises. I will
not repeat what is so generally admitted and so little
taken into account, that knowing is, biologically, a
differentiation of organic behavior, but will cite some
facts that are even more obvious and even more
neglected.
i. If we take a case of perception, we find upon
analysis that, so far as a self or organism is concerned
in it at all, the self is, so to say, inside of it rather than
outside of it. It would be much more correct to say
that a self is contained in a perception than that a per
ception is presented to a self. That is to say, the or-
EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM 277
ganism is involved in the occurrence of the perception
in the same sort of way that hydrogen is involved in
the happening producing of water. We might
about as well talk of the production of a specimen of
water as a presentation of water to hydrogen as talk
in the way we are only too accustomed to talk about
perceptions and the organism. When we consider a
perception as a case of "apperception," the same
thing holds good. Habits enter into the constitution
of the situation; they are in and of it, not, so far as
it is concerned, something outside of it. Here, if
you please, is a unique relation of self and things, but
it is unique not in being wholly incomparable to all
natural relations among events, but in the sense of
being distinctive or just the relation that it is.
2. Taking the many cases where the self may be
said, in an intelligible sense, to lie outside a thing and
hence to have dealings with it, we find that they are
extensively and primarily cases where the self is agent-
patient, doer, sufferer, and enjoyer. This means,
of course, that things, the things that later come to
be known, are primarily not objects of awareness,
f but causes of weal and woe, things to get and things
to avoid, means and obstacles, tools and results.
To a na ive spectator, the ordinary assumption that a
thing is "in" experience only when it is an object
of awareness (or even only when a perception), is
nothing less than extraordinary. The self experiences
whatever it undergoes, and there is no fact about life
278 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
more assured or more tragic than that what we are
aware of is determined by things that we are under
going but of which we are not conscious and which
we cannot be conscious of under the particular con
ditions.
3. So far as the question of the relation of the self
to known objects is concerned, knowing is but one
special case of the agent-patient, of the behaver-
enjoyer-sufferer situation. It is, however, the case
constantly increasing in relative importance. The
connections of the self with things by way of weal or
woe are progressively found to depend upon the con
nections established in knowing things; on the other
hand, the progress, the advance, of science is found
to depend more and more upon the courage and
patience of the agent in making the widening and
buttressing of knowledge a business.
It is impossible to overstate the significance, the
reality, of the relation of self as knower to things when
it is thought of as a moral relation, a deliberate and
responsible undertaking of a self. Ultimately the
modern insistence upon the self in reference to knowl
edge (in contrast with the classic Greek view) will be
found to reside precisely here.
My purpose in citing the foregoing facts is not to
prove a positive point, viz., that there are many rela
tions of self and things, of which knowing is but one
differentiated case. It concerns something less
obvious: viz., showing what is meant by saying that
EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM 279
the problems at issue concern matters of fact, and
are not matters to be decided by assumption, defini
tion, and deduction. I mean also to suggest what
kind of matters of fact would naturally be adduced
as evidential in such a discussion. Negatively put,
my point is that the whole question orthejgl^Hnn o f
knower to knownJs_radic^lly_ji^c^c,elYed in what
eisteniglogy^ie^aj!S_ojL^
assumption, an assumptionjvhich, more-
(sxammed, makes the__CQjritroversy verbal
or^absurd. Positively put, my point is that since,
pnma facie, plenty of connections other than the
knower-known one exist between self and things, there
is a context in which the "problem" of their relation
concerns matters of fact capable of empirical deter
mination by matter-of-fact inquiry. The point about
a difference being made (or rather making) in things
when known is precisely of this sort.
Ill
That question is not, save upon the assumption of the
ubiquity of the knowledge relation, the absurd question
of whether knowledge makes any difference to things
already known or to things as knowledge-objects, as
facts or truths. Until the epistemological realists
have seriously considered the main propositions of the
pragmatic realists, viz., that knowing is something
that happens to things in the natural course of their
career, not the sudden introduction of a "unique"
280
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
non-natural type of relation that to a mind or con
sciousness they are hardly in a position to discuss
the second and derived pragmatic proposition that,
in this natural continuity, things in becoming known
undergo a specific and detectable qualitative change.
I had occasion earlier to remark that if one identifies
"knowledge " with situations involving the function of
inference, the problem of knowledge means the art of
guiding this function most effectively. That state
ment holds when we take knowledge as a relation of
the things in the knowledge situation. If we are
once convinced of the artificiality of the notion that
the knowledge relation is ubiquitous, there will be an
existential problem as to the self and knowledge ; but
it will be a radically different problem from that
discussed in epistemology. The relation of knowing
to existence will be recognized to form the subject-
matter of no problem, because involving an un
grounded and even absurd preconception. But the
problem of the relation of an existence in the way of
knowing to other existences or events with which
it forms a continuous process will then be seen to be
a natural problem to be attacked by natural methods.
XI
THE EXISTENCE OF THE WORLD AS A
LOGICAL PROBLEM
Of the two parts of this paper the first is a study
in formal analysis. It attempts_to_show that there
is no jproblem, logically speaking, of the existence of
an external world. Its point is to show that the
very attempt to state the problem involves a self-
contradiction : that the terms cannot be stated so as
to generate a problem without assuming what is pro
fessedly brought into question. The second part is a
summary endeavor to state the actual question which
has given rise to the unreal problem and the condi
tions which have led to its being misconstrued. So far
as subject-matter is concerned, it supplements the
first part; but the argument of the first part in no
way depends upon anything said in the second. The
latter may be false and its falsity have no implications
for the first.
I
There are many ways of stating the problem of the
existence of an external world. I shall make that of
Mr. Bertrand Russell the basis of my examinations,
as it is set forth in his recent book Our Knowledge of the
External World as a Field for Scientific Method in
Philosophy. I do this both because his statement is
281
282 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
one recently made in a book of commanding impor
tance, and because it seems to me to be a more carefu
statement than most of those in vogue. If my po
can be made out for his statement, it will apply,
a fortiori, to other statements. Even if there be those
to whom this does not seem to be the case, it will
admitted that my analysis must begin somewhere,
cannot take the space to repeat the analysis i
application to differing modes of statement with a
view to showing that the method employed will yield
like results in all cases. But I take the liberty of
throwing the burden upon the reader and asking 1
to show cause why it does not so apply.
After rejecting certain familiar formulations o
question because they employ the not easily definable
notions of the self and independence, Mr.
makes the following formulation: Can_we_^
i. A *-.,-,(- iirnf>n WP
that_pbjects_ofj sense
anotheV mode of statement:
anything_other than ^ J ow
Ir^he exiitenoBoiAosedata?! (pp. 73 and 83).
~l shaUlry to show that identification of the dat;
sense " as the sort of term which will generate the pro
lem involves an affirmative answer to the quest*
that it must have been answered in the affirmative
established ?
THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM 283
fore the question can be asked. And this, I take it, is to
say that it is not a question at all. A point of depar
ture may be found in the following passage: "I think
it must be admitted as probable that the immediate
objects of sense depend for their existence upon physio
logical conditions in ourselves, and that, for example,
the colored surfaces which we see cease to exist when
we shut our eyes" (p. 64). I have not quoted the
passage for the sake of gaining an easy victory by
pointing out that this statement involves the existence
of physiological conditions. For Mr. Russell himself
affirms that fact. As he points out, such arguments
assume precisely the "common sense world of stable
objects" professedly put in doubt (p. 85). My
HP?^i isJojLskjwha^justification there is for calling
immediate data u obje^ts]oj_sense." Statements of
this type always call color visual, sound auditory, and
so on. If it were merely a matter of making certain
admissions for the sake of being able to play a certain
game, there would be no objection. But if we are
concerned with a matter of serious analysis, one is
bound to ask, Whence comejthese adjectives ? That
coloris visual in the sense of being an object of vision TsT
world but
That color is visual is
a proposition about
__
color itself does nqtjitter. Visible or visual
already a "synthetic" proposition, not a term nor an
analysis of a single term. That color is seen, or is
284 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
visible, I do not call in question; but I insist that fact
already assumes an answer to the question which
Mr. Russell has put. It presupposes existence beyond
the color itself. To call the color a "sensory" object
involves another assumption of the same kind but even
more complex involving, that is, even more existence
beyond the color.
I see no reply to this statement except to urge that
the terms "visual" and "sensory" as applied to the
object are pieces of verbal supererogation having
no force in the statement. This supposititious answer
brings the matter to a focus. Is it possible to insti
tute even a preliminary disparaging contrast between
immediate objects and a world external to them unless
the term "sensory" has a definite effect upon the
meaning assigned to immediate data or objects?
Before taking up this question I shall, however, call
attention to another implication of the passage quoted.
It appears to be implied that existence of color and
"being seen" are equivalent terms. At all events, in
similar arguments the identification is frequently made.
But by description all that is required for the existence
of color is certain physiological conditions. They
may be present and color exist and yet not be seen.
Things constantly act upon the optical_apparaius in a
^^y_wWcJ^hi^kjthe^onditioiis^qf the exBtencejqf
color without mlny being ^een. This statement does
not involve any dubious psychology about an act of
attention. I only mean that the argument implies
THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM 285
over and above the existence of color something called
seeing or perceiving noting is perhaps a convenient
neutral term. And this clearly involves an assump
tion of something beyond the existence of the datum
and this datum is by definition an external world.
Without this assumption the term "immediate" could
not be introduced. Is the object immediate or is it the
object of an immediate noting? If the latter, then
the hard datum already stands in connection with
something beyond itself.
And this brings us to a further point. The sense
objects are repeatedly spoken of as "known." For
example: "It is obvious that since the senses give
knowledge of the latter kind [believed on their own
account, without the support of any outside evidence]
the immediate facts perceived by sight or touch or
hearing do not need to be proved by argument but are
completely self-evident" (p. 68). Again, they are
spoken of as "facts of sense" 1 (p. 70), and as facts
going along, for knowledge, with the laws of logic
(p. 72). I do not know what belief or knowledge
means here: nor do I understand what is meant
by a fact being evidence for itself. 2 But obviously
Contrast the statement: "When I speak of a fact I do not
mean one of the simple things of the world, I mean that a certain thing
has a certain quality, or that certain things have a certain relation"
(P- Si)-
* In view of the assumption, shared by Mr. Russell, that there is
such a thing as non-inferential knowledge, the conception that a
thing offers evidence for itself needs analysis. Self-evidence is merely
2 86 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
Mr Russell knows, and knows their application to the
sense object. And here is a further assumption c
what, by definition, is a world external to the datum^
we have aUD^djn^rttingjLJu^tiOTLjt^e
.
.
the assumption is not made the less simple in that
Mr Russell has defined belief as a case of a triadic
tion and said that without the recognition c
three-term relation the difference between percept
and belief is inexplicable (p. 5)-
We come to the question passed over.
terms as "visual," "sensory," be neglected without
modifying the force of the question-that is without
affecting the implications which give it the force of a
problem? Can we "know that objects of sense, c
very similar objects, exist at times when we are not
perceiving them ? Secondly, if this cannot be known,
can we know that other objects, inferable from objects
of sense but not necessarily resembling them, e
either when we are perceiving the objects of sense
any other time" (p. 75) ?
I think a little reflection will jnakfi ti-dezt
Stot^^
no ^&/^^sJoexisJenc^a^^
" (the Cartesian "clear and distinct") and truth dub,ou,
THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM 287
can_possibly arise. For neither (a) reference to time
nor (^limitation to a particular time is given either
in the fact of existence of color or of perceiving color.
Mr. Russell, for example, makes allusion to "a patch
of color which is momentarily seen" (p. 76). This
is the sort of thing that may pass without challenge
in the common-sense world, but hardly in an analy
sis which professes to call that world in question.
Mr. Russell makes the allusion in connection with dis
criminating between sensation as signifying "the
mental event of our being aware" and the sensation
as object of which we are aware the sense object. He
can hardly be guilty, then, in the immediate context,
of proceeding to identify the momentariness of the
event with the momentariness of the object. There
must be some grounds for assuming the temporal
quality of the object and that " immediateness "
belongs to it in any other way than as an object of
immediate seeing. What are these grounds?
How is it, moreover, that even the act of being
aware is describable as "momentary " ? I know of no
way of so identifying it except by discovering that it is
delimited in a time continuum. And if this be the
case, it is surely superfluous to bother about inference
to "other times." They are assumed in stating the
question which thus turns out again to be no
question. It may be only a trivial matter that Mr.
Russell speaks of " that patch of color which is momen
tarily seen when we look at the table" (p. 76, italics
288 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
mine) . I would not attach undue importance to such
phrases. But the frequency with which they present
themselves in discussions of this type suggests the
question whether as matter of fact "the patch of
color" is not determined by reference to an object-
the table and not vice versa. As we shall see later,
is really engaged,, not in .bringing. mto_question the
_
"defining the natur
^Ihe^tcrTof rglnr^s^eAingmpre primitive than_
thetaWejs reaUyjeleyant to tins jeconstn^nrf. tra
ditional mfitajAysb, In other words, it is relevant
to denning an object as a constant correlation of varia
tions in qualities, instead of denning it as a substance
in which attributes inhere or a subject of predicates.
a) If anything is an eternal essence, it is surely such
a thing as color taken by itself, as by definition it
must be taken in the statement of the question by
Mr. Russell. Anything more simple, timeless, and ab
solute than a red can hardly be thought of. One might
question the eternal character of the received state
ment of, say, the law of gravitation on the ground
that it is so complex that it may depend upon condi
tions not yet discovered and the discovery of which
would involve an alteration in the statement.
plus 2 equal 4 be taken as an isolated statement, ii
might be conceived to depend upon hidden conditions
and to be alterable with them. But by conception
THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM 289
we are dealing in the case of the colored surface with
an ultimate, simple datum. It can have no implica
tions beyond itself, no concealed dependencies. How
then can its existence, even if its perception be but
momentary, raise a question of "other times" at all?
b) Suppose a perceived blue surface to be replaced
by a perceived red surface and it will be conceded
that the change, or replacement, is also perceived.
There is still no ground for a belief in the temporally
limited duration of either the red or the blue surface.
Anything that leads to this conclusion would lead to
the conclusion that the number two ceases when;
we turn to think of an atom. There is no way then of
escaping the conclusion that the adjective " sense"
in the term "sense object" is not taken innocently,
t is taken as qualifying (for the purposes of statement
of the problem) the nature of the object. Aside from
reference to the momentariness of the mental event
a reference which is expressly ruled out there is no
way of introducing delimited temporal existence into
the object save by reference to one and the same
object which is perceived at different times to have
different qualities. If the same object however
object be denned is perceived to be of one color at
one time and of another color at another time, then as
a matter of course the color-datum of either the earlier
or later time is identified as of transitory duration.
But equally, of course, there is no question of inference
to "other times." Other times have already been used
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
to describe, define, and delimit this (brief) time. A
moderate amount of unbiased reflection will, I am
confident, convince anyone that apart from a refer
ence to the same existence perduring through differ
ent times while changing in some respect, no temporal
delimitation of the existence of such a thing as sound
(or color can be made. Even Plato never doubted
the eternal nature of red; he only argued from the
fact that a thing is red at one time and blue at another
to the unstable, and hence phenomenal, character of
the thing. Or, put in a different way, we can know that
, a red is a momentary or transitory existence only if
we know of other things which determine its beginning
and cessation.
Mr. Russell gives a specific illustration of what he
takes to be the correct way of stating the question in
an account of what, in the common-sense universe of
discourse, would be termed walking around a table.
If we exclude considerations to which we have (apart
from assuming just the things which are doubtful)
no right, the datum turns out to be something to be
stated as follows: "What is really known 1 is a corre
lation of muscular and other bodily sensations with
changes in visual sensations" (p. 77). By "sensa
tions" must be meant sensible objects, not mental
events. This statement repeats the point already
1 "Really known" is an ambiguous term. It may signify under
stood, or it may signify known to be there or given. Either meaning
implies reference beyond.
THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM 291
dealt with: "muscular," "visual," and "other
bodily" are all terms which are indispensable and
which also assume the very thing professedly brought
into question: the external world as that was de
fined. "Really known" assumes both noting and
belief, with whatever complex implications they may
involve implications which, for all that appears to
the contrary, may be indefinitely complex, and which,
by Mr. Russell s own statement, involve relationship
to at least two other terms besides the datum. But
in addition there appears the new term "correlation."
I cannot avoid the conclusion that this term involves
an explicit acknowledgment of the external world.
Note, in the first place, that the correlation in
question is not simple: it is threefold, being a correla
tion of correlations. The "changes in visual sensa
tions" (objects) must be correlated in a temporal
continuum; the "muscular and other bodily sensa
tions" (objects) must also constitute a connected
series. One set of changes belongs to the serial class
"visual"; the other set to the serial class "muscular."
And these two classes sustain a point-to-point corre
spondence to each other they are correlated.
I am not raising the old question of how such com
plex correlations can be said to be either "given"
or "known" in sense, though it is worth a passing
notice that it was on account of this sort of phe
nomenon that Kant postulated his threefold intel
lectual synthesis of apprehension, reproduction, and
2Q2
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
recognition in conception; and that it is upon the basis
of necessity for such correlations that the rationalists
have always criticized sensationalist empiricism.
Personally I agree that temporal and spatial qualities
are quite as much given in experience as are par
ticulars in fact, as I have been trying to show,
particulars can be identified as particulars only in a
relational complex. My point is rather (i) that any
such given is already precisely what is meant by the
" world"; and (ii) that such a highly specified corre
lation as Mr. Russell here sets forth is in no case a
psychological, or historical, primitive, but is a logical
primitive arrived at by an analysis of an empirical
complex.
(i) The statement involves the assumption of two
temporal "spreads" which, moreover, are determi-
nately specified as to their constituent elements and as
to their order. And these sustain to each other a
correlation, element to element. The elements, more
over, are all specifically qualitative and some of them,
at least, are spatial. How this differs from the ex
ternal world of common-sense I am totally unable to
see. It may not be a very big external world, but
having begged a small external world, I do not see
why one should be too squeamish about extending it
over the edges. The reply, I suppose, is that this
complex defined and ordered object is by conception
the object of a single perception, so that the question
remains as to the possibility of inferring from it to
THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM
293
something beyond/ But the reply only throws us
-ck upon the point previously made. A particular
or single event of perceptual awareness can be deter
mined as to its ingredients and structure only in a
continuum of objects. That is, the series of changes
m color and shape can be determined as just such and
such an ordered series of specific elements, with a
etermmate beginning and end, only in respect to a
temporal continuum of things anteceding and suc
ceeding. Moreover, the determination involves an
analysis which disentangles qualities and shapes from
Contemporaneously given objects which are irrelevant
In a word, Mr. Russell s object already extends beyond
it already belongs to a larger world
(ii) A sensible object which can be described as a
correlation of an ordered series of shapes and colors
with an ordered series of muscular and other bodily
objects presents a definition of an object, not a
psychological datum. What is stated is the definition
Abject, of any object in the world. Barring
of thp h % rePly - mplieS that thC exhaustiv e, all-at-once perception
the enure universe assumed by some idealistic writers does not
involve any external world. I do not make this remark for th sake
of idenUfymg myself with this school of think the J*J
But "U fa f li raCt r f CmpiriCal ^ IS ^ CCasions 2ta
trh 1 n y SUPP Se that the Dature of the limitations is
psychologically glV en. On the contrary, they have to be deterged
de " tifiCati
M re to t re
world. Hence no matter how "self-evident" the existence
d lim> r,r y ^ II " ^ Sdf - evident f-t they aT g ht y
ehnuted with respect to the specific inference in process of making
294 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
ambiguities 1 in the terms "muscular" and "bodily,"
it seems to be an excellent definition. But good
definition or poor, it states what a datum is known
to be as an object in a known system; viz., definite
correlations of specified and ordered elements. As a
definition, it is general. It is not made from the
standpoint of any particular percipient. It says:
// there be any percipient at a specified position in a
space continuum, then the object may be perceived
as such and such. And this implies that a percipient
at any other position in the space continuum can
deduce from the known system of correlations just
what the series of shapes and colors will be from
another position. For, as we have seen, the correla
tion of the series of changes of shape assumes a spatial
continuum; hence one perspective projection may be
correlated with that of any position in the continuum.
I have no direct concern with Air. Russell s solution
of his problem. But if the prior analysis is correct,
one may anticipate in advance that it will consist
1 The ambiguities reside in the possibility of treating the "muscu
lar and other bodily sensations" as meaning something other than
data of motion and corporealness however these be denned. Mus
cular sensation may be an awareness of motion of the muscles, but
the phrase "of the muscles" does not alter the nature of motion as
motion; it only specifies what motion is involved. And the long con
troversy about the existence of immediate "muscular sensations"
testifies to what a complex cognitive determination we are here deal
ing with. Anatomical directions and long experimentation were
required to answer the question. Were they psychologically primitive
data no such questions could ever have arisen.
THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM 295
simply in making explicit the assumptions which have
tacitly been made in stating the problem subject to
the conditions involved in failure to recognize that
they have been made. And I think an analytic
reading of the solution will bear out the following
statement. His various "peculiar," "private " points
of view and their perspectives are nothing but names
for the positions and projectional perspectives of the
ordinary space of the public worlds. Their correlation
by likeness is nothing but the explicit recognition that
they are all denned and located, from the start, in one
common spatial continuum. One quotation must
"If two men are sitting in a room, two
somewhat similar worlds are perceived by them; if a
third man enters and sits between them, a third world
intermediate between the two others, begins to be per
ceived" (pp. 87-88). Pray what is this room and
what defines the position (standpoint and perspective)
of the two men and the standpoint "intermediate"
between them ? If the room and all the positions and
perspectives which they determine are only within
say, Mr. Russell s private world, that private world is
interestingly complex, but it gives only the original
problem over again, not a "solution" of it. It is a
long way from likenesses within a private world to
ikenesses between private worlds. And if the worlds
are all private, pray who judges their likeness or
unhkeness? This sort of thing makes one conclude
that Mr. Russell s actual procedure is the reverse of
296 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
his professed one. He really starts with one room as
a spatial continuum within which different positions
and projections are determined, and which are readily
correlated with one another just because they are
projections from positions within one and the same
space-room. Having employed this, he, then, can
assign different positions to different percipients
and institute a comparison between what each per
ceives and pass upon the extent of the likeness which
exists between them.
What is the bearing of this account upon the
"empirical datum"? Just this: The correlation of
correlative series of changes which defines the object
of sense perception is in no sense an original historic
or psychologic datum. It signifies the result of an
analysis of the usual crude empirical data, and an
analysis which is made possible only by a very com
plex knowledge of the world. It marks not a primitive
psychologic datum but an outcome, a limit, of
analysis of a vast amount of empirical objects. The
definition of an object as a correlation of various sub-
correlations of changes represents a great advance-
so it seems to me over the definition of an object as a
number of adjectives stuck into a substantive; but it
represents an improved definition made possible by the
advance of scientific knowledge about the common-
sense world. It is a definition not only wholly
independent of the context in which Mr. Russell
arrives at it, but is one which (once more and finally)
\l
V. .x-
THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM 297
assumes extensive and accurate knowledge of just the
world professedly called into question.
II
I have come to the point of transition to the other
part of my paper. A formal analysis is necessarily
dialectical in character. As an empiricist I share
in the dissatisfaction which even the most correct
dialectical discussion is likely to arouse when brought
to bear on matters of fact. I do not doubt that
readers will feel that some fact of an important
character in Mr. Russell s statement has been left
untouched by the previous analysis even upon the
supposition that the criticisms are just. Particularly
will it be felt, I think, that psychology affords to his
statement of the problem a support of fact not affected f _
by any logical treatment. For this reason I append a
summary statement as to the facts which are mis
construed by any statement which makes the existence
of the world problematic.
I do not believe a psychologist would go as far as
to admit that a definite correlation of elements as
specific and ordered as that of Mr. Russell s state
ment is a primitive psychological datum. Many
would doubtless hold that patches of colored extensity,
sounds, kinaesthetic qualities, etc., are psychologically
much more primitive than, say, a table, to say nothing
of a group of objects in space or a series of events in
time; they would say, accordingly, that there is a
29 8 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
real problem as to how we infer or construct the latter
on the basis of the former. At the same tune I do not
believe that they would deny that their own knowl-
ed of the exisL.ce and nature of the "and
irreducible qualities of sense is the product of a long,
-arefu and elaborate analysis to which the saences
o physiology, anatomy, and controlled processes^
experimental observation have contributed. The
ord nary method of reconciling these two seem.ngly
Inconsistent positions is to assume that the ^ongmal
sensible data of experience, as they occurred i
nZcy have been overlaid by all kinds of assoc.at.ons
and inferential constructions so that it is now a work
of intellectual art to recover them in the.r mnocent
w I might urge that as matter of fact the recon
struction of the experience of infancy is itseU an infer
en from present experience of an objective world,
and hence cannot be employed to make a problem ou
of the knowledge of the existence of that world. But
gists. According to Mr. James for exa
original datum is large but confused, and l
sensible qualities represent the result of d,
THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM 299
tions. In this case, the elementary data, instead of
being primitive empirical data, are the last terms, the
limits, of the discriminations we have been able to
make. That knowledge grows from a confusedly
experienced external world to a world experienced as
ordered and specified would then be the teaching of
psychological science, but at no point would the
mind be confronted with the problem of inferring a
world. Into the arguments in behalf of such a
psychology of original experience I shall not go,
beyond pointing out the extreme improbability (in
view of what is known about instincts and about the
nervous system) that the starting-point is a quality
corresponding to the functioning of a single sense
organ, much less of a single neuronic unit of a sense
organ. If one adds, as a hypothesis, that even the
most rudimentary conscious experience contains
within itself the element of suggestion or expectation,
it will be granted that the object of conscious experi
ence even with an infant is homogeneous with the
world of the adult. One may be unwilling to concede
the hypothesis. But no one can deny that inference
from one thing to another is itself an empirical event;
and that just as soon as such inference occurs, even in
the simplest form of anticipation and prevision, a
world exists like in kind to that of the adult.
I cannot think that it is a trivial coincidence that
psychological analysis of sense perception came into
existence along with that method of experimentally
3 oo ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
controlled observation which marks the beginning of
modern science. Modern science did not begin with
discovery of any new kind of inference,
with the recognition of the need of different dat;
inference is to proceed safely. It was contended
starting with the ordinary-or customary-obje
Perception hopelessly compromised in advance he
work of inference and classification. Hence
demand for an experimental resolution of the common-
sense objects in order to get data less ambiguous, more
minute/and more extensive. Increasing knowledge
of the structure of the nervous system fell
Leased knowledge of other objects to make possiM
a discrimination of specific qualities in all the.r
diversity; it brought to light that habits, mdiyidua
and social (through influence on the format^ of
individual habits), were large factors in determining
the accepted or current system of objects
brought to light, in other words, that factors of
chance habit and other non-rational factors were
greater influences than intellectual inquiry in determm-
fng what men currently believed about theWorM.
What psychological analysis contributed was then,^
primitive historic data out of which a world had
somehow to be extracted, but an analysis of
3d which had been previously thought of and
Z Led in, into data making possible better inferences
nd beliefs about the world. Analysis of the mfl.
ences customarily determining belief and inference
THE WORLD AS A LOGICAL PROBLEM 301
was a powerful force in the movement to improve
knowledge of the world.
This statement of matters of fact bears out, it will
be observed, the conclusions of the dialectical analysis.
That brought out the fact that the ultimate and ele
mentary data of sense perception are identified and
described as limiting elements in a complex world.
What is now added is that such an identification of
elements marks a significant addition to the resources
of the technique of inquiry devoted to improving
knowledge of the world. When these data are iso
lated from their logical status and office, they are in
evitably treated as self-sufficient, and they leave upon
our hands the insoluble, because self-contradictory,
problem of deriving from them the world of common-
sense and science. Taken for what they really
are, they are elements detected in the world and t>
serving to guide and check our inferences about it.
They are never self-inclosed particulars; they are
always even^a&gqidfilgjgyen connected with otW
things in experience. But analysis gets them in the
form where they are keys to much more significant
relations. In short, the particulars of perception,
taken as complete and independent, make nonsense!
Taken as objects discriminated for the purposes of
improving, reorganizing, and testing knowledge of
the world they are invaluable assets. The material
fallacy lying behind the formal fallacy which the first
^ part of this paper noted is the failure to recognize
302 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
- that what is doubtful is not the existence of the
world but the validity of certain customary yet
inferential beliefs about things in it. It is not the
common-sense world which is doubtful, or which is
\ inferential, but common-sense as a complex of beliefs
about specific things and relations in the world.
Hence never in any actual procedure of inquiry do we
throw the existence of the world into doubt, nor can
we do so without self-contradiction. We doubt some
received piece of "knowledge" about some specific
thing of that world, and then set to work, as best we
can, to rectify it. The contribution of psychological
science to determining unambiguous data and elimi
nating the irrelevant influences of passion and habit
which control the inferences of common-sense is
an important aid in the technique of such rectifica
tions.
XII
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS BY PRACTICAL
Pragmatism, according to Mr. James, is a temper
of mind, an attitude; it is also a theory of the nature
of ideas and truth; and, finally, it is a theory about
reality. It is pragmatism as method which is empha
sized, I take it, in the subtitle, "a new name for some
old ways of thinking." 1 It is this aspect which I
suppose to be uppermost in Mr. James s own mind;
one frequently gets the impression that he conceives
the discussion of the other two points to be illustrative
material, more or less hypothetical, of the method.
The briefest and at the same time the most compre
hensive formula for the method is: "The attitude
of looking away from first things, principles, cate
gories, supposed necessities; and of looking towards
last things, fruits, consequences, facts" (pp. 54-55).
And as the attitude looked "away from" is the ration
alistic, perhaps the chief aim of the lectures is to
exemplify some typical differences resulting from tak
ing one outlook or the other.
But pragmatism is "used in a still wider sense,
as meaning also a certain theory of truth" (p. 55);
1 William James, Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways
of Thinking. (Popular Lectures on Philosophy.) New York:
Longmans, Green, & Co., 1907. Pp.
303
304 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
it is "a genetic theory of what is meant by truth"
(p. 65). Truth means, as a matter of course, agree
ment, correspondence, of idea and fact (p. 198), but
what do agreement, correspondence, mean? With
rationalism they mean "a static, inert relation," which
is so ultimate that of it nothing more can be said.
/With pragmatism they signify the guiding or leading
I power of ideas by which we "dip into the particulars of
experience again," and if by its aid we set up the ar
rangements and connections among experienced
objects which the idea intends, the idea is verified;
it corresponds with the things it means to square
with (pp. 205-6). /The idea is true which works in
leading us to what it purports (p. So). 1 /Or, "any
idea that will carry us prosperously from any one
part of experience to any other part, linking things
satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving
labor, is true for just so much, true in so far forth"
(p. 58). /This notion presupposes that ideas are
essentially intentions (plans and methods), and that
what they, as ideas, ultimately intend is prospective
certain changes in prior existing things. This con
trasts again with rationalism, with its copy theory,
where ideas, as ideas, are ineffective and impotent,
since they mean only to mirror a reality (p. 69) com
plete without them. Thus we are led to the third
, aspect of pragmatism. )/The alternative between
J rationalism and pragmatism "concerns the structure
1 Certain aspects of the doctrine are here purposely omitted, and
will meet us later.
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS
3S
of the universe itself" (p. 258). "The essential con
trast is that reality .... for pragmatism is still in
the making" (p. 257). And in a recent number of
the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific
Methods? he says: "I was primarily concerned in
my lectures with contrasting the belief that the world
is still in the process of making with the belief that
there is an eternal edition of it ready-made and com
plete."
It will be following Mr. James s example, I think,
if we here regard pragmatism as primarily a method,
and treat the account of ideas and their truth and of
reality somewhat incidentally so far as the discussion
of them serves to exemplify or enforce the method.
Regarding the attitude of orientation which looks to
outcomes and consequences, one readily sees that it
has, as Mr. James points out, points of contact with
historic empiricism, nominalism, and utilitarianism.
It insists that general notions shall cash in" as par
ticular objects and qualities in experience; that
" principles" are ultimately subsumed under facts,
rather than the reverse; that the empirical conse
quence rather than the a priori basis is the sanctioning
and warranting factor. But all of these ideas are
colored and transformed by the dominant influence of
experimental science: the method of treating con
ceptions, theories, etc., as working hypotheses, as
Vol. IV, p. 547-
306 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
directors for certain experiments and experimental
observations. Pragmatism as attitude represents
.what Mr. Peirce has happily termed the "laboratory
habit of mind" extended into every area where
inquiry may fruitfully be carried on. A scientist
would, I think, wonder not so much at the method as
at the lateness of philosophy s conversion to what
has made science what it is. Nevertheless it is impos
sible to forecast the intellectual change that would
proceed from carrying the method sincerely and
unreservedly into all fields of inquiry. Leaving
philosophy out of account, what a change would be
wrought in the historical and social sciences in the
conceptions of politics and law and political economy!
Mr. James does not claim too much when he says:
"The center of gravity of philosophy must alter
its place. The earth of things, long thrown into
shadow by the glories of the upper ether, must resume
its rights It will be an alteration in the seat of
authority that reminds one almost of the Protestant
Reformation" (p. 123).
I can imagine that many would not accept this
method in philosophy for very diverse reasons, per
haps among the most potent of which is lack of faith
in the power of the elements and processes of experi
ence and life to guarantee their own security and pros
perity; because, that is, of the feeling that the world
of experience is so unstable, mistaken, and fragmen
tary that it must have an absolutely permanent, true,
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS
37
and complete ground. I cannot imagine, however,
that so much uncertainty and controversy as actually
exists should arise about the content and import of
the doctrine on the basis of the general formula. It is
when the method is applied to special points that
questions arise. Mr. James reminds us in his preface
that the pragmatic movement has found expression
"from so many points of view, that much unconcerted
statement has resulted . And speaking of his lectures
he goes on to say: " I have sought to unify the picture
as it presents itself to my own eyes, dealing in broad
strokes." The "different points of view" here
spoken of have concerned themselves with viewing
pragmatically a number of different things. And it is,
I think, Mr. James s effort to combine them, as they
stand, which occasions misunderstanding among
Mr. James s readers. Mr. James himself applied
it, for example, in 1898 to philosophic controversies
to indicate what they mean in terms of practical issues
at stake. Before that, Mr. Peirce himself (in 1878)
had applied the method to the proper way of conceiv
ing and defining objects. Then it has been applied
to ideas in order to find out what they mean in terms
of what they intend, and what and how they must
intend in order to be true. Again, it has been applied
to beliefs, to what men actually accept, hold to, and
affirm. Indeed, it lies in the nature of pragmatism
that it should be applied as widely as possible; and
to things as diverse as controversies, beliefs, truths,
ti/
308
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
ideas, and objects. But yet the situations and prob
lems are diverse; so much so that, while the meaning
of each may be told on the basis of "last things,"
/ fruits," "consequences," "facts," it is quite certain
that the specific last things and facts will be very different
in the diverse cases, and that very different types of mean
ing will stand out. "Meaning" will itself mean some
thing quite different in the case of "objects" from
what it will mean in the case of "ideas," and for
ideas something different from truths . Now the
explanation to which I have been led of the unsatis
factory condition of contemporary pragmatic dis
cussion is that in composing these "different points
of view" into a single pictorial whole, the distinct
type of consequence and hence of meaning of "prac
tical" appropriate to each has not been sufficiently
emphasized.
i. When we consider separately the subjects to
which the pragmatic method has been applied, we
find that Mr. James has provided the necessary
formula for each with his never-failing instinct for
the concrete. We take first the question of the sig-
\J nificance of an object: the meaning which should
properly be contained in its conception or definition.
"To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an
object, then, we need only consider what conceivable
effects of a practical kind the object may involve
what sensations we are to expect from it and what
reactions we must prepare" (pp. 46-47). Or, more
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS 309
shortly, as it is quoted from Ostwald, "All realities
influence our practice, and that influence is their
meaning for us" (p. 48). Here it will be noted that
the start is from objects already empirically given or
presented, existentially vouched for, and the question
is as to their proper conception What is the proper
meaning, or idea, of an object ? And the meaning is s
the effects these given objects produce. One might doubt
the correctness of this theory, but I do not see how
one could doubt its import, or could accuse it of sub
jectivism or idealism, since the object with its power
to produce effects is assumed. Meaning is expressly
distinguished from objects, not confused with them (as
in idealism) , and is said to consist in the practical re
actions objects exact of us or impose upon us. When,
then, it is a question of an object, "meaning" signi
fies its conceptual content or connotation, and "practi
cal" means the future responses which an object requires I
of us or commits us to.
2. But we may also start from a given idea, and
ask what the idea means. Pragmatism will, of course,
look to future consequences, but they will clearly be
of a different sort when we start from an idea as idea,
than when we start from an object. For what an idea
as idea means, is precisely that an object is not given.
The pragmatic procedure here is to set the idea u at
work within the stream of experience. It appears
less as a solution than as a program for more work,
and particularly as an indication of the ways in which
3IO ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
existing -Hties .ay be
nature over again *,
r *f ,*; : s:
of an idea, it is u , existences
an intent) and its S . * e
which, as changed it mtend w ud
,
than that
,
changes ia our reactions.
doesn t express itself in a difference in concrete fact
and in conduct consequent upon the fact, imposed
on somebody" (p. 5o ). Now when we start with
something which is already a truth (or taken to be
truth), and ask for its meaning in terms of its conse-
quences, it is implied that the conception, or con
ceptual significance, is already clear, and that the
existences it refers to are already in hand. Meaning
here, then, can be neither the connotative nor denota
tive reference of a term; they are covered by the two
prior formulae. Meaning here means value, impor-
The practical factor is, then, the worth char
acter of these consequences: they are good or bad-
desirable or undesirable; or merely nil, indifferent in
which latter case belief is idle, the controversy a vain
and conventional, or verbal, one.
The term "meaning" and the term "practical" taken
m isolation, and without explicit definition from their
specific context and problem, are triply ambiguous
The meaning may be the conception or definition of
an object; it may be the denotative existential refer
ence of an idea; it may be actual value or impor
tance. So practical in the corresponding cases may
mean the attitudes and conduct exacted of us by
objects; or the capacity and tendency of an idea to
formulae for the three situations are there.
312 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
effect changes in prior existences; or the desirable
and undesirable quality of certain ends. The general
pragmatic attitude, none the less, is applied in all cases.
If the differing problems and the correlative
diverse significations of the terms "meaning" and
"practical" are borne in mind, not all will be converted
to pragmatism, but the present uncertainty as to what
pragmatism is, anyway, and the present constant
complaints on both sides of misunderstanding will, I
think, be minimized. At all events, I have reached
the conclusion that what the pragmatic movement
just now wants is a clear and consistent bearing in
mind of these different problems and of what is meant
by practical in each. Accordingly the rest of this
paper is an endeavor to elucidate from the standpoint
of pragmatic method the importance of enforcing
these distinctions.
II
First, as to the problems of philosophy ^hen prag
matically approached, Mr. James says:|/The whole
function of philosophy ought to be to find out what
definite difference it will make to you and me, at
definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or
that worl^-formula be true" (p. 50). Here the
world-formula is assumed as already given; it is there,
defined and constituted, and the question is as to its
import if believed. But from the second standpoint,
that of idea as working hypothesis, the chief function
of philosophy is not to find out what difference
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS
ready-made formulae make, if true, but to arrive at and
to clarify their meaning as programs of behavior for
modifying the existent world. From this standpoint,
the meaning of a world-formula is practical and moral,
not merely in the consequences which flow from
accepting a certain conceptual content as true, but as
regards that content itself. And thus at the very out
set we are compelled to face this question: Does Mr.
James employ the pragmatic method to discover the
value in terms of consequences in life of some formula
which has its logical content already fixed; or does he
employ it to criticize and revise and, ultimately, to
constitute the meaning of that formula ? If it is the
first, there is danger that the pragmatic method
will be employed only to vivify, if not validate, doc
trines which in themselves are pieces of rationalistic
metaphysics, not inherently pragmatic. If the last,
there is danger that some readers will think old notions
are being confirmed, when in truth they are being
translated into new and inconsistent notions.
Consider the case of design. Mr. James begins
with accepting a ready-made notion, to which he
then applies the pragmatic criterion. The traditional
notion is that of a "seeing force that runs things."
This is rationalistically and retrospectively empty;
its being there makes no difference. (This seems to
overlook the fact that the past world may be just
what it is in virtue of the difference which a blind force
or a seeing force has already made in it. A pragma tist
314 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
as well as a rationalist may reply that it makes no
difference retrospectively only because we leave out
the most important retrospective difference). But
"returning with it into experience, we gain a more
confiding outlook on the future. If not a blind force,
but a seeing force, runs things, we may reasonably
expect better issues. This vague confidence in the
future is the sole pragmatic meaning at present discern
ible in the terms design and designer" (p. 115, italics
mine). Now is this meaning intended to replace the
meaning of a "seeing force which runs things" ? Or
is it intended to superadd a pragmatic value and
validation to that concept of a seeing force ? Or does
it mean that, irrespective of the existence of any such
object, a belief in it has that value ? Strict pragma
tism would seem to require the first interpretation.
The same difficulties arise in the discussion of
spiritualistic theism versus materialism. Compare the
two following statements : " The notion of God ....
guarantees an ideal order that shall be permanently
preserved" (p. 106). "Here, then, in these different
emotional and practical appeals, in these adjustments
of our attitudes of hope and expectation, and all the
delicate consequences which their differences entail,
lie the real meanings of materialism and spiritualism
(p. 107, italics mine). Does the latter method of
determining the meaning of, say, a spiritual God
afford the substitute for the conception of him as a
"superhuman power" effecting the eternal preserva-
tion of something; does it, that is, define God, supply
the content for our notion of God ? Or does it merely
superadd a value to a meaning already fixed ? And,
if the latter, does the object, God as defined, or the
notion, or the belief (the acceptance of the notion)
effect these consequent values? In either of the
latter alternatives, the good or valuable conse
quences cannot clarify the meaning or conception of
God; for, by the argument, they proceed from a prior
definition of God. They cannot prove, or render
more probable, the existence of such a being, for, by
the argument, these desirable consequences depend
upon accepting such an existence; and not even prag
matism can prove an existence from desirable conse
quences which themselves exist only when and if
that other existence is there. On the other hand, if
the pragmatic method is not applied simply to tell the
value of a belief or controversy, but to fix the meaning
of the terms involved in the belief, resulting conse
quences would serve to constitute the entire meaning
intellectual as well as practical, of the terms; and
hence the pragmatic method would simply abolish the
meaning of an antecedent power which will perpetuate
eternally some existence. For that consequence
flows not from the belief or idea, but from the exist
ence, the power. It is not pragmatic at all.
Accordingly, when Mr. James says: " Other than
this practical significance, the words God, free will
design, have none. Yet dark though they be in
316
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
themselves, or intellectualistically taken, when we bear
them on to life s thicket with us, the darkness then
grows light about us" (p. 121, italics mine), what is
meant? Is it meant that when we take the intel-
lectualistic notion and employ it, it gets value in the
way of results, and hence then has some value of its
own; or is it meant that the intellectual content
itself must be determined in terms of the changes
effected in the ordering of life s thicket ? An explicit
declaration on this point would settle, I think, not
, merely a point interesting in itself, but one essential
to the determination of what is pragmatic method.
For myself, I have no hesitation in saying that it seems
unpragmatic for pragmatism to content itself with rind
ing out the value of a conception whose own inherent
significance pragmatism has not first determined; a
Jf fact which entails that it be taken not as a truth
but simply as a working hypothesis. In the par
ticular case in question, moreover, it is difficult to see
how the pragmatic method could possibly be applied
to a notion of "eternal perpetuation," which, by its
nature, can never be empirically verified, or cashed
in any particular case.
This brings us to the question of truth. The
v. v problem here is also ambiguous in advance of defini
tion. Does the problem of what is truth refer to
discovering the "true meaning" of something; or
to discovering what an idea has to effect, and how, in
order to be true; or to discovering what the value of
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS 3I7
truth is when it is an existent and accomplished fact ?
(i) We may, of course, find the "true meaning" of a
thing, as distinct from its incorrect interpretation
without thereby establishing the truth of the "true
meaning" as we may dispute about the "true mean
ing" of a passage in the classics concerning Centaurs,
without the determination of its true sense establish
ing the truth of the notion that there are Centaurs
Occasionally this "true meaning" seems to be what
Mr. James has in mind, as when, after the passage
upon design already quoted, he goes on: "But if
cosmic confidence is right, not wrong, better, not
worse, that [vague confidence in the future] is a most
important meaning. That much at least of possible
truth the terms will then have in them" (p. n 5 ).
Truth" here seems to mean that design has a
genuine, not merely conventional or verbal, meaning-
that something is at stake. And there are frequently
points where "truth" seems to mean just meaning
that is genuine as distinct from empty or verbal
But the problem of the meaning of truth may also
refer to the meaning or value of truths that already
exist as truths. We have them; they exist; now what
they mean ? The answer is: "True ideas lead us
nto useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as
directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to
consistency, stability, and flowing human inter
course" (p. 215). This, referring to things already true
I do not suppose the most case-hardened rationalist
3l8 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
would question; and even if he questions the prag
matic contention that these consequences define the
meaning of truth, he should see that here is not
given an account of what it means for an idea to be-
; / come true, but only of what it means after it has become
true, truth as fait accompli. It is the meaning of
truth as fait accompli which is here defined.
Bearing this in mind, I do not know why a mild-
tempered rationalist should object to the doctrine that
truth is valuable not per se, but because, when given,
it leads to desirable consequences. "The true
thought is useful here because the home which is its
object is useful. The practical value of true ideas is
thus primarily derived from the practical importance
of their objects to us" (p. 203). And many besides
confirmed pragmatists, any utilitarian, for example,
would be willing to say that our duty to pursue
"truth" is conditioned upon its leading to objects
which upon the whole are valuable. "The concrete
benefits we gain are what we mean by calling the pur
suit a duty" (p. 231, compare p. 76). (3) Difiiculties
have arisen chiefly because Mr. James is charged with
converting simply the foregoing proposition, and argu
ing that since true ideas are good, any idea if good in
any... way is true. Certainly transition from one of
thesefconceptions to the other is facilitated by the fact
that ideas are tested as to their validity by a certain
goodness, viz., whether they are good for accomplish
ing what they intend, for what they claim to be good
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS 319
for, that is, certain modifications in prior given exist
ences.^ In this case, it is the idea which is practical,
since it is essentially an intent and plan of altering
prior existences in a specific situation, which is indi
cated to be unsatisfactory by the very fact that it
needs or suggests a specific modification. Then
arises the theory that ideas as ideas are always work
ing hypotheses concerning the attaining of particular
empirical results, and are tentative programs (or
sketches of method) for attaining them. If we stick
consistently to this notion of ideas, only consequences
which are actually produced by the working of the idea
in co-operation with, or application to, prior existences
are good consequences in the specific sense of good which
is relevant to establishing the truth of an idea. This
is, at times, unequivocally recognized by Mr. James.
(See, for example, the reference to veri-fication, on
p. 201; the acceptance of the idea that verification
means the advent of the object intended, on p. 205.)
But at other times any^ good which flows from
acceptance of a belief is treated~as if it were an evi
dence, in so far, of the truth of the idea. This
holds particularly when theological notions are under
consideration. Light would be thrown upon how
Mr. James conceives this matter by statements on such
points as these: If ideas terminate in good conse
quences, but yet the goodness of the consequences was
no part of the intention of an idea, does the good
ness have any verifying force ? If the goodness of
320 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
consequences arises from the context of the idea in
belief rather than from the idea itself, does it have any
verifying force ? If an idea leads to consequences
which are good in the one respect only of fulfilling the
intent of the idea (as when one drinks a liquid to test
the idea that it is a poison), does the badness of the
consequences in every other respect detract from the
verifying force of consequences?
Since Mr. James has referred to me as saying "truth
is what gives satisfaction" (p. 234), I may remark
(apart from the fact that I do not think I ever said
that truth is what gives satisfaction) that I have
never identified any satisfaction with the truth of an
idea, save that satisfaction which arises when the idea
as working hypothesis or tentative method is applied
to prior existences in such a way as to fulfil what it
intends.
My final impression (which I cannot adequately
prove) is that upon the whole Mr. James is most
concerned to enforce, as against rationalism, two
conclusions about the character of truths as fails
accomplis: namely, that they are made, not a priori,
or eternally in existence, 2 and that their value or
1 The idea of immortality, or the traditional theistic idea of God,
for example, may produce its good consequences, not in virtue of
the idea as idea, but from the character of the person who entertains
the belief; or it may be the idea of the supreme value of ideal con
siderations, rather than that of their temporal duration, which works.
2 "Eternal truth" is one of the most ambiguous phrases that
philosophers trip over. It may mean eternally in existence; or that
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS
321
importance is not static, but dynamic and practical.
The special question of how truths are made is not
particularly relevant to this anti-rationalistic crusade,
while it is the chief question of interest to many.
Because of this conflict of problems, what Mr. James
says about the value of truth when accomplished is
likely to be interpreted by some as a criterion of the
truth of ideas; while, on the other hand, Mr. James
himself is likely to pass lightly from the consequences
that determine the worth of a belief to those which
decide the worth of an idea. When Mr. James says j
the function of giving "satisfaction in marrying previ- (
ous parts of experience with newer parts" is necessary
in order to establish truth, the doctrine is unambigu
ous. The satisfactory character of consequences is
itself measured and defined by the conditions which
led up to it; the inherently satisfactory quality of
results is not taken as validating the antecedent
intellectual operations. But when he says (not of his
own position, but of an opponent s 1 ) of the idea of an
absolute, "so far as it affords such comfort it surely
a statement which is ever true is always true (if it is true a fly is
buzzing, it is eternally true that just now a fly buzzed); or it may
mean that some truths, in so far as wholly conceptual, are irrelevant
to any particular time determination, since they are non-existential
in import e.g., the truth of geometry dialectically taken that is,
without asking whether any particular existence exemplifies them.
1 Such statements, it ought in fairness to be said, generally come
when Mr. James is speaking of a doctrine which he does not himself
believe, and arise, I think, in that fairness and frankness of Mr. James,
322 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
ta not sterile, it has that a of value;
that any good, consequent
pas-
unpragmatically, it seems to me s o ^ atist _
he consistently sticks to h ^ n e b ^ een the whole body of
more than any one, sees tamself to be beU ^ ^ ^
funded truths squeezed from the past and t
o! sense about him, who, so well as he fe
:ssure of
ments one day, says Emerson"
, Of course, Mr. James
small way. See pp. 77-79^
I think, non-pragmatic unless the
as intent. Now the sa
idea as idea, but from i
dependent on an assumpti
to testing the trurt j of an
absolute, which, if true,
consequences as test of
test without sheer self-contra
confusion of the test of ^ ^ea as t d a
as belief. On the other hand
an
.
j
^
" goes a
concession is,
. isrelevant to the idea
,n comes not from the
tr ue. Can a satisfaction
is already true be relevant
i an idea, like that of the
precludes any appeal to
use of the pragmatic
er words, we have a
., with that of the value of a
is quite possible
verbal.
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS 323
into satisfactory relations with other parts of our
experience" (p. 58); and, again, on the same page:
"Any idea that will carry us prosperously from any
one part of our experience to any other part, linking
things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying,
saving labor, is true for just so much" (italics mine).
An explicit statement as to whether the carrying
function, the linking of things, is satisfactory and
prosperous and hence true in so far as it executes the
intent of an idea; or whether the satisfaction and
prosperity reside in the material consequences on their
own account and in that aspect make the idea true,
would, I am sure, locate the point at issue and econo
mize and fructify future discussion. At present
pragmatism is accepted by those whose own notions
are thoroughly rationalistic in make-up as a means of
refurbishing, galvanizing, and justifying those very
notions. It is rejected by non-rationalists (empiri
cists and naturalistic idealists) because it seems to
them identified with the notion that pragmatism
holds that the desirability of certain beliefs overrides
the question of the meaning of the ideas involved in
them and the existence of objects denoted by them.
Others (like myself), who believe thoroughly in prag
matism as a method of orientation, as defined by
Mr. James, and who would apply the method to the
determination of the meaning of objects, the intent
and worth of ideas as ideas, and to the human and
moral value of beliefs, when these various problems
3 2 4
ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
are carefully distinguished from one another, do not
know whether they are pragmatists in some other
sense, because they are not sure whether the practical,
in the sense of desirable facts which define the worth
of a belief, is confused with the practical as an atti
tude imposed by objects, and with the practical as a
power and function of ideas to effect changes in prior
existences. Hence the importance of knowing which
one of the three senses of practical is conveyed in any
given passage.
It would do Mr. James an injustice, however, to stop
here. His real doctrine is that a belief is true when it
satisfies both personal needs and the requirements
of objective things. Speaking of pragmatism, he
says, "Her only test of probable truth is what works
best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of
life best and combines with the collectivity of experience s
demands, nothing being omitted" (p. 80, italics mine).
And again, "That new idea is truest which performs
most felicitously its function of satisfying our double
urgency" (p. 64). It does not appear certain from the
context that this "double urgency" is that of the
personal and the objective demands, respectively,
but it is probable (see, also, p. 217, where "consistency
with previous truth and novel fact" is said to be "al
ways the most imperious claimant"). On this basis,
the "in so far forth" of the truth of the absolute
because of the comfort it supplies, means that one of
the two conditions which need to be satisfied has
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS
325
been met, so that if the idea of the absolute met the
other one also, it would be quite true. I have no
doubt this is Mr. James s meaning, and it sufficiently
safeguards him from the charge that pragmatism
means that anything which is agreeable is true. At
the same time, I do not think, in logical strictness,
that satisfying one of two tests, when satisfaction of
both is required, can be said to constitute a belief
true even "in so far forth."
Ill
At all events this raises a question not touched so
far: the place of the personal in the determination of
truth. Mr. James, for example, emphasizes the
doctrine suggested in the following words: "We say
this theory solves it [the problem] more satisfactorily
than that theory; but that means more satisfactorily
to ourselves, and individuals will emphasize their points
of satisfaction differently" (p. 61, italics mine). This
opens out into a question which, in its larger aspects
the place of the personal factor in the constitution
of knowledge systems and of reality I cannot here
enter upon, save to say that a synthetic pragmatism
such as Mr. James has ventured upon will take a
very different form according as the point of view
of what he calls the "Chicago School" or that of
humanism is taken as a basis for interpreting the
nature of the personal. According to the latter view,
the personal appears to be ultimate and unanalyzable,
326 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
the metaphysically real. Associations with idealism,
moreover, give it an idealistic turn, a translation, in
effect, of monistic intellectualistic idealism into plural
istic, voluntaristic idealism. But, according to the
former, the personal is not ultimate, but is to be
analyzed and denned, biologically on its genetic side,
ethically on its prospective and functioning side.
There is, however, one phase of the teaching illus
trated by the quotation which is directly relevant
here. Because Mr. James recognizes that the personal
element enters into judgments passed upon whether
a problem has or has not been satisfactorily solved,
he is charged with extreme subjectivism, with encour
aging the element of personal preference to run rough
shod over all objective controls. Now the question
raised in the quotation is primarily one of fact, not
of doctrine. Is or is not a personal factor found in
truth evaluations ? If it is, pragmatism is not respon
sible for introducing it. If it is not, it ought to be pos
sible to refute pragmatism by appeal to empirical fact,
rather than by reviling it for subjectivism. Now it is
an old story that philosophers, in common with theo
logians and social theorists, are as sure that personal
habits and interests shape their opponents doctrines as
they are that their own beliefs are "absolutely" uni
versal and objective in quality. Hence arises that
dishonesty, that insincerity characteristic of philo
sophic discussion. As Mr. James says (p. 8), "The
most potential of all our premises is never men-
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS 327
tioned." Now the moment the complicity of the
personal factor in our philosophic valuations is recog
nized, is recognized fully, frankly, and generally, that
moment a new era in philosophy will begin. We
shall have to discover the personal factors that now
influence us unconsciously, and begin to accept a
new and moral responsibility for them, a responsibility
for judging and testing them by their consequences
long as we ignore this factor, its deeds will be
largely evil, not because it is evil, but because, flour
ishing m the dark, it is without responsibility and
without check. The only way to control it is by
recognizing it. And while I would not prophesy of
pragmatism s future, I would say that this element
which is now so generally condemned as intellectual
Iishonesty (perhaps because of an uneasy, instinctive
recognition of the searching of hearts its acceptance
would involve) will in the future be accounted unto
philosophy for righteousness sake.
So much in general. In particular cases, it is
possible that Mr. James s language occasionally
leaves the impression that the fact of the inevitable
involution of the personal factor in every belief
gives some special sanction to some special belief
Mr. James says that his essay on the right to believe
was unluckily entitled the "WiU to believe" (p 2 <8)
Well, even the term "right" is unfortunate, if the
personal or belief factor is inevitable-unfortunate
ecause it seems to indicate a privilege which might
328 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
be exercised in special cases, in religion, for example,
though not in science; or, because it suggests to some
minds that the fact of the personal complicity involved
in belief is a warrant for this or that special personal
attitude, instead of being a warning to locate and
define it so as to accept responsibility for it. If we
mean by "will" not something deliberate and con
sciously intentional (much less, something insincere),
but an active personal participation, then belief as
will, rather than either the right or the will to believe
seems to phrase the matter correctly.
I have attempted to review not so much Mr.
James s book as the present status of the pragmatic
movement which is expressed in the book ; and I have
selected only those points which seem to bear directly
upon matters of contemporary controversy. Even
as an account of this limited field, the foregoing pages
do an injustice to Mr. James, save as it is recognized
that his lectures were "popular lectures," as the
title-page advises us. We cannot expect in such
lectures the kind of explicitness which would satisfy
the professional and technical interests that have
inspired this review. Moreover, it is inevitable that
the attempt to compose different points of view,
hitherto unco-ordinated, into a single whole should
give rise to problems foreign to any one factor of the
synthesis, left to itself. The need and possibility
of the discrimination of various elements in the prag
matic meaning of "practical," attempted in this
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS 329
review, would hardly have been recognized by me
were it not for by-products of perplexity and con
fusion which Mr. James s combination has effected.
Mr. James has given so many evidences of the sin
cerity of his intellectual aims, that I trust to his
pardon for the injustice which the character of my
review may have done him, in view of whatever
service it may render in clarifying the problem to
which he is devoted.
As for the book itself, it is in any case beyond a
critic s praise or blame. It is more likely to take place
as a philosophical classic than any other writing of
our day. A critic who should attempt to appraise
it would probably give one more illustration of the
sterility of criticism compared with the productiveness
of creative genius. Even those who dislike prag
matism can hardly fail to find much of profit in the
exhibition of Mr. James s instinct for concrete facts,
the breadth of his sympathies, and his illuminating
insights. Unreserved frankness, lucid imagination,
varied contacts with life digested into summary and
trenchant conclusions, keen perceptions of human
nature in the concrete, a constant sense of the sub
ordination of philosophy to life, capacity to put
things into an English which projects ideas as if bodily
into space till they are solid things to walk around and
survey from different sides these things are not so
common in philosophy that they may not smell sweet
even by the name of pragmatism.
XIII
AN ADDED NOTE AS TO THE "PRACTICAL"
It is easier to start a legend than to prevent its
continued circulation. No misconception of the
instrumental logic has been more persistent than the
belief that it makes knowledge merely a means to a
practical end, or to the satisfaction of practical needs
practical being taking to signify some quite defi
nite utilities of a material or bread-and-butter type.
Habitual associations aroused by the word "prag
matic" have been stronger than the most explicit
and emphatic statements which any pragmatist has
been able to make. But I again affirm that the
term "pragmatic" means only the rule of referring all
thinking, all reflective considerations, to consequences
for final meaning and test. Nothing is said about
the nature of the consequences; they may be aesthetic,
or moral, or political, or religious in quality anything
you please. All that the theory requires is that they
be in some way consequences of thinking; not, indeed,
of it alone, but of it acted upon in connection with
other things. This is no after-thought inserted to
lessen the force of objections. Mr. Peirce explained
that he took the term "pragmatic" from Kant, in
order to denote empirical consequences. When he
refers to their practical character it is only to indicate
330
ADDED NOTE AS TO THE "PRACTICAL" 331
a criterion by which to avoid purely verbal disputes.
Different consequences are alleged to constitute rival
meanings of a term. Is a difference more than
merely one of formulation ? The way to get an answer
is to ask whether, if realized, these consequences would
exact of us different modes of behavior. If they do
not make such a difference in conduct the difference
between them is conventional. It is not that conse
quences are themselves practical, but that practical
consequences from them may at times be appealed to
in order to decide the specific question of whether
two proposed meanings differ save in words. Mr.
James says expressly that what is important is that
the consequences should be specific, not that they
should be active. When he said that general notions
must "cash in," he meant of course that they must
be translatable into verifiable specific things. But
the words "cash in" were enough for some of his
critics, who pride themselves upon a logical rigor
unattainable by mere pragmatists.
In the logical version of pragmatism termed instru-
mentalism, action or practice does indeed play a
fundamental role. But it concerns not the nature
of consequences but the nature of knowing. To use
a term which is now more fashionable (and surely to
some extent in consequence of pragmatism) than it
was earlier, instrumentalism means a behaviorist
theory of thinking and knowing. It means that
knowing is literally something which we do; that
33 2
analysis is ultimately physical and active; that mean
ings in their logical quality are standpoints, att
and methods of behaving toward facts, and
active experimentation is essential to verification.
I Put in another way it holds thaf thinking does not
mean any transcendent states or acts sudd
introduced into a previously natural scene, but
the operations of knowing are (or are artfully derive
from) natural responses of the organism, which c
stitute knowing in virtue of the situation of doubt
in which they arise and in virtue of the uses of
inquiry reconstruction, and control to which they an
put /There is no warrant in the doctrine for carry
ing over this practical quality into the consequences
V in which action culminates, and by which it is tested
and corrected. ^Jmowin^as an atf is instngnenta
to the resultant controlled and more significant situa-
jgasr this does not imply anything about the intnn
or the instrumental character of the consequent
situation. That is whatever it may be in a given case
There is nothing novel nor heterodox in the not:
that thinking is instrumental. The very word
redolent of an Organum-whether novum or vetentm.
The term "instrumentality," applied to thinking,
raises at once, however, the question of whether
thinking as a tool falls within or without the subject-
matter which it shapes into knowledge. The answer of
formal logic (adopted moreover by Kant and followed
in some way by all neo-Kantian logics) is unambigu-
ADDED NOTE AS TO THE "PRACTICAL" 333
ous. To call logic "formal" means precisely that
mind or thought supplies forms foreign to the original
subject-matter, but yet required in order that it
should have the appropriate form of knowledge^ In
this regard it deviates from the Aristotelian Organon
which it professes to follow.- For according to
Aristotle, the processes of knowing of teaching and
learning which lead up to knowledge are but the
actualization through the potentialities of the human
body of the same forms or natures which are previ
ously actualized in Nature through the potentialities
of extra-organic bodies. Thinking which is not
instrumental to truth, which is merely formal in the
modern sense, would have been a monstrosity incon
ceivable to him. But the discarding of the meta
physics of form and matter, of cyclic actualizations and
eternal species, deprived the Aristotelian "thought"
of any place within the scheme of things, and left it
an activity with forms alien to subject-matter. To -
conceive of thinking as instrumental to truth or
knowledge, and as a tool shaped out of the same
subject-matter as that to which it is applied, is but
to return to the Aristotelian tradition about logic.
That ^ the practice of science has in the meantime
substituted a logic of experimental discovery (of
which definition and classification are themselves but
auxiliary tools) for a logic of arrangement and expo
sition of what is already known, necessitates, how
ever, a very different sort of Organon. It makes
334 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
. necessary the conception that the object of knowl-
I edge is not something with which thinking sets out
but something with which it ends: something which
the processes of inquiry and testing, that constitute
thinking, themselves produce. Thus the object of
knowledge is practical in the sense that it depends
I/ upon a specific kind of practice for its existence-
existence as an object of knowledge. How practical
it may be in any other sense than this is quite anoth
story The object of knowledge marks an achievec
triumph, a secured control-that holds by the very
nature of knowledge. What other uses it may have
depends upon its own inherent character, not upor
anything in the nature of knowledge. We do not
know the origin and nature and the cure of _ ma
laria till we can both produce and eliminate
malaria; the value of either the production or 1
removal depends upon the character of malaria in
relation to other things. And so it is with mathe
matical knowledge, or with knowledge of politics or
art Their respective objects are not known til] they
are made in course of the process of experimental
thinking. Their usefulness when made is whatever,
from infinity to zero, experience may subseque
determine it to be.
XIV
THE LOGIC OF JUDGMENTS OF PRACTICE
THEIR NATURE
In introducing the discussion, I shall first say a
word to avoid possible misunderstandings. It may
be objected that such a term as "practical judgment"
is misleading; that the term "practical judgment" is
a misnomer, and a dangerous one, since all judgments
by their very nature are intellectual or theoretical.
Consequently, there is a danger that the term will
lead us to treat as judgment and knowledge something
which is not really knowledge at all and thus start us
on the road which ends in mysticism or obscurantism.
All this is admitted. I do not mean by practical
judgment a type of judgment having a different
organ and source from other judgments. I mean
simply a kind of judgment having a specific type of
subject-matter. Propositions exist relating to agenda
to things to do or be done, judgments of a situation
demanding action. There are, for example, propo
sitions of the form: M. N. should do thus and so; it
is better, wiser, more prudent, right, advisable,
opportune, expedient, etc., to act thus and so. And
this is the type of judgment I denote practical.
It may also be objected that this type of subject-
matter is not distinctive; that there is no ground for
335
336 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
marking it off from judgments of the form SP, or
mRn. I am willing, again, to admit that such may
turn out to be the fact. But meanwhile the prima
facie difference is worth considering, if only for the
sake of reaching a conclusion as to whether or no
there is a kind of subject-matter so distinctive as
to imply a distinctive logical form. To assume in
advance that the subject-matter of practical judg
ments must be reducible to the form SP or mRn is
assuerdly as gratuitous as the contrary assumption.
y It begs one of the most important questions about the
J world which can be asked : the nature of time. More
over, current discussion exhibits, if not a complete
void, at least a decided lacuna as to propositions of
this type. Mr. Russell has recently said that of the
two parts of logic the first enumerates or inventories
the different kinds or forms of propositions. 1 It is
noticeable that he does not even mention this kind
as a possible kind. Yet it is conceivable that this
omission seriously compromises the discussion of
other kinds.
Additional specimens of practical judgments may
be given: He had better consult a physician; it would
not be advisable for you to invest in those bonds; the
United States should either modify its Monroe Doc
trine or else make more efficient military preparations;
this is a good time to build a house; if I do that I shall
be doing wrong, etc. It is silly to dwell upon the
1 Scientific Method in Philosophy, p. 57.
LOGIC OF JUDGMENTS OF PRACTICE 337
practical importance of judgments of this sort, but
not wholly silly to say that their practical importance
arouses suspicion as to the grounds of their neglect
in discussion of logical forms in general. Regarding
them, we may say:
i. Their subject-matter ^implies an incomplete
s^tuation.^ This incompleteness is not psychical.
Something is "there^Jjut what_js there_jjoes not
constitute the entire objective situation. As there,
it requires something else. Only after this something
else has been supplied will the given coincide with
the full subject-matter. This consideration has an
important bearing upon the conception of the inde
terminate and contingent. It is sometimes assumed
(both by adherents and by opponents) that the
validity of these notions entails that the given is itself
indeterminate which appears to be nonsense. The
logical implication is that of a subject-matter as yet
unterminated, unfinished, or not wholly given. The
implication is of future things. Moreover, the incom
pleteness is not personal. I mean by this that the
situation is not confined within the one making the
judgment; the practical judgment is neither exclu
sively nor primarily about one s self. On the con
trary, it is a judgment about one s self only as it is
a judgment about the situation in which one is
included, and in which a multitude of other factors
external to self are included. The contrary assump
tion is so constantly made about moral judgments
338 ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC
that this statement must appear dogmatic. But
surely the prima facie case is that when I judge that
I should not give money to the street beggar I am
judging the nature of an objective situation, and that
the conclusion about myself is governed by the propo
sition about the situation in which I happen to be
included. The full, complex proposition includes
the beggar, social conditions and consequences,
a charity organization society, etc., on exactly the
same footing as it contains myself. Aside from the
fact that it seems impossible to defend the "objec
tivity" of moral propositions on any other ground, we
may at least point to the fact that judgments of
policy, whether made about ourselves or some other
agent, are certainly judgments of a situation which is
temporarily unfinished. Xow is u good time for me
to buy certain railway bonds" is a judgment about
myself only because it is primarily a judgment about
hundreds of factors wholly external to myself. If the
genuine existence of such propositions be admitted,
the only question about moral judgments is whether
or no they are cases of practical judgments as the
latter have been defined a question of utmost im
portance for moral theory, but not of crucial import
for our logical di 
