THE JOUEISTAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
Il
HI,
THE JOURNAL OP PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY
AND
SCIENTIFIC METHODS
EDITED BY
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE
AND
WENDEIJL T. BUSH
VOLUME VIII
JANUARY-DECEMBEB, 1911
NEW YORK
THE SCIENCE PRESS
1911
PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANI
LANCASTER. PA.
VOL. VIII. No. 1 JANUARY 5, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE GOODNESS AND BEAUTY OF TRUTH. I
IT is of curious interest that, regarded in its whole course, philos-
ophy has been optimistic. It has pronounced truth good.
There have been, there still are, pessimists: Proclus and Schopen-
hauer and all Asia. But the world is yet a livable world, and the
philosophic phrasing of this livableness is that its truth is a good
truth. The race has lived and thriven, it has achieved a certain
mastery over nature, harnessing her powers to the fulfillment of
men's needs; nay, in the very opulence of its rulership contriving
new needs for her ministration. That philosophy were less than
human which should fail to nod its Jovian approval of such efficient
living !
And yet it is of curious interest . . . not that philosophy should
have made appetite the measure of truth, for without this she could
not have been philosophy ; nor yet that she should have pronounced
the world livable and life good, for otherwise she would have
countered biological fact . . . but it is of curious interest that the
credo in a life dominantly good should have expanded into a credo
in a life absolutely good, that the recognition that the controlling
truths of nature are, humanly speaking, beneficent, should have
crystallized in the dogma of the identity of the true and the good.
Of course the main stress, the " drive," of experience is all in
this direction : the truths that interest and hold us are the ductile,
the malleable truths of our world; life is action, and the thought-
reaction of efficient living naturally brings into emphasis complaisant
truths. Nevertheless, it would seem that the consciousness, inevitable
to every human being, of the stubbornness and inductility of the
moiety of experience ought to preclude any generalization of all
particular truths into one truth, homogeneously beneficent. There
are unconquerable and even "brutal" facts in every life, for whose
truth it is normal to expect recognition ; and yet, I sometimes think,
5
6 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the chief "job" of philosophy has been to "get around" these facts.
Now I do not believe that this task could ever have been per-
formed, even plausibly, but for a subtle duplicity in the measures we
have set for truth. This duplicity derives, I imagine, from Plato.
In the Philebos, Plato makes truth and goodness alike into ends of
action, for he speaks of "the power or faculty . . . which the soul
has of loving truth, and of doing all things for the sake of it," and
he also says, "that for the sake of which something else is done must
be placed in the class of the good, and that which is done for some-
thing else, in some other class." 1 That which is sought for its own
sake is good, and the soul loves truth for truth's sake. The good,
then, is, at least in part, the true, but that truth does not exhaust the
meaning of goodness is the whole intent of this dialogue. The con-
clusion is thus presented :
"And now the power of the Good has retired into the region of the
Beautiful; for Measure and Symmetry are Beauty and Virtue the world over.
" True.
" Also we said that Truth was to form an element in the mixture.
" Certainly.
" Then, if we are not able to hunt the Good with one idea only, with three
we may catch our prey; Beauty, Symmetry, Truth are the three, and these taken
together we may regard as the single cause of the mixture, and the mixture as
being good by reason of the infusion of them."
The power of the good has retired into the region of the beautiful,
and truth forms an element in the mixture. Plato does not assert
the identity of the true, the good, and the beautiful ; though he does
say that the good must be true as well as beautiful. Yet in analyzing
goodness into beauty and virtue and truth, and in finding measure
and symmetry or, as we would say, law and order to be the essence
of beauty and virtue, he makes more than easy the step which philos-
ophy was not loath to take, summarized in the great trinitarian doc-
trine of the essential unity of truth, goodness, and beauty.
This step, as I say, is only implicit in Plato's utterances, though
as I conceive his philosophy, he might have proceeded to the explicit
dogma with right of far more logical grace than is manifest in most
of his successors who have so proceeded. For the very heart of
Plato's thinking is the identification of truth and ideality. He does
not, as do later thinkers, attempt to justify the imperfect world of
terrene experience, rather, he condemns it, with a sensitive and poetic
sympathy for the life that all men share, yet none the less with the
conscientious austerity of his idealism, he condemns it, severing it
hopelessly from the empyreal domain of truth. Plato does not deny
the existence of ugliness and pain and evil and falsity; he does not
justify these experiences; but he asserts that there is a world, an
1 Citations from Plato are of Jowett's translation.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 7
ideal world, which is forever free of them, and in so asserting he is
immortally true to the idealizing instincts of his kind.
II
But how has fared the dogma in the thought of Plato's philo-
sophic posterity? The duality of Plato's cosmos spite of the fact
that to it all human living glory ingly testifies has seemed to his
successors, from Aristotle onward, a defect to be overcome. Even
Christian philosophy, which ought to have welcomed Platonic dual-
ism as its potent ally, has persistently yielded to the mania for
monism. Already with Augustine God is " absolute, immutable,
omnipresent Goodness and Truth and Beauty ' ' ; and already we are
committed to the Scholastic formularies: ens est unum, Being is
One ; and this One, in relation of conformity with knowing, is ens
verum, in relation to appetite ens bonum, in relation to contempla-
tion of restful proportion ens pulchrum.
The breaking away from Scholasticism brought no emancipation
from this trinitarianism. Shaftesbury reasons: " What is beautiful
is harmonious and proportionable; what is harmonious and propor-
tionable is true; and what is at once both beautiful and true is, of
consequence, agreeable and good." This (obviously reminiscent of
the Philebos'} is made ground for identifying goodness and truth and
beauty in their mutual predicability with respect to a single creation.
Of course the Leibnitzian contention that this is the best possible, or
most perfect, of worlds is but another iteration of the same hy-
pothesis. Perfection, with Leibnitz, is either moral or physical-
metaphysical, and in each sense it may be predicated, in the greatest
possible degree, of the one world which actually is.
Finally we come to the modern philosophy of the absolute, the
last desperate expedient to save the face of the world ! The absolute
is, in the first place, absolute reality. But the real is ideal, and in
ideality is the essence of all truth. Hence the absolute is the abso-
lute truth. Further, being absolute, it is perfect; perfection is
absoluteness. And the meaning of perfection can only be finality
in goodness and beauty. So in the absolute, which is the essence of
the world, is the summate realization of truth and goodness and
beauty.
Such, briefly, is the development of this curious philosophical
assumption that the whole truth of life must somehow be justified to
the living as at once beautiful and good. That the assumption pro-
ceeds from emotion rather than logic and that the conclusions which
it prompts are clamorously belied by experience, I do most potently
believe. The world in which most lives pass is hopelessly Manichgean,
8 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
compact of struggling good and ill. The evil that men do is black
and stinking, and it lives after them. And if the good, oft interred,
as oft rises, it is only to renew its war with ills no more phantom
than itself. Bitter-sweet is experience, and the bitter is as mordant
as the sweet is suave.
But if experience be thus doubly edged with the twin blade of
pain and bliss, if the hurt of life and the sin of it be stinging sharp
in its substance, what sense shall be made of this denial of truth to
the darker half of being? How can philosophy overpersuade ex-
perience, so that consciousness of evil shall be brought to belie itself ?
This is the moral problem of the universe which, through obdurate
centuries, the willful optimism of the human mind has tackled and
tackled again, tirelessly, tenaciously.
Obviously the problem is hopeless from the human point of regard
(save, indeed, at the cost of human reason, as witness Christian
Science !) . Obviously a shift of vantage must precede even attempted
solution. And this shift was early made. In order to sustain the
goodness of all truth, truth and goodness alike were made predicable
(in their totality, taken to be the same as their reality) not of human
experience as human beings know and name it, but of the absolute
experience of the creative mind. The Scriptures offered a happy
starting-point for this shift Genesis i. 31 :
And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Creation was completed, and it was good. Henceforth theology
owned but one task: "to justify the ways of God to men."
The shift was from the point of view of man's insight to the
point of view of God's insight, from the reasoning of creature to the
reasoning of creator, from humanism to cosmism. Truly the device
is poignantly simple! Human wretchedness and misery and grief,
human cruelty and sin and shame, human agonies under the butcher-
ship of nature all the seeming diabolism of the world were to be
dissipated by a change of perspective; under the enchantments of
cosmic distances all the harsh and rasping lines of the pattern of life
were to melt into easeful and gracious curves and the piercing notes
of mortal suffering to modulate into celestial harmonies.
If there were not something so desperately pathetic in it all this
wild effort of the afflicted atomy to "save the phenomenon" of cre-
ation if reason were not so blindingly in tears, nausea could be our
sole reaction to such thought. But the pathos and the tears are there,
through all the obdurate centuries
Sunt lacrymae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.
But let us come to the force of the persuasion. Reasonings set
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 9
forth in their nakedness are impotent to hold the minds of men ; they
must be clothed in the bright and varied raiment of passion and
imagination this, or go beggarly to starveling ends. And so in this
case: God is all- wise and creation, as he sees it, all-good; the im-
perfection of a relative and mortal being is cured in the perfection of
absolute being. In doctrines such as these there is no solace for the
hurt life save by some merciful descent of their incarnate grace into
its hell.
And how has it been brought down, this grace?
The history of Christian philosophy is the story. For two thou-
sand years doctors and saints have pleaded the sinfulness of their
kith and kind and the irresponsibility of the Most High. For two
thousand years Christendom has reechoed the self-accusations of dis-
traught and distempered souls and given its hourly tithe of muti-
lated lives in dreadful expiation. For two thousand years humanity,
blind-led through shame and suffering, has cried its culpa mea into
impitiable ears. For two thousand years man has apologized for God.
Yet in these two millennia a great change has come over the con-
ception of God and over the human regard of the problem of evil.
The major premise the goodness of truth has not been brought
into question, nor has the method of justifying this premise by a shift
from the human to the cosmic perspective been relinquished, but the
dress of the argument, that which gives to it the color of persuasion,
has undergone an entire transformation. The nature of God himself
has been philosophically reconstructed, and for the sole (though un-
conscious) purpose, I believe, of maintaining his morality. This
transformation I would briefly sketch.
Ill
The primary conception of God's nature that with which Catho-
lic orthodoxy starts, and which the more conservative churches and
the orthodox laities still maintain is what I should term the Hebraic
conception. This is the conception of a God glorified by his creation
and praised by his creatures :
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his
handiwork.
Or again
All thy works shall praise thee, Lord; and thy saints shall bless thee.
They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy power j
To make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty
of his kingdom.
God, in this view, is concerned for the veneration of his creatures;
he is jealous of their attention, and glories in their praise; even the
10 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
divine mercy is manifested not as the compassionate rescue of the
afflicted creature, but as a display of the benignity of the creator.
Such already is the God of Augustine, and hence of historic ortho-
doxy. From that condemnation, says the great father, which came
upon mankind as a result of the sin of the parents, ' ' none can ever be
freed, but by the free and gracious mercy of God, which makes a
separation of mankind, to shew in one of the remainders the power of
grace, and in the other the revenge of justice. Both which could not
be expressed upon all mankind, for if all had tasted of the punish-
ments of justice, the grace and mercy of the Redeemer had had no
place in any ; and again, if all had been redeemed from death, there
had been no object left for the manifestation of God's justice; but
now there is more left than taken to mercy, that so it might appear
what was due unto all, without any impeachment of God's justice,
who notwithstanding having delivered so many, has herein bound us
forever to praise his gracious commiseration. ' '
It is the business of creation to extol its Lord and Maker, even
election and damnation are of a piece with the argument. "The
Church," saith St. Bernard, "is wonderfully concealed in the bosom
of a blessed predestination and in the mass of a miserable damna-
tion. ' ' Calvin puts the matter in words which only the sternness of
his unlovely personality can preserve from mawkishness :
It is unreasonable that man should scrutinize with impunity those things
which the Lord has determined to be hidden in himself; and investigate, even
from eternity, that sublimity of wisdom which God would have us to adore and
not comprehend, to promote our admiration of his glory.
This, as preface to the credo :
We assert, that by an eternal and immutable counsel, God has once for all
determined, both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom he would con-
demn to destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as concerns the elect,
is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit; but
that to those whom he devotes to condemnation, the gate of life is closed by a
just and irreprehensible, but incomprehensible judgment.
There remained but for Jeremy Taylor to clinch the ghastly argu-
ment by setting it in ghastly verse :
O mighty God,
Let not thy bruising rod
Crush our loins with an eternal pressure;
let thy mercy be the measure,
For if thou keepest wrath in store
We all shall die
And none be left to glorify
Thy name, and tell
How thou hast saved our souls from hell.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 11
The modern mind shudders as it calls the roll of these grim de-
fensores fidei. They have made their God monstrous with reason, and
with the name of holiness they have apotheosized inhumanity. Their
words seem to be seasoned in cruelty, and their ready consignment of
the major portion of their fellow men to eternal damnation "for the
better glory of God" sounds like terrible blasphemy. Nevertheless,
there is a certain raw-boned strength in all this thinking that has not
even yet lost its imaginative appeal, there is human passion at the
core of it, and human pain. We may feel a certain mingling of
amusement with sympathy at the subtle way in which Aquinas eludes
the difficulties of the question whether God may not exact of one the
relinquishment of beatitude ad decorem universi, but the amuse-
ment is all gone, and only the sympathy left, when we read the words
of Catherine of Siena :
Better were it for me that all should be saved, and I alone (saving ever
thy charity) should sustain the pains of hell, than that I should be in paradise
and all they perish damned; for greater honor and glory of thy name would
it be.
For it was this Catherine who exposed herself to a flow of boiling
water the while she meditated upon the pains of hell and besought
her creator to accept what she thus voluntarily endured in expiation
of them. Nor can we follow the great disciple of Aquinas through
his remorseless Inferno without awe of the endurance with which the
passion for justice can fortify the human soul.
The truth is once we get our breath this whole development is
not humanly unintelligible. It is a harsh spectacle, but it is the out-
come of harsh living. We realize this, I think, when we regard the
likenesses of these by-gone thinkers: their gaunt cheeks and corded
necks, their sunken eyes and the great features that stand out on the
medallions. They were men who lived the lives of thinkers in the
lurid intervals of war, and it is not strange that blood should have
seemed to them a trifling piaculum to righteousness or that in their
zest for moral goodness they should have shorn the world of loveli-
ness.
Further, there is a solidity and consistency in their thought which
the ensuing age does not present. Up to the very threshold of the
eighteenth century, Christian philosophy is consistently pessimistic
so far as this world is concerned. Human life received a wrong start
from the first parents and it has never been righted. The best we can
make out of a bad predicament is a tolerable preparation for the life
to come, and even this can be attained only by grievous denial of
what seems good and attractive to us here. All things mundane are
polluted, and all the seeming sweetness of nature is unclean.
12 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
This, I say, is the consistent view of a world which has fallen from
grace, and it makes easier our understanding of the brutal acceptance
of the divine condemnation, giving, too, a kind of picturesque sturdi-
ness to the thought of men who could live up to such a view. "We
realize, of course, that they saved their cosmos to optimism by the
introduction of a world of bliss beyond by the leata vita for which
tliis life is preparatory, but at least there was nothing cowardly in
their way of facing the hard preparation.
As much can not be said for the eighteenth century. From Leib-
nitz onward its whole smooth, self-satisfied course betrays a substan-
tial participation in the good things of this life. This world is the
best possible of worlds, so good, in fact, that once its procedure was
inaugurated, the Almighty became superfluous: harmony, preestab-
lished from the day of creation, pervades all its elements. In the be-
ginning God completed his work and saw that it was good, and the
repose of the seventh day has never since been broken. This impli-
cation of the non-interference of the creator in his handiwork led
inevitably to the deism of the century: a creator, it was conceded,
was necessary to the first operation of the world-engine, but the
operation begun, nature was the sufficient explanation of its continu-
ation, God was thenceforth otiose.
Thus with an altered view of life we get an altered conception of
God 's nature. The life of this world is looked upon with an optimism
so smug and complacent that man is jealous even of the suggestion
of divine interference in its orderly course. Nothing is at fault;
nothing here ought to be changed ; it is for the creator to keep hands
off lest he mar his achievement. God can add nothing to the world,
and if the world can be said to glorify God it is in the sense in which
a prodigiously endowed child confers credit upon his puzzled parents.
Of course God is already at a vast remove from humanity ; the world,
with all its furniture, is but his toy, his bauble, a six days' plaything,
and already we have in prediction the completer separation which the
next century is to bring.
I can not better illustrate the transformation in men's thought
that takes place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than by
quoting briefly from an English poet of each of these centuries. The
seventeenth century opens with Medievalism if so we may term the
elder view still dominant. All the learning of the Renaissance, all
the emancipation of the Reformation, has not sufficed to dissipate in
Christian philosophy its gloomy appraisal of the worldly life nor to
alter its conception of God as a being to be magnified by mortal trib-
ulation. Indeed, we seem to meet an accentuation of these traits in
the Puritanic reaction against the humanism of a paganizing lay
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 13
scholarship. I quote, however, not from a Puritan, but a convert
from Catholicism to the Church of England from Dr. Donne's
"Anatomy of the World," wherein "the frailty and the decay of this
whole world is represented ' ' :
Well died the world, that we might live to see
This world of wit, in his anatomy;
No evil wants his good; so wilder heirs
Bedew their fathers' tombs with forced tears,
Whose state requites their loss : whiles thus we gain,
Well may we walk in blacks, but not complain.
So the poem opens, setting its hypothesis. The meaning of human
endeavor is thus set forth:
Let no man say, the world itself being dead,
'Tis labor lost to have discovered
The world's infirmities, since there is none
Alive to study this dissection;
For there's a kind of world remaining still,
Though she which did inanimate and fill
The world, be gone, yet in this last long night,
Her ghost doth walk, that is, a glimmering light,
A faint weak love of virtue and of good,
Reflect from her, on them which understood
Her worth; and though she have shut in all day,
The twilight of her memory doth stay;
Which, from the carcass of the old world free,
Creates a new world, and new creatures be
Produced; the matter and the stuff of this,
Her virtue, and the form our practice is. ...
So man ghostly walks, mid the slow decay of his earthly paradise
This man, whom God did woo, and loth to attend
Till man came up, did down to man descend,
This man so great, that all that is, is his,
O what a trifle, and poor thing he is! ...
Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant.
... so is the whole world's frame
Quite out of joint, almost created lame:
For, before God had made up all the rest,
Corruption entered, and deprav'd the best. . . .
Donne's stiffly articulated verse seems somehow particularly ap-
propriate to the theology it conveys. It moves with the rattly swing
of the Danse Macabre, and it gives us a sense of the discords and jars
of creation which the same theology entirely misses in the symphonic
epic of his great contemporary. With all his Puritanism Milton pos-
sessed the humanist 's love of beauty, so transforming even diabolism
into grandeur ; his imagination was infinitely nobler than his thought,
and his poetry is hence a poorer medium for this thought than is that
14 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of the more narrowly theological divine. Yet Donne himself has
imagination, only it does not move in the domain of beauty: lurid,
powerful, it lights deep vistas with its sudden glows; flares and ex-
pires, like the very reflection of the pent and smouldering genius of
the Medieval mind. It is unlovely, but it is not without fascination,
and it commands respect.
Respect is an attitude which it is extremely difficult to maintain
in our regard of the work of that eighteenth-century poet who trav-
estied Dr. Donne. Pope's shallow and complacent verse is perfectly
adapted to the shallow and complacent philosophy of a shallow and
complacent century. It belongs to a period when men made conspicu-
ous display of their clothes and their table manners ; and it is irksome
for us of an inherital period (perhaps because we feel so keenly the
vexatiousness of the inheritance) to struggle into sympathy with it.
None the less, in the dialectic of history the eighteenth century occu-
pies a solid moment, which we must understand if we are to advance
to comprehension of our own ways of thinking. And of all its spokes-
men Pope is by odds the most loquaciously adept. With other men,
while their philosophies are not profound, they have not lost the
beauty of an older humanism or the earnestness of the older asceti-
cism; but with Pope thought is only a special kind of elegance and
truth is only timeliness.
The very key-note of Pope's "Essay on Man" is the key-note of
the mental lightness of his age. Milton had inaugurated his great
poem, in the preceding century, with the prayer :
What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the height of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Pope gives us his measure in
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to Man.
And the fall from reverence to conformity, from "justification" to
:i vindication," is but the moral token of the intellectual descent
which is typified.
I need not quote Pope's familiar epistles at any length. A few
summarizing verses will suffice to reestablish their general context
and import :
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 15
We have to read this twice and thrice, and read it yet again, be-
fore we begin to realize that here, in mean and dingy littleness, is
preserved the mere logic of Augustine 's fine utterances :
For God would never have foreknown vice in any work of his, angel or
man, but that he knew in like manner what good use to put it unto, so making
the world's course, like a fair poem, more gracious by antithetic figures. . . .
For as a picture shows well though it have black colors in divers places,
so the universe is most fair, for all these stains of sins, which notwithstanding,
being weighed by themselves, do disgrace the luster of it. ...
What is the secret of the changed effect? It is a change in the
color of life. In Augustine the thought springs from the fresh
ardors of a beauty-loving soul. Even when it recurs in Calvin, for
all its bony intellectuality, it is saved from mawkishness by the moral
sternness of the thinker. But in the age of Pope we are well aware
that neither the beauty of the cosmos nor its moral order was felt
to be necessary to its human comprehension or to enhance men's
satisfaction with life as they found it. Christian philosophy was a
mental pose, an act of conformity, and its glib recitation serves only
to expound its spiritual hollowness. Orthodoxy had been lived
through; beauty and goodness in turn it had lost; and at last its
well-hinged logic showed forth with all the neat articulation, and all
the unloveliness, of a blanched and mounted skeleton.
IV
It is small wonder that the succeeding century, in the full swing
of a buoyant optimism, should have felt the need of a revivified
philosophy and a reinvigorated faith. It is hardly wonderful that
it should have sought the new light with as little shift as possible
from the orthodoxy of the centuries past, and it is interesting to see
in just what directions the shift which it does make carries it.
The nineteenth-century addition to Christian philosophy is in
three respects striking. First, it is at one with historic orthodoxy in
justifying creation from God's point of view rather than from man's ;
it is cosmist rather than humanist. Second, it differs from the
earlier orthodoxy and agrees with the eighteenth century in its
optimistic appraisal of this life. Third, its conception of God's
nature is revolutionary.
I have said that the early Christian conception of the divine
nature was Hebraic. God was regarded as the father, but his
f athership was rather that of the patriarchal head of the clan than
of the sire of an only son. He was a father who was also a ruler, and
in his character of ruler he was King of Glory, and jealous of his
glorification. He was the Lord of Praise,
Placable if his mind and ways were guessed,
16 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
though only revelation could insure the guessing. The conception
is of a God intensely interested in the world he has created, and
having such concern for it that to mistake his meaning must cost his
creatures dear.
We have seen how by the eighteenth century this intense and per-
sonal interest has waned. The deistic creator who sets the clock-
work of the universe going derives only an indifferent edification
from his contemplation of its smooth running. Occasionally he may
interfere, working a miracle less for the benefit of creation than for
the assuagement of his own ennui, but on the whole he is content to
let the goodness of his work manifest itself in its mechanism. This
is the eighteenth-century view (exaggerated, no doubt, but only to
its fulfilled logic), and in a sense it affords a transition to the intro-
duction of the absolutely faineant deity of the nineteenth century;
but the change is really revolutionary.
In the poem from which I have just cited, Browning concedes to
the universe another and diviner being than the "placable" Setebos:
There may be something quiet o'er his head,
Out of his reach, that feels nor joy nor grief,
Since both derive from weakness in some way.
Ever sure in his theologizing instinct, Browning is quite right here
in setting the faineant deity at an absolute remove from the creative :
the one can not properly be derived from the other. It is a new
and revolutionary conception of God which the transcendentalists
of the nineteenth century introduce into Christian philosophy.
The very word transcendental characterizes the revolution. God
is set at an infinite remove from his creation. He is exalted to a
perfection so absolute that it can not in the remotest way reflect our
sullied life, and so lonely that it can not break its solitudes with the
faintest compassion for mortal pain. Things mortal are not pre-
sented to the absolute as things mortal : they appear to it only as the
subtile and vanishing complexions of an experience in which time
and passion are eternally transmuted into timelessness and passion-
lessness. It knows mortality only sub specie ceternitatis as once
for all robbed of its mortal poignancy. Knowing the compensations
of Eternal Being, it is content to take its eternal repose in the action-
less activity of this knowledge.
This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth,
Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch,
But never spends much thought nor care that way.
This is the God with which German metaphysics has replaced the
personal and concerned creator of Hebraic faith. But it is obvious
that in its mere transcendency such a God is impossible as the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 17
object of Christian belief; and, in fact, I am presenting but half the
picture in emphasizing the transcendency. For not only is the God
of transcendental philosophy an utterly transcendent being, but
strange contradiction ! he possesses the precisely opposite quality in
as utter a degree. The absolute experience is not only hopelessly
remote from human experience, but it is also unwaveringly imma-
nent in human experience. Totum in toto et in parte totum: imma-
nence, the sensible contrary of transcendence, is made the co-attribute
of God.
I can not enter into the shrewd, and logistically unanswerable,
logic which makes this contradiction appeal to men's minds as ''the
better reason"; but I do wish to show (since, after all, our logic is
but our shamed apology for faith) something of the force of its
spiritual appeal. And this appeal, I believe, is due in large part to
the admiration for quiet excited by an unquiet age, and again to the
friendliness and sympathy with which a divine immanence is felt to
endow a nature which men have come so wistfully to love. Peace
and sympathy their antithesis to our perturbed modernity has
made these seem divine. In place of a Heavenly King, ruling the
universe with a sure and steady hand, we have enthroned a Prince
of an unvexed and untempted Peace; in place of a watchful and
omnipresent Providence, argus-eyed for the fall of a sparrow or the
numbering of our hairs, we have trusted for consolation in the
immanence of an Abiding Presence.
1 ' Despite the vastness, the variety, the thrilling complexity of the
life of the finite world," says Josiah Royce, "the ultimate unity is
not far from any one of us. All variety of idea and object is sub-
ject, as we have seen, to the unity of the purpose wherein we alone
live. Even at this moment, yes, even if we transiently forget the
fact, we mean the Absolute. We win the presence of God when we
most flee. We have no other dwelling-place but the single unity of
the divine consciousness. In the light of the eternal we are manifest,
and even this very passing instant pulsates with a life that all the
worlds are needed to express. In vain would we wander in darkness ;
we are eternally at home in God."
Immanent in human experience yet forever transcending experi-
ence, as near to life as a mirrored reflection yet as absolutely cut off
from it as is mirrored space from real space . . . this nineteenth-
century conception of the divine nature is no new one in history.
It is as ancient as Brahm in the thought of India. It is the breath
of life to the Neo-Platonists : ' ' Transcending all bodies is soul, trans-
cending souls is intellect, transcending intellectual being is the
One"; so Proclus ascends to the selfless essence of God, the One
before all who is also the One in all, and is the realization and per-
18 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
fection of the Circle of Being. Even in the new world the meta-
physically minded Aztecs adumbrate the conception: above their
demonic pantheon, Tezcatlipoca personates the transcendent yet
immanent creator :
puissant Lord, under whose wings we seek protection and shelter, thou
art invisible and impalpable as air and night! . . .
O our very good Lord, who castest thy shadow about all who approach
thee, even as a tree tall and great, thou art invisible and impalpable and thy
glance penetrateth the rocks and to the heart of trees, beholding all that is
there concealed. It is for this that thou seest and understandest that which
is in our hearts and in our thoughts. Before thee our souls are as a film of
smoke or of fog vanishing from the earth!
The conception, explicit or implicit, occurs thus in many non-
Christian contexts, but with this significant difference : that in these
diverse thought media it is almost invariably an accompaniment of
pessimism. This is obvious enough in India: life is one perpetual
degeneration from the pure being of Brahm, and the acme of bliss
is the soul's utter submergence in the impersonal indifference of the
One. It is no less obvious with the Platonists. Plato himself, with
an almost shifty adroitness, after stating, in the Timceus, that God,
in his goodness, patterned the world after the perfect pattern of
his own being, "for the deeds of the best could never be or have
been other than the fairest," goes on to apologize for the world's
imperfections on the score that the deity turned over the details of
creation to lesser hands. It was inevitable that disciples of his
philosophy, fallen upon evil days, should have converted this into a
doctrine of progressive descent, of creative degeneration, such as
indeed we find in that Neo-Platonic pessimism which so mirrors that
of India that we are accustomed to see in it a borrowing from the
Orient.
But I believe that when we note how similar conceptions in
America seem to lead to a similar pessimism, our conviction that the
conception is itself author of the pessimism will gain strength. For
the Aztec betrays a sophisticated world-weariness worthy of disciples
of Schopenhauer. When a child was born into the world it was
addressed :
You are come into a world where your parents live mid toils and fatigues,
where there are broiling heats and windy chills, where there is neither pleasure
nor contentment, for it is a place of labors, of torments, and of cares.
And even of a dead king they could only pray :
Thou hast given him to taste in this world a few of the sweetnesses and
suavities which thou hast made to pass before his eyes like will-o'-the-wisps
which vanish in being born.
Pessimism, then, seems to have been the natural accompaniment
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 19
of this conception of an immanent and transcendent God in all cen-
turies save the nineteenth. How are we to account for the new value
which this century has placed upon the conception ?
The answer is complex.
Historically the nineteenth century is heritor of eighteenth cen-
tury optimism. The naturalism of the eighteenth century was a
reaction against the pessimism of the earlier ascetic Christianity ; its
mood was one of content with nature and its moral a readiness to
accept and find good nature's self -revelation. The doctrine of evolu-
tion in the nineteenth century seemed to be this revelation : it seemed
to mean progressive realization of the good. The conditions of mod-
ern life have favored this interpretation, and philosophy and theol-
ogy alike have been caught in its optimistic swing. Hegel, it has
been said, gives us in his dialectic evolution the inner interpretation
of what Spencer interprets outwardly: the two systems are comple-
mentary narratives of world-progress.
With the historical pressure all toward optimism, it is no marvel
that logic (ever an accommodating servant) easily adapts itself to
the push of circumstance. And, as a matter of fact, the adaptation
is not strained. The dialectic deduction of nature from God must,
to be sure, be regarded as a descent as Platonist, Gnostic and Hindu
have regarded it so long as your thinker maintains the cosmic, the
ontological point of departure ; but if instead his thinking start from
human powers of knowing, if his deduction be from the psychology
of human reasoning, first analyzed and then inductively generalized
as a predicate of the universe, then the process is legitimately inter-
preted as an ascent, an evolution. And this is precisely what Ger-
man transcendentalism has done. Kant psychologized metaphysics ;
and in the hands of the philosophers of the absolute, especially
Hegel, human thought-processes were treated as epitome and mirror
of the being of the world. The starting-point was humanistic and
hence the goal of perfection was found to be an implication of
human nature, emerging from human nature by a smooth and
felicitous progression.
To be sure, in so far as this progression was withdrawn from time
we have as the fond of this reasoning the unhappy quibble of time-
less change, an antinomy of points of view (the human and the
absolute) that to the lay mind is insoluble, but this difficulty is one
readily concealed by cloudy words, for the mimesis and methexis of
Plato are terms descriptive of a no more irreconcilable conciliation
than are the "transfusion," "transmutation," and "transcendency"
of the absolutists.
But history urged and logic admitted optimism, and the times
20 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
had need of a new conception of God. There remains but to ask
how far this conception answers the needs of its generation.
Now there are undoubtedly some thousands of Protestant clergy-
men who, with the more informed of their laity, hold and find com-
fort in the transcendentalist idea of God. But I regard it as unde-
niable that the mass, even of enlightened Protestantism, is still in the
Eeformation, or at most is not beyond the eighteenth century,
whereas Catholicism, as we know, is still assertively Medieval.
Unchurched Christendom is in the main eighteenth century. On the
other hand, by underground channels Theosophy, New Thought,
Christian Science Asiatic philosophy is undoubtedly inflowing to
an ever-rising flood. The assimilation of transcendentalist ideas
seems to show more vitality outside than inside orthodoxy.
But what of the intellectual leadership the thought of the best
minds?
Here we have no right to turn to philosophers; it is philosophy
that we are judging. But we have a right to turn to the poets, for
the poetry for which any generation cares is just index of the spirit-
ual development of that generation. And judged by this standard
of poetry, I think we can say that, in the English-speaking world at
least, transcendentalism has failed. I do not mean to say that it has
failed to command belief that were a rash and hasty judgment ; nor
yet that it has failed to bring a certain elegiac comfort into many
lives. But just here is my point : the comfort that it has brought is
elegiac; it is the comfort of resignation. Transcendentalism has
failed to preserve optimism even with the advantage of the tre-
mendous optimistic momentum which had been given by eighteenth-
century French humanitarianism and English naturalism.
The elegiac tone of modern poetry is too conspicuous to need
much illustration. Yet in a certain instance there is indicated a
trend so significant that I can not refrain from pointing it. Two of
the most widely read of modern English poems appeared within a
decade in the middle of the nineteenth century. The first to appear
and the first to take and hold the sympathy of the modern mood was
Tennyson's "In Memoriam." It is a poem which, perhaps best of
all, voices the elegiacism of the Victorian epoch: the mingling of
wistful faith and material doubt, of passionate optimistic hope and
dread of compelling pessimism. The immanent and transcendent
God is there, the God far-off and perfect, who transforms the com-
pelling evil of experience into some final blessing
yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill ...
and the evolutional ascent is there, but the upward-straining mortal
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 21
vision descries only a mounting gloom betwixt humanity and God;
the heaviness of doubt outbalances the buoyancy of faith:
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
This is the first of the two poems, read and reread for a genera-
tion. The second, composed a ten-year later, after lying almost
unknown for a generation, is now, I venture to guess, read a hundred
times to the once of "In Memoriam," and quoted thrice a hundred.
And yet the "Rubaiyat" of Fitzgerald's Omar owns not even the
lame faith of Tennyson. It is pessimistic to the core, shot through
with the impudence and pain of hopelessness. As to man, the best
that Omar can offer is a Cyrenaic advice to snare the pleasures of an
evanescent sensation, to banish thought with a loud and joyless
laughter, and to meet death with Stoic dignity
So when the Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff you shall not shrink. . . .
And as to God, his best is an indifference that is akin to blasphemy :
O Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken' d Man's forgiveness give and take!
Surely the captivation in which this poem holds the modern mood
betrays the utter bankruptcy of transcendental optimism!
H. B. ALEXANDER.
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Die Geschichtsphilosophie Augusts Comtes kritisch dargestellt von Dr.
philos. Georg Mehlis. Leipzig: Fritz Eckardt. 1909. Pp. 158.
When Comte's system of philosophy is viewed in the light of preceding
systems, its weaknesses spring to view, and it appears rather as an aberra-
tion than as an advance. But, if in its light we view the important tend-
encies in current thinking and activity, these are by it not simply pictured
in prophecy, but organized, vivified, and idealized. This second way of
studying Comte would naturally center around his philosophy of history;
and now, half a century after his death, an essay along this line would be
22 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of great interest. Hence it is disappointing to find that Dr. Mehlis writes
without reference to present political and social conditions, or even to
those current philosophies that seem closest to positivism.
None the less this essay is a stimulating work, in German that is
incisive and clear. The chapters are: I., Comtes dogmatischer Positiv-
ismus; II., Comtes Geschichtsphilosophie und die Eomantik; III.,
Soziologie und Geschichtsphilosophie; IV., Comtes Wertsystem; V.,
Entwickelung und Fortschritt; Schluss.
Comte's use of the term " metaphysics " refers solely to the individual-
izing, anti-social, and enervating tendencies of critical and sceptical
philosophies. These his own " relativistic " theory escapes, however, only
through "das Nichtzuendedenken seiner Thesen." That theory carries
him to the point of saying that truth changes and differs for different
individuals and different nations. But his philosophy of history and his
"positive policy" are in fact dominated by the conception of a truth
underlying all others, and of an ideal to be recognized by all men.
The third chapter discusses the logic of science on the basis of Rick-
ert's distinction between the natural sciences, which deal with fixed rela-
tions between recurring events, and historical science, presenting indi-
vidual events in their concrete, unique relations with one another and
with the whole of what has happened. Comte deals with the materials
of human history from the point of view of a natural science, viz.,
sociology, reaching his culminating scientific result in the celebrated law
of the three stages. However, the conception of history as the presenta-
tion of a unique process forms the background of Comte's philosophy.
And Dr. Mehlis, in Chapters III., IV., and V., is largely concerned with
the logical conditions under which this implicit philosophy of history
might become explicit and consistent with itself. All scientific history
rests upon the adoption of a single, ultimate, absolute value (Wert), since
the essential uniqueness of any event can be demonstrated only by show-
ing that it is a certain stage in the realization of that supreme value or
good. This requires the formulation of a science or system of values, in
contradistinction to the generalizations of the sciences of matter of fact,
or natural science. Hence Comte's conception of the uniformity of scien-
tific purposes and methods is at fault. An interesting, but in my opinion
unsuccessful, attempt is made to show, in Chapter V., that Comte's belief
in unending progress is inconsistent with his position that infinite per-
fection is an irrational term.
The supreme good epitomized in the term humanity is discussed from
the standpoint of German romanticism. Romanticism essentially is an
emphasis upon the progress of mankind measured in terms esthetic and
religious. French romanticism is vitiated by " traditionalism " ; that is,
the medieval world-view, which subordinates the individual man to a
system to which he belongs. Here an ascetic spirit, so marked in Comte,
leads to a depreciation of the individualism of the Enlightenment, of the
Renaissance and the Reformation, and of Greece. Dr. Mehlis seems to
me to leave obscure the roots of Comte's complete and vigorous renuncia-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 23
tion of the socialistic scheme of things. But he brings into prominence
the motives that led him to condemn the various forms of theism, and the
other " abstractions " that reinforce individualism. Comte's final exalta-
tion of " f etichism," which may perhaps best be rendered animism, is also
thus explained, since it inspires, in the enlightened soul, not fear, but
love for nature, and keeps the intellect to its task of framing useful,
practical conceptions of the world.
Dr. Mehlis attacks the Comtean philosophy of history and its funda-
mental conception of value or the good on the ground that " from the
revolt (Auflehnung) of individuals against the totality all progress has
come" (p. 157). The mere conception of the dominant whole, humanity,
leads to the ascetic subordination of art and religion to morality and use,
and thus to a world-view radically defective in esthetic and religious
appeal. Since this is probably the chief thesis of the essay, it may be
in order to compare with it the basis of Edward Caird's rejection of
Comte's ideal. For the latter is based not on a mere demand for indi-
viduality or upon an unsupported standard of esthetic worth, but upon
the assertion of a matter of fact.
Nature and man, says Caird, can not be united as Comte would have
it, by subordinating the former to the position of mere material for man's
activity and advance; simply because by nature we mean, as Kant has
shown, an existence woven in rational patterns. Intelligence, therefore,
is not merely a product of biological conditions, since these conditions at
every stage and from every possible point of approach are already rational
in structure. Nature is thus more than material, more than a fetich.
" Humanity " sinks then to the second place, as the individual, standing
in relation to the life and spirit of nature, finds in that relation a con-
dition that enables him to face the demands of society not with a revolt,
but with an humble and invincible freedom, with a knowledge and an
ideal by which those demands must be tested. Thus from a matter of
fact Caird sees spring the demand for, or rather the recognition of, indi-
viduality, together with such esthetic and religious features of the world-
view as individuality in every age occasions.
Two minor points may be offered in criticism of Dr. Mehlis's essay.
Whereas Mill, in his review of Comte, makes the distinction between the
earlier and the later Comte fundamental, Dr. Mehlis makes it incidental.
And I think it is partly in consequence that rather startling inconsisten-
cies appear in his remarks, which a study of their context does not miti-
gate. For example, on page 67 we are told that Comte's interpretation of
history emphasizes the unique and neglects the uniform and recurrent,
whereas on page 102 it is stated that Comte is so interested in the recur-
rent that the unique appears to him irrelevant.
On page 133 Dr. Mehlis intimates that this great work of Mill's is
"verstandnislos," and blind to the " geschichtsphilosophisches Interessante"
of the positive policy. But Comte's philosophy of history, unlike Hegel's,
centered in prophecy. And Mill's sympathy with and comprehension of
Comte was such that he could not, at this day, any more than when he
24 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
wrote, have ignored, as Dr. Mehlis has done, the striking relation which
Comte's philosophy, and especially his philosophy of history, bears to the
issues that have worked their way into the world at large in the fifty odd
years since Comte died. PERCY HUGHES.
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY.
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. JOHN GRIER HIBBEN. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons. 1910. Pp. xii -f- 311.
This volume is the first of a series edited by Professor Hibben and
dealing with the epochs of philosophy. The purpose which Professor
Hibben seeks to realize in this book is to portray the various tendencies
which were operative in the period of enlightenment and which, coming to
a focus in the philosophy of Kant, prepared the way for the intellectual
life of our own times. In pursuance of this purpose he has brought to-
gether within the compass of a single volume the chief elements of eight-
eenth-century thinking, and by skillful handling of his subject-matter has
managed to secure an excellent perspective of the period covered in his
treatment. The difficult task of properly balancing general outline and
detailed presentation has been accomplished in a manner which in many
respects is deserving of admiration. Since it is precisely the organization
of the material rather than originality of interpretation that constitutes
the aim of the volume, Professor Hibben may be congratulated upon the
result which he has achieved.
As a brief summary of the topics included in the work, it may be said
that the discussion begins with English empiricism as represented by
Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, to each of whom a separate chapter is devoted.
It then takes up the materialistic movement, which arose as an alternative
to the psychologizing tendencies of the movement begun by Locke, and
which owes some of its inspiration to him. Following this comes a
chapter on Rousseau's philosophy of feeling, which was called forth as a
protest against the barren intellectualism of the time. German rational-
ism is then taken up, the philosophy of Leibnitz and the conflict of typical
philosophical influences in Germany being discussed in separate chapters.
Then comes an outline of Kant's critical philosophy, followed by a con-
cluding chapter on the practical influences of the enlightenment. A chron-
ological table of the philosophical works of the period is added as an
appendix. The form of presentation is such as to make the book suitable
for laymen or students who have formed some acquaintance with philos-
ophy. For those who have already acquired some knowledge of the his-
tory of modern philosophy the simple and untechnical exposition can
scarcely fail to be illuminating and suggestive. The treatment not only
furnishes an excellent bird's-eye view, but, with a limitation to be noted
presently, the critical parts bring out the familiar difficulties encountered
in Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Leibnitz with clearness and force.
The least satisfactory part of the book, perhaps, is the chapter on the
materialistic movement. Apparently the subject has little interest for the
author, but is included because it constitutes a part of the general subject.
Both criticism and definition are conspicuously absent. In view of the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 25
success with which the author brings out the inherent difficulties of Eng-
lish empiricism, it is both surprising and disappointing to find that no
attempt is made to analyze out the meaning of matter or to trace out
the shifts and assumptions by which the respective theories are rendered
plausible. The result is naturally that instead of a study of the material-
istic movement we have essentially a series of comments on the beliefs of
the various individuals connected with the movement.
A rather unusual feature of the book is the fact that in the somewhat
detailed presentation of Kant's philosophy there is scarcely a hint of criti-
cism. The emphasis falls almost entirely upon those aspects of Kant's
thinking which, from an idealistic standpoint, may be regarded as a
solvent of the difficulties in which the earlier empiricism and rationalism
had become enmeshed. The claims of apriorism and the shortcomings
and crudities generally are passed over in order to make prominent the
Kantian contention that thought fulfills a constitutive function in experi-
ence. It is claimed for Kant that " the line of his endeavor indicates a
direction of thought, and a method of critical analysis, which the philos-
ophy of the Auflddrung had failed to discover. That movement of thought
culminates in him, for he conserves in his philosophy the elements of truth
which it had evolved, and at the same time he overcomes its obvious de-
fects and limitations. To mark the scope and function of experience, to
establish its complete dependence upon the interpreting, informing, and
ordering mind, to discover a world of moral law and life, wherein the free
spirit of man moves toward his determined ends, modifying the mechan-
ical conditions of the causal series of events so as to compel them to obey
his will; to find, moreover, in such a world the presence of a divine com-
pulsion, and to discern within the beauty and purpose of nature the
presence of a kindred spirit such has been, in part at least, the high office
which Kant has performed in presenting to the thought of his age, and,
indeed, of all ages, the truth as he saw it" (p. 251).
The idealistic attitude revealed in this quotation comes to the sur-
face constantly throughout the volume. To the reader who does not share
this attitude it furnishes occasion for legitimate criticism of the book.
In connection with Locke, for example, it is stated that " what is wanted
is a central unifying principle which is capable of organizing the various
parts into a complete whole. And such a principle it is possible to dis-
cover in the reason, working not upon but within the elemental materials
given in consciousness, informing them according to its constructive
power, which power is simply the expression of the inherent necessities of
the mind's essential nature itself" (p. 38). Later it is said that "not
merely are the fully formed products of thought skillfully ordered by the
mind, but at the very threshold of knowledge itself, where the crude ele-
mental material is furnished through the senses, the mind is already ac-
tively engaged in fashioning and informing the given material according
to its own native powers" (p. 230). This conclusion is supposed to fol-
low from the breakdown of the theories under consideration. Passages
like these, which are typical of the book and typical of idealism generally,
were sufficiently conventional a decade or so ago to pass without chal-
26 THE 'JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
lenge. But idealism has been under fire so much of late that one may
reasonably expect a writer who employs such phraseology at the present
day to indicate what it really means. That " mind " should operate upon
" crude elemental material," when, according to the same theory, this
material is merely an abstraction from the " fully formed products," and
not a preexistent entity, is extremely mystifying to the uninitiated.
Whether or not idealism is a defensible theory, Professor Hibben's book
would be more effective if it did not assume throughout what is so very
much in dispute, and if it did not, consequently, tend, in a measure, to
confine criticism to an unsupported reassertion of idealistic contentions.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. B. H. BODE.
Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social
Philosophy. JOHN STUART MILL. Edited with an introduction by W.
J. ASHLEY. London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1909.
Pp. liii -f 1013.
It is doubtful if any work on economics will ever exercise a wider and
more enduring influence than Mill's treatise. The bibliographical note
prefixed to this edition records no less than twelve editions, one of them
reprinted eighteen times, by the present publishers. This new edition
is interesting mainly for the introduction by Professor Ashley, pointing
out the chief intellectual influences that determined Mill's economic and so-
cial views, and for the indication in the notes of all the significant changes
or additions to the text made by Mill. in the course of the six editions that he
himself revised. The laborious task of comparing editions has apparently
been done with care, and the student is thus enabled to observe the
changes and development of Mill's thought between 1848 and 1871. It is
a pleasing impression that one thus gains of the well-known candor of the
man and his readiness to revise his opinions in the light of new evidence.
Professor Ashley has appended twenty pages of references to the chief
writers, mainly English, who since Mill's time have dealt with the prin-
cipal topics treated by him. The notes include Mill's recantation of the
wage-fund doctrine and his latest views on socialism. A careful index,
prepared by Miss M. A. Ellis, completes this useful edition of a really
great book. It is well printed, in a single volume of convenient size.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. H. K. MUSSEY.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. September, 1910. Recherches experi-
mentales sur I'illusion des ampules et sur les lois de sa rectification (pp.
226-240) : C. HEMON. - The illusion is suspended by evoking a real sensa-
tion, qualitatively like the mental image whence the illusion springs, and
related to a symmetrical part of the body. La nature psychologique de
" I'etat de grace " (pp. 241-261) : G. TRUE. - Grace is an emotional quiet-
ing in which the strife between opposing tendencies of conduct closes.
L'induction en mathematiques (pp. 262-269) : G.-PI. LUQUET. - Mathe-
matics is related to the other sciences through its inductive procedure.
Notes et discussions. Le " phenomene psychique" : G.-L. DUPRAT.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 27
A propos de la logique de la contradiction: L. VIAL. Revue Critique.
Les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures: Parodi, Le probleme
moral et la pensee contemporaine : F. PAULHAN. Miceli, II sentimento
del dovere: G. RICHARD. G. Mazzalorso, Schema di una dottrina intorno
la Giustizia e il diritto : G. RICHARD. A. E. Davies, The Moral Life:
G.-L. DUPRAT. A Binet, Les idees modernes sur les enfants: G. COM-
PAYRE. E. Roehrich, Philosophie de V education: L. DUGAS. L. Cellerier,
Esquisse d'une science pedagogique: L. DUGAS. Dr. Mignard, La joi
passive: CH. BLONDEL. Bechterew, La suggestion et son role dans la vie
sociale: PH. CHASLIN. A. Mairet et E. Salager, La folie hysterique:
PH. CHASLIN. L. C. Gatewoold, An Experimental Study of Dementia
Prcecox: P. C. B. A. Hartley, The Subconscious in the Light of Dream
Imagery: G.-L. DUPRAT. G. G. Bertazzi, Storia genetica dell' Idealismo
platonico e dei suoi significati: C. HUIT. Revue des periodiques Strangers.
Boaz, Franz. Extract from Handbook of American Indian Languages
(Bulletin 40), Part 1, of Bureau of American Ethnology. Introduc-
tion. Pp. 1-83. Tsimshian, an Illustrative Sketch. Pp. 283-422.
Kwakiutl, an Illustrative Sketch. Pp. 423-557. Chinook, an Illus-
trative Sketch. Pp. 559-677. Washington: Government Printing
Office. 1910.
Correspondance de Renouvier et Secretan. Paris : Libraire Armand Colin.
1910. Pp. 168. 3 fr. 50.
Grant, Percy Stickney. Socialism and Christianity. New York:
Brentano's. 1910. Pp. ix -f 203.
Kent, Grace Helen, and Rosanoff, A. J. A Study of Association in In-
sanity. Reprinted from American Journal of Insanity, Vol. LXVIL,
Nos. 1 and 2. 1910.
Ostwald, Wilhelm. Natural Philosophy. Translated by Thomas Selzer.
New York : Henry Holt and Company. 1910. Pp. ix -f- 193. $1.00.
Paulhan, Fr. La logique de la contradiction. Paris : Felix Alcan. 1911.
Pp. 183. 2 fr. 50.
Starch, Daniel. Principles of Advertising. Madison: University Co-
operative Co. 1910. Pp. 67.
Wodehouse, Helen. The Presentation of Reality. Cambridge: Univer-
sity Press. 1910. Pp. x + 163. $1.00.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE American Philosophical Association held its tenth annual meet-
ing at Princeton University on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, De-
cember 27, 28, and 29, 1910, in accordance with announcements already
published. The program extended through three sessions, which were
well attended and marked by vigorous discussion. On Tuesday afternoon
Professor and Mrs. Hibben received the members of the association at
their home. In the evening the retiring president, Professor Charles M.
Bakewell, of Yale University, read his address on " The Problem of
28 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Transcendence." After the address the members of the association were
informally entertained at the Nassau Club. On the evening of Wednesday
the association joined in the annual smoker at the Princeton Inn. At the
business meeting called on Wednesday afternoon, officers for the ensuing
year were elected as follows : president, Professor Frederick J. E. Wood-
bridge, of Columbia University; vice-president, Professor Walter T. Mar-
vin, of Rutgers College ; secretary-treasurer, Professor Edward G. Spauld-
ing, of Princeton University ; new members of the executive committee, to
serve for two years, Professor Dickinson S. Miller, of Columbia Univer-
sity, and Professor Theodore de Laguna, of Bryn Mawr College. A fuller
notice of the meeting of the association will appear in a later number of
the JOURNAL.
THE American Psychological Association held its annual meeting at
Minneapolis, December 29, 30, and 31, in affiliation with the American
Association for the Advancement of Science and a number of other sci-
entific associations.
THE Fourth International Congress of Philosophy will meet during
the Easter vacation in 1911 at Bologna. The Committee of the Congress
invites cooperation from all who interest themselves in the questions of
philosophy. Contributions are to be addressed to the General Secretary,
Professor Giulio Cesare Ferrari, Bologna, Piazza Calderini 2. The sub-
scription fee to the Congress is twenty-five francs. A program will be
sent on application to the secretary.
PROFESSOR JAMES R. ANGELL, of the University of Chicago, will give
three lectures at the Union College in January and February. They will
be known as the Ichabod Spencer lectureship series, and are supported by
the endowment of $75,000 for the department of philosophy which was re-
cently made by Mrs. Catherine Leavitt, of Washington, in memory of her
father, Ichabod Spencer.
THE Huxley lecture at the University of Birmingham was delivered on
November 23 by Professor Percy Gardner, professor of classical archeol-
ogy in the University of Oxford. The subject of the address was " Ra-
tionalism and Science in relation to Social Movements."
A DESPATCH from Munich says that the oath disavowing modernism,
required of theological professors by the Vatican, has caused a schism in
the faculty at the University of Munich. One professor has retired from
the church.
PROFESSOR JOSIAH ROYCE of Harvard University has accepted the invi-
tation of the trustees of Lake Forest University to deliver the next course
of Bross lectures at Lake Forest, Illinois, in November, 1911.
THE Henry Sidgwick memorial lecture, at Cambridge University, was
given by Sir George Darwin, K.C.B., F.R.S., on " William and Caroline
Herschel," in the hall of Newnham College, on December 3.
THE Herbert Spencer lecture at Oxford on " Evolution, Darwinian and
Spencerian," was delivered by Professor R. Meldola, F.R.S., on De-
cember 8.
4.1
VOL. VIII. No. 2 JANUARY 19, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE GOODNESS AND BEAUTY OF TRUTH. II
V
IN our running review we have traced the development of a great
conception, that of a being whose character is at once perfect
truth and perfect goodness and perfect beauty. At the outset this
being is an Emperor-God, throned above a world which is his foot-
stool ; at the end the being is the veritable anima mundi regarded as
the saving transfiguration of a blotched and blemished world of ex-
perience.
At the outset the truth and goodness and beauty of God could
be made to seem at least imaginatively consistent with the falsities
and evils and ugliness of life owing to the dramatic separation of
creator and creation, of king and kingdom, of judge and judged.
At the end we find the vividness of experience is too blindingly real
to permit the mind to perceive and hold those logical subtleties which
seek to eliminate sin and error merely by putting a new face on a
sullied universe : the transcendental outlook may mean salvation, but
it is not the salvation for which a sick and distressful humanity
yearns.
Is the conception of God, then the Christian conception bank-
rupt? Is there no counsel for a feverish and distempered age save
the sparge rosas of a Horace, no solace save an Omar's pitiful flytings
with Fate ?
Frankly, the orthodox conception, whether Hebraic, deistic, or
transcendental, in so far as it rests upon the metaphysical trini-
tarianism which unites in the divine person all the goodness and
beauty and truth of the world, making these the world's whole truth
frankly, this conception is bankrupt. It runs against the grain of
experience, and however easy it is for human nature to hold to faiths
that are contrary to reason, it is impossible for it long to continue
in beliefs that cross the testimony of eyes and ears and inquisitive
fingers: even the doubting Thomas was convinced of his Lord's
beatific being by the touch of his grievous corporeal wounds.
29
30 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
But the orthodox conception is by no means the only possible, nor
even the only Christian, conception of the divine nature. Along
with Hebrew and Greek, Persian doctrines entered into the making
of Christianity. Historically, to be sure, Manichasan dualism has
always been heresy orthodox Christianity would none of it but
the tale of history is yet in the telling, and in the modern reversion
to Omar's keen Persian sense of a twy-bladed living we seem to find
the heresy resurgent, as ever it must be so long as experience itself
is Manichaean.
In its essence the Manichaean conception is this : The universe is
an interweave of good and evil, of ugliness and beauty. Truth is no
attribute of a part of these qualities, denied of the other parts; the
powers of darkness are as real as the powers of light : they are gen-
uine powers, capable of designing and wreaking ill. And God is no
embodiment of truth 's totality ; rather he is all goodness and beauty,
the leader of the powers of light against the powers of darkness in a
struggle that is eternal.
God, on this view, is neither all-knowing nor all-powerful. The
struggle in which he is engaged the struggle which appears to us
as the evolution of the world, as the dramatic action of creation is
no illusory, theatrical struggle ; it is a real and tense conflict in which
ach combatant, the good and the evil, must be eternally vigilant or
eternally overcome.
The part of man in this struggle is heroic. Man is placed by his
creator in the van of the conflict against the powers of cosmic night,
and placed there because there is real and urgent need of human
prowess in the fight. It is the post of honor and of danger, and the
reward of valiancy and fortitude is the glory of conquest over the
enemy of God and man.
In the Hebrew view, man is the creature and servitor of his all-
powerful Lord and King. It is no human part to lift pretending
<?yes to the awful majesty of the divine ruler or curiously strive to
pierce the veil of immensity which dimly magnifies the huge and
distant seat of the Almighty : "He holdeth back the face of his throne
and spreadeth his cloud upon it. ' ' In the Persian view, on the other
hand, man is the comrade and helper of God. Even Khayyam,
though the pall of Moslem fatalism had robbed this partnership of
its militant spirit, yet feels in a wistful, hypothetic mood the tug of
its friendly humanism :
Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire?
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 31
"Could you and I with Him conspire!" . . . The strength of this
humanistic heresy lies just in the fact that "yu and I" are valued
and needed partners in his combat with evil and ugliness. Man is
given a doughty and dignified position in "the Scheme of Things,"
and because God himself owns his need of man the divine wisdom
and beauty become object of a chivalrous and devoted love rather
than of a prostrate adoration.
This is humanism a philosophy and theology of experience as
we know and name experience in the chance and change of every-day
living, experience raw and fresh and untransmuted. It is true to
life. It is not untrue to religion. Is it false to logic ? I believe not.
Near the beginning of this essay I said that the identification of
all truth with the goodness and beauty of God could not have satis-
fied human reason save for the duplicitous meaning of the measures
of truth, the duplicity of a goodness that is in part beauty and in
part something other than beauty. Let us ask more narrowly after
the relationship of these ideas.
The values of truth and by this I mean the qualities of realities
which make them seem worth while to human living are of two
sorts : they are moral and they are esthetic. No matter which stand-
ard we are concerned with, the desirable truths, the realities that do
seem worth while, we call the Good. "The Good," says Aristotle,
"is that at which all things aim"; and Plato before him, as I have
already quoted, has defined the Good as "that for the sake of which
something else is done, " as an end of action.
Now for expediency in talk we may be justified in speaking of
custom and convenance, of merely moral conduct, as good; but it is
certainly not a good in this teleological sense. Goodness in conduct
is a means, not an end; it is social facilitation, but society exists for
something other than mere smooth running. To quote Aristotle yet
again : ; ' He who would duly enquire about the best form of a state
ought first to determine which is the most eligible life"; for "the
end of individuals and of states is the same," viz., the ideal life; and
"the good man as such is the measure of everything." In other
words, moral goodness is good only as an instrument to ideal living,
in which alone is the truth of goodness.
And this ideal living, does it represent a value that is moral in
some other than the root meaning of "moral," as designating the
mutual concession which makes human intercourse possible, or does
it represent a value that is properly to be termed "esthetic"? I
regard the latter view as the feasible one. For if we look at human
ideals of life's value in the broadest mode, I see but three types of
experience that stand out as goals, proximate or ultimate, of men's
conscious endeavor. There is, first, happiness; there is, second,
32 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
mystic union with divinity; there is, third, the zest of creative en-
deavor. Now all three of these are types of experience, of wstkesis,
of realization rather than of preparation. They are in each case the
end and object of moral conduct, and in themselves are non-moral.
Each is properly esthetic,. though of course it is doing violence to our
common speech to infer that each thereby involves an ideal of beauty.
But let us consider them case by case.
The ideal of happiness may be (1) mere sensuous delight, the
Cyrenaic's lustful indulgence of perception and appetite; it is that
pleasure for the power of which, says Plato, your noble nature feels
"an instinctive repugnance and extreme detestation." Again (2)
happiness may mean, as Aristotle would have it, "virtuous activity,"
but Aristotle reasons in a circle, for "virtue" is for him "human
excellence," and his whole eudaBmonism resolves virtue into an un-
defined "right living": agatkon is in eudcemonia, eudcemonia is in
arete, whence agatkon is in arete, it is a fruitless quest. Finally (3)
happiness may mean supersensuous ecstasy, be it the intoxication
of thought or the bliss of beatific vision. If happiness have any
other meaning than these three, then it is an incident and not an end
of conduct.
Now the third of these meanings I take to be identical with that
ideal of mystic union which regards such union as a state of con-
scious felicity. For mystic union may, of course, be of the Oriental,
pessimistic type an "absorption" which is no more nor less than
annihilation. But if annihilation is not meant, if what is meant be
a state of unalloyed and unaffected bliss, then we are back to the
paradisal ideal of orthodox Christianity, and this ideal I have main-
tained is out of the modern temper.
I do not question that some men may find their life's ideal in the
most material Cyrenaicism. I do not doubt that many ascetic souls
have sold the happiness of this life for felicity in a life to come, or
that many saintly ones have found in this life moments of bliss that
have effaced for them all sense of life's encompassing evils. But I
do affirm that for the normal mind of our period such ideals are im-
possible as the true and universal measures of goodness.
There remains, then, but the one other form of cesthesis, the truly
esthetic zest of creative endeavor. This is truly esthetic because it
identifies, as Plato was ever instinctively identifying, the good and
the beautiful. The essence of the ideal has ever been beauty, in so
far as the ideal has affected human conduct: it is the state not yet
realized, but challenging the effort to realization, the pattern w^hich,
because it is an ever-recessive pattern, is ever-divine, whose actualiza-
tion is the motive and the despair and hence the life of an evolving
world. In the light of our meager achievements imagination charts
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 33
mighty conquests of the domain of darkness, patterning empires of
wonder peopled by forms lovely and divine, while beyond them and
beyond in the bowels of the cosmic gloom, dimly emergent, yet
nobler gods uprear Titanic forms.
Life is action. Action is condemnation of the present reality for
the sake of the ideal. We live in our idealizations, which is to say
that we live in the conquering endeavor of an ever-creative world.
For a living God as for living men there are beauties to be attained
and there are imperfections to be overcome. This is Manichaeism,
and it is the philosophy of evolution as evolution is manifested to us
in mortal experience.
VI
Passing from the consideration of the Good to that of its opposite,
we find, I believe, that the Manichsean view is the only one that gives
us a square and downright solution of the problem of evil. Evils
are of four sorts : immorality, sin, pain, and ugliness. Each of these,
on the view taken, is as genuine a reality as is its opposite. By
naming bad conduct immorality we do not make it mere absence of
good conduct; by calling evils defects and imperfections we do not
transform them into mere privatives of the good; they are genuine
and forceful and creative in their own rights. We are honest with
experience, accepting its several testimonies at their face values.
And in the case of the bad, as in the case of the good, we make
distinctions. Immorality, for example, resolves into inexpediency;
evil between man and man is hindrance of the good life ; it must be
dealt with as a problem and not as a calamity, cosmic and over-
powering.
Further, it lies between man and man and not between man
and God. For the evil that obtains between man and God we have
another name sin. If sin be a social transgression, after the anal-
ogy of our transgressions against mankind, then we have in it but a
special case of immorality. But by sin we mean something more
than this, something that comes home to the transgressor; sin is a
breaking of troth with one's own and acknowledged ideals; it is a
denial of idealization, a denial of life, and its inevitable wage is
death. To sin is to violate the noble and outrage the divine in hu-
man nature.
Immorality, then, is inexpediency, human inexpediency, and it
is bad because it hurts the chances of ideal living. It is not a rela-
tion that holds between man and God, and we have no right to ask,
and make no sense in asking, that God be moral: "How should a
man be just with God?" But that which outrages the ideal, that
which is treasonable to the good, that is sin, and of that God takes
account.
34 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Of the two objective phases of the bad, pain and ugliness, we can
make similar division. For ugliness is the very denial of ideal liv-
ing ; it is evil made into a goal and an end ; it is the utter thwarting
of that beauty which is the spur of man's endeavor. Pain, on the
other hand, is but a condition of struggle, a condition, even, of no-
bility and ideality and of the being of beauty itself. ''There are
combinations of pleasure and pain in lamentations," says Plato,
"and in tragedy and comedy, not only on the stage, but on the
greater stage of human life. ' '
In ugliness and sin, therefore, are given the measures of the
truth of badness in the universe, whereas pain which is a symptom
of a striving world-nature, and faulty endeavor which is a symptom
of striving human nature, are signs of life and of an up-struggling
mind; they are token of cosmic health, if health means progress.
Some of the sorriest muddles in which human thinking has been
embogged have been the consequence of confusion of the instru-
mental and the final goods and bads of experience. We have sadly
over-strained our adjectives in applying "good" and "bad" to so
diverse contrasts. A shrewd instance is Milton's nobly infernal
Satan throned in hell,
by merit raised
To that bad eminence.
Indeed Milton's whole purpose comes precious near fiasco from
the very fact that Satan's sin is mainly immorality, whereas his
Titanic revolt against Omnipotence is in itself beautiful. What
makes beauty in human character is never its morality, but always
its nobility, and it is therefore not wonderful that the theologian
should have lost to the poet, for the poet's insight was the true one.
The whole error of asceticism has lain just here. In its effort
to avoid the inexpediencies of life it has denied the possibility of
beautiful living. The theological result is a fearful dichotomy of
existence: a wallowing in ugliness here below for the sake of a safe
and tame paradise hereafter. When I was in my sixth or seventh
year I had a dream which so stung my conscience that its memory
has remained ever fresh. In my dream I thought that the choice
of heaven or hell was placed before me. Heaven, as I saw it, was
full of silvery clouds and silvery-winged harpers and there was a
great light in its midst which was the throne of God, and it was
reached by three little wooden stairs. Hell was a battlemented castle
rising from a bottomless gloom, yet below where I stood so that I
could look over into it. Now in my dream I knew that I ought to
choose heaven, but I looked down into hell once, and twice, and
thrice, and I saw in it braziers of burning fire, and demons black
and red and demons winged and demons in the shapes of fantastic
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 35
and monstrous beasts, and I saw there a tall knight clad all in sable
armor . . . and in my dream I chose hell.
In this dream the troublesome "ought" that lay upon my con-
science was moral; the choice was esthetic and instinctive. In the
tale of "Aucassin and Nicolette," Aucassin answers the threat of
hell in this wise:
In Paradise what have I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to
have Nicolete, my sweet lady that I love so well. For into Paradise go none
but such folk as I shall tell thee now: Thither go these same old priests, the
halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower continually before the
altars and in the crypts; and such folk as wear old amices and old clouted
frocks, and naked folk and shoeless, and covered with sores, perishing of hunger
and thirst, and of cold, and of little ease. These be they that go into Paradise,
and with them have I naught to make. But into Hell would I fain go; for into
Hell fare the goodly clerks, and goodly knights that fall in tourneys and great
wars, and stout men at arms, and all men noble. With these would I liefly go.
And thither pass the sweet ladies and courteous that have two lovers, or three,
and their lords also thereto. Thither goes the gold, and the silver, and cloth of
vair, and cloth of gris, and harpers and makers, and the prince of this world.
With these would I gladly go, let me but have with me Nicolete, my sweetest
lady. 1
Between the tame felicities of an ascetic's paradise and the red
and burning magnificence of hell there is but one choice, and that
the Pagan choice. Between a world without suffering and a world
without nobility we can not hesitate. And I think there is no more
terrible because none so human arraignment of the God of the
theologians than in the fifth canto of the Divine Comedy :
Se fosse amico il Re dell' universe,
Noi pregheremmo lui per la tua pace,
Poiche hai pieta del nostro mal perverso.
Francesca is infinitely nobler than the Most Catholic King of the
Universe, infinitely nobler than the God who has punished her ; and
so, in the face of that infinite justice he is sent to uphold, the poet
justifies her:
Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,
Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,
Che, come vedi, ancor non mi abbandona.
Her human love survives triumphant mid the torments of hell, and
it ennobles hell, and it glorifies hell.
Surely it is no light fact that the lasting appeal of every great
religion has been its humanism and its heroism. It is not the dis-
tant perfections of God, but the near glow of the divine in the
human, of the divinity humanized, that has drawn and held the
hearts of men. This is wonderfully shown in the great religious
1 Andrew Lang's translation.
36 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
dramatic poems. In the "Prometheus" of ^sehylus the powerful
and vengeful Zeus is forever ugly; it is for the Titan, punished
because he "loved men overmuch," that the tragedy awakens a
noble and enduring pity. In "Job" it is the colossal faith of the
patriarch, "though he slay me yet will I trust him," rather than
the conduct of a deity who makes of his servant a sport and a
spectacle, that renders the book so passionately and so grievously
human. And in Milton's epic the shudder with which we see paid
the grim wage of the heaven-fallen rout
Sublime with expectation when to see
In triumph issuing forth their glorious Chief;
They saw, but other sight instead, a crowd
Of ugly Serpents,
this shudder at least shares their "horrid sympathy." In each case,
Prometheus against Zeus, Job against Jehovah, Satan against the
Almighty, it is the mortal heroism of the creature rather than the
immortal might of the Creator that urges in our breasts its answer-
ing passion.
From the beginning the element in religion that has appealed
most potently to mankind has been the struggle against evil, the
struggle after good. And the heroes of religion have been the-
doughty leaders of this struggle, have been the saviors of men.
Orpheus and Mithras and Mani, Moses and Mohammed, Buddha and
Christ, all these have been heroic leaders of heroic men in conflict
with an encompassing and powerful worker of ill. Salvation, to be
felt as real, must be felt as a rescue from a real and terrible danger,
and the savior, to be a hero among the saved, must perform his
labor at a peril and a cost. Omnipotence and omniscience are out
of place in the drama of redemption, and so the hero of this drama
is never the all-powerful and all-wise creator, but always his hu-
man and suffering delegate.
Those Christians are right who insist that the essential article
of their faith is not the nature of the God they worship, but the life
of Jesus, his son and exemplar. The God who is the sum of per-
fections was Greek and Hindu before he was Christian, and the
intolerable burden of Christian theology has ever been its notion of
an omnipotent and omniprescient creator who could frame a cosmos
with such a core of evil that he must sacrifice for its redemption.
Such a conception is inherently contrary to sense; it violates the
meanings of language; and no metaphysical sublimations can give
it an enduring rationality. But the strength and the essence of the
Christian faith have never resided here. Rather they have been,
and must be, in the life of the Savior of men in him who was
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 37
wearied before he found rest, who was tempted before he was
transfigured, who suffered pain and death before he overcame them.
In the most magnificent of Christian hymns the note that clutches
the souls of men is not the sublimity of the "dies irae," but the
tenderness and pain and compassion of the wonderful stanza
Quaerens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti crucem passus:
Tantus labor non sit cassus!
The link between God and man is mutual ideality, mutual endeavor,
mutual pain: in divine suffering is divine beauty.
What is at once most human and most divine in men is their
power of idealizing life. Amid the balks and hurts and rigors of
experience the soul instinctively selects certain elements to be glori-
fied with beauty, and this glorified life becomes the pattern of de-
sire. Idealization is a kind of dramatization, and like all drama it
selects the pertinent from the haphazard contexts of reality; it is
art, and so is neglectful of non-artistic truths. But because it is art
it possesses the wistfulness of all creative endeavor, and reflects the
huger endeavor of cosmic creation. It spiritualizes life, not by
denying the truth of ugliness and sin, but by proclaiming the un-
conquerable effort of the world to slough these off.
Over and over again Plato darkly affirms the high and perfect
independence of other-world beauty, and yet perhaps his noblest
passage is one in which, for the moment, he withdraws the divine
from the quiet of celestial splendor down into the turbid and aching
imperfection of man 's life ; and so, of the Ideal City he makes Soc-
rates say:
In Heaven there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, which he who desires
may behold, and beholding, may set his own house in order. But whether such
an one exists, or will ever exist in fact, is no matter; for he will live after the
manner of that City, having nothing to do with any other.
Man's life is shot through with imperfections, yet in the vision of
beauty is salvation.
The view that I have set forth is Manichsean and unorthodox,
for it represents evil as real and God as a struggling God, hating
sin because sin is a cosmic danger and hating ugliness because the
creation of beauty is not, nor ever can be, complete. The view is
unorthodox, but it may be that God himself is not orthodox.
H. B. ALEXANDER.
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA.
38 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
DISCUSSION
CAUSE AND GROUND. A REPLY
DR. BOSANQUET'S very interesting discussion of cause and
ground, 1 in that it was elicited by an article of my own, calls
for some reply. I shall, however, endeavor to confine my comments
to two points directly raised in my own article: (1) the difference,
if any, between Dr. Bosanquet's ideal of methodology and my own,
(2) the question whether his treatment of cause and effect is, in fact,
a contribution towards either ideal. The other questions raised in his
discussion, the relation between Hegelianism and pragmatism, the
larger problem of the philosophy of cause, the general utility of
tautology, I shall not attempt to discuss.
The first of these I pass by because I do not think I can rightfully
be called a pragmatist ; 2 certainly I am not competent to defend prag-
matism against the metaphysical school of thought. The second it
will be well to defer because, should it ever come my way to make a
contribution to the philosophy of cause, which is doubtful, I should
prefer to do so de novo, rather than incidentally in a particular con-
troversy. Nor do I think the general utility of tautology relevant to
the matter in hand. The widening of the ground of discussion cer-
tainly enables Dr. Bosanquet to create a pleasing illusion of Platonic
support, but the point with which we are concerned is not whether
an apparent tautology ever actually conveys new information, but
whether a useful purpose is served by Dr. Bosanquet's special treat-
ment of cause and ground.
1. In Dr. Bosanquet's conception of methodology, as expressed in
his third paragraph, I find little with which to disagree. But what
precisely is the meaning of his unnecessarily emphatic and repeated
assertion that it is not the function of philosophy ' ' to teach scientific
men their business"? VvHiat is the business of a scientific man? If
Dr. Bosanquet means to tell us that every worker has his own work,
and that the philosopher is not required to enter the laboratory, or
1 This JOURNAL, Vol. VII., No. 16, p. 438.
2 On this point it is as well to give some brief explanation. My own
position is that of one who approaches philosophy from the scientific side, with
decided views of my own, which I am endeavoring, in every possible way, to put
before the philosophical world. With regard to the controversies that divide
the philosophical world, I usually find, not having myself passed through the
philosophical mill, that they concern matters which are to me of secondary
importance, or of which I have very imperfect knowledge. My principal ground
of sympathy with what is called pragmatism is the demand that philosophy
should have a real practical bearing on science and on every-day life.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 30
to inform the chemist and the physicist how to carry out an experi-
ment, surely that is only a truism. But if he means that the scientist
and the philosopher each inhabits a universe of his own, that they
deal with entirely distinct series of problems, that their spheres never
meet, that their problems are in no way interrelated, that contro-
versy, cooperation, or discussion between them is impossible or out
of place, the falsity of the statement is equally apparent.
The point of my essay, of which a practical example has just beer>
published, 3 is that, when the philosopher undertakes to investigate-
the principles of scientific method, the investigation should be one
which the scientist should not be able to ignore. Let me illustrate
my meaning by a simple analogy. It is clearly and obviously not th:^
function of the science of theoretical mechanics to teach the mechan-
ical engineer his business. The mathematical mechanical theorist
investigates the principles which underlie the complexities of all
types of machinery. He does not attempt to tell the working engi-
neer how to build a bridge. Yet it will be universally admitted thai,
if the working engineer is in no way more competent to design n
bridge by reason of his study of mechanics, there must be something
seriously wrong with theoretical mechanics. Similarly, we are en-
titled to assume that if, as appears to be the case, the study of tho
philosophical analysis of scientific method in no way fits the scientist
to deal more adequately with the problems that are presented to him ,
there is good prima facie evidence that the currently accepted prin-
ciples of methodology are erroneous or inadequate.
2. That this criticism is applicable to the current metaphysical K
treatment of cause and effect, most explicitly stated by Dr. Bosar-
quet, no one, I think, will deny. Nor am I able to see that either h's
very interesting explanation, or his imposing array of authority.,
necessitates the withdrawal of what I have said.
As I stated in the passage which Dr. Bosanquet criticizes, there :"s
a sense in which we can not fully explain anything until we have ex-
plained everything: "No section of phenomena is in reality isolated,
but all take their place in the greater cosmic unity." On this place-
it is clearly illegitimate to speak of particular causes and effects, i
that every phenomenon is in some respects unique, and in that every-
thing is in some way connected with everything else. This is clearly*
3 This JOURNAL, Vol. VII., No. 18, p. 481.
4 1 substitute the term metaphysical for intellectualistic, which latter terr>
Dr. Bosanquet thinks inapplicable to his logic. I used the term, in default of a
better, to express jny opinion that his treatment shows a tendency to too great
abstraction.
40 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Professor Clifford's meaning 5 in the passage to which Dr. Bosanquet
refers, and if it is all that Dr. Bosanquet means, he is open to the
taunt, sometimes levelled at philosophers, of telling us what everyone
knows in language which no one can understand. As I stated before,
' ' the metaphysical unity is an assumption which antedates the whole
investigation. ' '
To do justice to Dr. Bosanquet, he does, in reality, mean more
than this, and it is because he means more that I cited his treatment
of cause and effect as an example of the deficiencies of the current
methodology. For the special interest and value of the conception of
cause and effect (though not necessarily of all descriptive science) is
that, notwithstanding the metaphysical uniqueness of every phe-
nomenon, and the metaphysical unity of the whole universe, certain
events 'can, in fact, be repeated. The interest lies in the repetition
not in the uniqueness. And it was because of the recognition of this
that the treatment of Mill was superior to that of his successors. On
this plane you certainly do, as Mill 6 clearly pointed out, have to
reckon with "plurality of causes," and you do, in many cases, indeed
usually, find the cause clearly and obviously preceding the effect in
time. The horse moves before the cart, if only by a minute fraction
of a second. The point of my criticism was that, if the philosopher
undertakes to write a philosophy of cause, he must start by showing
the utility and the applicability of the conception, and by tracing its
development in the various sciences. From this standpoint, Dr.
Bosanquet 's explicit statement that "he does not in the least imply
that men of science ought to use other ideas than they do use at par-
ticular points in their work, " is a distinct step in advance, as is also
his admission that in chemistry the concept is * ' fully in place. ' ' When
the philosopher has accomplished this preliminary, he should then
show that the contradiction between the popular and scientific con-
ception of cause and effect, and the metaphysical unity, the assump-
tion of which underlies all scientific investigation, is only apparent.
Now the empirical investigation of the idea of cause in the various
sciences, or, in other words, the putting of ' ' methods, processes, ideas,
5 With the best will in the world, I am unable to see the exact relevance of
Dr. Bosanquet's reference to the " descriptive " movement in modern science.
This development, if regarded as a metaphysical theory, I will say in passing,
I believe to be mistaken, and I have in a previous article pointed out some of
the errors of one of its most prominent representatives (see Mind, January,
1910, particularly p. 52), but with this, as with other matters, I should prefer
to deal, if at all, explicitly. Here I would merely remark that a totally different
metaphysical theory, which dispenses with the idea of cause for the purposes
of practical science, is hardly a support to Dr. Bosanquet's expressed desire to
put the idea in its place.
8 " Logic," Vol. I., p. 504.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 41
in their place" is the element that I miss in his logic and in that of
others of his school. My incidental criticism, to which I still adhere,
is that while it ''maintains its relation to the metaphysics from
which it has been obtained, it has lost its connection with science."
I desire to add, however, that the (admissions and) explanations to
be found in Dr. Bosanquet's discussion, if they are more fully de-
veloped in subsequent work, will go some way towards remedying
the deficiency.
H. S. SHELTON.
ASHFORD, MIDDLESEX, ENGLAND.
CAUSE AND GEOUND. A REJOINDER
MR. SHELTON has kindly shown me his paper, and suggested
that I should make an addendum. I fear it would be difficult
for us to come to an agreement ; for Mr. Shelton, as I judge from his
foot-note 2, approaches philosophy rather from the outside, and de-
mands that its treatment of its material shall be adapted to his
questions. And I think it very likely that it will not be able to sat-
isfy him, even if, as I believe, its treatment and material are fuller
than he has trained himself to recognize. Offering more than is easily
grasped causes misapprehension, as well as offering too little.
The question is, he says, whether such a treatment of causation
as mine serves a useful purpose. Well, what is a useful purpose?
Mine, in this case, is to satisfy a great human interest by helping to
clear up the nature of knowledge. His, I fear, is to subserve the
progress of natural sciences. I see nothing more useful in the latter
of these than in the former. I do not think Mr. Shelton would say
" useful = conducive to 'practical' interests." If he did, we should
have to drop our discussion till we could talk out pragmatism. I did
think he had leanings that way because of his demand for practical
science from a branch of philosophy, and that was why I held prag-
matism relevant.
But he may take me on the true ground of philosophy, and say
that I don't help to clear up the nature of knowledge. Now I think
that he really has not quite seen how entirely relevant my argument
was. For he supposes that my references to tautology, and to the
descriptive view of science, and to what he thinks ' ' a totally different
metaphysical doctrine," the doctrine of ground, are irrelevant. But
here, I submit, he has not quite got inside his subject. For the point
lies in the unavoidable transformation of the conception of "cause
and effect" according to the phase of common sense or of science
with which we may be dealing. And all the points I referred to lie
42 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
well within the catena of meanings which must be thus constructed
that is to say, the actual significations of cause and effect, or the cor-
responding ideas- (e. g., in geometry, where cause and effect can not be
used at all), as they are employed every day in the practise of the
sciences. There is no question of the metaphysical unity of the uni-
verse or any heterogeneous conception. The phases described are the
actual practise of science, concealed from the common-sense public
by bad popular tradition.
Let us test the matter by the importance to be assigned to repeti-
tion. I said that the important thing for science was reference to a
ground, i. e., systematic determination. Mr. Shelton says it is repeti-
tion. This, in my view, is just the popular fallacy that induction lies
in generalization from one or a few cases to many. It is wholly op-
posed to the practise of science and the theory of the best logicians.
Take the fact that water boils at 212 Fahr. at sea level. After one
strict experiment, the repetition of this fact is absolutely without
scientific interest. The interest lies in the further development of the
facts and theory of barometric pressure or the volatilization of fluids.
In such a development cause ipso facto passes into ground. We no
longer speak of things and events, but of laws and systems of condi-
tions.
All I have done is to interpret the inductive theory of cause and
the real practise of science. This, I submit, is more convenient, as
well as nearer truth, than to work with a conception like cause which
changes in your hands at every step in scientific progress. This is
clearly what Clifford meant, and it is the whole tendency of the
science of biology, as it approaches, on the one hand, the organic,
and, on the other, the mathematical ideal. The category of cause can
not be used in either of these types of knowledge. It belongs to the
level of common sense and elementary observation.
It is very disagreeable to me to seem to defend the merits of my
own ''Logic." But really I am speaking here of the whole tendency
of modern logical theory. Of course my own book is full of defects.
Still, it has the outline of the doctrine which is the a, b, c of the mod-
ern theory of knowledge that the sciences create their own methods
for their own purposes, but yet these methods are mere working
hypotheses, good in so far as they work, but differing greatly in their
claim to anything like truth. There is no "admission" nor a step
in advance in this doctrine. It is the very raison d'etre of logical
theory. 1
BERNARD BOSANQUET.
OXSHOTT, SURREY.
1 Any one interested in the detail of the theory of causation would do well
to refer to Mr. Joseph's " Introduction to Logic," Clarendon Press.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 43
POSTSCRIPT
IN order to avoid drawing Dr. Bosanquet into further controversy,
I add only the following points of explanation :
1. Dr. Bosanquet, I am sure, will do me the justice to note that
I have at no time expressed an opinion concerning the content of
philosophy. My essay refers only to methodology.
2. I fully agree with him that to clear up the notion of knowledge
is a useful purpose and it is on the philosophical ground that I am
meeting him.
3. I do not assert that repetition is the important thing for sci-
ence, but merely that it is an essential element of the concept of
cause and effect.
4. The words ' ' admissions and ' ' which I have placed in brackets,
and which Dr. Bosanquet thinks inapplicable to his statement, can
be omitted without weakening the force of the argument.
5. I did not mention Dr. Bosanquet on account of any special
defects in his work, but because he is the most prominent exponent
of the metaphysical treatment of the philosophy of cause.
"With this explanation, I leave the matter to the judgment of
others; but I desire to say in conclusion that, though I am unable
to withdraw the substance of my criticism, I think, on looking once
more through my essay, that one or two of the phrases might, with
advantage, be modified. But no discourtesy was intended to a
philosophical writer much more experienced than myself.
H. S. SHELTON.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Herders und Rants Aesthetik. GUNTHER JACOBY. Leipzig. 1907. Pp.
ix + 348.
In an age when the historical viewpoint is regarded as important in
the development of any subject, a book deserves attention that is able to
reconstruct a prominent historical epoch with reference to the influences,
meanings, and relative values embodied in it. The work's significance is
multiplied if it brings to light ideas that are vital for our age, that can
exercise a stimulating and controlling power over contemporary theo-
rizing. Such a book lies before us.
The investigation is divided into three parts. Of these the first is a
general historical introduction, of minor importance save to those whose
chief interest is in historical facts and relations. The second is an
exposition of Herder's completed esthetics in both its general principles
and its application to the different arts. The third is a critical compari-
son of Herder and Kant. The book is well supplied with table of con-
44 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tents, indices of subject-matter and persons, and references to the writings
of Herder and Kant used. The author's main dependence for Parts II.
and III. was upon Herder's " Kalligone " and Kant's " Kritik der Urteils-
kraft." His problem neglecting the personal grounds of Herder's polemic,
was concerned with the difference between the two esthetics in method and
content; and he estimates Kant's views by the standards embodied in
Herder's writings, rather than the reverse, as has been the historical
custom.
In order to estimate the present-day value of Herder's esthetics, we
must give brief attention first to its fundamental principles and then
to the definition and relations of esthetic experience expressed by his
theory. For Herder the kernel of that experience is feeling, but it is
sympathetic and directed to objects, and thus elevated above blind imme-
diacy. The object is mediated by the esthetic concept, which is well dis-
tinguished from both practical and logical concepts: it is not concerned
with personal interests and the part that things play therein, nor with
abstract qualities and their quantitative relations; it is not emasculated,
its emotional and vital factors have not been eliminated; its virtue is not
abstract definition, but inner intuitive clearness, though this is conditioned
by sensory, intellectual and emotional factors. It varies with the object
and the observer's acquaintance therewith; it differs for the beautiful and
the sublime in the prominence given to individual nature or general type.
Evidently esthetic conception involves Beseelung, a kind of animism, vital
imagination, or objective sympathy, which is not fanciful, but determined
by the essential spiritual nature of the object. This esthetic Beseelung
(cf. Lipps's Einfiihlung} is viewed by Herder as more nai've and original
than philosophical animism (though its admitted modification by science
and culture seems incompatible with this view), therefore Herder's
esthetics is to be regarded as the foundation of his epistemology rather
than the converse.
Perfection is a central concept of Herder's esthetics. It is a relative
and normative concept, predicating an object's approximation to the ideal
and its place in a scale of values. Herder distinguished the subjective
and objective types, *. e., (1) the enhancement of mental functioning in
the observer, ease and adequacy of the knowing process, of which pleasure
is a sign, and (2) the perfection involved in the happy inner constitution
of the object. Each involves an organic unity of the manifold. There
is a mutual, significant connection of spiritual welfare and bodily perfec-
tion such that either becomes the symbol of the other. The world is
viewed as containing a gradation of perfections from the minerals up to
man, so there should be a gradation in the feeling attitudes of their sym-
pathetic appreciation from the agreeable of the lower senses up to the
sublime. The beautiful : the sublime : : lower perfection : higher. Herder
rejects Kant's sharp division of the esthetic from the teleological and the
perfect.
For Herder the sublime is more dynamic, more mediate than the
beautiful; it contains a moment of wonder and awe, of pain and effort,
later overcome. His views may be contrasted with those of Kant: his
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 45
criterion of the sublime is found in the consciousness of the observer,
while Kant places it more in the nature of the object; for him the un-
pleasant is a transient moment, for Kant it is permanent; and he empha-
sizes the relativity of the sublime to the stage of evolution. For Herder
the two types of sublimity are marked respectively by (1) organic com-
plexity rather than bodily greatness, and (2) reference to natural vs.
supernatural morality.
As to the definition and relations of the esthetic, Dr. Jacoby finds
Kant's three categories inaccurate. (1) " Universality " and " necessity "
are not satisfactorily defined and are finally found to apply not to the
esthetic experience per se, but to the judgment about the nature of the
object. (2) " Freedom from interest " refers to the constitution of the
subject, not of the object; but the subject is over-individual and esthetic
judgment and taste are a priori, independent of the nature of the object
and of personal desire. Evidently the term " interest " is here given an
arbitrary meaning. For this negative category Herder substitutes the
positive one " sympathetic," which implies that the object, in its own
constitution, independent of the subject, is the content of esthetic feeling.
(3) For Kant's " purposiveness without purpose " Herder substitutes real
" perfection," for non-conceptual apprehension he substitutes the con-
ceptual mode which is discriminating in its evaluations on an objective
basis. While Kant starts with the lower forms of beauty as typical,
Herder starts with the higher, more complex forms which contain intel-
lectual elements ; but the reaction to the higher forms ia really the simpler
and the easier of explanation: sympathy, Beseelung, and discriminative
conception are more evidently present in dramatic or musical appreciation
than in the attitude to simple geometric designs. It is easier to explain
the lower from the higher forms than conversely: therefore Kant stands
for discontinuity of the higher and lower, Herder for continuity. In fact,
while Herder emphasizes the continuity both between the various types of
esthetic experience and between esthetic and extra-esthetic experience,
Kant adopts the opposite attitude in both cases.
On the relation of the esthetic to the intellectual, a brief comparison
of Kant and Herder will be in order. For Kant the essential factor in
appreciation is imaginative activity; this mediates between sense and
understanding, but is not conceptual ; it is concerned only with the formal
relations of the sense material, not with its meaning, and it does not refer
to an object. Herder and Kant agree that in mere form appreciation
there is an absence of explicit logical concepts and of ability to give
reasons for one's enjoyment. But while Kant makes this non-conceptual
immediacy central and all-important as the criterion and differentia of
esthetic experience, Herder on the contrary assumes the gradation and
continuity of experience before mentioned, and for him enjoyment with-
out thought is the derived and simplified form of a clear knowledge of
perfection.
We noticed above the importance to Herder of the esthetic concept
which, while different in direct purpose and constitution from the logical
concept, must be said to be a partly intellectual instrument. The norma-
46 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tive nature of the esthetic implies the ideal supremacy of the intellect in
appreciation. For Herder the esthetic appreciation of nature, involving-
Beseelung, is conditioned by a double knowledge: (a) of one's own inner
life and expression, and (fr) of the external constitution and conditions of
existence of the object. Esthetic imagination and judgment are liable to
error in particulars: that nature is a spiritual life is intuitively certain,
but the what and how of this life are uncertain, i. e., the special mode of
conceiving it as a basis for esthetic sympathy depends on scientific theory.
The danger of erroneous taste is well illustrated in the case of the ugly:
as apparent ugliness may not be real ugliness, there arises the normative
demand for comprehension as a means of purifying taste. Opposition
may exist between approbation by the finer senses and disgust by the
coarser, or vice versa. Past scientific acquisitions enter into esthetic-
enjoyment as conscious, immediate, intuitive, and instrumental factors;
as knowledge is not their aim, theoretical valuation is absent and intel-
lectual processes involve no disturbance. Here a pertinent question
would be, how far the science and reflection absorbed in art or apprecia-
tion must be the product of the individual's own efforts, and how far the
individual may have acquired the results of others' efforts by imitation,,
sympathy, and even esthetic appreciation.
In Herder's view esthetic experience implies the unity of the whole
being of man, intellectual, moral, and esthetic; it brooks no unresolved
contradiction between these, esthetic judgment agrees with logical and
moral judgment. The sublime, and especially the morally sublime, is a
feeling for the ideal, and is dynamic. In moral ugliness, the morally
obnoxious becomes esthetically unpleasant; the standard common to both
is the norm of spiritual perfection. Esthetics, ethics, and nature philos-
ophy are all normative, their content is worth judgments. Taste and
conduct share in the pursuit of perfection, which is conceived as the goal
of nature. Perfection of both object and subject is an esthetic requisite,
involving therefore the wise selection of a worthy object, accurate appre-
hension, the development of the human spirit, and dependence on the
sanction of the reason. Truly, Herder stands for " Reason in Art."
It is already evident that esthetic experience implies education.
Esthetic education gets its sanction (Jacoby, p. 140) first in the fact of
the plasticity, variableness, and evolution of psychic dispositions, and
second in the normative nature of appreciation, involving, as it does,
objectivity and the possibility of erroneous taste. We have found beauty,
the sublime, the perfect, and the ugly to be relative concepts: relative to
each other, relative to a real world of nature and art, and relative to
humanity, its history, interests, powers, and degree of culture. The
validity of taste thus depends on a capacity developed through education,
but this necessity of training taste in no way impugns the claims of
esthetic experience to validity, any more than the like need for conscience-
renders all morality groundless and worthless. Herder maintains that
all education should be an advance from lower (or false) to higher (or
true) grades of the sublimity reaction; i. e., all true education is at once
esthetic and moral. The ideal of human culture and progress is found
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 47
in beauty and sublimity; but it is a spiritual and dynamic beauty: the
functional value of the esthetic is never lost to sight.
A brief summary may enable the reader better to grasp the contrast
between the positions of Kant and Herder on esthetics. We find in Kant
the apriori method vs. the experiential method in Herder; the stress on
form is opposed to stress on significance; judgment instead of feeling is
the point of departure; an apriori subjectivity takes the place of the
objectivity of experience; the point of view is absolutistic rather than
normative; the disjunction of the various types of esthetic experience is
emphasized rather than their continuity; there is isolation rather than
functional connection of the esthetic experience with other phases of
experience, or the connection remains a mechanical and external one
rather than organic; appreciation is non-conceptual vs. conceptual, and
disinterested rather than sympathetic. These generalizations hold in the
main, though of course there are some exceptions, and some inconsist-
encies in the authors, as in the place they assign to intellectual factors,
and again Herder's method of experience.
Space forbids a discussion of detailed criticisms many of which will
occur to the reader. Herder's method is more artistic than logical, it
is more intuitive than strictly inductive, ideas springing from his per-
sonal experience with little subjection to further tests. One may com-
plain that he gives a mythological interpretation of the world, that there
is too much of teleology and animism, which even though appropriate to
esthetics is quite out of joint with science, and that therefore he forces
appreciation and knowledge into a union in which there is no fitness and
in which the latter loses its true character. Is there any genuine intel-
lectual mediation involved in appreciation, and if so, is this provided for
by Herder's esthetic concept? Again, what is the relation of subject and
object in esthetic experience: are they merged in the immediate? or if
distinguished, is the subject or the object to be regarded as the more
fundamental ? Herder seems to lend himself to each of these three views
under different circumstances; no doubt to distinguish the attitudes of
the appreciator and the philosopher would conduce to clearness. But
along with his valuable suggestiveness, some defect of definiteness and
consistency must naturally be admitted in him.
Finally the criticism, partly valid, will occur to many that the idea of
continuity, whether between the phases of esthetic experience or between
it and other phases of life, is developed by Herder at the expense of
important distinctions. For instance, Jacoby's readers may not be able
accurately to differentiate the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, and the
perfect, as Herder views them. This is certainly a defect; but one should
not on that account overlook the importance of Herder's insistence that
the phases of experience are in fact not wholly separable, that they have
something in common, that they are organically connected and that one
type shades over into another by fine gradations. The emphasis of con-
tinuity brings one nearer the more immediate experiences of life and
their felt meanings than does the emphasis of sharp divisions. Herder's
view at least has the merit of reminding us that the whole value and
48 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reality, the essence of an experience, is not to be confused with its differ-
entia, the distinguishing mark of a thing is not the thing itself.
Dr. Jacoby's work perhaps makes Herder out to be more systematic
and consistent than he is, or at least than he is demonstrated to be. Thus
it is natural that some important theoretical and logical problems should
be suggested, but left undiscussed or unsolved. But perhaps, after all,
Herder's artistic intuitions are of more value than much system. For
this reason and because his viewpoint and results harmonize so well with
some of the leading and congenial traits of contemporary philosophical
esthetics, I feel that his work may be of more real moment to us than
Kant's. Students in this field should therefore be grateful to Dr. Jacoby
for this scholarly rehabilitation of Herder.
E. L. NORTON.
UNXVEBSITY OF ILLINOIS.
Studies in Melody. W. VAN DYKE BINGHAM. Psychological Review
Monograph, No. 50. Pp. 88.
This is a thesis submitted for the doctor's degree. A part of the work
was done during the years of 1905-07 at the University of Chicago and
the remainder during the years 1907-08 in the Harvard psychological
laboratory. The author writes as an enthusiast. He possesses some
musical talent and has had some training. His interests are, however,
primarily psychological. He finds the point of departure for this work
in Professor Stetson's investigations in the field of rhythm and a great
portion of the work turns upon certain points in Professor Meyer's
" Elements of a Psychological Theory of Melody." The thesis is divided
into four parts. The first part deals theoretically with the melody prob-
lems. He discusses the three uses of the term melody. A melody is
defined as " a succession of tones which are not only related, but which
also constitute an esthetic unity, a whole." The problem is to discover
how a series of discrete tonal stimuli can generate the experience of a
melody unity. Pitch of tones is made the sine qua non of melodic feel-
ing, but other factors, such as duration, intensity, and color, may greatly^
assist in cementing the unity. " How the pitch relations of a series of
discrete musical sounds may operate to weld these sounds into the organic
whole which we perceive as a melody this is the core of the problem and
to this primary phase of the subject our present investigations will be
strictly limited." The second part is given over to an experimental study
of melodic relationship and of melodic trend. Two problems are investi-
gated. The first concerns the question whether the feeling of " relation-
ship " that attaches to two tones, in a major third, for instance, belongs
alone to tones that stand to one another as 4 : 5. The inquiry was started
to test, first, Lipps's law that one of two tones that give the feeling of
melodic relationship must be a pure power of 2, and, second, Meyer's law
that tones giving the feeling of melodic relationship are related by ratios
expressed by small numbers not greater than seven. The author used
twelve reagents who were to judge whether intervals slightly smaller and
slightly larger than the major third gave melodic feeling. " The char-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 49
acteristic feeling of ' relationship ' was nearly always still present when
the interval had been increased (or diminished) by 32 cents." The rela-
tion disappeared with a change of 48 cents. This is explained by refer-
ence to the way in which perception takes place, every object is apper-
ceived according to some norm already established.
The second problem treats the question whether, when one of two tones
is a pure power of 2, we wish to hear this tone last. A series of ratios
was given the reagents and they were requested to answer the question
whether the melody did end or not. Some of the series contained pure
powers of 2 and some different ratios. The pairs of tones were given in
both ascending and descending order. In the summaries there are tend-
encies shown for powers of 2 as well as for descending intervals or falling
inflection. But there is a great mass of doubtful cases or indifferent
judgments. These suggest a third line of inquiry which relates to the
phenomenon of "tonality." Some other tone than either of the pair is
preferred as an end tone. The author proposes this law : " Two melodi-
cally ' related ' tones tend to establish a tonality, and the melody is judged
to end only when the final tone is one of the members of the tonic triad
preferably the tonic itself." In the experiments the tones of the diad
were given and then a third tone was made to follow. The reagent gave
his introspections regarding the trend or trends of the interval. The out-
come is expressed thus : " So long as the given tonality was maintained,
the trend of any interval, ascending or descending, was toward some
members of the tonic chord, preferably the tonic itself." " By tonality
is meant a group of mutually related tones, organized about a single tone,
the tonic, as the center of relations. Subjectively a tonality is a set of
expectations, a group of melodic possibilities." " The tonality consists in
the attitude of which the image is merely the superficial manifestation."
Several observers remarked upon certain motor adjustments, strains, and
tensions, which were relieved when the melody seemed to them to possess
" finality." This furnishes the suggestion for the investigation reported
upon in the third part. This is a study of the effects of melodic stimuli
upon muscular movement. Reagents were instructed to tap at the most
natural rate with the forefinger. When a norm was fully established,
they were asked to listen to a two-tone group and to observe its melodic
character. The results show that listening has in general a depressing
effect upon the rate of tapping while the tones are heard, and increases
the rate where finality is felt after the tones cease to be heard. Retarda-
tion takes place when the interval is judged lacking in finality. The
fourth part contains a sketch of a motor theory of rhythm, the basis of
which is to be found in the theory of attention. A melody begins by
upsetting some set of muscular tensions ; it " includes the taking of a
proper ' attitude,' the organization of a set of incipient responses," and
ends finally " with the arrival of a phase of the complex ongoing activities
in which the balanced tensions can merge into each other, etc." " Two
or more tones are felt to be ' related ' when there is community of organ-
ized response." " Unrelated pitches fall apart because each demands its
own separate attentive act of adjustment." The acknowledged obliga-
50 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tions to Professor Stetson are here apparent. The way in which the
author makes his suggestion bring this new factor of human experience
of melody into harmony with the general trend of psychological theories
is to be most highly commended.
While one feels a certain lack of the feeling of " finality " on finishing
the reading, yet there is something so inherently interesting about the
book and so suggestive in the problems studied and the results attained
that he must pronounce it a first-class piece of work. One could wish
that the results might have been published sooner after the work was
done or that the long interval between the experiments and the final
publication might have been filled with other equally good experimental
'studies upon some of the problems hit upon. The suggestion of tonality
as a complement to the Lipps-Meyer theory seems to be the best part.
The author has shown himself free from prejudice in a field where
empiricism, if not prejudice, plays a great role. He has nowhere forced
his facts to fit hypotheses. It may not be a disparagement of a good
piece of work to say that a wider range of observers should have been
found and experimented upon, as the author suggests the great influence
which habituation has upon melodic feeling.
T. L. BOLTON.
TEMPE, ABIZONA.
Stoic and Epicurean. R. D. HICKS. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.
1910. Pp. xix + 412.
It is not easy to resume a resume, and this book is a sober and com-
pact resume in untechnical language of the history of four or five hun-
dred years of ancient philosophy. The difficulty is enhanced for both the
author and the reviewer by what is apparently the publisher's policy of
excluding Greek. It is doubtless possible to obtain a considerable insight
into the history of ancient philosophy through translations only. But a
very little Greek is a great aid, and the use of the Greek originals of even
twenty or thirty technical terms immensely facilitates the exposition of
either the Aristotelian or the post-Aristotelian systems. If such terms
were confined to foot-notes, they would add greatly to the value of the
book for students without seriously offending the sensibilities of the
general reader.
Historical study can not escape the illusions of abstraction and per-
sonification. The capitalized abstractions Platonism, Stoicism, Medieval-
ism, Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, compel us to conceive of
ages, tendencies, and movements as single entities as in a sense they are.
Mr. Hicks distinguishes the teachings of the earlier and later Stoics as
sharply as the plan of his book allows, and if I belabor the point it is not
in censure of him, but because our estimate of the abstraction Stoicism
depends upon it. Stoicism is the accidental name of a school, or perhaps
rather a terminology and a literature of philosophy, which dominated the
Graeco-Roman world during the five hundred years between Aristotle and
the neo-Platonic revival. Big as it bulked in the centuries of its vogue,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 51
there is a point of view from which it is a mere episode or temporary
fashion of speech of no lasting significance for the human spirit in com-
parison with the abiding suggestiveness of Plato and Aristotle.
The literature of the first three centuries of Stoicism survives only in
fragments which scholars have industriously collected, and in Cleanthes's
pantheistic hymn to Zeus, which Mr. Hicks gives, not in Pater's clever
adaptation as an Hebraic psalm, but in the uninspired rhymed transla-
tion of the late Dr. James Adam. From the fragments of this early
literature and the accounts of the systems given in Cicero and Plutarch,
it seems probable that, apart from a certain mood and temper in the ac-
ceptance of life, the originality of the founders of Stoicism was, as Cicero
hints, of the kind which George Eliot says " mistakes its ignorance for
a creative dissidence." Stoic hylozoism and pantheism is implicit in the
pre-Socratics and in Plato's " TimaBus." The Stoic ethics is the ideal-
izing and ascetic mood of Plato's " Gorgias," " PhaBdo," and " Republic,"
overstrained by pedantry and then relaxed by casuistry. The Stoic
theodicee and teleology, like that of Leibnitz and Malebranche, is antici-
pated in Plato's " Laws." The Stoic logic and psychology add little to
Aristotle but refinements of terminology and superfluous distinctions.
The Stoic physics is a mixture of Heraclitus and Aristotle that has little
significance for the history of science. Our estimate of the value of this
early Stoicism will depend largely on the extent of our interest in system-
building and coining of terminology. Two things only give Stoicism its
hold on the modern imagination : First, its association with the noblest type
of Roman character in the lives of the Stoic worthies of the later Roman
republic and early empire a Cato, a Thrasea, a Musonius; and, second,
the extant later secondary Platonizing Stoic literature of edification in
the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, of whom Mr.
Hicks's fourth chapter, on " The Teaching of the Later Stoics," gives an
excellent account.
To Epicurus Mr. Hicks devotes three chapters. The first, " Epicurus
and Hedonism," consists largely of translations from the philosophic letters
of Epicurus, preserved in the tenth book of Diogenes Laertius, and of the
" Golden Maxims," concluding with interesting parallels between Epicurus
and the two great modern hedonistic utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham and
Herbert Spencer. The second chapter, on " The Atomic Theory," includes
the little Mr. Hicks has to say of the Epicurean psychology and the poem
of Lucretius on " The Nature of Things." The statement on p. 205, that
" the mechanical explanation of nature was abandoned by Plato and Aris-
totle ... in favor of a teleological system," is the conventional yiew
from Bacon down, but is misleading, for Plato certainly, and perhaps for
Aristotle. They superposed teleological on mechanical explanation, but
Plato never and Aristotle rarely substituted the one for the other. They
were ready to admit all mechanical explanations available and to encour-
age the quest for more ; they merely refused to accept atomistic material-
ism as the ultimate ontology. The notion that Platonism was an anti-
scientific school of thinking, as compared, for example, with Epicurean-
52 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ism, is a superstition of the orators of modern science derived from Bacon
and Macaulay. In attempting to translate and interpret Diogenes
Laertius, X., 58 ff., on the minimum vicibile, Mr. Hicks shows great cour-
age, justified by substantial success. His defense of the declination of the
atoms against Guyau I do not understand. The swerving of the atoms is
distinctly postulated by Lucretius, both to account for their coming in
contact and also to make possible the freedom of the will. As a scientific
speculation, it is precisely on a par with Professor James's suggestion
that free will might without exercising force or exposing itself to detec-
tion suspend decision long enough to enable our better nature to get in its
work. But Mr. Hicks insists that, " Great as is the departure from the
true doctrine of mechanical necessity, . . . this is a very different thing
from calling in spontaneity as a principle in nature" (p. 261).
The chapter on " The Epicurean Keligion " assumes that the Epi-
cureans seriously believed in their faineant gods, and that Democritus
also believed in the real existence of the " demons " whose atomic images
present themselves to the mind in dreams. Supplementary chapters
sketch the history of ancient scepticism and eclecticism. Thus the work
as a whole fills the gap between Aristotle and Neo-Platonism and well
fulfills its function in the series of which it is a part. A useful select
bibliography is appended.
PAUL SHORE Y.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
ARCHIV FUR SYSTEMATISCHE PHILOSOPHIE. XVI. Band,
Heft 3. August, 1910. The Psychology of Belief (pp. 294-309): J.
LINDSAY. - The psychology of belief as presented by Spinoza, Hume, and,
in our time, by James, Rickert, Wundt, and others, prompts the conclusion
that belief is not a mere reality-feeling, but the asserting of what is on
the logical side a judgment, a determination. The psychology of belief
is the psychology of human power, life. Henri Bergsons metaphysische
Grundanschauung (pp. 310-320) : H. PRAGER. - Bergson in his highly in-
teresting " Einfiihrung in die Metaphysische " admits as possible only two
attitudes toward the absolute: (1) the relative, symbolic where the object,
I being outside of it, is viewed in relation, as it were, to a system of coor-
dinates and is symbolized in an image, concept; (2) the intuitive whereby
I penetrate into the object itself, reaching its very essence as unity. Thus,
the metaphysics rests on psychology, their respective places are obvious : the
latter is analytic, the former a most interested science whose center is the
essence of the individual. From intuition one can reach to analysis, but
never vice versa. Manifestly, metaphysics is no system, no abstraction,
"but intuition of the essence of the inner duration. Die Seele (pp. 321-
331) : F. L. DENCKMANN. - Man is a person, for in his cells a soul is seated
that is not subject to mutation (though conditioned thereby), and that
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 53
continues after the decomposition of the cell-life. Man's individuality is
mutable and is seated in the cell aggregates of the brain with something
like 18 individual faculties. Politik als Wissenschaft und Philosophic
(pp. 332-348): K. PESCHKE. -Politics is a science of values with the
individual, the appraiser, for its center. The state compelling the indi-
vidual's acts must justify its end. No Rechtsphilosophie, no philosophy
in general, but politics alone must answer what is good and what is evil.
Obviously, the will of every one to live, this axiomatic value, is the
foundation of social self-preservation, and politics must furnish the ideal
of social coexistence. Die Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung in Hartmanns
Philosophic des Unbewussten (pp. 348-354) : A. HARTUNG. - Hartmann's
computations are in principle erroneous and when corrected lead to results
opposite to his own. Die EntwicTdung des Menschen (pp. 355-363) : V.
SCHLEGEL. - A unified world view is useful to man regarding both his
knowledge and conduct; hence the value of the theory of evolution that
makes man spring from some primordial cell form and develop by differen-
tiation into individuals and by integration into higher forms of society.
Die Emanzipirung von der Folgestrenge (pp. 364-379) : E. KIESERITZKY.
-Logical stringency is but a farce; the necessary foundation of logical
reasoning (in generalizations as well as in the historical narrative) is
our conscience, hence the logic of motives should precede and supersede
that of premises. The kinship of this view with pragmatism is apparent,
but does not minimize the former's value. Ueber den Begriff der Wahr-
heit der Erkenntnis (pp. 380-394) : A. MULLER. - " AdaBquatis rei et in-
tellectus " is only then a correct formula of truth when being is made to
imply the relation: subject-cognizable reality. Obviously, truth as but
the approximate synthesis of subjective and objective elements leads
asymptotically to the ideal of agreement between thinking and being.
Die gesehene und die ungesehene Welt (pp. 395-398) : T. KEHR. - The
object as given to consciousness (= as seen) is tridimensional : Quality
(= substance), quantity, and form (arrangement). Now, does the object
coincide with its picture (= seen object) ? Yes, as to quality, but not as
to quantity and form, in which objects of various qualities may be alike.
Die Philosophic in Finnland (pp. 399^05) : W. EIGENBRODT. - Historical
survey continued. Bericht uber die deutsche dsthetische Literatur aus
den Jahren 1905-09 (pp. 409-426) : ANNA TUMARKINS. Die neuesten
Erscheinungen.
REVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET BE MORALE. September,
1910. Vues sur les protlemes de la philosophic (pp. 581-613) : G. SOREL.
-An interpretation of the significance of diverse philosophies, ancient
and modern. Proudhon sociologue (pp. 614-648) : C. BOUGLE. - Detailed
account of the different tendencies in the author's sociological views.
Correspondence inedite de Ch. Renouvier et de Ch. Secretan (fin) (pp.
648-670) : Conclusion of the personal and scientific correspondence that
has been appearing in this journal. Etudes critiques. H. Cohen, La
logique de la connaissance pure: WALTER KINKEL. Directions des etudes
ethiques dans I'ltalie contemporaine : A. LEVI. Questions pratiques. Le
proces de la Democratic (suite et fin) : GUY-GRAND. Supplement.
54 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Bonucci, Alessandro. Verita e realita. Modena: A. F. FormigginL
1911. Pp. viii + 518. L. 7.50.
Booth, Mary H. How to Read Character in Handwriting: A Guide for
the Beginner and Student of Graphology. Philadelphia: The John C.
Winston Co. 1910. Pp. 72. $0.50.
Dorner, A. Encyklopadie der Philosophic mit besonderer Beriicksichti-
gung der Erkenntnistheorie und Kategorienlehre. Leipzig: Verlag
der Diirr'schen Buchhandlung. 1910. Pp. vii -f 334. M. 6.
Jastrow, Joseph. The Qualities of Men. Boston and New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company. 1910. Pp. xv-j-183. $1.00.
Lempp, Otto. Das Problem der Theodicee in der Philosophic und Lit-
eratur des 18. Jahrhunderts bis auf Kant und Schiller. Leipzig:
Verlag der Diirr'schen Buchhandlung. 1910. Pp. vi -f- 432. M. 9.
Lindsay, James. The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics. Edin-
burgh and London : William Blackwood & Sons. 1910. Pp. xii -f- 135.
Mast, S. O. Light and the Behavior of Organisms. New York: John
Wiley & Sons; London: Chapman & Hall, Limited. 1911. Pp. xi~f-
410. $2.50.
Sewall, Frank. Spirit as Object, or the Objectivity of a Spiritual World.
Philadelphia: Swedenborg Scientific Association. 1910. Pp. 14.
Telesio, Bernardino. De Rerum Natura, a cura di Vincenzo Spampanato,
Volume primo. Modena: A. F. Formiggini. 1910. L. 5.50.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE tenacity of the argument from design is illustrated by the recent
book by Alfred Russel Wallace, " The World of Life." The sub-title of
the volume is " A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind, and
Ultimate Purpose," and the author's object is, if possible, to discover
proofs of this in nature. With this in view he begins with a detailed
account of the distribution of plants and animals in the world, and as
shown in past ages by the geological record. He believes that the surface
changes of the earth form the motive power of organic evolution, the
guiding force of which is natural selection acting by means of the laws
of heredity, variation, and increase, and the consequent survival of the
fittest. But Dr. Wallace's convictions enable him to carry the analysis a
step further back : " If then all life development all organic forces are
due to mind action, we must postulate not only forces, but guidance; not
only such self-acting agencies as are involved in natural selection and
adaptation through survival of the fittest, but that far higher mentality
which foresees all possible results of the constitution of our cosmos."
Again, referring to the adaptations between life and the physical laws of
the solar system which render life possible, and after expressing his belief
that on no other planet than the earth can the development of organic
life take place, he says: "These afford, in my opinion, an exceedingly
powerful argument for an over-ruling Mind, which so ordered the forces
at work in the material universe as to render the almost infinitely im-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 55
probable sequence of events to which I have called attention an actual
reality." The Athenaeum.
AT the meeting of the Aristotelian Society on December 5 Mr. Ber-
nard Bosanquet read a paper on " A Defect in the Customary Logical
Formulation of Inductive Reasoning." The point of departure for the
.argument was a sentence from M. Bergson : " I/intelligence a pour f onc-
tion essentielle de Her le meme au meme, et il n'y a entierement adaptable
aux cadres de 1'intelligence que les faits qui se repetent." Contending that
this account of the intelligence is false, and pointing out its origin in
M. Tarde and the imitation and repetition theorists, the writer neverthe-
less admitted and maintained that the customary account of induction
does much to support it, by restricting itself to eliminative tests founded
on the abstract principle of identity, much as M. Bergson states it. The
true mainspring of inductive thought, he further contended, is the power
of a universal, or of a continuity of principle in new, but kindred matter,
binding different to different. This point tends to drop out of logical
theory, because it can not be reduced to formal method. The writer laid
stress on an illustration drawn from the reciprocal modification of the
principles of preformation and epigenesis in recent embryology (Driesch
and Jenkinson). He further pointed out that the opinion he supports is
opposed to the purely exhaustive doctrine of inductive proof and to a
common conception of inductive generalization or universality, which
really lies in the comprehension of a system of knowledge, and not in
numbers of instances. This view of the goal of induction further affects
the truth of partial truths, which are here treated as partially false, in
harmony with a doctrine of Plato compared with an argument of Mr. F.
H. Bradley. The Athenceum.
THE American Psychological Association held its nineteenth annual
meeting at Minneapolis on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, December
28, 29, and 30, 1910, in affiliation with the Western Philosophical Associa-
tion and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The
program occupied two days and a half. The department of philosophy
and psychology of the University of Minnesota entertained the members
of the association at two smokers given jointly to the two associations
under its care, one after the address of the president of the Western
Philosophical Association, Professor E. B. McGilvary, of the University
of Wisconsin, and the other after the address of the president of the
American Psychological Association, Professor Walter B. Pillsbury, of
the University of Michigan, on " The Place of Movement in Conscious-
ness." At the business meeting on Friday morning the following officers
were elected: president, Professor C. E. Seashore, of the University of
Iowa; secretary-treasurer, Professor W. V. D. Bingham, of Dartmouth
College ; members of the council, to serve for three years, Professor A. H.
Pierce, of Smith College, and Professor H. C. Warren, of Princeton
University. It was voted to meet next year in Washington, unless
unforeseen circumstances arise to make this inadvisable.
THE first number has appeared of the series of Italian philosophical
56 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
classics, the publication of which was noted at the meeting of the Italian
Philosophical Society held at Eome in 1909. It is Volume I. of the
works of Bernardino Telesio; this writer's other works will fill probably
three more volumes which are expected to appear at intervals of about
six months. The editor of the series, Felice Tocco, calls attention to the
absence of satisfactory texts of the Italian philosophy of the Eenaissance,
and to the importance of the present undertaking. The volumes are
offered at the rate of L. 5.50 each, and L. 7.50 for binding in parchment.
If the undertaking is justified by its support, the works of Telesio will be
followed by those of Campanella. The present volume is an excellent
piece of book-making, and the appearance of it suggests an inquiry as to
the fate of a similar enterprise in behalf of early American philosophy
which has been undertaken by our own Philosophical Association.
IN the Revue generale des sciences for October 15 and 30 Professor
Marinesco, of the University of Bucharest, has given an interesting sum-
mary of recent investigations upon the anatomical localization of the
human cerebral cortex, and more especially of the distinctive cytological
characters of each of the multitude of areas into which the pallium of
the brain can now be subdivided. His descriptions are elucidated by a
series of twenty-seven drawings exhibiting a wealth of intricate detail.
The articles are essentially a digest of the work accomplished by others,
and especially of the classical researches of Oskar and Cecilie Vogt and
Karl Brodmann. Although Professor Marinesco's citations of the results
and the opinions expressed by other anatomists are not always exact, on
the whole his summary will be useful to those who are unable to find
time to read the voluminous literature upon which it is based. Nature.
THE meeting of the New York Branch of the American Psychological
Association will take place on Friday and Saturday, February 3 and 4.
The scientific sessions will be held in the psychological laboratory of
Columbia University, and a dinner and smoker will be held on Friday
evening at the Faculty Club of the University. In view of the fact that
many eastern members of the association were unable to attend the
national meeting, it seems possible that the winter meeting of the New
York Branch may appeal to a wider constituency than usual. All mem-
bers, and others interested, are cordially invited to attend this meeting.
Among those who have signified their intention of being present from a
considerable distance are Professors Angell, Jastrow, Judd, and Pillsbury.
It is probable that some papers will be presented in memory of William
James.
AT the Minneapolis meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, Dr. Charles E. Bessey, professor of botany and
dean at the University of Nebraska, was elected president for the meeting
to be held at Washington, beginning on December 27, 1911. It is planned
to hold the meeting of 1912 at Cleveland. The meeting of the association
and of the affiliated societies at Minneapolis was in every way successful.
The registration of members of the association was 663, which represents
an attendance of scientific men about twice as large.
VOL. VIII. No. 3 FEBRUARY 3, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
RUSSELL'S PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS. 1 I
MR. RUSSELL'S essays, while comparatively popular in style,
give a more rounded picture of the system he represents than
do any of his previous writings, or any of those yet published by
Mr. G. E. Moore. They touch on a variety of subjects: the sub-
limity of ideal science, the formal nature of truth, and the formal
meaning of good ; and they criticize some looser ways of thinking on
these subjects, such as pragmatic logic and naturalistic ethics. In
one of the papers we also learn what sort of religion might be ex-
pected to crown this logical puritanism. It would consist of a
Promethean defiance of nature and all her ways, concentrating our
satisfaction, in the Stoic manner, upon a certain internal freedom,
which can not be taken away from any being endowed with reason
the freedom to frame his own ideals and to worship them.
Of this philosophy I should be inclined to say what Mr. Russell
himself has said of the philosophy of Leibnitz, that it is at its best in
those subjects which are most remote from human life. It is refresh-
ing, and on the whole reassuring, after the confused, melodramatic
ways of philosophizing to which transcendentalism and pragmatism
have accustomed us, to breathe again the crisp air of scholastic
common sense. It is good for us to be held down, as the Platonic
Socrates would have held us, to saying what we really believe, and
sticking to what we say. We seem to regain our intellectual birth-
right when we are allowed, even in philosophy, to declare our gen-
uine intent, instead of begging some kind psychologist to investigate
our "meaning" for us, or even waiting for the flux of events to
endow us with what "meaning" it will. It is also instructive to
have the ethical attitude purified of all that is not ethical and
turned explicitly into what in its moral capacity it essentially is:
a groundless pronouncement upon the better and the worse. But
here a certain one-sidedness begins to make itself felt in Mr. Rus-
1 " Philosophical Essays," by Bertrand Russell, M.A., F.R.S., late fellow
of Trinity College, Cambridge, Longmans, Green, & Co., 1910.
57
58 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sell's views. The ethical attitude doubtless has no ethical ground,
but that fact does not prevent it from having a natural ground ; and
the observer of the animate creation need not have much difficulty in
seeing what that natural ground is. Mr. Russell, however, refuses
to look also in that direction. He insists, rightly enough, that good
is predicated categorically by the conscience; he will not remember
that all life is not merely moral bias, and that, in the very act of
recognizing excellence and pursuing it, we may glance back over
our shoulder and perceive how our moral bias is conditioned, and
what basis it has in the physical order of things. This backward
look, when the hand is on the plough, may indeed confuse our ethical
self-expression, both in theory and in practise ; and I am the last to
deny the need of insisting, in ethics, on ethical judgments in all their
purity and dogmatic sincerity. Such insistence, if we had heard
more of it in our youth, might have saved many of us from chronic
entanglements; and there is nothing, next to Plato, which ought to
be more recommended to the young philosopher than the teachings
of Messrs. Russell and Moore, if he wishes to be a moralist and a
logician, and not merely to seem one. Yet this salutary doctrine,
though correct, is inadequate. It is a monocular philosophy, seeing
outlines clear, but missing the solid bulk and perspective of things.
We need binocular vision to quicken the whole mind and yield a full
image of reality. Ethics should be controlled by a physics that per-
ceives the material ground and the relative status of whatever is
moral. Otherwise ethics itself tends to grow narrow, strident, and
fanatical; as may be observed in asceticism and puritanism, or, for
the matter of that, in Mr. Moore 's uncivilized doctrine of retributive
punishment, or in Mr. Russell 's intolerance of selfishness and patriot-
ism, and in his refusal to entertain any pious reverence for the
nature of things. The quality of wisdom, like that of mercy, is not
strained. To choose, to love and hate, to have a moral life, is in-
evitable and legitimate in the part ; but it is the function of the part
as part, and we must keep it in its place if we wish to view the whole
in its true proportions. Even to express justly the aim of our own
life we need to retain a constant sympathy with what is animal and
fundamental in it, else we shall give a false place, and too loud an
emphasis, to our definitions of the ideal. However, it would be much
worse not to reach the ideal at all, or to confuse it for want of cour-
age and sincerity in uttering our true mind; and it is in uttering
our true mind that Mr. Russell 's essays can help us, even if our true
mind should not always coincide with his.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 59
I. THE STUDY OF ESSENCE
"The solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the
mathematical infinite is probably," says Mr. Russell, 2 "the greatest
achievement of which our own age has to boast. ... It was assumed
as self-evident, until Cantor and Dedekind established the opposite,
that if, from any collection of things, some were taken away, the
number of things left must always be less than the original number
of things. This assumption, as a matter of fact, holds only of finite
collections; and the rejection of it, where the infinite is concerned,
has been shown to remove all the difficulties that hitherto baffled
human reason in this matter." And he adds in another place: 3
"To reconcile us, by the exhibition of its awful beauty, to the reign
of Fate ... is the task of tragedy. But mathematics takes us still
further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity,
to which not only the actual world, but every possible world, must
conform ; and even here it builds a habitation, or rather finds a hab-
itation eternally standing, where our ideals are fully satisfied and
our best hopes are not thwarted. It is only where we thoroughly
understand the entire independence of ourselves, which belongs to
this world that reason finds, that we can adequately realize the pro-
found importance of its beauty. ' '
Mathematics seems to have a value for Mr. Russell akin to that
of religion. It affords a sanctuary to which to flee from the world,
a heaven suffused with a serene radiance and full of a peculiar sweet-
ness and consolation. "Real life," he writes, 4 "is to most men a long
second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the pos-
sible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no prac-
tical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in
splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from
which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote
even from the pitiful laws of nature, the generations have gradually
created an ordered cosmos where pure thought can dwell as in its
natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can
escape from the dreary exile of the actual world." This study is
one of "those elements in human life which merit a place in
heaven." 5 "The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of
being more than man, which is the touchstone of the highest excel-
lence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry." 6
This enthusiastic language might have, I should think, an oppo-
2 P. 77.
8 P. 82.
4 P. 74.
6 P. 73.
8 Ibid.
60 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
site effect upon some readers to that which Mr. Russell desires. It
might make them suspect that the claim to know an absolute ideal
necessity, so satisfying to one of our passionate impulses, might be
prompted by the same conceit, and subject to the same illusion, as the
claim to know absolute truth in religion. Beauty, when attributed
to necessary relations between logical entities, casts a net of subjec-
tivity over them ; and at this net the omnivorous empiricist might be
tempted to haul, until he fancied he had landed the whole miraculous
draught of fishes. The fish, however, would have slipped through the
meshes ; and it would be only his own vital emotion, projected for a
moment into the mathematical world, that he would be able to draw
back and hug to his bosom. Eternal truth is as disconsolate as it is
consoling, and as dreary as it is interesting: these moral values are,
in fact, values which the activity of contemplating that sort of truth
has for different minds; and it is no congruous homage offered to
ideal necessity, but merely a private endearment, to call it beautiful
or good. The case is not such as if we were dealing with existence.
Existence is arbitrary; it is a questionable thing needing justifica-
tion; and we, at least, can not justify it otherwise than by taking
note of some affinity which it may show to human aspirations. There-
fore our private endearments, when we call some existing thing good or
beautiful, are not impertinent; they assign to this chance thing its
only assignable excuse for being, namely, the service it m'ay chance to
render to the spirit. But ideal necessity or, what is the same thing,
essential possibility has its excuse for being in itself, since it is not
contingent or questionable at all. The affinity which the human
mind may develop to certain provinces of essence is adventitious to
those essences, and hardly to be mentioned in their presence. It is
something the mind has acquired, and may lose. It is an incident in
the life of reason, and no inherent characteristic of eternal necessity.
The realm of essence contains the infinite multitude of Leibnitz's
possible worlds, many of these worlds being very small and simple,
and consisting merely of what might be presented in some isolated
moment of feeling. If any such feeling, however, or its object, never
in fact occurs, the essence that it would have presented if it had oc-
curred remains possible merely; so that nothing can ever exist in
nature or for consciousness which has not a prior and independent
locus in the realm of essence. When a man lights upon a thought or
is interested in tracing a relation, he does not introduce those ob-
jects into the realm of essence, but merely selects them from the
plenitude of what lies there eternally. The ground of this selection
lies, of course, in his human nature and circumstances; and the
satisfaction he may find in so exercising his mind will be a conse-
quence of his mental disposition and of the animal instincts beneath.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 61
Two and two would still make four if I were incapable of counting,
or if I found it extremely painful to do so, or if I thought it naive
and pre-Kantian of these numbers not to combine in a more vital
fashion, and make five. So also, if I happen to enjoy counting, or to
find the constancy of numbers sublime, and the reversibility of the
processes connecting them consoling, in contrast to the irrevocable
flux of living things, all this is due to my idiosyncrasy. It is no part
of the essence of numbers to be congenial to me ; but it has perhaps
become a part of my genius to have affinity to them.
And how, may I ask, has it become a part of my genius ? Simply
because nature, of which I am a part, and to which all my ideas
must refer if they are to be relevant to my destiny, happens
to have mathematical form. Nature had to have some form or
other, if it was to exist at all; and whatever form it had hap-
pened to take would have had its prior place in the realm of es-
sence, and its essential and logical relations there. That particular
part of the realm of essence which nature chances to exemplify or to
suggest, is the part that may be revealed to me, and that is the pre-
destined focus of all my admirations. Essence as such has no power
to reveal itself, or to take on existence ; and the human mind has no
power or interest to trace all essence. Even the few essences which
it has come to know, it can not undertake to examine exhaustively ;
for there are many features nestling in them, and many relations
radiating from them, which no one needs or cares to attend to. The
implications which logicians and mathematicians actually observe in
the terms they use are a small selection from all those that really
obtain, even in their chosen field; so that, for instance, as Mr. Rus-
sell was telling us, it was only the other day that Cantor and Dede-
kind observed that although time continually eats up the days and
years, the possible future always remains as long as it was before.
This happens to be a fact interesting to mankind. Apart from the
mathematical puzzles it may help to solve, it opens before existence
a vista of perpetual youth, and the vital stress in us leaps up in
recognition of its inmost ambition. Many other things are doubtless
implied in infinity which, if we noticed them, would leave us quite
cold; and still others, no doubt, are inapprehensible with our sort
and degree of intellect. There is of course nothing in essence which
an intellect postulated ad hoc would not be able to apprehend; but
the kind of intellect we know of and possess is an expression of vital
adjustments, and is tethered to nature.
That a few eternal essences, then, with a few of their necessary
relations to one another, do actually appear to us, and do fascinate
our attention and excite our wonder, is nothing paradoxical. This is
merely what was bound to happen, if we became aware of anything
62 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
at all; for the essence embodied in anything is eternal and has
necessary relations to some other essences. The air of presumption
which there might seem to be in proclaiming that mathematics re-
veals what has to be true always and everywhere, vanishes when we
remember that everything that is true of any essence is true of it
always and everywhere. The most trivial truths of logic are as
necessary and eternal as the most important ; so that it is less of an
achievement than it sounds when we say we have grasped a truth
that is eternal and necessary. This fact will be more clearly recog-
nized, perhaps, if we remember that the cogency of our ideal knowl-
edge follows upon our intent in fixing its object. It hangs on a
virtual definition, and explicates it. We can not oblige anybody or
anything to reproduce the idea which we have chosen ; but that idea
will remain the idea it is whether forgotten or remembered, exempli-
fied or not exemplified in things. To penetrate to the foundation of
being is possible for us only because the foundation of being is dis-
tinguishable quality; were there no set of differing characteristics,
one or more of which an existing thing might appropriate, existence
would be altogether impossible. The realm of essence is merely the
system or chaos of these fundamental possibilities, the catalogue of
all exemplifiable natures; so that any experience whatsoever must
tap the realm of essence, and throw the light of attention on one of
its constituent forms. This is, if you will, a trivial achievement;
what would be really a surprising feat, and hardly to be credited,
would be that the human mind should grasp the constitution of na-
ture; that is, should discover which is the particular essence, or the
particular system of essences, which actual existence illustrates. In
the matter of physics, truly, we are reduced to skimming the surface,
since we have to start from our casual experiences, which form the
most superficial stratum of nature, and the most unstable. Yet these
casual experiences, while they leave us so much in the dark as to
their natural basis and environment, necessarily reveal each its ideal
object, its specific essence; and we need only arrest our attention
upon it, and define it to ourselves, for an eternal possibility, and
some of its intrinsic characters, to have been revealed to our thought.
Whatever, then, a man's mental and moral habit might be, it
would perforce have affinity to some essence or other; his life would
revolve about some congenial ideal object; he would find some sorts
of form, some types of relation, more visible, beautiful, and satisfy-
ing than others. Mr. Russell happens to have a mathematical
genius, and to find comfort in laying up his treasures in the mathe-
matical heaven. It would be highly desirable that this temperament
should be more common; but even if it were universal it would not
reduce mathematical essence to a product of human attention, nor
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 63
raise the "beauty" of mathematics to part of its essence. I do not
mean to suggest that Mr. Russell attempts to do the latter ; he speaks
in this book explicitly of the value of mathematical study, a point in
ethics and not directly in logic; yet his moral philosophy (to which
I hope to return in a later paper) is itself so much assimilated to
logic that the distinction between the two becomes somewhat dubious ;
and as Mr. Russell will never succeed in convincing us that moral
values are independent of life, he may, quite against his will, lead us
to question the independence of essence, with that blind gregarious
drift of all ideas, in this direction or in that, which is characteristic
of human philosophizing.
G. SANTAYANA.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
DISCUSSION
REALISM: A REPLY TO PROFESSOR DEWEY AND AN
EXPOSITION 1
"TDROFESSOR DEWEY'S examination of the "Platform of Six
Realists" in a recent number of this JOURNAL under the title
'The Short Cut to Realism Examined" is certainly very welcome
to the members of the group. 2 Criticism is a mode of cooperation
which we gladly accept ; for, if we are in error, we had rather know
this than not, and are quite willing, indeed anxious, not only to
amend our platform, if such error be demonstrated, but, finally, to
find in some set of principles, either in those of our platform or in
such others as criticism may show to be correct amendments or sub-
stitutes, a common standing-ground for an ever-widening circle of
philosophers.
Professor Dewey makes his criticism from the standpoint of
genesis. Now genesis and realism are not incompatible. If there is
a real, existential genesis, just as if there is a real existential theistic
God, or a real vital energy, etc., then these must be accepted. Only,
the realist contends, the very same conditions on which one ' ' thing, ' '
say a genesis, can be and is accepted as real, must be allowed to
make it possible to accept other "things" as real also. Accordingly
he finds that it is quite as possible that there should be real limits
to genesis, that there should be some "things" which do not evolve
among these certain logical principles and that these should
1 This reply and exposition is published after discussion with the other
members of the group and has received in general their approval.
2 See this JOURNAL, Vol. VII., pp. 393 and 553.
1
64 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
have a real logical priority 3 over the genesis either of knowledge or
of things, or of the genetic account of this genesis, as that there
should be a genesis either physical or mental. The realist would
wish that Professor Dewey could do this too, for then, by realizing
that there is nothing incompatible between the logical antecedence
of logic over psychology and at least the partial psychological (his-
torical) antecedence of the knowledge of genesis over the knowledge
of logic, that further agreement would be reached which should be the
final purpose of all discussion.
I shall reply to Professor Dewey in essentially the order in
which he presents his several criticisms of our platform.
Criticism 1. The realist is attempting "to derive conclusions
regarding existence from analysis and manipulation" of the theory
of "external relations" (p. 554).
The charge is difficult to reply to as a whole because it contains
diverse elements ; in itself it is to be criticized. Thus it conjoins the
terms "analysis" and "manipulation," and seemingly seeks to
discredit the former by the unfortunate suggestion derived from the
latter, especially if this means mere manipulation, as Professor
Dewey intimates it does. Clearly, however, analysis stands as a
perfectly valid method. But both analysis and manipulation are
perfectly valid methods, especially when used together with other
methods, for drawing conclusions about existence or anything else.
Indeed how else than by such methods does Professor Dewey pro-
ceed in getting his own genetic philosophy? The realist is, then, as
much opposed as Professor Dewey intimates he is to the method of
deriving conclusions by mere analysis and manipulation indeed
this is one of the reasons why he opposes idealism. Not mere manip-
ulation, but manipulation, analysis, observation, hypothesis, and
confirmation form his methods. And that this is the case can be
shown by stating what his actual procedure is in dealing with the
theory of "external relations."
The realist finds that in logic there are the two theories of rela-
tions as "external" and "internal" respectively, 4 and his attention
3 By logical priority there is meant that relation which subsists if B pre-
supposes or implies A, but A does not imply B; A is then the logically prior,
B the logically subsequent. For example, logic is logically prior to Euclidean
geometry, objects, existent or subsistent, are to the knowledge of them, truth is
to proof, the theory of " external relations " to the theory of " internal relations."
* The theory of " external relations " can be found formulated in our plat-
form as follows:
" In the proposition * the term a is in the relation R to the term c,' aR in
no degree constitutes c } nor does Re constitute a, nor does R constitute either
a or c." Also : " One identical term may stand in many relations ; a term may
change some of its relations to other terms without thereby changing all its
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 65
is especially directed to these by the fact that idealistic and phe-
nomenalistic theories are without exception constructed and arrived
at by what amounts to a purely manipulative use of the theory of
"internal relations." Now to this construction of a philosophical
theory by mere manipulation of any concept or doctrine the realist
is thoroughly opposed. But that to which he is especially opposed
in this idealistic procedure is the arbitrary application of the "in-
ternal theory" to the cognitive relation; for he finds empirical
grounds for holding not only that this theory does not apply to this
particular relation and that it is self-contradictory, but also that the
"external theory" does apply. In considering the cognitive rela-
tion, then, and in laying emphasis on the theory of "external re-
lations" as applying to this, the realist is actuated by his desire to
join issue with his opponent at that point where it can be joined
most sharply. And that point is furnished by the opponent him-
self in his selection and emphasis of the cognitive relation as the
pivotal philosophical point, and by his application to it of the "in-
ternal theory." Accordingly, although the realist finds empirical
grounds against this emphasis, he too, in order to meet his opponent
squarely on his own ground, considers the cognitive relation. He
both joins issue with his opponent and proceeds empirically by ask-
ing which of the two theories, that of "external" or that of "in-
ternal relations," is involved in genuine knowing. And he finds
that that theory which logically allows for the fact that in genuine
knowledge the object known is not modified (falsified), constituted,
or altered by the knowing, i. e. t the "external theory," is implied.
He finds this theory of relations to be implied in certain specific
cases of supposedly genuine knowledge, in such cases, e. g., as the
idealist 's knowing of his own theory and in Professor Dewey 's know-
ing of his own genetic account. If, now, the cognitive relation in
certain specific cases of genuine knowledge implies the theory of
"external relations," then, the realist generalizes, it is to be con-
sidered as valid for all instances of genuine knowledge until demon-
stration to the contrary is effected. And since at some point in
every theory, even in a genetic theory, the genuineness of knowledge
and what it implies (viz., the "external theory") is assumed or
granted, the realist has a fulcrum on which to meet squarely the
adherent of opposed theories and force him to yield. Just as, then,
other relations to those same or to other terms; what relations are changed by
a given change of relation can not be deduced merely from the nature of either
the terms involved or their relation."
The theory of " internal relations " can be found formulated and the argu-
ments for it analyzed in my article on " The Logical Structure of Self-refuting
Systems," Philosophical Review, Vol. XIX., No. 3.
66 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the realist leaves it to empirical investigation to ascertain which
theory of relations is valid for the cognitive relation, so the further
question as to what other relations the "external theory" is valid
for, he decides by the same method. Finding empirically that the
"external theory" applies to or is valid for the cognitive relation
(where there is genuine knowledge), the realist proceeds further by
asking, "What follows?" And he finds that, among other things,
realism follows; i. e., it follows (1) that anything whatsoever can
be found to be real unmodified by the knowing; (2) that only by
detailed empirical investigation can it be found what the real is,
how manifold and diverse it is; and (3) that knowing itself need
not be studied (epistemology) in order to have genuine knowing
(in chemistry, physics, biology, etc.). But these consequences are
found empirically to be facts. Therefore the deductions from our
hypothesis are confirmed, and an empirical presumption in favor
of the truth of that hypothesis created. This is the method, then,
which the realist uses, and he may well insist that he is not pro-
ceeding merely manipulatively, as he is charged with, but just as
empirically as our critic would have him.
Criticism 2. There is a basic ambiguity between the applica-
tion of the concept of 'external relations' to (I.) terms and (II.)
existences." "Seemingly it refers to the relation which terms in a
proposition hold to each other. " " Is it, however, denotative or con-
notative in its scope?" If the latter "does it mean that the logical
content of a term is not modified when it enters into a relation with
some other logical content?" If it means this, then, in the case of
the growth of knowledge, "it is obviously false," although for
achieved knowledge it is to be admitted; for "there is a difference
between knowing as an active process and knowledge as a finished
result. ' ' ' The realist ignores this and so achieves an easy victory. ' '
Keply: No, the realist does not ignore this difference; indeed it
can be shown that he formulates it more clearly and makes an even
greater use of it than Professor Dewey himself. This the realist
does by using the closely allied distinction, which modern analysis
justifies, between judgments and propositions. Judgments are
psychological entities, propositions are subsistents. Professor
Dewey confuses these two. Using this distinction, the realist can
readily solve the questions concerning the growth of knowledge, etc.,
which Professor Dewey puts to him. Thus, as concerns this particu-
lar question, the realist finds that it is not necessary to have com-
pleted knowledge in all particulars in order to have genuine knowl-
edge in some particulars. Professor Dewey 's own theory might con-
ceivably be an instance of such completed genuine knowledge within
a limited field, not to be further modified by similar knowledge in
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 67
other fields. Or his theory might be partly right and partly wrong.
Making the valid distinction, then, between the judgments of dis-
course and propositions, it is to be admitted that the former with
their constituents call these concepts may be and doubtless are
somewhat in error and are modified and corrected as knowledge de-
velops. But the only kind of modification which it is possible for
such judgments to undergo is either their rejection as false in toto
or their analysis into two parts, one of which is true, and the other
false. Indeed, these two modifications are the only modifications
which Professor Dewey's own theories, as a whole, or the judgments
which constitute them, could undergo, and he himself would not,
without a struggle, accept the first alternative. He would certainly
insist that some parts of his theory, some propositions, some con-
cepts, or some parts of these say of the complex concept .of genesis
are genuinely true. Such parts can be related and supplemented
without thereby being modified, and it is such parts that the realist
has in mind when he applies the theory of "external relations" to
achieved knowledge. This theory, then, is quite compatible with the
growth and change of knowledge.
But, just as other knowledge may grow and change, as explained
above, so also may the knowledge of the "external theory" develop
and change. It has done this and the realist hopes that it will con-
tinue to do so stimulated by such criticism as Professor Dewey's.
But, with certain accurate and precise formulations and applica-
tions already on hand, the assertion (p. 556) that the theory is un-
analyzed is not justified or justifiable, faulty as such analysis may
be. Indeed one has only to turn to a work like Eussell 's ' ' Principles
of Mathematics" to find such an analysis and formulation and ap-
plication of the theory, although it must be admitted that these are
not segregated, but are scattered here and there through that most
interesting and valuable presentation of advanced logic.
Now it seems to the writer that Professor Dewey does not attrib-
ute sufficient importance to this modern logical analysis and its
bearing on the questions at issue, e. g., on his own leading concept,
genesis. At least it is a fact that he employs certain words with a
meaning which this analysis has shown good reasons for not accept-
ing, and which the realist does not accept. Thus, for example, Pro-
fessor Dewey distinguishes between terms and existences (p. 554)
and defines a term as = a symbol. The realist proceeds otherwise.
For him, words are symbols for terms, and terms are either existent
or subsistent, simple or complex, things or concepts.
Now it is also one of the results of this modern analysis not only
that it makes it possible to admit change which, of course, must be
done but that it shows (in mathematical physics) that change, in-
68 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
teraction, genesis, imply the theory of " external relations." Ac-
cordingly no assertion about the general character of genesis,
change, etc., can be safely made without considering this modern
analysis of them. For, if such assertions ignore this analysis, they
may be in error. But Professor Dewey does seem to ignore this
analysis in his accounts of genesis ! With him we admit that exis-
tential complexes do change, do interact, do have a genesis. But
change, interaction, genesis, in those cases at least to which Pro-
fessor Dewey refers (p. 556), namely, biological, chemical, and
some physical, can be shown not to be logically simple. Thus, to
illustrate and prove my point, interaction can be analyzed into at
least six simpler relations: (1) diversity between things; (2) diver-
sity between the states of things; (3) simultaneity; (4) succession;
(5) causality; (6) the relation of a thing to its states. And some of
these can be further analyzed; for example, succession involves a
certain type of relation between instants which eternally have the
relations which they have and are what they are, unmodified al-
though related the ''external theory." But further and very
relevantly, there is that mode of treatment of physical alteration
which is made in the case of heat, gravitation, and magnetic and
electrical phenomena, as this is found to-day in authoritative trea-
tises on the subject. The analysis of physical alteration in such
cases reveals the fact that there is implied in each of them a poten-
tial-field which is made up of intensity-points bearing relations of
a certain type to each other. Certain of these relations when inte-
grated are identical with a potential surface, others with a potential
difference, etc. But the intensity-points are eternally what they are,
although they are related the " external theory." This is the
method of modern mathematical physics, 5 and if it be called
"Eleatieism" (p. 555), then the charge can be safely admitted.
Chemical and biological changes and genesis have not yet been so
treated, but to succeed in so treating them is always an ideal for the
chemist and biologist. In the light, then, of such results, Professor
Dewey 's qualified admission that the theory of "external relations"
holds only of spatial relations is wrong. In every case of physical
alteration or interaction or genesis, where y = f(%), representing
the interaction, change, or alteration of two complexes, we have the
theory of "external relations" applied when we get
dt) /*&
(I) J and (II) { ydx.
ULJC /
5 See such subjects as the Newtonian Potential Function, Green's Theorem
and Spherical Harmonics in such authoritath^e treatises as Webster, " The
Dynamics of a Particle/' and Jeans, " Electricity and Magnetism."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 69
The finite change or alteration of a complex is the definite integral
of values which, though related, do not change. With it the fact,
then, that alteration and genesis are found, in those instances where
they have been most precisely analyzed, to involve the "external
theory," it is manifestly illogical to attempt to disprove this theory
by appealing to those instances for which this analysis has not been
made, but for which the presumption is that it can be. Until, then, our
critic considers these facts, he has not really joined issue with us on
this specific point. Indeed in arbitrarily accepting and arguing
from any genesis, etc., as logically simple, without raising the ques-
tion of the possibility of its analysis, he begs the question at issue.
The foregoing considerations also answer, then, the group of ob-
jections which constitute
Criticism 3. Is the theory of "external relations" "a doctrine
of the relation sustained by terms in a proposition"? Answer:
"Yes," so far as we have a genuine proposition and not merely a
judgment (psychological), or so far as judgments contain true parts
as distinct from false. Is the theory one "of the relation of exist-
ences qua existences to one another?" Answer: "Yes" and "No";
"No" for unanalyzed complexes, "Yes" for analyzed, i. e., for those
"simples" to which analysis leads.
We now come to a fourth group of objections which may be put
together under
Criticism 4. These objections concern the relation of knowing
to its object to existents and subsistents. They are all actuated
by the dominance of the concept of genesis in Professor Dewey 's
thinking a concept whose detailed logic he has nowhere given ; i. e.,
the objections are made from the standpoint of genetic psychology
and without a thorough examination of the realist's contention that
logic is logically prior to psychology. Thus the realist would main-
tain that what Professor Dewey has given in his many contributions
is chiefly a genetic psychological account of the growth of knowl-
edge, but that in doing this he has tacitly made use of certain log-
ical principles which in their subsistence are neither accounted for
nor produced by the genesis of knowledge or its study, although
the knowledge of them may be. Professor Dewey objects somewhat
(p. 556) to our speaking of the relation of knowing to its objects
especially if we regard knowing as itself a relation between two
terms which we do. But he himself always assumes that knowing
is related to its objects. Then the reply can be made on the same
basis, since this view, further, is justified ! Modern logic shows that
a relation, R, both relates and is related to its terms, and yet that the
infinite regress thus implied is quite harmless (see Russell, loc. cit.,
pp. 99-100). However, that which Professor Dewey would seem-
70 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ingly have regarded as his most cutting criticism is that "surely it
should be self-evident that the knowing process is not one of the
terms of a proposition, unless the case of the special proposition
about the relation of the knowing process to existence be exclusively
taken." But "to suppose that the relation of the knowing process
to the existence it deals with can be settled by an analysis of the
relation of the terms (as terms) of the very proposition which
passes upon the relation would seem to go the limit in the way of
begging the question." This is his criticism of one of the proposi-
tions in one of the platforms to the effect that "by the 'external
view' it is made logically possible that the knowing process and its
object should be qualitatively dissimilar."
Eeply : First, we are at liberty to speak of the relation of knowing
to its object. Professor Dewey himself does so, and the question as
to what is the character of this relation has been a great one his-
torically, and that there is such a relation is a justified position.
Now in the criticism last quoted, Professor Dewey hits us oniy at
the cost of putting himself in a very serious predicament. And yet
we believe that he will not, indeed, that he can not, accept the con-
sequences of his own criticism. For, by its logic, he would be pre-
vented from studying the genesis of knowledge, provided his own
knowing has a genesis which, of course, it has! Indeed, that it
has is implied by the fact that he does study the genesis of knowl-
edge in general, and in so doing he is analyzing a process which
necessarily includes his own studying ; he does study the relation of
knowing to things, and this necessarily includes the relation of his
own knowing to his own theory. By his own study, then, he is
doing that which, by the logic which he uses in his criticism of us,
invalidates his own efforts, his ,'own study, his own results, and
makes him "beg the question to the limit." Either he is guilty with
us or we are innocent with him. But that he himself is innocent, he
tacitly assumes. He does study knowing by knowing = the study,
does know genesis by that which has a genesis, namely, the knowing.
By his own procedure and tacit assumptions, then, he himself in-
validates his own criticism of our procedure. What he himself dis-
credits, we can not take as serious. What he will not and can not
accept, he can not compel us to. And so we proceed and join issue
with him as regards his general theory on that basis which he, in
common with us, must accept, even if the effort be made not to. To
explain further: Professor Dewey argues against us that we place
ourselves in a predicament (beg the question) in attempting to find
out about the relation of knowing to its object, because this relation
of knowing to its object includes the attempt to find out about it,
and so on in an infinite series. But he himself tacitly assumes in
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 71
studying and giving his genetic account that these difficulties are
not insuperable. Then he must allow us to proceed on the same
basis, which we do. He himself assumes, and in fact it can be
shown, that the predicament is quite harmless. The point is this:
Professor Dewey is especially interested in the genetic account of
things. Now assume that the account which he has given is a true
account even to a large extent. He himself would feel hurt were
this assumption not made, and he himself tacitly makes it. But the
account is a set of propositions, and the genesis which it describes a
process, which are or have been at some time the objects of his
knowing. And yet, although his knowing has had a genesis and
the account has grown and changed, he has always made the tacit
assumption (and must make it) that, in so far as the account is
true and the genesis real, they, although related to his knowing, are
not created, altered, modified, or constituted by this, but are dis-
covered in it. Briefly, for this relation between his own knowing
and its object, the theory of ''external relations" is used by Pro-
fessor Dewey, and would still be used even if the claim were made,
contrary wise, that there was a real alteration of the object by
genuinely knowing it. For the discovery of even such a real altera-
tion would itself presuppose the " external theory," so that this
claim would defeat itself. It is in this way, then, that we can
answer Professor Dewey 's question as to what is the "warrant" for
"transferring" the "external theory" to the cognitive relation, or
to the relation between propositions, or the terms of these, or to
existents. It is very evident that this warrant is one, not of manipu-
lation, but of discovery by analysis, if one please, that the theory
is involved, is applicable, is valid, as a matter of fact. And so to the
further question as to whether or ni t the view applies to the rela-
tion between propositions and the existences to which some propo-
sitions refer, the answer must also be "Yes, it does!" For, if this
distinction between propositions and existences is made, the "ex-
ternal theory" must apply to their relation; otherwise it would be
impossible to discover a proposition which should refer to existences
as they really are.
These considerations concern, then, a crucial point in the real-
ist's difference with Professor Dewey. The realist admits that one
may study genesis the genesis of anything which one finds empir-
ically to have a genesis. But, if one can find the facts about genesis,
it is also possible that it should be found that some "things" do not
have a genesis, although the knowledge of them may have. And
among such "things" he would insist that there are certain logical
facts (as there are also certain existential terms), which not only
are logically prior to any genesis, but are presupposed in any genu-
72 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ine knowledge of real genesis. The realist can find room for both
interests, although his own interest is in other facts, rather than in
genesis exclusively. And this is, indeed, the method and purpose of
such special sciences as chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. To
suppose that genuine knowledge in these fields can not be achieved
until we know about the knowing of the chemist, the physicist, etc.
whether, for example, it is a natural event is to commit the
epistemological fallacy. For were this the case, then Professor
Dewey could not know about genesis of any other kind until he
knew about the genesis of his own knowing, and so on in an infinite
series. The result would be, seemingly, that he could never have
genuine knowledge of anything until this series is completed.
What the realist does, then, indeed what Professor Dewey tacitly
does in this situation is to assume that at some point genuine knowl-
edge not only is possible, but is actual. Professor Dewey makes
this assumption in setting out to know genesis and in giving his
results; the realist makes it in studying other things than genesis,
and in giving results. Both Professor Dewey and the realist make
it, each for his own theory, either as a whole, or for some parts. It
is on this point, then, that the realist joins sharp issue with Pro-
fessor Dewey. The realist recognizes that, wherever the assump-
tion is made, either tacitly or explicitly, that genuine knowledge has
been obtained, the tacit assumption is also made that the object
known is not modified, altered, or constituted by the knowing. This
means that the realist recognizes that in every case of genuine know-
ing, whatever the object known may be, the theory of "external re-
lations" is presupposed as valid for the cognitive relation. Other-
wise, i. e., if the object known were modified or constituted either in
whole or in part by virtue of being known results which follow
from the forced application of the theory of "internal relations" to
the cognitive relations then knowing were falsification, no know-
ing were possible, all knowing were not knowing !
These facts enable us to reply to an objection which, although
not explicitly formulated by Professor Dewey, really underlies his
whole criticism, and might be raised against our reply so far. This
implied objection is that our reply is not ad rem, since in it we use
"genuine knowledge" in a sense which Professor Dewey would not
admit, and do not use it in that sense which he insists upon. Ac-
cording to Professor Dewey 's explicit accounts, genuine knowledge
can have a meaning only in reference to genesis. That is, of course,
his pragmatism. For him genesis conditions genuineness. He
would say to us, then, that we have not joined issue with him until
we have considered the relation between genuineness and genesis.
And for him genuineness = efficiency in the genetic series.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 73
Our reply to this implicit objection, which we herewith antici-
pate, is, in agreement with our preceding contentions, as follows:
"We can not alone consider that view of knowledge which Professor
Dewey presents explicitly. We must also consider that view which
he has tacitly assumed in working out and in offering his explicit
genetic accounts to us as true. And the one crucial tacit assump-
tion which we discover Professor Dewey making, and which we use
as a fulcrum for an argument both ad rem and ad hominem, is that
there is one instance which he assumes is genuine knowledge with-
out giving, and without its being necessary to give, its genetic ac-
count. This is the instance of his own knowing of his own account.
But if there is one case of this kind, there may be others ! And if
in this case the definition of genuine knowing which is tacitly used
by Professor Dewey himself is that "knowing is genuine when the
object is known as it really is, unmodified and unconstituted by the
knowing, no matter what the history of this knowing may have
been," then we are quite justified in making this a definition of
genuine knowing in all cases. The definition in terms of genesis
and efficiency can not displace this non-genetic definition, since the
former presupposes the latter and the latter does not imply the
former. Professor Dewey, then, must himself consider this tacit
presupposition which he himself makes, and which we recognize, in
order to join issue with us; for the continued insistence on the
genetic definition will mean only that he continues to beg the ques-
tion which we dispute, and that he hesitates or fails to consider all
the implications of his own procedure and results.
The realist, then, accepts as the definition of genuine knowing
that one which Professor Dewey himself tacitly uses and which his
genetic definition presupposes, and further finds, since his attention
is directed to this point by the idealist's application of the theory
of "internal relations" to the cognitive relation, that for genuine
knowing the acceptance of the theory of "external relations" is de-
manded. This theory presents the logical situation which is involved
in the cognitive relation. And the necessity of ascertaining what
this situation is, is shown by the fact that it is possible to discover
what follows logically from the character of genuine knowing, as
even Professor Dewey himself tacitly uses this, only by discovering
what logical principles are involved in this knowing.
With this as a starting-point, then, the realist proceeds further by
asking "what follows?" And he finds that a number of very in-
teresting and important consequences follow, which, moreover, are
confirmed by the actual history and development of knowledge.
Among these consequences, now, of the validity of the "ex-
ternal theory" for the cognitive relation, the realist finds that
74 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
there is the possibility of genuine knowledge in any field, of any-
thing, independently of knowing the genesis which this knowl-
edge has. This holds, of course, for the knowing of genesis itself,
even the genesis of knowledge. But the character and the de-
tails of the entities known are not in the least derived from or
by manipulation of this theory or of the definition of knowledge.
To find out these the realist depends upon experience, upon observa-
tion and experiment, and consistent analysis. Indeed it is one of the
most important consequences of the " external theory" as valid for
the cognitive relation that it not only logically allows, but demands
just this reliance on empirical investigation. And so, by the "ex-
ternal theory," the empirically discovered object may be anything
whatsoever, either dissimilar or similar to the knowing such a typi-
cal case of dissimilarity being Professor Dewey's own knowing of a
physical genesis or of his own (subsistent) theory. Thus it is shown
that in "deriving the possibility of a qualitative dissimilarity of the
knowing and its object from the 'external theory,' ' we are not beg-
ging the question, as Professor Dewey accuses us of doing, but are
finding empirically that the situation involved in the cognitive re-
lation, even as he himself accepts this, implies the possibility of this
dissimilarity. And experience confirms this consequence.
But not only do these consequences follow ; other very important
ones do also. If the cognitive relation is such that it implies that we
can know as if the knowing were not taking place, then it follows
that we can go ahead and know without first studying knowing either
epistemologically, or psychologically, or genetically. For, if we join
issue with the philosopher who pursues such studies at the point of
his own assumption, that a genuine knowledge of knowing in its
genesis, etc., is possible, and that his own knowing does not here
modify its object, i. e., the propositions which make up his objective
theory, then, on the basis of this very same condition, knowing need
not be studied in its genesis, etc., before we study other problems.
The temporal order of study is indifferent, or at least largely so.
This consequence is confirmed by the way in which the special sciences
have actually developed. And this is the way, too, in which we can
get a real knowledge of logic. And, having it, we find that, just as
in order to explain physiological phenomena, the facts of chemistry
and physics must be used, so, to explain genesis, alteration, etc.,
logic must be used. This does not mean that validity is denied the
problems of genesis, of psychology, etc., but does mean that logic
is presupposed in the attempt to solve them, and that it is logically
prior not only to this discovery, but to the genetic account of this
discovery, and to its use.
This conclusion, then, brings to a clear focus the issue between
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 75
the realist and Professor Dewey. Professor Dewey's dominant in-
terest is in genesis, and he views even logic from this standpoint;
that of the realist is in other facts as well, independent of the fact that
the information about these has, as a knowledge process, a genesis.
So far, then, there is nothing incompatible in the two viewpoints.
But there is a radical incompatibility as soon as the question is
raised as to which is antecedent, at least when ' l antecedence " is
denned with precision which Professor Dewey does not do (p.
557). The realist, distinguishing logical and temporal antecedence,
takes the position and grounds it, that the logic of proof, of classes, or
relations, etc., is logically antecedent to the solving of questions of
genesis, even to proving that there is a real genesis. Professor Dewey
would, in consistency, seem to be obliged to accept this position, for,
since he explicitly accepts the core of our realistic position in the
statement (p. 554), "I agree with realism's contention that knowl-
edge always implies existences prior to and independent of their
being known, ' ' it would seem that he would be obliged to accept the
logic which this realism implies, or give such reasons to the contrary
as are not inconsistent with their own presuppositions. From the
standpoint of the conclusions referred to above, then, and with the
issue thus clearly defined, the four questions (p. 557) which Professor
Dewey asks at the end of his criticism can be answered with pre-
cision.
Question 1. : 'Is knowing a natural event?" Answer: Yes, of
course, but to show what is its factual character as such an event,
and how it evolves out of other natural events, is to solve a problem
in genetic psychology, and does not meet the realist's contention
that logic is logically prior to both the genesis and the genetic ac-
count. For both the solution of the question and the occurrence of
the genesis which that solution describes, and the final attainment
of a true result, presuppose certain logical principles which sub-
sist prior to and independently of their being known and used. The
fact that these questions of genesis may be studied antecedently in
time to the study of logic does not make them logically antecedent.
A very similar reply can be made to
Question 2. 'Is logic an account of getting knowledge or is it
a theory of knowledge achieved?" Answer: Neither! Logic is a
body of information about facts, a true knowledge of principles of
proof, relations, classes, implication, etc. With this knowledge
(logic) on hand, it can be and is used as a means to the getting of
genuine knowledge, even of the knowledge of the knowing process,
and also as a means of discovering what the logical situation is in
achieved knowledge. But the account of getting knowledge and of
what this is when once achieved is psychology and the history of
76
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
science, and not logic, although it involves logic both in process and
result. Logic, then, has no closer alliance with a theory either of
getting knowledge or of knowledge achieved than it has with, e. g.,
chemistry.
Question 3. "Is it of any significance that achieved knowledge
is expressed in propositions composed of terms i. e., of symbols?"
Answer: The realist would question the equating of terms with
symbols. However, ignoring this as a minor point, it may be said
that the fact that knowledge is symbolized is of significance pri-
marily to psychology, but presupposes certain logical principles
e. g., that the symbol does not alter the symbolized although related
to it the theory of "external relations" again.
Question 4. "What is the relation of knowing as an event, a
happening, to knowledge as a logical relation, whether of things or
terms?" Answer: Relations, at least existential relations, "come
and go"; some of the relations between terms, both subsistent and
existent, are independent of others. Now the cognitive relation
"comes and goes." This, then, is the relation of knowing as an
event to knowledge (knowing) as a relation. The "coming and
going ' ' of the cognitive relation, under certain conditions, of course,
is itself an event. However, the cognitive relation is not simply and
purely a logical entity, any more than are other natural events and
things; but it is logical in part and belongs to a certain type, say,
that of symmetrical, transitive relations. Still, what this type is,
the realist would admit to be an open question.
All four of Professor Dewey's final questions concern primarily
and for the most part, then, the psychology of knowing. Therefore,
by them, he does not really join issue with us in our contention that,
in answering them, even to a limited extent, certain logical prin-
ciples are presupposed, and that a more complete answer demands
the explicit formulation of an extensive logic of relations, their
types, their character, of classes, both finite and infinite, of implica-
tion, both formal and material, etc. In fact the realist would go so
far as to say that if Professor Dewey gives a true account of the
real genesis of knowing and of its conditions, he at least tacitly em-
ploys, in so doing, not only this logic, but also the principles of our
platform, which incorporates some of this logic in its propositions.
The replies to all the foregoing criticisms which have been con-
sidered make clear also what is the realist's reply to one other criti-
cism (p. 555) that the "external theory" makes knowing "acci-
dental" or "supernatural," whereas this consequence is refuted by
the fact that knowing is essentially ' ' purposive ' ' and ' ' natural ' ' in
effecting some alteration in existence itself. Our reply is : The ' ' ex-
ternal theory" makes knowing no more accidental or supernatural
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 77
than it makes any other existent, e. g., heat, electricity, etc., in whose
explanation and exact scientific treatment it is implied (see supra).
These are "natural things," and yet they involve the "external
theory"! Therefore the fact that knowing involves the same theory
does not make it accidental or supernatural. Second, real alteration
of complexes is a fact, but a fact compatible with the "external
theory" and the unalterability of "simples." So also with know-
ing! Taken descriptively and integrally, it is a complex process in
the larger series of complex processes, and may be said to play its
part in the larger process. But it plays the part that it plays, and
that is, that when it occurs, under certain conditions, reality is
known, and conversely. Third, this, too, may be said to be its pur-
pose ; but if so, the purpose is just that specific one of making real-
ity known, so that quite analogously, and with as much reason, no
more and no less, any existent, and indeed any subsistent, may be
said to have the purpose of giving to "being" that characteristic
which "being" would lack were such an existent or subsistent lack-
ing. Accident, supernaturalness, and lack of alteration and of pur-
pose, if they characterize knowing because it implies the "external
theory," must characterize everything else which implies the same
theory. But they do not characterize knowing because of this valid-
ity. Therefore the presence of alteration and of purpose and the
naturalness of knowing can be admitted, and yet these be treated by
the "external theory" in just those respects in which, as a matter
of fact, this theory is found to be involved in them.
EDWARD GLEASON SPAULDING.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.
REJOINDER TO DR. SPAULDING
I HAVE read with interest Dr. Spaulding's reply to my earlier
criticism of one aspect of the realistic platform. 1 The only
reply it occurs to me to make is that Dr. Spaulding 's article, in spite
of the many interesting things it contains, is not a response to my
criticism. Doubtless owing to some obscurity in my original article,
he conceives it to be written from the standpoint of a philosophic
position, which, on other grounds (whether logical or psychological
I know not) he attributes to me. He says : "Professor Dewey makes
his criticism from the standpoint of genesis." On the contrary, it
is made from a formal standpoint. Believing heartily that philo-
sophical discussion suffers from ambiguous terms, and welcoming
the "Platform" as an attempt to clear some of them away, I thought
JOURNAL, September 28, 1910.
78
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
I found the "Platform" using the term "external relations" in
ways which involved taking advantage of an ambiguity. The refer-
ence to "knowledge getting," the phrase upon the basis of which
Dr. Spaulding attributes a genetic standpoint to my article, is used
simply in pointing out one formal aspect of the ambiguity. To re-
peat: External relations may hold of the terms of a proposition,
without being a description of the relation of the proposition as an
existence to other existences. I did not claim that it does not hold
in this existential case; I claimed that to conclude that it holds (as
the "Platform" does at a crucial point) on the basis of an analysis
of the relation of the terms o~f a proposition to each other as terms,
is to beg the precise question at issue; it is to assume that one can
decide from the i'm-plication of a proposition a question of fact hav-
ing to do with its ap-plication.
Without going outside the limits of my original criticism to dis-
cuss the new points raised by Dr. Spaulding (some of which I should
be very glad to discuss, were it not that such discussion at this time
would be sure to lead to further misunderstanding of my original
criticism), I may borrow from his account of mathematical physics
a way of restating my formal point. Suppose that a mathematical
physicist stated that he could settle in a proposition of mathematical
physics the scope and place in existence generally of the entities
(or subsistents) forming the subject-matter of mathematical physics.
Suppose some one (myself, for example) retorts that such a proce-
dure begs the only point at issue. Would that retort be met by point-
ing out that I was ignorant of mathematical physics? Would that
retort be equivalent to a denial of the validity and importance of
mathematics within its own province, whatever that may turn out to
be? Is it inconsistent even with an acknowledgment that it is pos-
sible and desirable if possible to state the relation in question
mathematically ? And if I went on to point out that the procedures
by which the mathematical propositions are themselves established
do not, on their face, agree with the claim made respecting the place
of mathematical subject-matter, as such, in existence : would a reply
that I am speaking about the "getting" of true propositions and
hence arguing from an irrelevant standpoint, that of genetic psy-
chology, have anything to do with the case ?
I may add that the matter of Dr. Spaulding 's reply adds to the
evidence that the "Platform" at certain specific points (and I am
speaking only of those points) does commit precisely the logical fal-
lacy I charged it with. I mean his concluding to certain Eleatic
properties of existence from a consideration of the implications of
mathematical physics. I am not denying that mathematical physics
has these implications; or that, as matter of fact, existence may
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 79
have these Eleatic properties ; I am only questioning the formal logic
of a procedure which assimilates physical and biological operations
to static spatial relations because of the form the former take ivhen
and as they become the subject-matter of mathematical physics.
And I add: Do the actual propositions of mathematical physics
themselves rest upon purely mathematical implications and consid-
erations, or do they rest upon experimental inquiries into matters of
fact? If the latter, do these inquiries (being modes of "knowledge
getting") belong to genetic psychology? And whether Dr. Spaul-
ding answers "yes" or "no," what becomes of all that portion of his
reply which claims that my criticism is irrelevant because made from
the standpoint of genetic psychology ?
I do not assume to know whether my statements deserve attention
or not. If they receive it, I venture to hope that the discussion will
confine itself to the points of procedure involved in my discussion.
JOHN DEWEY.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Der junge Despinoza. Leben und Werdegang im Lichte der Weltphilos-
ophie. STANISLAUS VON DUNIN-BORKOWSKI, S. J". Miinster i. W : Druck
und Verlag der Aschendorffschen Buchhandlung. Pp. xxiii -j- 633.
1910.
In a modest preface, the author of this learned work refers to the writ-
ings of Couchoud, Freudenthal, and others, and states that, after having
occupied himself a dozen years or more with Spinoza, he doubted whether
a new volume of the scope of the present one was called for. He con-
cluded that, although he has no revolutionary discoveries to announce, he
was in the position to offer a large number of new details, and even to set
the spiritual development of the philosopher in a somewhat new light.
This volume covers Spinoza's life up to the time of his exconfinunication ;
it is to be followed by a second, dealing with the mature man, and with his
thought in its final and complete development.
The book is divided into five chapters. The first, treating of the
biographies of the philosopher, the sources which may be appealed to, and
the fables and traditions which sprang into being as a result of the in-
terest his personality aroused in the men of his own and a later time, gives
a pretty full and useful account of the materials the student of Spinoza
finds ready to hand (pp. 1-78). The Count von Dunin-Borkowski has
ransacked the libraries of Europe with unusual care and thoroughness,
and his researches will be of interest even to those who may be inclined to
use his materials in a quite different way.
The second chapter, on the boyhood and school-life of the philosopher
(pp. 79-153), brings together what little is known of his family, and gives
80 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
a detailed and sympathetic account of the home and school education
which he obtained in the Portuguese-Jewish colony in Amsterdam in the
seventeenth century. The author cautiously tells us : " Information re-
garding Spinoza's family, and also regarding his philosophical develop-
ment, must, in view of our present sources of information, be regarded as
hypothetical. In what follows, independent investigations in both these
fields will be presented, which, however, do not claim to reach historical cer-
tainty " (p. 77). I am compelled to state that, although I have every
sympathy with an inquiry into " the times, the surroundings, and the edu-
cational influences which acted upon the philosopher," I can not think that
even the learning and patience of our author enable us to arrive at a
" high degree of assurance " touching some of the matters dwelt upon in
the four biographical chapters. We know too little directly; and the field
in which we are to exercise our ingenuity in guessing is too broad.
Nevertheless, the attempt at construction has its fascination.
Chapter III., which deals with the possible influence upon Spinoza of
the Jewish and Arabian philosophy into which the author has evidently
dipped with a good deal of care is particularly interesting (pp. 153-245).
The reader will find many suggestions and references which may be of use
to him. The Count von Dunin-Borkowski is very sympathetic in his
treatment; and he accounts for the strongly religious tone of Spinoza's
philosophy, the mysticism with which it is penetrated, by dwelling upon
the early religious training of the man and his studies while still largely
under Jewish influences. That he could not have gotten this from the
Cartesians, and was not likely to have gotten it from various other sources
open to him at the time, the author is quite right in maintaining.
In some respects less sympathetic are the remaining two chapters of
the book. They present an admirable fund of information touching the
intellectual and religious ferment of the seventeenth century. The au-
thor is concerned to point out the sources of the thoughts which came to
the surface in the " Short Treatise " ; and he refers to an extensive litera-
ture which we in America do not often find it easy to come at. He has to
do, however, with various persons and schools of thought, not only in
sharp conflict with the Church, but apt to be felt as more or less repellant
by men of strongly religious feeling, whatever their creed. The peculiari-
ties of such he does not seem to find it very easy to treat with an imper-
sonal fairness. To be sure, some of those of whom he writes must be ad-
mitted by men of all schools to be far from admirable personalities; but
he is occasionally betrayed into a warmth of expression which will put his
reader on his guard (pp. 468-492).
Every new book on Spinoza which comes into my hands impresses me
with the fact that even patient and exhaustive investigation seems to add
comparatively little to our direct and indubitable information regarding
the sources from which Spinoza at first hand drew the elements of his
doctrine. So much had become common property; so many notions were
in the air breathed by every seventeenth-century scholar. The Count von
Dunin-Borkowski is, as I have said, modest in his claims. He seems to
me generally fair-minded. In emphasizing the dangers which attend the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 81
running to earth of Spinoza's fundamental notions, whether in his earlier
or in his later writings, and which fill us with doubt as we attempt to fol-
low the development of the philosopher from year to year, I can not do
better than to quote an admirable passage, touching the problem of his-
torical interpretation, from the volume before us. Our author tells us
that, in hunting out of old philosophies passages which suggest Spinozistic
notions, we may be dwelling upon what Spinoza never saw with his own
eyes; and yet there is danger of our reading into him too few such sug-
gestions rather than too many : " What we now dig out of faded pages, the
young student of philosophy read from the lips of his contemporaries.
What is for us dead and printed wisdom was, for him, fresh and pulsating
life. As the ideas of the organism, of evolution, of individualism are car-
ried with the noise of the street to the modern layman two hundred
years hence our descendants will look these things up in philosophical
encyclopedias so, in Spinoza's day, there buzzed about every friend of
philosophy notions derived from the Stoic, the Epicurean, from scholasti-
cism, Platonism, Gassendi, Hobbes, and Descartes " (p. 164) .
In other words, infinite extension, the impossibility of empty space, the
sharp separation of soul and body, the intellectual love of God as the
mystical consummation of knowledge, the One as both God and Nature
these conceptions were in many mouths; they were the common property
of the philosophy of the day; how shall we determine whether Spinoza
was, in a given instance, influenced by a particular voice, and to what
extent? A similar problem faces every biographer who does more than
chronicle the outward occurrences of a life; it is a most serious problem,
when we have to do with a character reticent and self-contained, who
furnishes his biographer with the scantiest information regarding himself.
We may, then, be grateful to the Count von Dunin-Borkowski for his
sympathetic and painstaking study, which is certainly successful in help-
ing us to realize the intellectual and emotional atmosphere in which
Spinoza must have lived his life. We should not forget, however, as our
author himself rightly indicates, that much that is suggested must be re-
garded as belonging to the realm of hypothesis.
As to the attitude taken with reference to Spinoza's doctrine, so far as
the subject falls within the scope of the present book, the Count von
Dunin-Borkowski finds in the " Short Treatise " less of the developed
thought set forth in the " Ethics " than does, for example, Freudenthal.
He recognizes just as unequivocally the influence of scholastic concep-
tions, but he has a very poor opinion of Spinoza's first-hand knowledge of
Catholic doctrine, and attributes to him a pervasive " prejudice and mis-
conception " (p. 451). The influence of the Jewish and neo-Platonic
thought in molding Spinoza's conceptions of God and the world are not
unduly emphasized.
Perhaps, to most readers of the present volume, what the author has to
say of Spinoza and scholas'ticism will be of especial interest. The stand-
point of the writer is, of course, that of scholasticism. To him Suarez is
"the prince of metaphysicians" (p. 512), and his sincere devotion to the
school of thought which he represents comes to the surface in many pas-
82 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sages (e. g., pp. 272, 348, 355, 451, 452). Whether a whole-hearted devo-
tion to scholasticism is more likely to render a man biased in his judg-
ment of Spinoza than is a whole-hearted devotion to Hegelianism, to
naturalism, or to any other " ism," is a question which men will answer
according to their individual proclivities. Certainly, the neo-scholastic
need not feel bound to discover that Spinoza was really in his heart of
hearts a churchman, and that is something.
I, for my part, feel inclined to enter a courteous protest against one
position taken by the author, which seems to me to be a matter of no little
significance in the interpretation of Spinozism as a system. It is main-
tained (p. 348) that Spinoza never was a realist in the Platonizing and
medieval sense, but in his speculations touching the " universal " stood
close to the moderate classical scholastics. To my mind, the reasonings
of the " Ethics " are incomprehensible, if regarded from this point of
view, though, undoubtedly, unequivocally anti-realistic passages may be
cited. However, the author will have an opportunity to make good his
position in the promised volume on Spinoza, the mature philosopher; and
I shall await what he has to say with great interest.
The volume is attractive in style, and is handsomely gotten up. Two
portraits in color, thirteen autotypes, and seven facsimiles accompany
the text. There are copious notes and a good index. I hope that no
criticism of individual points, contained in the above, will mislead the
reader into supposing that I undervalue the scholarship and the patient
investigation represented in the book. It may well be welcomed by those
who approach Spinoza from widely different points of view.
GEORGE STUART FULLERTON.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. October, 1910. Les mathematiques
et la probability (pp. 329-360) : F. LE DANTEC. - Mathematics is only the
language of science. If we separate the physical facts from the mathe-
matical verbalism that expresses them, the paradox " law of chance "
vanishes and we have nothing but a calculus of averages. Le moindre
effort en psychologie (pp. 361-386) : TH. RIBOT. - The tendency to prefer
repose is a rule, not a law. The apotheosis of it appears in many
religious and philosophic ideals. When not useful it is a sign of regres-
sion. La philosophie scientifique comme systeme de valeurs (pp. 386
408) : F. MAUGE. - Suggests a position compromising between intemperate
apriorism and narrow empiricism. Observations et documents. H.
PIERON: Contribution a I' etude des sentiments intellectuels. Analyses et
comptes rendus. G. Richard, La femme dans I'histoire: J. DELVAILLE.
L. Bourgeois, Pour la societe des nations: J. DELVAILLE. Posada, Prin-
cipios de 8ociologia: G. RICHARD. Dr. A. Schlesinger, Der Begriff des
Ideals. II et III: L. ARREAT. Raoul Mourgue, La philosophie d'Aug.
Comte: P. FONTANA. Deroisim, Notes sur A. Comte par un de ses dis-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 83
ciples: J. DAGNAN-BOUVRET. G. Vidari, L'individualismo nelle dottrine
morali del secolo: J. SECOND. A. Covotti, La vita e il pensiero di A.
Schopenhauer: J. PERES. E. Troilo, Idee e Ideali del Positivismo: P.
FONTANA. Revue des periodiques Strangers.
Doncaster, L. Heredity in the Light of Eecent Eesearch. (Cambridge
Manuals of Science and Literature.) Cambridge: University Press.
1910. Pp. x -f 140. Is.
Essays in Modern Theology and Eelated Subjects. Papers in Honor of
Charles Augustus Briggs. By various writers. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. 1911. Pp. xvi + 347.
Heymans, G. Die Psychologic der Frauen. Heidelberg: Carl Winter's
Universitatsbuchhandlung. 1910. Pp. viii + 308. 4M.
Judd, J. W. The Coming of Evolution. The Story of a Great Revolu-
tion in Science. (Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature.)
Cambridge : University Press. 1910. Pp. iv -f 171. Is.
Fite, Warner. Individualism. Four Lectures on the Significance of
Consciousness for Social Relations. New York, London, Bombay, and
Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1911. Pp. xix -f- 301.
NOTES AND NEWS
To THE EDITORS OF THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SCIEN-
TIFIC METHODS:
During the last meeting of the American Philosophical Association
one frequently heard the following as an argument, against realism : How
can the same object be both red to A and green to B, present parallel
sides to one observer and convergent sides to another, etc., etc. Professor
Miller argued, if I understood him rightly, that since the same object
appeared differently from an indefinite number of different points of view,
a realistic interpretation would involve the absurdity that the same object
is or has all these different forms. Now, the other night I attended a
meeting in which the guest of honor was father to one, brother to another,
uncle to a third, professional associate to a fourth, teacher to a fifth, and
bore a number of other relations to the others who had gathered to honor
him, while at the same time and in the same meaning of the word, he was
a friend to all those present. As no one has yet maintained that A is
father to B only when B is conscious of the relation, the incident suggests
that there is nothing impossible in the same object bearing an indefinite
number of real relations to an indefinite number of different bodies, and
at the same time bearing exactly the same relation to any number of
different bodies. The incident and its suggestion are doubtless dreadfully
commonplace and trivial. But I can not help thinking that there is
something wrong with a philosophic attitude that asks how can such
trivial things be.
Respectfully yours,
COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, MORRIS R. COHEN.
January 6.
84 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
THE sixth annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and
Psychology was held at Chattanooga, Tennessee, December 27 and 28,
1910. The meetings were presided over by Professor Edward Franklin
Buchner, who delivered the presidential address on the topic, " Learning
and Forgetting." The officers elected for the year 1911 are: president,
Dr. Shepherd Ivory Franz, Government Hospital for the Insane; vice-
president, Professor A. Caswell Ellis, University of Texas; secretary-
treasurer, Professor R. M. Ogden, University of Tennessee. Vacancies in
the council were filled to constitute that body as follows : for a three-year
term, Professors E. F. Buchner, Johns Hopkins University, and W. B.
Smith, Tulane University ; for a two-year term, Professor Bruce R. Payne,
University of Virginia, and President H. J. Pearce, Brenau College ; for
a one-year term, Professors David Spence Hill, Peabody College for
Teachers, and W. C. Ruediger, George Washington University. It was
voted to hold the next meeting of the society at Washington, D. C., in
affiliation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
provided the American Psychological and Philosophical Associations meet
at the same place and time.
THE Fourth International Congress of Philosophy, which is to be held
at Bologna April 6-11 of the current year, will be divided into eight sec-
tions : General Philosophy and Metaphysics, History of Philosophy, Logic
and Theory of Science, Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of
Right, Esthetics and Methods of Criticism, Psychology. The following
papers will be presented : S. Arrenius, " Ueber den Ursprung des Gestirn-
kultus " ; G. Barzellotti, " Filosofia e storia della filosofia " ; E. Boutroux,
" Du rapport de la philosophic aux sciences " ; R. Eucken, " Die Auf gaben
der Philosophie im Kulturleben der Gegenwart " ; P. Langevin, " L'evolu-
tion du mecanisme " ; W. Ostwald, " Elementare Begriffe und die Gesetze
ihrer Verbindung"; H. Poincare, "La definition"; F. C. S. Schiller,
"Error"; C. F. Stout, "The Interrelation of Objects and Ejects";
F. Tocco, " La questione platonica " ; W. Windelband, " Die Metaphysik
der Zeit " ; A. Riehl, " Forth ildung Rautischer Gedanken in der Philo-
sophie der Gegenwart." There will be a discussion on " The Task of
Contemporary Philosophy," introduced by H. Bergson with a reply by A.
Chiapelli, and on " Judgments of Value and Judgments of Reality,"
introduced by E. Darkheim.
A LECTURESHIP on the history and institutions of the United States
has been established at Oxford, to be held by American scholars. The
subject-matter of the lectureship is to be the political, institutional, eco-
nomic or social history or conditions of the United States.
DR. GUNTHER JACOBY, privatdocent at the University of Griefswald,
and research fellow in philosophy at Harvard University, is giving a
course of seven lectures on " Schopenhauer," the first of which was deliv-
ered January 6. The lectures are open to members of Harvard University.
AT the University of Pennsylvania Dr. Arthur Holmes and Dr. F. M.
Urban have been made assistant professors of psychology, and Mr. S. F.
Fernberger has been made instructor in psychology.
VOL. VIII. No. 4 FEBRUARY 16, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE LOGIC OF MR. RUSSELL 1
IN a recent bit of criticism that appeared in this JOURNAL, I
remarked, incidentally, that all fruitful concepts are developed
in connection with the field to which they are to be applied ; that is,
the concepts of any one science are too specialized to be safely taken,
over into any other science without reinvestigation of their material
significance. But it is sometimes a question whether a field is really
of a new sort, and if not, a development of its concepts should lead
to the rediscovery of already existing concepts. Certain things
look as if this were the situation of the new logic that is being devel-
oped in connection with mathematics; that is, it may be the old
logic all over again. It is the aim of this paper to suggest this as
probable, although a much fuller investigation, involving questions
not so much as mentioned here, would be necessary to raise this,
probability to a certainty.
Formal logic has always pretended to a generalized significance.
To be sure, in problems directly concerned with quantity and order,
and in certain relational formulae, there have been short cuts to
conclusions and a specialized division of the general subject. The
whole subject-matter of mathematics is such a special field. In his
"Principles of Mathematics" Mr. Russell has attempted to develop
a new logic in connection with this field, but by the time he has
reached Chapter X. less that a fifth of the way through the book
he finds himself confronted with an insolvable contradiction.
Related contradictions have blocked the way for all other writers on
symbolic logic, or would have, if they had not continued to develop
their systems in spite of them. Frege 2 writes this remarkable Nach-
wort: <; 'Einem wissenschaftlichen Schriftsteller kann kaum etwas:
Unerwiinschteres begegnen, als dass ihm nach Vollendung einer-
Arbeit eine der Grundlagen seines Baues erschiittert wird. In diese
Lage wurde ich durch einen Brief des Herrn Bertrand Russell ver-
1 Cf. American Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 30, 1908, pp. 222-262.
a " Grundgesetze der Arithmetik," Bd. II., S. 252.
85
86 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
setzt, etc." Now, Mr. Eussell thinks he has found a way out
through a new concept, that of logical types. I intend here to ask
what that concept really is. Can it be an old concept rediscovered
and dressed up in new clothing?
The chief of the contradictions that have come under considera-
tion, as given by Mr. Russell, are: (1) The Epimenides. (2) The
class of all those classes that are not members of themselves. This
class can neither be nor not be a member of itself. (3) If T is a
relation which subsists between two relations R and 8, when R does
not have the relation R to S, then "R has the relation T to 8" is
equivalent to " R does not have the relation R to 8." But if R and
S have the value T, by substitution, "T has the relation T to T'
is equivalent to "T has not the relation T to T." (4) The least
integer not namable in fewer than 19 syllables must denote a definite
integer (111777), but this integer is denoted by the phrase itself,
which is a name consisting of only 18 syllables. (5) "Richard's
paradox" is somewhat similar to this, but concerns a decimal which
is at once definable and indefinable. (7) "Burali Forti's paradox" :
if the series of all ordinals has an ordinal number, that number is
one greater than the last number of the series: then there is an
ordinal number not in the series, and it is not the series of all ordinal
numbers.
These paradoxes all have a common characteristic, self -reference ;
and they assert something of all cases of a certain kind. * ' This leads
us to the rule: * Whatever involves all of a collection must not be
one of the collection' ' (p. 225). But if this is true, the "quaint"
laws of thought are meaningless ; we can not say all propositions are
true or false, and mathematical induction is impossible. Thus the
cure is almost worse than the illness. The difficulty can be avoided,
Mr. Russell thinks, by distinguishing between the use of all and any.
"Thus we may say: 'p is true or false, where p is any proposition,'
though we can not say 'all propositions are true or false.' The
reason is that, in the former, we merely affirm an undetermined one
of the propositions of the form 'p is true or false,' whereas in the
latter we affirm (if anything) a new proposition, different from all
the propositions of the form ( p is true or false. ' Thus we may admit
'any value' of a variable in cases where 'all values' would lead to
reflexive fallacies; for the admission of 'any value' does not in the
same way create new values. Hence the fundamental laws of logic
can be stated concerning any proposition, though we can not signifi-
cantly say that they hold of all propositions. These laws have, so to
speak, a particular enunciation but no general enunciation. There
is no one proposition which is the law of contradiction (say) ; there
are only various instances of the law" (pp. 229-230). I quote this
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 87
passage in full, as an example of the curious limitations to which
this formulation of logic is submitted.
Mr. Eussell has always valued this distinction between all and
any which, in his nomenclature, is an expression of the distinction
between the real and the apparent variable. In his "Principles of
Mathematics" we read: "And when we say 'X is a man, implies X
is mortal for all values of X,' we are not asserting a single implica-
tion, but a class of implications ; we have now a genuine proposition,
in which, though the letter X appears, there is no real variable : the
variable is absorbed ... so that the result is no longer a function of
X." It is, then, an apparent variable, "whereas in ( X is a man'
there are different propositions for different forms of the variable,
and the variable is what Peano calls real." 3
Consider the apparent variable: if "X is a man implies that X
is mortal for all values of X," it must be because mortality is an
essential part of the connotation of man ; and, if this is true, propo-
sitions of this form are what the non-mathematical logician knows as
verbal propositions. On the other hand, the propositional function
"X is a man," which is only true for certain values of X, is what
gives rise to what are commonly called real propositions. Mr. Eus-
sell 's rule, then (c/. supra) becomes "Verbal propositions can not
admit themselves as included in their subjects ' ' ; and this is in some
ways a more serviceable statement than Mr. Russell's, for it permits
such propositions as the laws of thought, which are not verbal, to be
reflexive and true, and at the same time it is equally serviceable in
avoiding the paradoxes (cf. infra). Before taking up the para-
doxes, I want to follow Mr. Russell's exposition somewhat further.
Concerning propositions in which all occurs, we find: "Every
proposition concerning all asserts that some propositional function
is always true; and this means that all values of the said function
are true, not that the function is true for all arguments, since there
are arguments for which any given function is meaningless, i. e.,
has no value. Hence we can speak of all of a collection when and
only when the collection forms part or the whole of the range of
significance of some propositional function, the range of significance
being defined as the collection of those arguments for which the
function in question is significant, i. e., has a value" (p. 236). In
the course of drawing this conclusion, Mr. Russell himself says that
he is near to the traditional doctrine of the universe of discourse.
The development in the text is not quite clear on the point, but the
author apparently believes his range of significance to be something
much more weighty. I have failed to discover just what that extra
significance is.
1 " Principles of Mathematics," p. 13.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
To pass to the theory of types: "A type is defined as the range
of significance of a prepositional function, i. e., as the collection of
arguments for which the said function has values. . . . The division
of objects into types is necessitated by the reflex fallacies which
otherwise arise. . . . Thus whatever contains an apparent variable
must be of a different type from the possible values of that variable ;
we will say it is of a higher type " (p. 237). Let us stop a minute
and reinterpret this in the language of our more familiar logic:
With respect to verbal propositions (propositions containing an
apparent variable), the universe of discourse (range of values of
the apparent variable) is its type. Reflexive fallacies necessitate
the consideration of the universe of discourse. Thus a verbal propo-
sition, as such, must be in a different universe of discourse from the
connotation of its subject term. Why not? The verbal proposition
as above defined concerns itself with connotation, but it is itself an
object of denotation. Now, by the principle of contradiction, it can
not be both a denotation and a connotation in the same sense, in the
same relation, and at the same time. The verbal proposition is then
in a different universe of discourse from that prescribed by its sub-
ject term.
To continue the exposition: Propositions containing apparent
variables (verbal propositions) are generated from those that do not
(real propositions), by a process of generalization, i. e., the predi-
cates become known as a part of the connotation of the subject, by
generalizing from particular instances of the subject where it is
observed as a real attribute. Such propositions are called by Mr.
Russell elementary propositions. The terms Mr. Russell means
here only the subjects of elementary propositions are individuals,
and these terms furnish the lowest, or first, type; the universe of
discourse within which a predicate is related to an instance or a
number of instances of a thing, is a lower universe of discourse than
that in which it is predicated as a connotation of the thing or things.
A somewhat grave difficulty appears here in Mr. Russell 's system.
He wishes to generalize from individuals occurring in elementary
propositions and so obtain new propositions, but in order to do this
he is obliged to demand that no individual shall be a proposition.
This is done by defining the individual "as something destitute of
complexity" (p. 238), but any philosopher must be a little aghast
at the sweep of this procedure, and begin to wonder whether there
are any elementary propositions concerning individuals.
"Elementary propositions, together with such as contain only
individuals as apparent variables, we will call first order proposi-
tions. These form the second logical type. . . . We can . . . form
new propositions in which first order propositions occur as apparent
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 89
variables. These we will call second order propositions. They form
the third logical type" (p. 238). That is, first order propositions
are those by which things are included in some universe of discourse ;
second order propositions are about first order propositions, and
therefore imply a larger universe of discourse. If "Cows chew
cud" is a first order proposition, "It is interesting to know that
cows chew cud" is of the second order. The universe of discourse
is enlarged from its bovine limitations to the whole realm of the
things which it is interesting to know. Of course the process can be
continued indefinitely.
Let us consider the application of this logic to the paradoxes
mentioned above :
1. "Thus when a man says, 'I am lying,' we must interpret him
as meaning: 'There is a proposition of order n, which I affirm, and
which is false. ' This is a proposition of order n -f- 1 ; . . . hence his
statement is false, and yet its falsehood does not imply, as that of
'I am lying' appeared to do, that he is making a true statement.
This solves the liar" (p. 240). Perhaps; but in the older language,
: 'I am lying" is a real proposition and attempts to present a certain
situation. It may fail to do so, and so be false, without its failure
making it succeed an absurdity ; for it and the situation it intends
to present are in different universes of discourse.
2. ( Cf. 4, supra. ) ' ' The least integer not namable in fewer than
nineteen syllables" presents some special difficulties. After limiting
"not fewer than nineteen syllables" to a finite number, Mr. Russell
continues: "We may next suppose that 'namable in terms of names
of the class N' means 'being the only term satisfying some function
composed wholly of names of the class N. ' The solution of this
paradox lies, I think, in the simple observation that 'namable in
terms of the class N' is never itself namable in terms of names of
that class. If we enlarge N by adding the name 'namable in terms
of names of the class N,' our fundamental apparatus of names is
enlarged; calling the new apparatus N', 'namable in terms of
names of the class N" remains not namable in terms of names of the
class N'. If we try to enlarge N until it embraces all names,
'namable' becomes (by what was said above) 'being the only term
satisfying some function composed wholly of names. ' But here there
is a function as apparent variable ; hence we are confined to predica-
tive functions of some type (for non-predicative functions can not
be apparent variables). Hence we have only to observe that nama-
bility in terms of such functions is non-predicative in order to escape
the paradox" (p. 241). This hardly shows the simplicity of the
theory of types. If one considers as his universe of discourse certain
named numbers, the proposition that selects one of these does not
90 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
define it, for it is in a different universe of discourse. If this de-
noting phrase were admitted to the same universe of discourse with
the named numbers, to utter it would be a contradiction in defining.
3. (Cf. 5, supra.) The least indefinable ordinal is analogous,
but "The other contradictions, that of Burali Forti in particular,
require some further developments for their solution" (p. 241).
It is interesting to see what we can do with them without this
development.
4. Concerning contradiction (3, supra). I speak with some diffi-
dence. If T is such that either RTS or RR8, where R, 8, and T are
relations, then RTS is equivalent to RRS, and if R = 8 = T, then
TTT=TTT; but such symbols are exceedingly tricky to deal with,
and a formal logic of relations, if possible, is yet far to seek. It is
doubtful whether any expression, in conformance with the law of
identity, can be used identically as term and relation ; it is possible,
then, that R = S = T is an illegitimate expression with respect to
this substitution, and, if so, the paradox disappears.
5. (Cf. 2, supra.) As to the class of all classes not contained in
themselves. This paradox need not present any difficulty. The
class of horses is not a horse, while the class of not-horses is a not-
horse, so the two implied classes exist. But a class exists only in its
connotation and denotation, i. e., only in its members. Then to say
that a class is contained in itself is either an identical proposition
(the class is itself), or it is the assertion that the class name is found
amongst its denotations and is implied by its connotation, as in the
case of the not-horse. The first alternative can not even suggest
paradox. As to the second, if "A class is contained in itself' 1
means "The class name is found amongst its members," then to ask
if the class of all classes whose class names are not found amongst
their members has its name found amongst its members, is a per-
fectly possible question, and can be answered negatively. Its name
can not be found amongst its members, for its members are classes,
not names ; they are a different order of things and so in a different
universe of discourse. It is then the sort of class that its name
denotes, but no contradiction is implied, so long as the class is not
confused with the class name.
6. With respect to Burali Forti 's contradiction (cf. 7, supra),
I have elsewhere pointed out 4 that there is a real ambiguity in the
concept number when defined as a type of a series, and the infinite
and the finite numbers are connotatively in different universes of
discourse, and it is only by neglecting this distinction that the con-
tradiction arises. In the only sense in which all is permissible of an
infinite collection, it does not follow that the addition of 1 is pos-
4 This JOURNAL, Vol. V., 1908, pp. 628-634.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 91
sible in any sense that would create a greater ordinal, and if not,
the contradiction disappears. Mr. Russell's new theory leads him
to the conclusion that there can be no totality of all ordinals (p. 261),
so he dismisses this contradiction on practically the same grounds.
The reason, it seems to me, why Mr. Russell's theory of types
solves the contradictions, is that it is a rediscovery of the concept of
universe of discourse, and of the distinction between connotation and
denotation. This paper does not pretend to give a complete account
or criticism of the logic. It is enough if it serves to strengthen a
suspicion that its author believes to be prevalent amongst many
philosophers, namely, that the new logic is nothing but the old logic
dressed up in new clothes ; and the author would add that, inasmuch
as these new clothes are borrowed from a highly technical science
which is a closed book to many, it is an unnecessarily inaccessible
form ; and it may even be that this rediscovery, if such it prove to be,
has not yet progressed as far as its prototype had gotten. If so, to
recognize the kinship might further its development, and any studies
tending to confirm or to destroy this suspicion should be welcome.
HAROLD CHAPMAN BROWN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
SOCIETIES
THE TENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN
PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
AN excellent arrangement of the program by the executive com-
mittee and an almost absolute power wisely wielded by the
presiding officer made possible the great success of this meeting.
There was general approval of the unification of the program by
selecting for reading only those papers whose subjects were more or
less closely connected with the principal topics under considera-
tion, with a resulting gain in time for the discussion, which was
allowed to run on as long as it seemed profitable. A partial rear-
rangement of the program was found advisable, and several papers
were withdrawn by their writers during the meeting so as to allow
still more time for discussion, which proved unusually enticing and
instructive. The opinion was expressed that the plan of unifying
the program could be carried even a step further by selecting one
principal topic for discussion and announcing this as early in the
year as possible. The discussion during the meeting, though sharp
and incisive, was permeated by an honest desire to come to a mutual
understanding. Great credit is due to the authors of the * ' Platform
of Six Realists," whose views were the main topic for discussion,
92 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
for having had the courage and ability to formulate a number of
propositions on which they found an agreement possible. The plat-
form thus far published is only a first attempt, but its effect has
already been most clarifying. It is a matter of regret that some of
the statements made during the meeting regarding the special prob-
lems underlying the tenets of the platform could not have been in-
corporated in the platform paper itself. It was quite apparent that
some of the arguments against the new realism were moving in the
realm of a different generating problem. The importance of the
onr-ept problem was well emphasized in Professor Montague 's
remark that the process of discovery has nothing to do with the
question of validity. A clearer recognition of the principle here
indicated, that the assumptions necessary for the solution of a definite
problem do not affect, and may even contradict, the assumptions
necessary for the solution of a different problem, and a definite
renunciation of the principle of self-evidence as a valid court of
appeal, would pave the way for a better understanding and more
fruitful discussion of the issue presented by the new realism. These
things were in the air during the meeting, and they produced the
feeling (at least in the present writer) as of the dawn of a new
day in philosophy, not produced by the radiance of an overpowering
genius-to-come, but by the initiation in philosophy of that coopera-
tion compared with which the work of even the greatest genius pales.
Professor Miller opened the meeting with "An Examination of
Four Realistic Theories of Perception." He called them, respect-
ively, the picture theory, the window theory, the doorway theory,
and the sunshine theory. The first speaks of an object not mental
and its picture in the mind. The second takes the "awareness of
an object" as an ultimate fact. In the third the object plants itself
in the doorway of the mind, but continues to be in the physical
world if we turn our attention away; the object being itself "mind-
stuff" or simply "stuff." The last is an " efflux- theory, " which
identifies the efflux with the object. The following difficulties were
urged against these four theories. The first duplicates the object,
for which there is no warrant in our experience: we do not "see
double. ' ' The second does not account for illusions ; how do we even
know that there is a "window"? The third does not seem to take
account of the machinery of perception : it takes time to make an
impression. The last is a refinement of the picture theory, but has
nevertheless its defects. The speaker disclaimed any attempt to
refute the new realism in pointing out these difficulties. And he
expressed himself in sympathy with the platform idea.
In the lively discussion which ensued Professor Woodbridge sug-
gested that Professor Miller's difficulties sprang from his funda-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 93
mental assumption of mind as a room and perception as a process by
which things appear. Do not start thus, he said, and the whole
problem is radically changed. It is hard to state this contrasted
view. But the problem of vision will then become simply a problem
of mechanics, and the whole problem of how a thing appears in
mind is eliminated. Professor Marvin suggested the addition of a
fifth theory of perception which he called the " out-of-doors ' ' or
"fresh-air" theory. There we start on a level where there are no
illusions, namely, with the raw material which is the source of all
our problems.
This whole train of thought was well continued in the second
paper, in which Professor Woodbridge discussed "The Belief in
Sensations." As a special example of the lack of clear concepts in
psychology, so strangely contrasting with its great practical success,
he specified the term ' ' sensation. ' ' What difference is there between
tone and sensation, between red and sensation? If there is a dif-
ference between them, specify it; if not, what are they? And yet,
in spite of this lack of clearness about the nature of sensations, they
are considered in our psychologies as the elements of mind! The
usual evidence for the belief in sensations was discussed under four
heads, the "relativity of sensations," "dreams and illusions,"
"pain and similar experiences," and "introspection." The evi-
dence was dismissed as insufficient to establish the existence of sen-
sations in the subject, and a restatement of the problems therewith
presented was given in terms of the organism and its reactions.
;< Things which have been called sensations are stimuli to thought
and behavior, but not the constitutive elements of mind ! ' ' Even
introspection does not disclose sensation, but only "things sensed."
On the other hand, Professor Woodbridge did not mean to offer a
substitute for sensation, because he held that even the demand for a
substitute sprang from a philosophical confusion. He would replace
the problem of sensation by the following two : " (1) What, as matter
of fact, are the objects with which we are consciously familiar?"
and " (2) What are the causes of the appearance of consciousness?"
But these are problems of positive science, not of epistemology.
It was to be expected that so remarkable a paper would be vigor-
ously attacked. To Professor Love joy it appeared like an invitation
to go back to infancy. It is very well for neo-realists to urge us to
go out-of-doors; but we are indoors. The dualistic difficulty has
broken out. What are we going to do about it ? Miss Calkins found
herself in agreement with part of Professor Woodbridge 's paper,
especially his demand for more careful definitions, his small regard
for the parallelistic theory as a fundamental method in psychology,
and even his denial that we introspect sensations: color is best
94 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
explained as " supposedly existing red character." But she vigor-
ously protested that the whole theory * ' is utterly one-sided ' ' in that
it completely omits the "self" which immediate consciousness gives
us. Professor Sheldon held that thoughts are something qualita-
tively different from sensations and saw in this a menace to the
realist. Professor Miller declared he did not know what Professor
Woodbridge was trying to prove : we must understand facts by cate-
gories! Professor Woodbridge, in replying, turned particularly
against the charge that neo-realism meant an invitation to return to
infancy. He reminded the audience that most of the neo-realists
had been for years idealists. It was not their lack of acquaintance
with idealism, but its inherent insufficiencies, which drove them to
neo-realism.
The discussion of neo-realism, which had sprung up with the very
first paper of the meeting, was now officially opened by Professor
Dewey. He did not wish to be considered an out-and-out opponent
of neo-realism. His criticism was directed merely against certain
points of method. He considered that the neo-realists, or at least
some of them, had tried to reach conclusions about existence by
developing purely conceptual implications. As evidence of this he
referred (1) to the doctrine that "certain principles of logic are
logically prior to all scientific systems," and (2) to the prominence
given to the theory of the "externality of relations." After ex-
pressing his full agreement with the neo-realists in their opposition
to idealism, he proceeded to the discussion of the following two
questions: " (1) How far is realism preferred as a positive body of
doctrines? (2) How far does the logical analysis of the logic of
propositions enter into the determination of this positive body of
doctrines?" "Mental" may be defined in terms of "implication."
On what grounds, then, do realists deny that logical entities are
mental? Is it not at least a discussable hypothesis that "number"
is a transformation of a physical fact for purposes of implication?
A thing thus would undergo a change in becoming an "inferential
thing. ' ' His question was not whether the knowledge relation modi-
fies its terms ; but whether, assuming things to exist independent of
and prior to the knowledge relation, they undergo a change in
becoming terms of a proposition. On what grounds do neo-realists
deny this?
The afternoon session was opened by Professor Perry, who spoke,
in place of Mr. Pitkin, in behalf of the neo-realists. The main
problem of neo-realism is the reconciliation of independence and
immanence ; and its principle is : terms may enter into relations
without forfeiting their identity. It is opposed to nominalism, it is
opposed to sensationalism: logical entities belong to the texture of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 95
reality. It is in sympathy with modern logic. Idealism gives man
a preeminent position in the universe, which realism denies. In
reply to Professor Dewey he maintained that logic is prior to other
systems. Analysis reveals abstract entities, such as unity, relation.
This structure is more universal than the particular objects. But
you must add particular characters to get the particular object.
The logical plane intersects things; what is true of them logically
is true so far as it goes. Neo-realism does not deny an indirect
modification of the object by the knowledge relation ; for knowledge
may cause action. In discussing this principle of neo-realism, that
the knowledge relation does not modify the object, it must be under-
stood in the light of this stricter interpretation. Here is a desk;
realism takes it to exist with its properties ; I glance at it, or in any
other way establish a knowledge relation; then this new fact does
not modify the desk. That I know "2 + 2 = 4" does not affect the
logical relation expressed in the equation.
The discussion which followed these papers of the two leaders
was participated in by many speakers. Professor Marvin : Ought
philosophers ever to indulge in existential propositions? Should
they not rather take the existential propositions which science has
given us? Professor Spaulding: The method of the neo-realists is
purely empirical. We find that any science of objects necessarily
presupposes that these objects are not modified by our studying"
them. This is true in physics. Professor Dewey has assumed it in
his own studies. Start with the contrary assumption, namely, that
an object is modified by the knowledge relation ; is that process
known without modification? Professor Dewey: You ask the same
type of questions as Professor Royce does. Knowledge is a process
with a purpose. Its outcome justifies it. Professor Spaulding:
Professor Dewey takes the genetic view of knowledge. But first he
studies the genesis of his own knowledge. And here he implies a
logical doctrine: his knowing does not modify the object known at
least in this case. And this is the essence of realism: objects can
be known as they are and as if the knowing were not taking place.
Professor Montague: Realism is a protest: the process of discovery
has nothing to do with the question of validity. Genesis has no
relevancy to truth. Professor Ormond: One way of getting to
knowledge is by the logic-process. Would it not follow that our-
successive acts of knowledge do modify the object of knowledge?'
Professor Montague: Professor Ormond is not taking "modify" in
the precise sense defined by Professor Perry. Professor Spaulding :
How would you find out, how much knowledge modifies the object? 1
Professor Ormond: Such a question can only be answered by ex-
perience. Professor Norman Smith : Professor Dewey 's question has.
96 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
'
not been answered, namely, whether getting into consciousness makes
a difference. Professor Home: The usual objection to the method
of introspection in psychology is that the object of introspection
is modified by the act of introspecting. Here, then, seems to be at
least one class where modification of the object by the knowledge
relation is admitted. Another is the social point of view : It makes a
difference to us to be known. How did realists get outside of knowl-
edge to know what the object-not-known is?
Miss Calkins concluded the discussion for the day with her paper
"The Idealist to the Realist." It consisted of a refutation of criti-
cisms on idealism, and an attack on the positive doctrines of neo-
realism. Realists claim that their principles are demanded by sci-
ence and logic. But idealism can not be subversive of logic, if logic
is defined as the formulation of the laws of consistent thinking.
And if science demands the distinction between object and subject,
this is possible and necessary on idealistic grounds ; for we know
ourselves as bounded; this boundary is the other- than-myself, the
beyond ; and yet it must be mental, for I know it ; it can only exist
as known. This is not an assumption on the part of idealism, but a
discovery, the result of analysis. Empiricists are guilty of an un-
blushing willingness to sacrifice empirical fact to logic when they
argue from the "externality of relations" to the independence of
objects from the mind. The ubiquitousness of the "ego" is not a
"predicament," but a significant fact. The distinction between
shared and unshared experience is an expression of such an em-
pirical fact. Solipsism is not a necessary consequence of the ideal-
istic starting point. Regarding the positive doctrines of the neo-
realists, the most important are the conceptions of reality in scien-
tific terms. But are these in no sense conditioned by being known ?
Analysis reveals that "atoms," "ether," "energy" are simply ways
of knowing; they reduce to sense-qualities or relations, i. e., to ideal
terms. Our objects are found to be simply complex forms of ex-
perience.
In the evening the president, Professor Bakewell, addressed the
association on ' ' The Problem of Transcendence, ' ' which will be pub-
lished in full in the official report of the meeting.
The session was opened Wednesday morning by Professor Mon-
tague's paper "The New Realism and the Old." He attempted to
specify the definite problem which the new realism attacks and the
realm to which the propositions of the platform should be restricted.
It is not a problem of "ontology," but of "epistemology"; even
here a distinction is necessary between the methodological question
of the sources and criteria of knowledge, and the simple question
"whether or not the known exists independently of the fact that it
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 97
is known." The latter alone is the problem of neo-realism. He
sketched three historical solutions of this problem: natural realism,
epistemological dualism, and subjectivism, and showed the deficien-
cies which prohibit the unqualified acceptance of any one of these.
Neo-realists are amending natural realism; in particular the objec-
tions arising out of the problems of illusions, dreams, and the
relativity of sensations were met by declaring all these to be real, not
merely apparent, relations between objects, and by distinguishing
them as "binary" from the so-called real, namely, "triadic" rela-
tions. Properties are not due to the knowledge relation, but to the
relations of objects to objects. And the brain is one such object.
Professor Pratt : Would sound be existing even if there were no
ear ? Professor Montague : We do not know whether sound depends
on an ear or extra-organic relations. Professor Miller: The same
tree will appear green to the near, bluish to the distant observer.
Are both to be considered properties of the tree? We would then
have a multitude of attributes in relation to possible perception at
different removes. Miss Calkins : A number of idealists here have been
united on one point at least, the impossibility of a purely internal
world ; whether they express this in the form : I and the world ; or,
the will and the beyond ; or, I know myself as thwarted ; in each case
they maintain that one immediately knows more than one's own self.
The most important question to the realist is : How can you explain il-
lusions by calmly calling in brain and sense-organs and objects in
space? They are just what is in question : What is the object? Pro-
fessor Keyser : It can be proved equally well that all things are mental
or that all things are non-mental. We prefer the first hypothesis
merely because everybody is certain that at least some logical enti-
ties are mental. Professor Dewey: This shows that it is a wrong
method to confine yourself to conceptual elaboration. If I were a
neo-realist I should be aware that mathematics has played into the
hands of idealism. Imagine that idealism had disappeared with its
presuppositions, what problems would be left? Professor Marvin:
In our discussions here two distinct meanings of logic have come to
light. The first is a study of the knowing process. The second has
nothing to do with "knowing." Realists take logic in this second
meaning. Professor Ormond : I offer a new definition of neo-realism.
It is a "solipsism of the object." Professor Lovejoy: More adher-
ence to definitions is required, if we want to come to an understand-
ing. Appoint a committee to define the fundamental terms which
are to be used in the discussion. Professor Perry: Realists disclaim
the Cartesian axiom. Cogito ergo sum is not a prime certainty.
Professor Spaulding: Cognition need not be studied before things
are known.
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Professor Hibben then opened the discussion of ' ' The Value for
Philosophy of Mathematical Methods and Ideals." Mathematics is
a phase of logic developing the necessary implications of certain
fundamental postulates. The possibility of extending knowledge by
mathematics beyond the limits of observation depends "on the man-
ner in which the mathematical system articulates with our real
experience." This point of articulation is the original postulate.
On it depends therefore the value of mathematical prediction. Can
we develop philosophy geometrico more? No; because the funda-
mental conditions underlying philosophy are too complex to be ex-
pressible in a limited number of postulates. The conquests of
mathematics suggest, however, the possibility of a fundamental
unity underlying a general Weltanschauung. In this sense mathe-
matics will remain an ideal of philosophy.
Dr. Brown, the second leader of this discussion, held that mathe-
matics has to philosophy no more intimate relation than any other
science. All mathematics begins as a representation of reality and
remains thus in so far as it is significant. But it does not copy real-
ity. Its concepts are symbols which signify operations on reality;
their value is to be judged by their success. Novelties are only ap-
parent in a deductive system; the propositions are merely more
serviceable forms of the same essence which is implicit in the postu-
lates. As regards the value of the deductive system form for phi-
losophy, we must distinguish a constructive and a reconstructive use
of this form. Neither is applicable in philosophy; the former, be-
cause philosophical systems grow by the aggregation of new facts,
mathematical systems by the development of their implications ; the
latter, because the number of fundamental concepts and postulates
which are required is too great in philosophy, owing to its great com-
plexity. Dr. Schmidt : It is unfortunate that the value of mathematical
methods and ideals, which I consider very great, should have been
discussed by two speakers who both argued on the negative. It
is significant that their results are based on a certain concep-
tion of the deductive system form which is open to doubt in es-
sential points. A careful study of this form as exhibited in mathe-
matics should prove a fruitful subject of philosophical inquiry. It
seems also important to call attention to the success of mathematical,
methods already attained in the field of logic. The complexity of
philosophical presuppositions can not be argued against the appli-
cation of the deductive system form, so long as they have not been
exhibited. But no form whatever can make unsound reasoning
sound ; a good form, however, enables us to detect flaws more readily.
Professor Keyser: I call attention to an error in the two papers,
namely, that Euclidean geometry agrees with experience better than
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 99
non-Euclidean. Both "agree" with experience; but Euclidean
geometry has proved more convenient so far.
In the afternoon Professor De Laguna examined the "External-
ity of Relations" in three different aspects. It has its origin in the
distinction of essence and accidents, as the latter are either non-
essential qualities or relations. Externality of relations means here
"external to the essence," i. e., to the defining attributes. The
validity of this distinction depends therefore on the possibility of
' ' adequate definition. ' ' If anywhere, this must be possible in mathe-
matics. But here this theory of the externality of relations is un-
sound, because the meaning of its indefinables is determined only by
their relations to each other in the axioms, just as the meaning of words
is determined by their connections, their relations to each other.
But the externality of relations may be conceived also as "external-
ity to qualities, ' ' whether essential or not. Here no precise decision
is possible, because the distinction itself is not precise. Lastly, we
may understand the externality of relations as meaning independ-
ence of relations from each other. In this sense it is, at least in
part, decidedly wrong. And we have no reason for assuming that
the relations in which an object stands form distinct groups each of
which is independent of the rest.
Professor Cohen followed with his paper on ' ' The Present Situa-
tion in the Philosophy of Mathematics." Starting from the custom-
ary view that mathematics is a deductive science, we are struck by
the so-called * * problem of the New, ' ' namely : how can mathematics
genuinely extend our knowledge? The fact itself admits of no
doubt ; the question can therefore merely be : how can it be accounted
for? He examined the empiricist explanation that the axioms are
the result of experience; Kant's appeal to "pure intuition"; and
Poincare's recent attempt to mark out the method of "mathematical
induction" as the fountain of the "New." None of these seemed to
Professor Cohen capable of accounting for the fact of the "New."
In his own attempt at solution he pointed out (1) that mathematical
reasoning is not confined to the syllogism; (2) that the syllogism is
not reducible to mere identity. He then discussed the problem of
the objective validity of mathematics. Again, the fact itself admits
of no doubt ; the problem is to account for it. He discussed in turn
the answer of empiricism, of transcendental idealism, and of prag-
matism. He maintained that the assumption of the mental nature of
mathematical entities is based on the erroneous notion that the par-
ticular alone has existence. On the contrary, it seems necessary to
assume also the existence of universals, though they can not be local-
ized in space, and though their mode of existence may be different
from that of particulars. Dr. Schmidt : I agree with Professor Cohen
100 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in urging the problem of the "New" and with his criticism of the
usual attempts to account for it. I doubt, however, whether Pro-
fessor Cohen has himself succeeded in giving a satisfactory solution.
The main importance of the problem lies, to my mind, in the indica-
tion it gives that something is wrong with our ordinary conception
of a deductive system. Professor Lovejoy : The New is only appar-
ently existent in a deductive system. In the syllogism we must
already have established the conclusion "Socrates is mortal" in
order to be able to start with "All men are mortal." Dr. Schmidt :
This may be admitted in this particular syllogism ; but it only proves
that Socrates might now be excused from serving in the same old
example. Better examples would make it evident that Professor
Love joy's view is not correct.
Professor Keyser's paper on "The Asymmetry of Imagination"
required some knowledge of mathematics. Let
E = UiXi + U 2 X 2 + + U x n + 1
where Uk and XK are real numbers. Then E = is a symmetrical
equation. We will give to the #'s and u's different interpretations.
Starting with the equation
u i x i + U 2 X 2 + 1 0,
let x 19 x 2 be the coordinates of a point in Cartesian coordinates.
Then the equation will represent a straight line. We shall call this
straight line the image, l(u), corresponding to the concept, T(u),
namely, the equation. But we may also give the u 's a definite mean-
ing; let us understand by them the coordinates of a line; then our
equation will represent a point, formed by the intersection of an
infinity of straight lines. We will call this the I(x) corresponding
to the T(x). As x and u are interchangeable, we have perfect
symmetry in the equation which holds good in the image. This still
obtains when we treat the equation
U 1 X 1 + U 2 X 2 + U 2 X 3 + 1 =
correspondingly. But in
the corresponding images I(u) and I(x) lose their symmetry:
I(u) can still be imagined; but I(x) can not. We discover thus a
certain asymmetry of the imagination, whilst thought still remains
perfectly symmetrical. Professor Sheldon: This corroborates the
results obtained recently by some German psychologists, namely,
that thought and imagination are totally different. It opens up a
novel method of treating the problem of the a priori. If these re-
eal
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 101
suits are correct, they ought to alter our methods of philosophizing.
We have tried to cling to the concrete. Now it must be urged: don't
think in concrete terms; let thought have free play. Miss Calkins:
You may be as concrete (*. e., individual) as ever; but you must let
the relational have its place as well as the sensational.
On Thursday morning Professor Britain spoke of "The Logical
Value of the Genetic Explanation." He distinguished two types
of valuation, the one exact, capable of being agreed upon, the other
inexact, not subject to common agreement. The "standard of ex-
planation" was taken to be of the second type. "The perfect
explanation, implying as it does the ultimate solution of both the
ontological and cosmological problems, is a task too stupendous for
human intelligence. And yet it stands logically as the only perfect
form of explanation, though forever undefined, real though never
realized." With this ideal of explanation before him, Professor
Britain rebelled against scientific procedure which definitely limits
its problems in order to arrive at definite solutions. And on it is
based his criticism of the genetic method. As an internal criticism
of the genetic method Professor Britain pointed out that "it has no
definite starting-point, covers no stated period, nor can it assign any
reason why these should be as they are rather than otherwise."
Professor Gore : The remedy for this, it would seem, is : more genetic
method. Professor Lovejoy: Professor Britain's ideal of explana-
tion is hazy and would exclude the only kind of explanation of
which we have any definite knowledge, namely, the scientific. Pro-
fessor Cohen: Professor Britain has indicated some at least of the
arbitrary presuppositions of the genetic method.
Professor Sheldon 's paper showed, in definite instances, the effect
of two "Ideals of Philosophic Thought" in determining the reason-
ing of those who hold them. He called them the ' ' aristocratic ' ' and
the "democratic" ideal. They are mostly latent in philosophic dis-
cussions, beyond proof or refutation, and whilst not really contra-
dictory to each other, they determine opposing views in those who
hold them, and are consequently a source of perennial quarrels. The
first, held by Bradley and others, takes reality to be something deeper
or higher than common, every-day experience ; it postulates ultimate
principles to which experience-content must conform to attain the
dignity of reality. Two of these principles are: (1) that everything
must be grounded in everything else, i. e., the principle of sufficient
reason ; (2) that every term is simply itself and nothing else, i. e., the
principle of identity. The second ideal (of which Dewey and James
are representatives, also Betrand Russell) takes reality as that which
is directly present here and now, and regards that which is beyond
such concrete verification as ghostly and illusory. It denies any
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ultimate principles except those directly useful in attaining results
here and now. Professor Norman Smith: There is no cleavage be-
tween two parties such as Professor Sheldon represents ; both realists
and idealists rely on logic and on fact. Bradley is not a representa-
tive of idealism ; he stands by himself, a scholastic in modern times,
a student neither of the history of philosophy nor of science. Pro-
fessor Urban : There are certain presuppositions which underlie both
realism and idealism, which are not logical, and which can best be
called values. Idealism has made great advances since it recognized
value as a fundamental idea, as Miinsterberg did. Dr. Schmidt:
Two important points of method seem to have come to light during
this meeting; one is the fundamental role of the concept problem
which limits the validity of our fundamental assumptions ; the other
is the necessity of determining an ideal of philosophic thought, as
this will determine the solutions of our philosophic problems.
Here lies the great value of Professor Sheldon's paper, in that
he has shown in definite examples just this determining effect of
two ideals. Professor Spaulding: I do not admit Dr. Schmidt's
contention that the validity of our fundamental propositions is lim-
ited by our problems. It is a significant fact that all philosophical
systems are stated in the form of propositions. Dr. Schmidt : I agree
with this, and it is significant; but it does not invalidate my
statement.
Professor Singer's paper, "Mind as an Object of Observation"
criticized the "analogy argument" for the existence of a mind in
other bodies: it assumes wrongly that our mind is directly known
only to ourselves, it is invalid as an inference from a single case, and
the hypothesis of other minds refers to the " jenseits" of things that
make a difference. It fundamentally misconceives * ' mind ' ' as some-
thing which is to be added to the body, an eject. This is brought
out by the example of an "automatic sweetheart" invented by
James. James's shrinking from accepting here the consequences
of his own pragmatic method proves disappointing. The difference
between soul and no-soul is merely a question of the fuller or poorer
experience. ' ' Our belief in consciousness is an expectation of prob-
able behavior based on an observation of actual behavior." This
recognition of consciousness as behavior provides a definite method
for finding out what consciousness means, even though it is impos-
sible to know surely what aspect of the behavior of certain objects
leads us to call them conscious. Professor Singer finds one root of
the analogy argument in the (erroneous) assumption of English
sensationalism, namely, that "I am immediately possessed of certain
data, recognizable and namable each by itself." 'The beginning
of our epistemological building is not a datum which might be known
by itself, . . . but just any point at which it occurs to us to ask our-
selves : What is it you know, and how do you know it ? " A second,
and still deeper, root of the wrong conception of a soul presupposed
by the analogy argument he finds in the ' ' instinct for adding. ' ' As
a primitive physical science added to a body another called heat to
produce the hot body, so we add to a body another, called soul, to
make it a live body, we compose a real sweetheart out of an automatic
sweetheart plus an eject. Physical science has outgrown this stage.
Soul is still considered a mystery by philosophers. ; * Is it not time to
recognize the meaninglessness of the mystery?" Professor Ormond
took exception to Professor Singer's view of life.
In the concluding paper of the meeting, "Some Problems con-
fronting the Intellectualist, " Professor Shaw showed the historical
development of activism and its effect on intellectualism. This influ-
ence concerns the framing of the problem of reality and the formu-
lation of the doctrine of truth. Starting with the distinction be-
tween appearance and reality, Professor Shaw showed that the intel-
lectualist may conceive of being as that which appears and acts;
"being is expected to exist in sensu, in actu, et in re." The Lockean
formula should be modified so as to read : nihil est in intellects, quod
non ante fuerit in actu. This theory of reality finds support on the
psychological side in Wundt's theory of attention and in Judd's
conception of "active behavior and conscious experience as com-
plementary forms of the ego 's existence. ' ' The new theory of truth
emphasizes the role of human interest, whether, like Eucken, in the
form of a "spiritual creativeness, " or "along the path of instinct,"
where Bergson seeks truth. Professor Shaw pointed out dangers in
this theory, but concluded that the intellectualist ought to admit
that "there is truth in desire," as well as that there is "reality in
activity. ' '
KARL SCHMIDT.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Natural and Social Morals. CARVETH READ. London : Adam and Charles
Black. 1909.
The title of this book is intended to be descriptive. Morality is nat-
ural to man " in the sense that it is necessary not merely to his existence,
but to the development of all that is distinctively human." And morality
is social because man, in respect both of his existence and his development,
is essentially social. No exception can be taken to this contention, and
it gives to the whole book a certain pertinence and liveliness that are
lacking in many ethical treatises. But the author's other preliminary
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contention, that his ethical system rests logically on the metaphysical
system developed in his " Metaphysics of Nature," is more questionable.
Apparently the only application that Professor Read makes of his ideal-
istic metaphysics is the inference that because " science is the interpreta-
tion of the world according to the principle of causality," it follows that
" if morality is to be scientifically treated, it must be brought under the
principle of causality." But this inference, barring the contention that
the principle of causality somehow depends upon the " nature of the
human mind," is not idealistic doctrine at all. The idealistic motive in
modern ethics appears rather in the tendency to distinguish moral judg-
ments from scientific judgments through setting up a dualism between
" appreciation " and " description," or the " normative " and the " factual."
And no one has repudiated such a dualism more explicitly than has
Professor Read. Thus he says: Moral science differs from the natural
sciences " not in the quality of its laws but in the limitation of its scope
by the end in view " (p. 95). And again: " Moral science is not a system
of rules, but a science of the tendencies of actions: which being known,
every one must judge what he ought to do " (p. 99). Such assertions as
these bring Professor Read into agreement, not with idealists like Green,
Bradley, and Mackenzie, but with realists like G. E. Moore, in whose
" Principia Ethica " we read that the question, What ought we to do,
" introduces into ethics . . . the question what things are related as causes
to that which is good in itself ; and this question can only be answered by
. . . the method of empirical investigation; by means of which causes are
discovered in the other sciences" (p. 146).
Where virtue and duty are construed in terms of the consequences or
tendencies of actions, the concept of the good assumes fundamental impor-
tance. Here the author is in agreement with the tendency which domi-
nates modern ethics, to construe goodness in terms of desire. But his
account of the matter is on the whole confused and unsuccessful. In the
first place, he argues that because the good is the object of desire it must
therefore consist in some " experience." Now accepting the necessary
connection between desire and goodness, goodness may be defined either
as that which satisfies desire, or as the satisfaction itself. But it is impos-
sible to identify the two and assert that a desire is satisfied by its own
satisfaction. And if the good is that which satisfies desire, then there is
no proof that it need be experience; while if the good is the satisfaction
of desire, then it is inaccurate to identify goodness with the object of
desire. But this is perhaps more a matter of clearness than of doctrine.
A more serious difficulty arises in connection with the account of the
" chief good," which is the basal conception of the whole system. The
author nowhere analyzes this conception, and he does not appear to recog-
nize that because it predicates some kind of quantitative maximum of the
generic goodness already defined, it must derive its exact meaning from
the category of quantity which is employed. Everything, in other words,
turns upon the term " chief," which the author uses with the naivete of
common sense. He assumes, apparently, that if the good is the desired,
the chief good is the most desired; or that the chief good is what is pre-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 105
ferred. The difficulty, of course, lies in the fact that a great many dif-
ferent and contradictory things are preferred, so that we are nowhere
afforded any ground upon which to establish a true judgment in the mat-
ter. Professor Read does not even employ the ordinary idealistic device
of referring to an absolute judgment. Were he to do so, we should as
moralists be compelled to ask for the grounds of such a judgment, and
should not be at all interested in it as a metaphysical Or epistemological
hypothesis. And Professor Eead must at least be credited with avoiding
irrelevant issues, even though he fails to solve the problem; but that he
does fail, can scarcely be denied. We are told of some of the things which
men have thought to be the chief good, "namely happiness, perfection,
virtue, the beauty of holiness and wisdom " ; and it is suggested that the
best term under which to comprise them all (" if one term must be
chosen") is "philosophy or culture." But why the author should feel
compelled to choose one term when he has not succeeded in discovering a
single conception, does not appear. We are left at the end without the
slightest idea of what the author is really looking for, or where he expects
such a thing to be found. The whole discussion rests upon a vague appeal
to the actual preferences of men, in other words, to opinion ; and is easily
convertible into the crudest relativism. Against the relativism of Wester-
marck he feels it necessary to protest, " as the alternative to abandoning
moral philosophy" (p. 129). But what does it profit moral philosophy to
save the subordinate conception of virtue or right action from the taint
of subjectivity, unless it be possible to establish the principal conception
of goodness upon objective grounds?
Doubtless it is Professor Head's failure to recognize the seriousness of
the logical problem that leads him to speak so slightingly of Kant, as one
who identifies " duty with the command of an abstract Prussian drill-
sergeant " (p. 54) ; and to dismiss the term " ought " as unanalyzable
" because it is empty " (p. 57) . He is entirely correct in distinguishing
the " feeling and impulse " of duty from the rational conviction of duty,
and in charging tradition with confusing the two. But Professor Read
seems scarcely to understand that Kant and others have been brought to
their excessive formalism by their painstaking treatment of a matter that
he himself glosses over. If moral scepticism is to be avoided it is neces-
sary that moral experience should somehow be enabled to escape the limits
of the individual consciousness; it is necessary that the fundamental
judgment in moral matters should partake of the logical virtue of ob-
jective truth. And Kant's notion of a " practical reason," artificial and
needless though it doubtless is, can scarcely be dismissed by one who has
nothing better to put in its place than composite opinion.
Nearly two-thirds of the book is devoted to the discussion of custom,
the family, the state, religion, and art. These chapters are interestingly
written, and contain an abundance of information and sound critical com-
ment. A pessimistic tone pervades them all, and this is most pronounced
in the last chapter, which he significantly terms " moral degeneracy,"
rather than " progress." Professor Read is evidently an individualist who
is somewhat out of sympathy with an age in which men habitually look to
106
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the state for succor. But he is not bitter, nor is he over-positive. Indeed
the author's willingness to leave important matters unsettled, to accumu-
late evidence without striking a balance, and to offer opinions without
proof, is at once the principal defect and the principal merit of the book.
It is not to be compared with such a book as Moore's "Principia Ethica "
in logical rigor, nor with such a book as Simmel's " Einleitung " in re-
finement of analysis, nor with such a book as Rashdall's " Theory of Good
and Evil " in systematic arrangement and completeness. But, on the
other hand, it surpasses all of these books not only in style, but in the
trenchancy and aptness of its criticism of life. Its very inadequacy as a
treatise in theoretical ethics may have something to do with its success
as an " endeavor to study morals as matter of fact and experience, instead
of merely worrying the traditionary abstract ideas in the fashion of a
scholastic age" (p. xi).
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
Le cycle mystique: la divinite, origine et fin des existences individuelles
dans la philosophic antesocratique. AUGUSTE DIES. Paris: Eelix
Alcan. 1909. Pp. 115.
The volume under notice belongs to the series " Collection historique
des grands philosophes." It falls into two parts, of which the first con-
siders the religious origins of the conception of deity as source and goal
of all existences. In two chapters M. Dies treats (1) of the "classical"
religion, that is, the religion of classic Greek literature beginning with
Homer, or what is more familiarly known as the Olympian religion, and
(2) of the primitive religion, of which the Dionysiac and Orphic cults
are survivals or revivals. These chapters are extremely well done, pre-
senting in brief compass probably as satisfactory a statement of Greek
religion before the Hellenistic period a r * may anywhere be found. There
are points, to be sure, at which the student of Greek religion will hesitate
to adopt the views of M. Dies, as when he regards Homeric religion as
essentially a religion of art, and explains the flexibility of fate (p. 10)
and the tendency of the epic to portray the gods as of like passions with
ourselves (p. 11), as due to the exigencies of art. One may gladly recog-
nize that without such conceptions the Homeric epic, as we know it,
would have been impossible; but that would be quite another thing
from admitting that such considerations begot the conceptions in ques-
tion. These are but two of a number of similar points; but they do not
greatly detract from one's favorable judgment of the presentation as a
whole.
The chapters of the second part, which deal with the teachings of the
pre-Socratic philosophers touching this view of the world, are rather per-
functory, excepting that in which M. Dies treats of Empedocles. Xeno-
phanes and Heraclitus might perhaps be included in this exception, but
only if one takes a narrow view of the theme. The chief shortcoming
of the thesis is that the author did not perceive that, in the last resort,
he was dealing with the large question of the " one and the many." If
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 107
he perceived it, he skirted the question to the prejudice of his thesis. It
would be easy to show that different statements are quite contradictory,
possibly because in this part of his discussion he relied too much on
M. Rivaud.
M. Dies is most suggestive in his treatment of Empedocles. The
necessary limits of this review do not admit of a detailed criticism of his
view, though the task were worthy of the pains. The strength of his
account lies in the attempt to relate the physical philosophy and the
religious teachings of Empedocles. There is undoubtedly a relation ; but,
unless I am in error, the relation is not so much logical, as M. Dies seems
to think, as psychological. The connection is due to the fact that both
dwelt together in one and the same brain, and that in the main it was
the religious doctrine, accepted as a definitive truth, which served as a
basis for the associative coordination of ideas, however little Empedocles
may himself have been aware of it. I have indicated elsewhere (" Die
Bekehrung im klassischen Altertum," p. 4, n. 14) my belief that it was
the Orphic conception of the soul that suggested the Empedoclean " ele-
ment." As a matter of fact, the two conceptions are quite closely parallel,
as M. Dies seems to perceive; but he is quite in error as to the precise
theory of Empedocles in both spheres. On the one hand, he regards the
soul in the teaching of Empedocles as " ephemeral groups of elements "
(pp. 96 and 99), that is to say, as composite, for which view there is not
a shred of evidence. The soul preexists before birth, and survives death;
it is essentially an atomic, elemental substance which enters into a pass-
ing union with the " elements." After the dissolution of this temporary
union, it either enters successively into other similar unions, or, after a
great year, enters into a union with the gods, which are elemental souls,
essentially like the human. In neither case does it lose its identity: it
becomes a god, not God. The union with the gods is a " republic of
souls," not an absorption into a Parmenidean one. In other words,
Empedocles's view of the world of souls is fundamentally pluralistic.
On the other hand, the union of the " elements " in the " sphere of love "
is not, as M. Dies would have us suppose, an absorption into a Parmeni-
dean one or a qualitative indeterminate. This, I believe, I have elsewhere
(" Qualitative Change in Pre-Socratic Philosophy," pp. 366-7 ; Uepl
4>v<rea>5, p. 103, n. 92) clearly shown.
M. Dies, like most interpreters of early Greek philosophy, errs in
pressing overmuch the notion of unity. There can be no doubt that
" unity " nowhere implies complete homogeneity before the time of Par-
menides, and that the exigencies of natural philosophy, if not the persist-
ence of lax definition of thought, led subsequent philosophers also to
recede from the extreme logical position of Parmenides, which necessarily
resolved itself into nihilism.
M. Dies is right in seeking an explanation of Greek philosophy in
Greek religion, especially in notions embodied in primitive religion. It
was there that the concepts of man first took definite shape and longest
continued to exert their influence, because of the peculiar conservatism
of religion; but we must look for these concepts not in the large sys-
108
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tematic formulations of belief, but rather in details. This task still
awaits the patient study of competent scholars; and there is no field more
fruitful for the historian of thought.
W. A. HEIDEL.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
MIND. July, 1910. The Psychological Explanation of the Develop-
ment of the Perception of External Objects (I.) (pp. 305-321) : H.
"W. B. JOSEPH. - Criticizes the doctrine of Professor Stout, as expounded
in his " Groundwork of Psychology," Chapter IX., that we know an
external world and that we gain this knowledge by a process psycholog-
ically traceable, in which we start from experiences merely of our own
sensations. The theory fails to account for cognition of spatial relations.
Discussion of cognition of external reality reserved for next installment.
The Cardinal Principle of Idealism (pp. 322-336) : R. B. PERRY. - Ideal-
ism, in its current technical sense, is a distinctively modern movement.
True religion had to be defended against the claim of science to have
alienated the world from man. Kant's " revolution " was a counter
revolution through which the spectator again became the center of the
system. The burden of idealism is a religious interpretation of nature,
and its cardinal principle is that knowledge is a creative process. This is
a fallacious inference from " the ego-centric predicament," or the circum-
stance that anything that is known or referred to is something known or
referred to, and can not be at the same time unknown and unreferred to.
The idealistic induction proceeds wholly by the method of agreement,
because " the ego-centric predicament " forbids the use of the method of
difference. " It is impossible to observe cases of unobserved things, even
if there be any. But where this is the case, the method of agreement is
worthless and the use of it is a fallacy." Linguistic Misunderstandings
(pp. 337-355) : HUGH MACCOLL. - Second installment. Perplexities that
attach to the ideas the infinite and the finite are removed by letting the
sign for equality signify " virtual equality " (X = X -j- dx) as well as
absolute equality. Problems of matter and mind involve a conception of
the soul. The Sublime (pp. 356-372) : E. E. CARRITT. - A criticism of the
theory of A. C. Bradley in his " Oxford Lectures on Poetry." Sublimity
in the loose sense is beauty discovered in what bears a definitely hostile
relation to our purposes or existence. Speaking strictly, only the absolute
is sublime. Sublimity might be defined as the beauty of the absolute.
Discussions: Some Explanations in Reply to Mr. Bradley (pp. 373-378) :
B. RUSSELL. - Mr. Bradley assumes a certain theory of relations and ap-
peals to a sufficient reason. Mr. Russell defends external relations, and
holds that a term may be related to itself (2 + 2 = 4). Mr. Russell's
Objections to Frege's Analysis of Propositions (pp. 379-386) : Miss E. E.
C. JONES. - Erege's theory supplies an analysis of propositions of the form
S is P which can be applied to all propositions of that form, and some
theory of denotation which can be applied to all denotative terms. Defi-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 109
nition in Symbolic Logic (pp. 387-389) : A. T. SHEARMAN. - Seeks to
elucidate the volitional character of definition, together with the position
of definitions in reasoning, and the distinction to be drawn between defi-
nitions in symbolic logic and in philosophy. Note on Aristotle's Theory
of the Constructive Reason (pp. 390-394) : A. W. BENN. - Writer com-
ments on a presumed error of himself and of Professor Adamson. Active
reason is not to be identified with reason in act. Aristotle meant by
" constructive reason " something equivalent to ego or self-conscious per-
sonality or rational self-consciousness. Critical Notices: August Messer,
Empfindung und Denken: G. E. MOORE. Karl Joel, Der Frei Wille:
C. S. MEYERS. James Sully, The Teacher's Handbook of Psychology:
T. WHITTAKER. New Books. Philosophical Periodicals. Note.
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. October, 1910.
Voluntary Movement (pp. 513-562) E. C. ROWE. - The author reports
typewriting experiments, writing experiments, anatomical, physiological,
and pathological data. The conclusion is drawn that " feeling is never the
fundamental in a complex and highly voluntary activity." Voluntary
movement differs from other kinds of movement in that it is essentially a
form of control, which, in turn, means cognition. An Experimental Study
of Belief (pp. 563-596) : DR. OKABE. - Belief and its opposite are con-
sciousnesses similar in nature. Belief and disbelief are more than mere ac-
ceptance, rejection, or emotional consciousness. Certainty-uncertainty are
strongly affective, having a pleasant and unpleasant element, respectively.
A Preliminary Study of the Association-Reaction Consciousness (pp.
597-602) : R. L. GEISSLER. - A preliminary report of an introspective study
of the " complex." The " complex " was found to be a group of ideas that
are unpleasant. These ideas give a feeling of focal crowdedness soon to
be followed by a single focal idea. A Bibliography of the Scientific Writ-
ings of Wilhelm Wundt: E. B. TITCHENER and L. R. GEISSLER. William
James Commemorative Note. Subject Index and Names of Authors.
Brown, William. The Use of the Theory of Correlation in Psychology.
Cambridge : University Press. 1910. Pp. 83.
Bussell, F. W. Marcus Aurelius and the Later Stoics. Edinburgh:
T. & T. Clark. 1910. Pp. xi + 302.
Franklin, Charles Kendall. What Nature Is: An Outline of Scientific
Naturalism. Boston: Sherman, French & Company. 1911. Pp. 74.
$0.75.
Jevons, F. B. The Idea of God in Early Religions. Cambridge: Uni-
versity Press. 1910. Pp. x -f 170.
Lindsay, James. The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics. Edin-
burgh and London : Blackwood. 1910. Pp. xii -j- 135.
Magnus, Philip. Educational Aims and Efforts, 1880-1910. London:
Longmans, Green, and Co. 1910. Pp. xii -j- 288. 7s. 6d.
Menard, A. Analyse et critique des principes de la psychologic de W.
James. Paris: Felix Alcan. 1911. Pp. 467. 7 fr. 50.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Ostwald, Wilhelm. Die Forderung des Tages. Leipzig: Akademische
Verlagsgesellschaft m. b. H. 1910. Pp. vi -f- 603.
Rigano, E. De 1'origine et de la nature mnemoniques des tendances
affectives. Estratto da Scientia, rivista di scienza, Vol. IX, Anno V
(1911), N. XVII-1. Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli.
Huge, Arnold. Die Philosophic der Gegenwart. Eine Internationale
Jahresiibersicht. Heidelberg : Weiss'sche Universitatsbuchhandlung.
1910. Pp. xii + 531. 10s.
NOTES AND NEWS
AT the meeting of the British Academy on January 18 Mr. Shadworth
H. Hodgson read a paper on " Some Cardinal Points in Knowledge."
Among the most prominent of these points were the following: that
consciousness is the only evidence we have for anything whatever; that
every empirically present moment of consciousness moves in two opposite
directions of time at once, backwards into the past, and forwards into the
future; that this circumstance compels us to distinguish between con-
sciousness as a knowing (in which it is our evidence for everything) and
the same consciousness as an existent (in which it is the dependent con-
comitant of some real condition or conditions, which are not conscious-
ness) ; that the content of consciousness as a knowing is always found to
be analyzable ultimately into distinguishable but inseparable elements,
its so-called formal and material elements, time or time and space together
being the formal, and some mode of feeling the material, while, taken as
an existent, it appears as a self-objectifying process, having two aspects,
the objective and the subjective; that physical matter is made known to
us by the process of the simultaneous exercise of the sensations of sight
and touch, including pressure, which gives us our first conception of
reality in the full sense, namely, as a real condition of genesis; that
physical matter, as known by sensations of touch with pressure, is a
replica of the sensations by which it is known, which can not be said of
any other sensation or feeling; that physical matter is at once the object
and the real condition of genesis of new sensations, new not in respect of
kind, but of occurrence, and the experience of physical matter is thus the
point at which the physical world as known and our consciousness know-
ing it coincide, thus proving the latter to be true evidence of the former;
that the nature of the specific qualities of sensation, what, for instance,
sensations of touch, pressure, light, color, sound, heat, cold, pleasure, pain,
and so on, are this is incapable of being thought of as caused or condi-
tioned by anything whatever; in their simplest shape they are ultimates
in experience ; they are a revelation in the strictest sense : that, since time
or time and space together, which are their inseparable formal element,
are infinite, that is, limitless in increase or decrease, we are compelled to
admit the possibility of innumerable other modes of sensation than our
own, and even of other kinds of formal elements than time and space,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 111
though we can form no positive idea whatever of what such possible modes
may be; that the specific qualities of emotion and desire of all kinds are
ultimates of experience, in precisely the same sense and for the same
reason as those of sensation; that religion springs from an emotional
root, namely, the craving for the sympathy of some being who, besides
being morally our superior, should also have a perfect knowledge of what
we are and have been, such as can belong to no finite being who is sepa-
rate from ourselves ; and that, when thought is said to arrest the attention,
the stream of consciousness, the content arrested, belongs to consciousness
as a knowing, the thought which arrests it to consciousness as an existent.
The Athenaeum.
SIR FRANCIS GALTON died in London on January 17. The following
summary of his career is from The Nation : " He was born at Birming-
ham, England, February 16, 1822 ; was educated at King Edward's School,
Birmingham, the Medical School of King's College, London, and at
Trinity College, London, where he graduated in 1844. Two years after
his graduation, he set out for the Upper Nile, which at that time was
almost unexplored. He went far beyond the temples and upper cataracts,
penetrating to the Sudan. The interest which this journey awakened in
England and the enthusiasm which it quickened in the young explorer
induced him to undertake exploration in South Africa. In company
with J. C. Anderson, he landed an expedition at Walfisch Bay in August,
1850, and was engaged in exploring Damaraland, now German South-
west Africa, until January, 1852. This expedition was fertile in
discoveries. He came upon the Ovampo race, a partly civilized agri-
cultural people, and reported for the first time upon the whole
region lying between Lake Ngami and the seacoast and 18 minutes 23
seconds south latitude. He soon turned his attention to meteorology,
and devised methods which served as the basis of our present weather
maps. He propounded the theory of anticyclones, which underlies the
present system of weather forecasting, and at various times put out
inventions having to do with meteorologic reckoning. He became expert
in handling statistics, and the facility which he so derived he put into
practise in his subsequent anthropological studies; he invented a system
of composite portraiture and various means of psychological measure-
ment. In a paper which appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society
on ' The Law of Ancestral Inheritance/ he undertook to place the study
of heredity on a quantitative footing. He was a consulting editor of
Biometrika since 1902, and continued to write almost up to the present.
Latterly he gave himself somewhat to the study of eugenics. In 1905 he
established a laboratory for that purpose at University College, under the
authority of the University of London. His works include : ' Tropical
South Africa/ 'Art of Travel/ ' Meteorographica/ ' Hereditary Genius/
' Human Faculty/ ' Natural Inheritance/ ' Finger Prints/ ' Finger-print
Directory/ and l Memoirs of My Life/ "
THOSE mathematicians and physicists who experience difficulty in
forming a clear mental picture of the concepts of non-Euclidean geometry
112
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
will find a useful and suggestive paper on the Bolyai-Lobatschewsky sys-
tem, by Professor H. S. Carslaw, in the Proceedings of the Edinburgh
Mathematical Society, XXVIII. (1910). The author starts by showing
how the properties of planes and straight lines in ordinary space can be
extended by inversion to spheres and circles through a fixed point. He
then proceeds to consider the properties of spheres and circles that are
orthogonal to a given fixed sphere, and shows that if these be called " ideal
planes " and ideal lines, they will be found to possess properties exactly
analogous to those of hyperbolic geometry. In the plane geometry thus
established " ideal parallels " are represented by circles which touch on
the fixed orthogonal circle, and thus it follows that through a given ideal
point two parallels can be drawn to a given line. In short, Professor
Carslaw shows that a geometry identical with that of Bolyai and Lobat-
schewsky can be built up in ordinary Euclidean space, and, so far as plane
geometry is concerned, in an ordinary Euclidean plane. Unless some
unforeseen fallacy in this investigation should be discovered which has
escaped Professor Carslaw's notice, we have here a convincing proof that
Euclid's parallel postulate is incapable of demonstration. In fact, it is
argued that if any inconsistency existed in the Bolyai-Lobatschewsky pos-
tulate this inconsistency would be extended by Professor Carslaw's " ideal "
system to Euclidean geometry. Do not these arguments point to the view
that Euclid's postulate should be regarded as a property of matter rather
than of space? Nature.
UNDER the auspices of the departments of philosophy and psychology
of Columbia University, a course of nine public lectures on " Problems of
Psychology " was given at the university from January 31 to February 9.
The lectures on the subject were as follows : " Measurement of Musical
Capacity," Professor C. E. Seashore, University of Iowa ; " Social Psy-
chology," Professor Charles H. Judd, University of Chicago ; " Memory
and Imagination," Professor E. B. Titchener, Cornell University;
" Erailties of Imageless Thought," Professor J. R. Angell, University of
Chicago ; " The Standpoint and Scope of Social Psychology," Professor
Mary Whiton Calkins, Wellesley College ; " The Psychology of Dream
States," Professor Joseph Jastrow, University of Wisconsin ; " The Role
of the Type in Simple Mental Processes," Professor W. B. Pillsbury,
University of Michigan ; " The Ontological Problem of Psychology,"
Professor George T. Ladd, Yale University; " Some Psychological Topics
Emphasized by Pragmatism," Professor Josiah Royce, Harvard University.
DR. LEONARD T. HOBHOUSE, professor of sociology in the University of
London, has been appointed to the Beer lectureship in political science
at Columbia University for this year. There are to be ten lectures on
" Social Evolution and Political Theory " in March and April.
PROFESSOR IRVING KING, of the University of Iowa, will give two
courses in education in the University of Wisconsin during the coming
summer session.
THE Macmillan Company will publish shortly Bergson's " Creative
Evolution," translated by Dr. Arthur Mitchell.
us
VOL. VIII No. 5 MARCH 2, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
EUSSELL'S PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS
II. THE CRITIQUE OP PRAGMATISM
time has not yet come when a just and synthetic account of
what is called pragmatism can be expected of any man. The
movement is still in a nebulous state, a state from which, perhaps,
it is never destined to issue. The various tendencies that compose it
may soon cease to appear together ; each may detach itself and be lost
in the earlier system with which it has most affinity. The reader
will probably remember Professor Lovejoy's "Thirteen Pragma-
tisms"; and besides such distinguishable tenets, there are in prag-
matism echoes of various popular moral forces, like democracy, im-
pressionism, love of the concrete, respect for success, trust in will
and action, and the habit of relying on the future, rather than on
the past, to justify one's methods and opinions. Most of these things
are characteristically American; and Mr. Russell touches on some
of them with more wit than sympathy. Thus he writes : ' ' The influ-
ence of democracy in promoting pragmatism is visible in almost
every page of William James's writing. There is an impatience of
authority, an unwillingness to condemn widespread prejudices, a
tendency to decide philosophical questions by putting them to a
vote, which contrast curiously with the usual dictatorial tone of
philosophic writings. ... A thing which simply is true, whether
you like it or not, is to him as hateful as a Russian autocracy; he
feels that he is escaping from a prison, made not by stone walls but
by 'hard facts,' when he has humanized truth, and made it, like the
police force in a democracy, the servant of the people instead of
their master. The democratic temper pervades even the religion of
the pragmatists; they have the religion they have chosen, and the
traditional reverence is changed into satisfaction with their own
handiwork. 'The prince of darkness,' James says, 'may be a gentle-
man, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven
is, he can surely be no gentleman. ' He is rather, we should say, con-
ceived by pragmatists as an elected president, to whom we give a
113
114 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
respect which is really a tribute to the wisdom of our own choice. A
government in which we have no voice is repugnant to the cjpno-
cratic temper. William James carries up to heaven the revolt of his
New England ancestors: the Power to which we can yield respect
must be a George Washington rather than a George III. ' '
Many emotional impulses of this sort might be discovered in
pragmatism; and yet what seems to be, at this moment, the domi-
nant note, among those who have most felt the influence of the
movement, is what is called the New Realism ; and to something very
like this, under the name of Radical Empiricism, Professor James
himself seemed to turn in the end as to a haven after the storm.
But this new realism is not a doctrine resting at all on vague moral
aspirations. It is nothing if not positive, scientific, and (most un-
like the earlier pragmatism) even materialistic and mathematical.
What it chiefly inherits from pragmatism, however, is the determi-
nation to reduce ideal relations, such as that of knowing, to natural
relations between dynamic processes. That such dynamic natural
relations underlie knowing and all spiritual activity was surely the
guiding insight of pragmatism, on its technical side ; while the habit,
most unfortunate, as it seems to me, of actually identifying these
natural relations with the ideal ones in which they find conscious
expression, has been the source of infinite confusion, both to prag-
matists and to their opponents, and the ground of that decided re-
jection which the new doctrine has met with in almost every quarter.
It is not, however, in any general picture of pragmatism that Mr.
Russell might draw that the value of his criticism would be likely
to lie. He attempts no such picture; and his exact and spare way
of philosophizing would hardly be suited to the task. That would
require a delicate blending of historical perspectives and some faith
in blundering, kindly, brave human nature. What Mr. Russell
catches and dwells upon are certain high lights of pragmatic theory ;
and however inadequately these precise points, even when added
together, may represent the movement, they are of interest in them-
selves, and what our critic has to say on them is keen and cogent
and, to my mind, altogether final.
A point of fundamental importance, about which pragmatists
have been far from clear, and perhaps not in agreement with one
another, is the sense in which their psychology is to be taken. ' The
facts that fill the imaginations of pragmatists," Mr. Russell writes
(p. 104), "are psychical facts; where others might think of the
starry heavens, pragmatists think of the perception of the starry
heavens; where others think of God, pragmatists think of the belief
in God, and so on. In discussing the sciences, they never think, like
scientific specialists, about the facts upon which scientific theories
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 115
are based ; they think about the theories themselves. Thus their
initial question and their habitual imaginative background are both
psychological. ' ' This is so true that unless we make the substitution
into psychic terms instinctively, the whole pragmatic view of things
will seem paradoxical, if not actually unthinkable. For instance,
pragmatists might protest against the accusation that "they never
think about the facts upon which scientific theories are based," for
they lay a great emphasis on facts. Facts are the cash which the
credit of theories hangs upon. Yet this protest, though sincere,
would be inconclusive, and in the end it would illustrate Mr. Rus-
sell's observation, rather than refute it. For we should presently
learn that these facts can be made by thinking, that our faith in
them may contribute to their reality, and may modify their nature ;
in other words, these facts are our immediate apprehensions of fact,
which it is indeed conceivable that our temperaments, expectations,
and opinions should modify. Thus the pragmatist's reliance on
facts does not carry him beyond the psychic sphere; his facts are
only his personal experiences. Personal experiences may well be
the basis for no less personal myths; but the effort of intelligence
and of science is rather to find the basis of the personal experiences
themselves ; and this non-psychic basis of experience is what common
sense calls the facts, and what practise is concerned with. Yet these
are not the pragmata of the pragmatist, for it is only the despicable
intellectualist that can arrive at them ; and the bed-rock of facts that
the pragmatist builds upon is avowedly drifting sand. Hence the
odd expressions, new to literature and even to grammar, which
bubble up continually in pragmatist writings. "For illustration
take the former fact that the earth is flat," 1 says one, quite inno-
cently; and another observes that "two centuries later, nominalism
was evidently true, because it alone would legitimize the local inde-
pendence of cities." Lest we should suppose that the historical
sequence of these "truths" or illusions is, at least, fixed and irre-
versible, we are soon informed that the past is always changing, too ;
that is (if I may rationalize this mystical dictum), that history is
always being rewritten, and that the growing present adds new rela-
tions to the past, which lead us to conceive or to describe it in some
new fashion. Even if the ultimate inference is not drawn, and we
are not told that this changing idea of the past is the only past that
exists the real past being unattainable and therefore, for personal
idealism, non-existent it is abundantly clear that the effort to dis-
tinguish fact from theory can not be successful, so long as the psy-
chological way of thinking prevails; for a theory, psychologically
" Studies in Logical Theory," edited by John Dewey, p. 106.
'This JOURNAL, Vol. IV., No. 24, p. 661.
116 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
considered, is a bare fact in the experience of the theorist, and the
other facts of his experience are so many other momentary views, so
many scant theories, to be immediately superseded by other "truths
in the plural. ' ' Sensations and ideas are really distinguishable only
by reference to what is assumed to lie without; of which external
reality experience is always an effect (and in that capacity is called
sensation) and often at the same time an apprehension (and in that
capacity is called idea) .
It is a crucial question, then, in the interpretation of pragmatism,
whether the psychological point of view, undoubtedly prevalent in
that school, is the only or the ultimate point of view which it admits.
The habit of studying ideas rather than their objects might be simply
a matter of emphasis or predilection. It might merely indicate a
special interest in the life of reason, and be an effort, legitimate
under any system of philosophy, to recount the stages by which
human thought, developing in the bosom of nature, may have reached
its present degree of articulation. I myself, for instance, like to
look at things from this angle: not that I have ever doubted the
reality of the natural world, or been able to take very seriously any
philosophy that denied it, but precisely because, when we take the
natural world for granted, it becomes a possible and enlightening
inquiry to ask how the human animal has come to discover his real
environment, in so far as he has done so, and what dreams have
intervened or supervened in the course of his rational awakening.
To the habit of studying in this way the tragi-comedy of cognitive
experience, I probably owe the generous appreciation, somewhat dis-
concerting at times, with which some pragmatists have honored me,
as well as the contempt or distrust my writings seem to inspire in
other critics, who think me a confused babbler and a romanticist,
because indeed I am more interested in the general imaginative life
of mankind than in the few shreds of it that these same critics
cherish as dogmas; for if they believed simply, as I do, in the nat-
ural world, they would not have misunderstood my intention. On
the other hand, a psychological point of view might be equivalent to
the idealistic doctrine that the articulation of human thought con-
stitutes the only structure of the universe, and its whole history.
This may be the position of Mr. Schiller, but hardly that of the other
leaders of the pragmatist school. I remember Professor Dewey say-
ing in conversation that he did not doubt that the mind of a friend
of ours, M, existed independently of our ideas of M's mind; but it
was not for philosophy to discuss that independent being; the busi-
ness of philosophy was merely to fix the logic and system of our own
knowledge. According to this view, pragmatism would seem to be
a revised version of the transcendental logic, leaving logic still tran-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 117
scendental, that is, still concerned with the evolution of the cate-
gories. The revision would consist chiefly in this, that empirical
verification, utility, and survival would take the place of dialectical
irony as the force governing the evolution. It would still remain
possible for other methods of approach than this transcendental
pragmatism, for instinct, perhaps, or for revelation, to bring us into
contact with things-in-themselves. A junction might thus be effected
with the system of M. Bergson, which would lead to this curious
result: that pragmatic logic would be the method of intelligence,
because intelligence is merely a method, useful in practise, for the
symbolic and improper representation of reality ; while another non-
pragmatic method sympathy and dream would alone be able to
put us in possession of direct knowledge and genuine truth. So that,
after all, the pragmatic " truth" of working ideas would turn out to
be what it has seemed hitherto to mankind, namely, no real truth,
but rather a convenient sort of fiction, which ceases to deceive when
once its merely pragmatic value is discounted by criticism.
I remember, too, once putting a question on this subject to Pro-
fessor James also; and his answer was one which I am glad to be
able to record. In relation to his having said that "as far as the
past facts go, there is no difference, ... be the atoms or be the God
their cause, "I asked whether, if God had been the cause, apart
from the value of the idea of him in our calculations, his existence
would not have made a difference to him, as he would be presumably
self-conscious. "Of course," said Professor James, "but I wasn't
considering that side of the matter; I was thinking of our idea."
The choice of the subjective point of view, then, was deliberate here,
and frankly arbitrary ; it was not intended to exclude the possibility
or legitimacy of the objective attitude. And the original reason for
deliberately ignoring, in this way, the realistic way of thinking, even
while admitting (like Professor Dewey) that it represents the real
state of affairs, would have been, I suppose, that what could be veri-
fied was always some further effect of the real objects, and never
those real objects themselves ; so that for interpreting and predicting
our personal experience only the hypothesis of objects was pertinent,
while the objects themselves, except as so represented, were useless
and unattainable. The case, if I may adapt a comparison of Mr.
Eussell's, was as if we possessed a catalogue of the library at Alex-
andria, all the books being lost forever ; it would be only in the cata-
logue that we could practically verify their existence or character,
though doubtless, by some idle flight of imagination, we might con-
tinue to think of the books, as well as of those titles in the catalogue
which alone could appear to us in experience. Pragmatism, ap-
" Pragmatism," p. 101.
118
proached from this side, would then seem to express an acute critical
conscience, a sort of will not to believe ; not to believe, I mean, more
than is absolutely necessary for solipsistic practise.
Such economical faith, enabling one to dissolve the hard material-
istic world into a work of mind, which mind might outflank, was
traditional in the radical Emersonian circles in which pragmatism
sprang up. It is one of the approaches to the movement; yet we
may safely regard the ancestral transcendentalism of the pragmatists
as something which they have turned their back upon, and mean to
disown. It is destined to play no part in the ultimate result of
pragmatism. This ultimate result promises to be, on the con-
trary, a direct and materialistic sort of realism. This alone is
congruous with the scientific affinities of the school and its young-
American temper. Nor is the transformation very hard to ef-
fect. The world of solipsistic practise, if you remove the romantic
self that was supposed to evoke it, becomes at once the sensible
world; and the problem is only to find a place in the mosaic of
objects of sensation for those cognitive and moral functions which
the soul was once supposed to exercise in the presence of an in-
dependent reality. But this problem is precisely the one that
pragmatists boast they have already solved; for they have de-
clared that consciousness does not exist, and that objects of sensa-
tion (which at first were called feelings, experiences, or "truths")
know or mean one another when they lead to one another, when they
are poles, so to speak, in the same vital circuit. The spiritual act
which was supposed to take things for its object is to be turned into
"objective spirit," that is, into dynamic relations between things.
Rather than admit that the mind of M exists, but is beyond the reach
of philosophy, this post-pragmatic theory will identify the .mind of
M with a material system consisting of M's body and such surround-
ing objects as M' s body is reacting upon. The philosopher will deny
that he has any other sort of mind himself, lest he should be shut up
in it again, like a sceptical and disconsolate child; while if there
threatens to be any covert or superfluous reality in the self-con-
sciousness of God, nothing will be easier than to deny that God is
self-conscious; for indeed, if there is no consciousness on earth, why
should we imagine that there is any in heaven? The psychologism
with which the pragmatists started seems to be passing in this way,
in the very effort to formulate it pragmatically, into something
which, whatever it may be, is certainly not psychologism. But the
bewildered public may well ask whether it is pragmatism either.
There is another crucial point in pragmatism which the defenders
of the system are apt to pass over lightly, but which Mr. Russell
regards (justly, I think) as of decisive importance. Is, namely, the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 119
pragmatic account of truth intended to cover all knowledge, or one
kind of knowledge only? Apparently the most authoritative prag-
matists admit that it covers one kind only; for there are two sorts
of self-evidence in which, they say, it is not concerned: first, the
dialectical relation between essences; and second, the known occur-
rence or experience of facts. There are obvious reasons why these
two kinds of cognitions, so interesting to Mr. Russell, are not felt by
pragmatists to constitute exceptions worth considering. Dialectical
relations, they will say, are verbal only; that is, they define ideal
objects, and certainty in these cases does not coerce existence, or
touch contingent fact at all. On the other hand, such apprehension
as seizes on some matter of fact, as for instance, ''I feel pain," or
"I expected to feel this pain, and it is now verifying my expecta-
tion," though often true propositions, are not theoretical truths;
they are not, it is supposed, questionable beliefs but rather imme-
diate observations. Many of these apprehensions of fact (or all,
perhaps, if we examine them scrupulously) involve the veracity of
memory, surely a highly questionable sort of truth; and, moreover,
verification, the pragmatic test of truth, would be obviously impos-
sible to apply, if the prophecy supposed to be verified were not
assumed to be truly remembered. How shall we know that our
expectation is fulfilled, if we do not know directly that we had such
an expectation? But if we know our past experience directly not
merely knew it when present, but know now what it was, and how it
has led down to the present this amounts to enough knowledge to
make up a tolerable system of the universe, without invoking prag-
matic verification or "truth" at all. I have never been able to dis-
cover whether, by that perception of fact which is not "truth" but
fact itself, pragmatists meant each human apprehension taken singly,
or the whole series of these apprehensions. In the latter case, as in
the philosophy of M. Bergson, all past reality might constantly lie
open to retentive intuition, a form of knowledge soaring quite over
the head of any pragmatic method or pragmatic "truth." It looks,
indeed, as if the history of at least personal experience were com-
monly taken for granted by pragmatists, as a basis on which to rear
their method. Their readiness to make so capital an assumption is
a part of their heritage from romantic idealism. To the romantic
idealist science and theology are tales which ought to be reduced to
an empirical equivalent in his personal experience; but the tale of
his personal experience itself is a sacred figment, the one precious
conviction of the romantic heart, which it would be heartless to
question. Yet here is a kind of assumed truth which can not be
reduced to its pragmatic meaning, because it must be true literally
in order that the pragmatic meaning of other beliefs may be con-
ceived or tested at all.
120 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Now, if it be admitted that the pragmatic theory of truth does
not touch our knowledge either of matters of fact or of the necessary
implications of ideas, the question arises: What sort of knowledge
remains for pragmatic theory to apply to? Simply, Mr. Russell
answers, those ' ' working hypotheses ' ' to which ' ' prudent people give
only a low degree of belief " (p. 147). For "we hold different
beliefs with very different degrees of conviction. Some such as the
belief that I am sitting in a chair, or that 2 -f- 2 = 4 can be doubted
by few except those who have had a long training in philosophy.
Such beliefs are held so firmly that non-philosophers who deny them
are put into lunatic asylums. Other beliefs, such as the facts of
history, are held rather less firmly. . . . Beliefs about the future, as
that the sun will rise to-morrow and that the trains will run approxi-
mately as in Bradshaw, may be held with almost as great conviction
as beliefs about the past. Scientific laws are generally believed less
firmly. . . . Philosophical beliefs, finally, will, with most people, take
a still lower place, since the opposite beliefs of others can hardly fail
to induce doubt. Belief, therefore, is a matter of degree. To speak,
of belief, disbelief, doubt, and suspense of judgment as the only
possibilities is as if, from the writing on the thermometer, we were
to suppose that blood heat, summer heat, temperate, and freezing
were the only temperatures" (p. 145). Beliefs which require to be
confirmed by future experience, or which actually refer to it, are
evidently only presumptions ; it is merely the truth of presumptions
that empirical logic applies to, and only so long as they remain pre-
sumptions. Presumptions may be held with very different degrees
of assurance, and yet be acted upon, in the absence of any strong
counter-suggestion ; as the confidence of lovers or of religious enthu-
siasts may be at blood heat at one moment and freezing at the next,
without a change in anything save in the will to believe. The truth
of such presumptions, whatever may be the ground of them, depends
in fact on whether they are to lead (or, rather, whether the general
course of events is to lead) to the further things presumed ; for these
things are what the presumptions refer to explicitly.
It sometimes happens, however, that presumptions (being based
on voluminous blind instinct rather than on distinct repeated ob-
servations) are expressed in consciousness by some symbol or myth,
as when a man says he believes in his luck; the presumption really
regards particular future chances and throws of the dice, but the
emotional and verbal mist in which the presumption is wrapped,
veils the pragmatic burden of it; and a metaphysical entity
arises, called luck, in which a man may think he believes rather
than in. a particular career that may be awaiting him. Now
since this entity, luck, is a mere word, confidence in it, to be justi-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 121
fied at all, must be transferred to the concrete facts it stands
for. Faith in one's luck must be pragmatic, but simply because
faith in such an entity is not needful nor philosophical at all. The
case is the same with working hypotheses, when that is all they are ;
for on this point there is some confusion. Whether an idea is a
working hypothesis merely or an anticipation of matters open to
eventual inspection may not always be clear. Thus the atomic
theory, in the sense in which most philosophers entertain it to-day,
seems to be a working hypothesis only ; for they do not seriously be-
lieve that there are atoms, but in their ignorance of the precise com-
position of matter, they find it convenient to speak of it as if it were
composed of indestructible particles. But for Democritus and for
many modern men of science the atomic theory is not a working
hypothesis merely ; they do not regard it as a provisional makeshift ;
they regard it as a probable, if not a certain, anticipation of what
inspection would discover to be the fact, could inspection be carried
so far; in other words, they believe the atomic theory is true. If
they are right, the validity of this theory would not be that of
pragmatic "truth" but of pragmatic "fact"; for it would be a view,
such as memory or intuition or sensation might give us, of experi-
enced objects in their experienced relations; it would be the com-
munication to us, in a momentary dream, of what would be the
experience of a universal observer. It would be knowledge of real-
ity in M. Bergson's sense. Pragmatic "truth," on the contrary, is
the relative and provisional justification of fiction; and pragmatism
is not a theory of truth at all, but a theory of theory, when theory is
instrumental. For theory has more than one signification. It may
mean such a symbolic or foreshortened view, such a working hypoth-
esis, as true and full knowledge might supersede; or it may mean
this true and full knowledge itself, a synthetic survey of objects of
experience in their experimental character. Algebra and language
are theoretical in the first sense, as when a man believes in his luck ;
historical and scientific imagination are theoretical in the second
sense, when they gather objects of experience together without dis-
torting them. But it is only to the first sort of theory that prag-
matism can be reasonably applied; to apply it also to the second
would be to retire into that extreme subjectivism which the leading
pragmatists have so hotly disclaimed. We find, accordingly, that it
is only when a theory is avowedly unreal, and does not ask to be be-
lieved, that the value of it is pragmatic; since in that case belief
PMSS.-S consciously from the symbols used to the eventual facts in
which the symbolism terminates, and for which it stands.
It may seem strange that a definition of truth should have been
based on the consideration of those ideas exclusively for which truth
122 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
is not claimed by any critical person, such ideas, namely, as religious
myths or the graphic and verbal machinery of science. Yet the
fact is patent, and if we considered the matter historically it might
not prove inexplicable. Theology has long applied the name truth
preeminently to fiction. When the conviction first dawned upon
pragmatists that there was no absolute or eternal truth, what they
evidently were thinking of was that it is folly, in this changing
world, to pledge oneself to any final and inflexible creed. The pur-
suit of truth, since nothing better was possible, was to be accepted
instead of the possession of it. But it is characteristic of Protestant-
ism that, when it gives up anything, it transfers to what remains the
unction, and often the name, proper to what it has abandoned. So,
if truth was no longer to be claimed or even hoped for, the value
and the name of truth could be instinctively transferred to what
was to take its place spontaneous, honest, variable conviction. And
the sanctions of this conviction were to be looked for, not in the ob-
jective reality, since it was an idle illusion to fancy we could get at
that, but in the growth of this conviction itself, and in the prosper-
ous adventure of the whole soul, so courageous in its self -trust, and so
modest in its dogmas. Science, too, has often been identified, not
with the knowledge men of science possess, but with the language
they use. If science meant knowledge, the science of Darwin, for
instance, would lie in his observations of plants and animals, and in
his thoughts about the probable ancestors of the human race all
knowledge of actual or possible facts. It would not be knowledge of
" selection" or of " spontaneous variation," terms which are mere
verbal bridges over the gaps in that knowledge, and mark the lacunce
and unsolved problems of the science. Yet it is just such terms that
seem to clothe " Science" in its pontifical garb; the cowl is taken
for the monk; and when a penetrating critic, like M. Henri Poin-
care, turns his subtle irony upon them, the public cries that he has
announced the "bankruptcy of science," whereas it is merely the
language of science that he has reduced to its pragmatic value to
convenience and economy in the registering of facts and has by no
means questioned that positive and cumulative knowledge of facts
which science is attaining. It is an incident in the same general con-
fusion that a critical epistemology, like pragmatism, analyzing these
figments of scientific or theological theory, should innocently suppose
that it was analyzing "truth"; while the only view to which it
really attributes truth is its view of the system of facts open to
possible experience, a system which those figments presuppose and
which they may help us in part to supply, where it is accidentally
hidden from human inspection.
Mr. Russell, with the candor and courage that distinguish him,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 123
has not wished to aim these and similar cruel shafts at the pragma-
tist without exposing himself in turn to attack, and his book closes
with a brief but complicated essay "On the Nature of Truth. " In
asserting the truth or falsity of any opinion, it is assumed that the
force of the predicates ' ' true ' ' and ' ' false ' ' is perfectly well known ;
but what is the force of these predicates? Mr. Eussell begins his
reply by agreeing with Professor James on the point that truth
should be predicated of beliefs, not of things. ' ' When, for example,
we see the sun shining, the sun itself is not 'true,' but the judg-
ment 'the sun is shining' is true" (p. 172). Thus "it is plain that
there can be no truth or falsehood unless there are minds to judge.
Nevertheless it is plain, also, that the truth or falsehood of a given
judgment depends in no way upon the person judging, but solely
upon the facts about which he judges. ' ' Were there no false judg-
ments it would be plausible, Mr. Russell thinks, to assume a true
"objective," that is, an objective truth, which the true judgment
asserts; but it is not possible to admit false "objectives" to match,
and, as false judgments assert something, the theory of true "ob-
jectives" for truths must be abandoned. Instead we may postulate
a number of objective terms, standing in some objective relation to
one another; and a true judgment will be one that assigns to those
several terms the relation in which they actually stand. "Every
judgment is a relation of a mind to several objects, one of which is a
relation ; the judgment is true when the relation which is one of the
objects relates the other objects, otherwise it is false" (p. 181).
And we learn subsequently that this relation must not be conceived
too abstractly, so as to be reversible; it may hold in one direction
only, and that direction must, in that case, be specified in the true
judgment.
I confess to some surprise that Mr. Russell should admit that
there can be no truth unless there are minds. When one holds that
ideal essences and facts and the relations between them are all
independent of the judging mind, it seems unnatural to assert that
this existing standard for true judgments is not itself the truth. Of
course truth is not synonymous with reality; but "the truth," as I
apprehend the force of that phrase, means the form of reality, or
the complex of all those possible judgments which the reality justi-
fies. This complex of possible true judgments would be determined
by the reality whether any one ever pronounced any of those judg-
ments or not ; so that it would be, at the very most, possible minds,
and not actual minds, that would be involved in the being of truth.
Nor does the difficulty about "objectives" for error, which Mr.
Russell puts forward, seem to me very serious. The content, or the
esthetic essence, envisaged in a false judgment is one thing, and the
124
"HE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
external object, or the complex of necessary relations, in which that
essence is alleged to lie, is quite another. The form of reality is the
standard for errors as well as for truths ; if error did not mean to
describe reality it would not be error, but mere imagination. The
' 'objective" which a false judgment requires, so that it may assert
something, is its own content or esthetic essence; the "objective"
which it requires, so that it may be true or false, is the truth outside.
I may not have fully understood Mr. Russell's argument, which is
very concise ; but the conclusion at which he arrives, that false judg-
ments must have complex objects, seems certain on other grounds.
If reality had no multiplicity we should either have to apprehend it
truly or not to refer to it at all. What exposes us to err is that we
may conceive one element of reality, fixing upon it by some sign
that determines it sufficiently, and then combine with it other ele-
ments which are not conjoined with it in fact.
Perhaps some of the difficulties which meet Mr. Russell here may
be due to another tenet of his, which itself seems very questionable,
namely, that perception, as distinguished from judgments based
upon it, is infallible. If we subtract the accompanying judgments
from perception, however, what remains would not appear to be still
a judgment ; it would be merely an essence presented ; and why need
the sense-datum, or esthetic essence, which perception presents, have
any further embodiment in the universe? Doubtless, there are no
perceptions without a material cause, as there can be none without
an esthetic essence; but it is a long way round the whole long cir-
cuit of human disillusion and science from the first esthetic essence,
perceived in a dream, to the ultimate knowledge of what may have
been its cosmic causes. Professor James used to exclaim, when he
was startled by some fresh and unlooked-for misunderstanding, that
you could say nothing safely in philosophy unless you said every-
thing; and I suspect that these obscure points in Mr. Russell's doc-
trine will be made clearer when he has given us his views on the
material world, and on psychology; for there are hints in his
writings, and in Mr. Moore's, of a new realism with an atomic
migratory soul, genuine matter, and secondary qualities subsisting
independently in objects; a system which promises to be no less
interesting than the new realism already launched in America, and
possibly more complete.
G. SANTAYANA.
HAEVAED UNIVERSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 125
SOCIETIES
NEW YORK BRANCH OF THE AMERICAN
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
A JOINT meeting with the Section of Anthropology and Psy-
chology of the New York Academy of Sciences was held on
November 28, 1910, with an afternoon session at the psychological
laboratory of Columbia University and an evening session at the
American Museum of Natural History. Between these sessions, an
informal dinner was held at the Faculty Club of Columbia Univer-
sity. The New York Branch, in the hope of having an unusually
large attendance and participation at its next or mid-winter meeting,
voted to refer the date and management of this meeting to the
executive committee with power. (February 3-4 was set as the date
of this meeting.)
The Section of Anthropology and Psychology of the New York
Academy of Sciences voted to submit to the council of the Academy
the following nominations for sectional officers for the year 1911:
for vice-president and chairman, Professor R. S. Woodworth; for
secretary, Dr. F. Lyman Wells. (These nominations have since
been confirmed. ) The section also voted to recommend to the favor-
able consideration of the council the application of Professor C. C.
Trowbridge for a grant from the Herrmann Research Fund for as-
sistance in a study of the migrations of birds. (This grant has since
been allowed by the council.)
The following scientific program was presented :
Practise Effects in Free Association: F. LYMAN WELLS.
When subjects are practised in the free association test through
a long series of different words each day, there normally appears a
decrease in the association time that may be as high as forty per
cent. This practise effect consists essentially in bringing down the
long times of a series to the approximate level of the few words
showing the shortest time at the beginning of practise. It is an
overcoming of the resistances originally present in the majority of
responses. It is very striking that the practise effect of this test,
where the given situation is essentially different in each observation,
is not markedly less than in other psychological tests where the situa-
tions are the same or but slightly different, as in the addition or the
number checking tests. Besides this practise effect in the reaction
time, it also appears that there are certain changes in the character
of the responses ; they tend to become more specific, but also more
superficial, and less determined by the influence of so-called emo-
tional "complexes."
126 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Drowsiness: H. L. HOLLINGWORTH.
This paper reports an attempt to study the hitherto inadequately
explored transition state between waking and sleeping. Two ob-
servers have for two years recorded hallucinations occurring during
the drowsy state, and typical cases are reported. Their examina-
tion discloses several clearly-defined principles or tendencies, the
exposition of which seems to constitute a fairly true though perhaps
only partially complete analysis of the state of drowsiness.
1. Transformation of imagery type. Imagery modes ordinarily
vague and feeble become dominant and vivid, even tending to re-
place customary imagery habits. Thus H who is predominantly
auditory and motor in type and can only with difficulty summon up
visual images of even the most moderate vividness has, in the
drowsy state, visual experiences which constantly startle him by their
clearness. I to whom visual imagery is a common habit, but who,
in her waking consciousness, can not understand what kinesthetic
imagery is like tends, in the drowsy state, to relive motor experi-
ences almost exclusively.
2. Substitution of three types, sensory, perseverative, and ideal.
Within the drowsiness fusion a present impression, a perseverative
tendency, or even a pure memory element often substitutes itself for
some other datum whose role it fills in the perceived composition of
the hallucination.
3. Fluid association on a sensory basis, with removal of constrain-
ing mental sets and controls, leading to bizarre analogies, naive
statements, and unusual verbal juxtapositions.
4. Isolation. Association trains may develop when the drowsy
state is extended over a long period of time, and show the same
behavior as do the "flash-light" perceptual or ideational states in
drowsiness proper, the essential thing being the release of all intel-
lectual inhibition.
5. Grandeur and vastness characterize the simpler perceptual
complications as well as the more developed thought processes.
6. Amnesia for processes and events occurring during the drowsy
state comes quickly.
7. Absence of special symbolism, except in so far as the halluci-
nation reflects the recent experiences or occupations and hence, per-
haps, the fundamental interests of the observer.
Summary. The drowsiness hallucination seems to be a "flash-
light" perceptual fusion or complication, and is further character-
ized by transformation of imagery type ; sensory, perseverative, and
ideal substitution ; fluid association on a sensory basis ; and by isola-
tion of association trains when they develop; and it is accompanied
by tendencies toward grandeur and vastness, by rapidly ensuing
amnesia, and by absence of symbolism.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 127
Mental Hygiene: CLYDE FURST.
A collection of items from biography and autobiography selected
so as to illustrate the ways in which such material may suggest fruit-
ful fields and methods for psychological study.
Thus, in the field of mental hygiene, individual equipment for
sensation, and individual habits of confinement or exercise, food and
sleep, and individual habits of work appear to have an adjustable
relation to youth and age, to climate, season, and weather, and to
weekly and daily rhythms of efficiency.
Similarly, environment, appliances, habit and variety, freedom
and restraint, society and solitude may be, at least partially, con-
trolled in their effect upon mental attitudes, interests, aims, and
ideals, as these, in turn, are related to mental spontaneity and
efficiency.
Study of mental action and reaction may thus be directed toward
a definite selection of stimulus and a deliberate adoption of methods
of work that will enhance both the welfare of the mental mechanism
and the quality of its product.
Subjectifying the Objective: DICKINSON S. MILLER.
It has been maintained that the meaning of the proposition "It
ought to be" can never be expressed by any proposition about human
feelings, preferences, approvals, or the like ; that there is something
objective and absolute in the ethical proposition which is missing in
the psychological form. But there is an exactly analogous relation
between subjective and objective statement in a long list of cases
other than the ethical. Thus we make objective statements about
what is comic, and their absoluteness is lost when we only state
propositions about human feelings of amusement. The whole column
of correlatives would run as follows: obligation approval; the
comic amusement; the beautiful esthetic pleasure; value desire;
the strange surprise; the sublime awe; probability expectation;
"up and down " certain feelings of effort and relaxation, etc. In
each of these cases the one term has an objective and absolute char-
acter which is missed in the other, the other making a psychological
and personal reference which is absent from the first; the meaning
of the first can not be translated, without change, into the second.
This fact is, however, fully explicable, and must needs be so because
the prison subject to the feelings does not in his primary experience
psychologize upon himself or class what he feels as his own feeling.
Why in all these cases does the objective come by reflective
people to be subjectified? And in what does subjectifying consist?
The objective in such cases is subjectified simply because it is found
to vary of necessity with the life and organism of the person experi-
encing it; and in this very fact and in nothing else consists its
subjectivity.
128
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Secondary Qualities: FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE.
The usual question suggested by the mention of secondary quali-
ties is that of their existential status, namely, in what context may
they be said to possess reality or to exist? The discussion of this
question does not appear to have been profitable in the history of
thought. It has moreover tended to divert attention from more im-
portant considerations.
Since secondary qualities do exist in the context of experience,
one may ask what function they there serve. In answer to this ques-
tion it may be pointed out that they serve as the means of identify-
ing different efficiencies. Their importance, for instance, in chemical
analysis and in the use of the spectrum is evident. It is to be noted
that while they are the indices of efficiency, so to speak, no efficiency
is assigned to them directly. Their methodological value appears to
be thus their value as signs. Furthermore, the existence of second-
ary qualities appears to be bound up with the specific differentiation
of the nervous system in the direction of sense organs. Indeed, it
appears impossible to assign any other function to the development
of sense organs and a coordinating nervous system than that of
securing reaction of the organism to its environment by means of a
specialization in view of the operation of secondary qualities. Bring-
ing together, then, the considerations based upon the methodological
value of secondary qualities and those based upon the significance
of secondary qualities in the development of the sense organs and
the nervous system, it would appear that reaction to secondary qual-
ities as stimuli would afford both a criterion for the existence of
consciousness and a definition of consciousness itself. In the life of
an organism such reactions would serve as indications of the general
connectedness of its surroundings.
A Forgotten Pragmatist: Ludwig Feuerbach: EGBERT H. LOWIE.
While it is commonly assumed that Germany lags behind in the
development of pragmatic philosophy, the speaker contended that
the theoretical principles of pragmatism have been long ago defended
by Ernst Mach, while a humanistic conception of philosophy, joined
with a conception of truth identical with that of Schiller and James,
was postulated by Ludwig Feuerbach nearly seventy years ago. As
modern pragmatism is primarily a protest against neo-Hegelism, so
Feuerbach 's philosophy meant a secession from the older Hegelian
school. Like James, Feuerbach insisted that philosophy must be
based on the totality of human nature as opposed to its exclusively
rational components. As an empiricist and nominalist, Feuerbach
taught the primacy of the concrete as compared with the abstract.
His refusal to abstract from the given totality of human nature pre-
vented him from holding the materialistic views erroneously ascribed
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 129
i
to him. He considered reality and thought as incommensurate, and
accordingly rejected all systems as artificially cramping the contents
of experience. In the treatment of his special problem, the phi-
losophy of religion, Feuerbach pursues a method strikingly similar
to that of James and Schiller in their critique of l ' pure truth ' ' and
of Mach in his critique of the Ding an sich : the divine is recognized
as based on human traits mystified and set up as non-human by the
religious consciousness. Feuerbach 's atheism in no way contravenes
his pragmatism; for it is based not on the metaphysical question of
the existence of the deity, but on the purely practical question
whether religion has " worked" satisfactorily. This Feuerbach de-
nies, considering religion an obstacle to social and political progress ;
but this difference from James and Schiller is merely a difference in
the interpretation of historical data and only emphasizes his insist-
ence on pragmatic standards.
R. S. WOOD WORTH,
Secretary.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe. GEORGE SAN-
TAYANA. Cambridge : Harvard University. 1910. Pp. viii -f- 214.
The founder and editor of the Harvard Studies in Comparative Lit-
erature, Professor W. H. Schofield, is certainly to be congratulated upon
this first volume of his series. Comparative literature is still caviare to
the general ; Professor Santayana's charming essay reveals it as " bread
of angels " to use Dante's phrase for the knowledge that is at once
delectable and sustaining. The author, indeed, is modest enough about
his book. " It contains," he says, " the impressions of an amateur, the
appreciations of an ordinary reader, concerning three great writers. . . .
I am no specialist in the study of Lucretius; I am not a Dante scholar
nor a Goethe scholar. . . . My excuse for writing about them, notwith-
standing, is merely the human excuse which every new poet has for
writing- about the spring." But Professor Santayana is by no means as
ingenuous as he sounds. Later, anent the "Vita Nuova," he shows the
claws behind the velvety innocence. " The learned will dispute forever
on the exact basis and meaning of these confessions of Dante. The
learned are perhaps not those best fitted to solve the problem. It is a
matter for literary tact and sympathetic imagination. It must be left to
the delicate intelligence of the reader, if he has it; and if he has not,
Dante does not wish to open his heart to him. His enigmatic manner is
his protection against the intrusion of uncongenial minds." Now I do
not mean to imply here a disclaimer of " learning " as opposed, appar-
ently, to " literary tact and sympathetic imagination," not to say " deli-
cate intelligence " that the author may claim a mind not uncongenial to
130 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Dante and such. That would not be fair. At the same time, there is a
challenge in the author's tone against minuscular research in mere mat-
ters of fact.
There is, however, a difference between weighty and heavy learning;
and in spite of its author's disclaimer, the book in hand is weighty with
learning. Listen to the announcement of the synthetic unity of the
argument : " Indeed, the diversity of these three poets passes, if I may use
the Hegelian dialect, into a unity of a higher kind. Each is typical of
an age. Taken together, they sum up all European philosophy." Indeed,
if I do not wrong him, Professor Santayana uses more than the Hegelian
dialect, he arrives at relations between his three poets that remind one of
the conclusions of the Hegelian dialectic. Thus for the philosopher of
Lucretius, " the decadence of all he lives by is the only prospect before
him; his whole philosophy must be a prophecy of death." The saint of
Dante looks forward to an eternity of changeless ecstasy. For all of us,
according to Dante, "the other life is a second experience, yet it does
not contain any novel adventures. It is determined altogether by what
we have done on earth; as the tree falleth, so it lieth, and souls after
death have no further initiative." On the other hand, "the soul of
Faust is to pass, in another world, through some new series of experiences.
But that destiny is not his salvation: it is the continuance of his trial."'
Eternal non-being eternal being eternal becoming such have been the
three prospects successively offered mankind. And as they who offer,
"taken together, sum up all European philosophy," it turns out that we
are after all being given no lightsome spring poem of criticism, but a
reasoned phenomenology of the European spirit.
There is a dialectic, again, in the final evaluation of the three poets,
and of shall we say the three ages they typify. " Goethe is the poet
of life ; Lucretius the poet of nature ; Dante the poet of salvation. Goethe
gives us what is most fundamental, the turbid flux of sense, the cry of
the heart, the first tentative notions of art and science, which magic or
shrewdness might hit upon. Lucretius carries us one step farther. Our
wisdom ceases to be impressionistic and casual. It rests on understand-
ing of things, so that what happiness remains to us does not deceive us,
and we can possess it in dignity and peace. Knowledge of what is pos-
sible is the beginning of happiness. Dante, however, carries us much
farther than that. He, too, has knowledge of what is possible and impos-
sible. He has collected the precepts of old philosophers and saints, and
the more recent examples patent in society around him, and by their help
has distinguished the ambitions that may be wisely indulged in in this
life from those which it is madness to foster, the first being called virtue
and piety and the second folly and sin." Taken separately, then, the
three visions are defective: Lucretius sees nature more as nature is, but
meagerly ; Goethe sees nature richly, but his rich " volume of life " is
after all too much a "magical medley"; Dante, like Lucretius, sees
nature as an ordered whole like Goethe, sees nature richly but never-
theless only as " an inverted image of the moral world," as a " mirage."
Therefore " the truly philosophical or comprehensive poet," who even now
may be waiting with his poem among the babes unborn, will unite the
insights and gifts of the three poets even as will the new age he shall
typify.
Aggredere o magnos, aderit iam tempus, honores,
cara deum suboles, magnum lovis incrementum!
Such to apply to his book its author's words on " Faust " is the
official moral, and what we may call its general philosophy; but for his
own qualifying words apply as well this moral is far from exhausting
the philosophic ideas which the book contains.
The initial defense of the long philosophical poem itself is subtle.
Against those who, like Poe, for instance, decry the long poem as in-
evitably unpoetic except in parts, Professor Santayana protests that it is
the poet's fault, and not that of his wide perspective. Indeed, he says,
" what makes the difference between a moment of poetic insight and a
vulgar moment is that the passions of the poetic moment have more per-
spective." " As in a supreme dramatic crisis all our life seems to be
focused in the present, and used in coloring our consciousness and
shaping our decisions, so for each philosophic poet the whole world of
man is gathered together; and he is never so much the poet as when, in
a single cry, he summons all that has affinity to him in the universe, and
salutes his ultimate destiny." In a single cry aye, but there's the rub.
In one pregnant moment, the poet may somehow realize the all, and the
many in the all as the composer who declared that in a single rapturous
moment he had heard his whole symphony; but to express the vision,
detail by detail, in articulate and consecutive speech, is a task necessarily
of many moments, many moods. The cosmic insight may be the su-
premely poetical insight; but the cosmological poem is pretty sure to
have vacant interlunar spaces of dullness. Lucretius can play the logi-
cian; Beatrice can talk like a graduate of the higher education for
women; Goethe can be long-winded and irrelevant; quandoque bonus
dormitat Homerus. Professor Santayana admits as much; but I can not
see that his argument proves more than that some day some genius shall
have changed all that. Maybe; but the last words of the book are quite
true : " This supreme poet is in limbo still."
Professor Santay ana's manifest, if qualified, sympathy with the nat-
uralistic insight of Lucretius leads him, I venture to think, into occa-
sional unfairness towards other, especially supernaturalistic, insights.
He declares, for instance, that for Dante as for Mohammed, Tertullian,
and Calvin "the everlasting shrieks and contortions of the damned
alone will make it possible for the saints to sit quiet, and be convinced
that there is perfect harmony in the universe. On this principle," ^ i
continues, " in the famous inscription which Dante places over the gate
of hell, we read that primal love, as well as justice and power, established
that torture-house ; primal love, that is, of that good which, by the extreme
punishment of those who scorn it, is honored, vindicated, and made to
shine like the sun. The damned are damned for the glory of God." And
" this doctrine," he says he can not help thinking, " is a great disgrace to
human nature." It doubtless is a disgraceful doctrine; but there may be
132 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
question if Dante ever enounced it. 1 Assuredly, primal love, in making
hell, was not concerned to provide an effective contrast for the " living
topazes " of heaven by a jet setting. The famous description goes on to
declare : " Before me were no things created, but eternal, and eternal I
endure." Hell, that is, was created simultaneously with man. The
greatest gift which primal love made to man at his creation was free
will. 3 But moral freedom involves not only the knowledge, but also the
choice, of good and evil; and the responsibility for the choice of evil
involves ipso facto the existence of hell. Thus hell may be said to have
been made by primal love as the reverse of that medal conferred on
humanity, of which heaven is the obverse, and free will the carrying
metal. The medal is still the greatest gift of God, whether we choose to
wear it " heads " or " tails." The damned are not damned for the glory
of God, but for the possible glory of mankind, attainable alone through
freedom. Dante's may or may not be a satisfactory solution of the prob-
lem of evil; 4 but I can not see that it involves, doctrinally, any gloating
of the saints over the sufferings of sinners.
Professor Santayana raises a still more capital issue later. " The fact,"
he says, " that according to him [Dante] the celestial spheres are not the
real seat of any human soul; that the pure rise through them with
increasing ease and velocity, the nearer they come to God; and that the
eyes of Beatrice the revelation of God to man are only mirrors, shed-
ding merely reflected beauty and light " " these hints suggest the doctrine
that the goal of life is the very bosom of God; not any finite form of ex-
istence, however excellent, but a complete absorption and disappearance
in the Godhead." " Dante broaches this point in the memorable inter-
view he has with Piccarda," says Professor Santayana; and her answer
means, he affirms, that " she would fain go higher, for her moral nature
demands it ... but she dare not mention it, for she knows that God,
whose thoughts are not her thoughts, has forbidden it." For a free and
immortal individual soul to be completely absorbed and to disappear
even in the Godhead, however, surely violates " the initial truth which
1 Gibbon's uncandid imputation to Tertullian of similar doctrine is effect-
ively disposed of by T. R. Glover in " The Conflict of Religions in the Early
Roman Empire," 1909, Ch. X.
2 Dinanzi a me non fur cose create,
se non eterne, ed io eterno duro.
8 Lo maggior don, che Dio per sua larghezza
fesse creando, ed alia sua bontate
piu conformato, e quel ch'el piu apprezza,
fu della volonta la libertate,
di che le creature intelligent!,
e tutte e sole furo e son dotate.
Par. V., 19-24.
4 Dante, of course, is well aware of the difficulty of harmonizing free will
and predestination, which would seem to throw the responsibility back upon
God; but he accepts the fact of the harmonization as an article of faith. To
explain it is beyond human, even angelic, capacity. Of. Par. XX., 130-8;
XXI., 76-102.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 133
man believeth," according to Dante the law of contradictories. Dante
explicitly states that the kingdom of heaven, no less than earthly king-
doms, involves diversity of citizenship. 8 Even if the blessed were to ap-
proach nearer and nearer to God through eternity, they would never quite
reach him; their approach would be, to speak mathematically, asymptotic.
But Dante explicitly denies that all, even all pure, souls rise through the
spheres " with increasing ease and velocity." When the limit of individ-
ual virtue is reached, " needs must the rays of the true love mount upward
with less life." ' God has not forbidden them ; it is the free choice, the
self-expression, of the individual. Nor is it fair, I think, to make Pic-
carda say that her humble seat in heaven " brings her happiness enough "
as if she in secret yearns for more happiness. She does say that
'* everywhere in heaven is paradise," that is, perfect happiness ; and as if
to make her assurance doubly sure, Dante emphasizes the sentiment in
the words of Justinian in the sphere next above, where excellence bears
the taint of having sought worldly honor : " But in the commeasuring of
our rewards to our desert is part of our joy, because we see them neither
less nor more. Whereby the living justice so sweeteneth our affection
that it may ne'er be wrenched aside to any malice. Divers voices upon
earth make sweet melody, and so the divers seats in our life render sweet
harmony amongst these wheels." Possibly, Piccarda, Justinian, and
the others ought from a romantic standpoint to have appealed in their
hearts from their lower seats amongst those wheels; but if they did, to
say the least, they were for saints strangely uncandid with Dante. 8
If Professor Santayana's point of view has been a shade romantic in
his discussion of Dante's heaven and hell, he makes amends in his half-
humorous deprecation of Goethe's romantic philosophy. His interpreta-
tion of " Faust," indeed, is, if I am not mistaken, audaciously unortho-
dox. The conventional Goethean might well say of him, as he says of
Mephistof eles : " We think him a villain ; " but would straightway be
compelled to add as he does " and find him delightful." He would
seem to make " Faust " in effect a more glorious precursor of Ibsen's
" Peer Gynt " a reductio ad extremum, if not- ad altsurdum, of the ro-
mantic philosophy. For his Faust, the Ewig-weibliclie the illusive ideal
8 Par. VIII., 97-120.
6 Par. VI., 116-7.
^ 7 Ma nel commensurar dei nostri gaggi
col merto, & parte di nostra letizia,
perche non li vedem minor nfe maggi.
Quindi addolcisce la viva giustizia
in noi 1'affetto si, che non si puote
torcer giammai ad alcuna nequizia.
Diverse voci fan gitl dolci note;
cos! diversi scanni in nostra vita
rendon dolce armonia tra queste rote.
Par. VI., 118-126.
8 Whether an inner contradiction may lie between Dante's avowed orthodox
Thomism and his Franciscan mysticism is another story. He himself admits
no such contradiction.
134 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
is like the traditional wisp of hay held just in front of the donkey's
nose; its virtue is that it keeps him moving where, matters not. Or,
Faust's soul is like a top, that keeps upright as long as its spins. If it
stops spinning, it falls. So the romantically heroic soul is the soul that
can keep on spinning indefinitely without nausea. Mephistof eles is " the
spirit that denies " the worth-whileness of this perpetual motion without
progress, and would fain stop once for all and end all the insane whirligig
of life. Faust conquers; for, after all, his translation to heaven does not
mean final rest. For the romantic soul rest is surrender. Heaven is but
another episode of unrest. For a while, Faust " is going to teach life to
the souls of young boys, who have died too soon to have had in their own
persons any experience of Rathskellers, Gretchens, Helens, and Walpur-
gisnachts." But this plainly can't last; Faust has been a schoolmaster
already, and hated it. " Some fine day he will throw his celestial school-
books out of the window, and with his pupils after him, go forth to taste
life in some windier region of the clouds."
This endless pursuit of the pursuit, however sufficient it may appear
to God " under the form of eternity," is plainly not to the taste of Pro-
fessor Santayana. It is indeed " the official philosophy " of " Faust," yet
after all but an " afterthought " a way of knotting together Faust's
string of experience. The experience is the thing; any other knot would
have served as well, or better, any, forsooth, except what may be called the
text -book notion of redemption in the Sunday-school sense, with Faust
and his Gretchen reunited, to live happily ever after in a gingerbread
heaven. For Professor Santayana, the wisdom of Goethe is not syn-
thetic, but episodic ; " Faust " is a Joseph's coat of shreds and patches
somewhat luridly unseemly as a garment, but brilliant beyond words in
spots. The judgment, by the way, is interesting as another example of
the increasing reaction against romanticism nowadays.
There will be many, no doubt, who will take sharp issue with this in-
terpretation and estimate of " Faust." Throughout the book, indeed,
more than one idol of the critical tribe is rudely shattered, but with so
much grace as to disarm wrath. The whole essay is a justification of the
saying that true criticism of literature is itself creative literature. To
all doubters or demurrers, the book may make reply, like Dante's ode,
Ponete mente almen com'io son bella.
JEFFERSON B. FLETCHER.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Wissenschaft und Religion in der Philosophic unserer Zeit. EMILE
BOUTROUX. Translated into German by Emilie Weber, with an in-
troduction by Professor H. Holtzmann. Leipzig und Berlin: Yerlag
von B. G. Teubner. 1910. Pp. vi -f 371.
To the Germans, who have not as yet got rid of the Hegelian notion
that the obscurer the philosophy the more profound it is, such a clear and
accurate translation of Boutroux's work will no doubt be of great service.
Credit must be given to the German translator for having so thoroughly
penetrated the author's thoughts. Not only has she rendered them ac-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 135
curately, but, instead of using the technical German expressions, con-
densed almost to obscurity, she has appropriated the ease and clearness of
the author's style. There has also lately appeared an English translation.
Boutroux's work, which is a study of the contemporary attempts to recon-
cile science and religion, is of like interest to the French, the Germans,
and the English, as the author has chosen from each of those nations
the typical representatives of the doctrines he considers. The work may
be said to combine the clear and easy style characteristic of the French,
the logical and deep historical insight of the German, and the common
sense of the English and American.
In spite of the truth of William James's statement that " originality
can not be expected in a field like this, where all attitudes and tempers
have been exhibited in literature long ago, and where any new writer can
immediately be classed under a familiar head," Boutroux's view of the
problem is an independent and original view, a view which he had ex-
posed already in his doctor's dissertation " Contingence des lois de la
nature " (1874) and in other works. In that work, as in his " Idee de la
loi naturelle," Boutroux has maintained that contingency is at the bot-
tom of nature, that the necessity of natural laws is only relative, that
nature is constituted of a series of superimposed stages, each stage add-
ing something not contained in the preceding one; and that their con-
nection is a contingent, not a necessary, one. The last lines of his " Con-
tingence des lois de la nature " end in the belief that the complete triumph
of the good and the beautiful would bring the disappearance of the laws
of nature and replace them by the free aspiration of the will towards
perfection, by the free hierarchy of souls. It is this view of nature which
we find reflected in his conception of religion. Religion is the surpassing
of the plan of nature which imposes the existence of evil; it aims to bring
nature to that higher stage where the good is realized through good and
not through evil. It is religion which lends value, ideal form, and right
to existence, and development to everything that has in it something
positive and living. It is that superior motive of the human soul which
allows it to go beyond itself. God is the existence of that force through
which, in our transformed spatial and temporal world, the good can be-
come itself the means of good. The basal elements of Boutroux's religion
are essentially moral. He summarizes religion in the terms faith, repre-
sentation of an ideal, and love. But faith is not essentially faith in the
divine, it may be faith in duty; the representation of an ideal may also
be a social ideal, an ideal of justice, and, finally, the feeling of love can
and must be reduced to the love of humanity. Boutroux's ideal of re-
ligion recalls Auguste Comte's " Religion of Humanity," with the differ-
ence that Auguste Comte conceived religion in sociological terms, while
Boutroux conceives it from a spiritual and moral aspect. We could not,
however, maintain that Boutroux reduces the religious conscience to the
moral one. He makes, it is true, faith in duty the essential basis of re-
ligion, but, on the other hand, he asserts that morality owes its develop-
ment, force, and efficiency to the religious principle which lies at its
basis, and that duty has a supersensible character whose origin is as
136 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
unknown as the concept of God. He sometimes adduces morality as the
basis of religion, and sometimes the reverse, but finally identifies the two.
Practise of duty, pursuit of the ideal, communion of souls, are, he says, at
the core of Christ's teaching, both religious and moral.
To the dogmas and rites of traditional religion Boutroux accords but
a temporary role. He admits their relative necessity for our present
time, but hopes that the evolution of religion will bring us to a concep-
tion of it which is the worship of God in spirit and truth. He does not,
however, as some critics have charged, dissociate religion from all ob-
jective and intellectual content. All radical separation between the ob-
jective and the subjective is to him artificial and false. In the forms,
as he indicates, the material elements are already included. All faith,
he asserts, is faith in something.
Boutroux is not concerned with religion and science as objective
systems. The problem for him is: What is the religious attitude, what
is the scientific attitude, and how may they be reconciled in one and the
same mind? He sees no incompatibility between these two attitudes.
The problem, he thinks, will disappear if we take science and religion,
not as two dogmatic doctrines, but as experimental sciences, and if, in-
stead of conceiving the world as static, we take it as a dynamic and
growing reality. Science and religion stand in two totally distinct
spheres of thought and fulfill two distinct functions. Science is that
which deals with what is, in its being, actually given, while religion goes
to the sources and initial determinations of being and aims at that which
ought to be. The scientific spirit, as Boutroux sums it up, is the sense
of the sovereignty of experience; the religious spirit, the sense of
the sovereignty of the ideal. This distinction, however, might be con-
tested. As James has well proved, the religious life also is an experi-
ence, while in the scientific experience there is as much of ideal, belief,
hope, and emotion as in the religious mind.
But, though distinct, science and religion are for Boutroux intimately
connected. The point of connection he finds in the notion of life.
Human life participates in religion through its ideal ambitions, and in
science through its relation to nature. Boutroux seeks in the relation of
science and religion the same relation he has sought to establish between
necessity and contingency in his " Contingence des lois de la nature."
He finds in both of them a progress where freedom is solicited without
being necessitated, a passage from fact to action, from what is to what
ought to be. This passage is not a logical necessity, but neither is it
logically arbitrary it presents this solidarity in contingency which is
precisely the kind of connection reason seeks to determine. It is an
extra-logical relation, neither analytic nor synthetic, but it is none the
less real since it is exemplified in life.
Boutroux's conception of life is but a synonymous term for the prag-
matist's " action." In spite of the criticisms Boutroux directs against
pragmatism, his view is very much akin to pragmatism. There are
throughout some affinities with James. The statement of the problem,
the distinction of the two systematizations, scientific and religious, based
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 137
on differences of point of view, with which Boutroux concludes his work,
is clearly marked out in James's " Variety of Religious Experiences."
But while for James the conciliation between science and religion is only
a progress hoped for in the future, for Boutroux the question is actually
solved by the consideration that the scientific reason is only a part of the
higher human reason. However, in this distinction between the scientific
reason and what he calls reason in general, Boutroux departs from prag-
matists who would refuse to make such a distinction. Belonging to the
neo-critical school by whose earlier works pragmatism was favored,
Boutroux was among the first in France to favor the pragmatic views.
His own view, as manifested in his early work, was also an attempt to
mediate between idealism and empiricism. Boutroux's ideas have exer-
cised great influence on the epistemological conception of Poincare.
The author of " L'action," Blondel, was also greatly influenced by him.
Turning now to the main object of the book, which is to give the
views of the contemporary philosophic systems rather than his own, the
author divides them into two groups, one of which represents the natural-
istic tendency, the other the spiritualistic. In the first group he places
the positivism of Auguste Comte, the evolutionism of Spencer, the monism
of Haeckel, and the doctrines of psyehologism and sociologism. In the
second group he places the radical dualism of Ritschl and his disciples,
the doctrine of the limits of science, the philosophy of action, and the
doctrine of religious experience as treated by James. All these doctrines
Boutroux finds incomplete. In Comte's positivism, science and religion
confront one another because they are put in a world of finite phenomena.
In Spencer he challenges the legitimacy of the point of view of ab-
solute objectivism. Haeckel has not justified the inductions which
make of science a philosophy, nor proved how, from this evolutionary
monism, human value, freedom, and fraternity, the basal concepts of
religion, could be deduced. The doctrine of psyehologism leaves a
residuum which it can not explain, while to the doctrine of sociologism
Boutroux objects that religion is individual and internal. With what
he calls the spiritualistic tendency, Boutroux is more in sympathy. He
none the less finds it vulnerable at some points. To Ritschl and his dis-
ciples, who relegate religion wholly to the inner life, Boutroux objects
that they make religion a pure abstraction, and that the integrity of
religion can only be secured against the attack of science by using the
facts of science as instruments for the realization of religious ideas.
The doctrine of the limits of science, orientating beyond itself to religion,
is to Boutroux the most satisfactory view, but does not secure to science
and religion the full autonomy which they both claim. The philosophy
of action, to which he so sympathetically inclines, and which, he says, is
called, perhaps, to realize great things, does not for Boutroux in its
actual form solve the difficulty it confronts, and can satisfy neither the
scientist nor the religious man. Boutroux raises against pragmatism the
usual but unfounded attack that it renounces being and objectivity. He
also contests the validity of the pragmatic concept of religion when re-
duced in its essence to pure action, independent of all intellectual con-
tent. He raises the same objection against James. The interesting
138 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
analyses of James are subject to objections from the scientists and the
religious men. The assimilation of religious to scientific experience is
not sufficiently justified. Boutroux objects to James in the words of
Hoeffding, that it is the faith wrapped up in religion which characterizes
it at once as experience and as religious.
This is but a brief sketch of the very interesting historical and crit-
ical study which Boutroux makes with such firm judgment and sympa-
thetic understanding.
Boutroux's research, beginning with Comte and ending with the
religious experience of James, shows that the nineteenth century is ad-
vancing from naturalism to spiritualism, from the suppression of all
supernaturalism to the study of it by the experimental method. In the
eighteenth century, the attack against religion was directed by philos-
ophers who thought they had finished with religion. In the nineteenth
century men are imbued with the lessons of history; they do not believe
that there could be a complete evolution transforming things to their
roots. Even Renan, the very prophet of the irreligion of the future, writes
to Sainte-Beuve, with regard to religion: "No, I did not want to detach
from the trunk a soul which was not ripe " (quoted by Guyau). Le Roy,
in an account of the philosophy of religion in France (Philosophical Re-
view, 1908), writes that the renewal of religion began twenty years since,
and that a simple reading of book notices in reviews will suffice to con-
vince us of it. He attributes this to the spread of pragmatism. " The liv-
ing philosophy of religion of to-day," he writes, " has its face turned in a
quite different direction from scholasticism; it calls itself a philosophy of
action." So also the late Borden P. Bowne, in a recent number of the
Hibbert Journal, shows that there has been a renascence of faith within
the last generation, and seems also to attribute it to the influence of
pragmatism. It would seem that Christianity finds in pragmatism more
than in any intellectual system its adequate metaphysics. Professor
Dewey, in an article 1 written in quite a different connection, expresses
the thought that the dualism between beliefs and realities, or, in more
concrete terms, between religion and science, is due to the fact that
" Christianity at its birth did not meet with intellectual formulations
corresponding to its practical proclamations. It had to absorb the Stoic
epistemology, which is the identification of reality with knowledge
divorced from personal reference, origin, and outlook."
But with the recognition by the present-day philosophies of the arti-
ficiality of all dualism between subject and object, inner and outer, beliefs
and realities, etc., the conflict is bound to disappear. Both science and
religion are regarded as necessary ingredients of our experience; both
are necessary moments of progress and civilization. The conflict of sci-
ence and religion, a phrase that was common in the past centuries, seems
to be rewritten now into the " friendship of science and religion," a state-
ment recently made by the Archbishop of York before the British As-
sociation for the Advancement of Science, held at Sheffield.
NlMA HlRSHENSOHN.
HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY.
1 " Beliefs and Realities."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 139
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. November, 1910. The Phi-
losophy of Henri Bergson, I. (pp. 579-596) : G. II. DALSON. - A non-critical
exposition of the facts and contents of the philosophy of Bergson. Ob-
jective Idealism and its Critics (pp. 597-609) : B. H. BODE. - A discus-
sion of idealism, realism, and pragmatism with a view to their exact dif-
ferentiation. It is maintained that much of the controversy concerning
them is due to the absence of satisfactory definition. Ontological Abso-
lutism (pp. 610-631) : EDWARD GLEASON SPAULDING. - The second of a
series on the subject of The Logical Structure of Self -Refuting Systems.
" Ontological absolutism is constructed, first, by rejecting the ' external
view ' of relations and accepting the general ' internal view,' and then,
second, by eliminating the ' constitutive ' interpretation of this last doc-
trine and arguing to the ' underlying reality ' interpretation, an argument
which is, however, full of snares." The transition is made to realism, a
" self -confirming " system. Discussion : Professor Boodin on the Nature
of Truth (pp. 632-638) : RADOSLAV A. TSANOFF. Reviews of Books (pp.
639-664). John McTaggart, Ellis McTaggart, A Commentary on Hegel's
Logic: JOHN GRIER HIBBEN. H. Heath Bawden, The Principles of Prag-
matism: B. H. BODE. Von Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der
Philosophic und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit: GEORGE H. SABINE.
Notices of New BooTcs. Summaries of Articles. Notes.
Carus, Paul. Truth on Trial. An Exposition of the Nature of Truth,
preceded by a Critique of Pragmatism and an Appreciation of Its.
Leader. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company. 1911. Pp.
v-4-138. $1.00.
Kakise, Hikozo. A Preliminary Experimental Study of the Conscious
Concomitants of Understanding. Reprinted from the American
Journal of Psychology, January, 1911, Vol. XXII., pp. 14r-64.
Segond, J. La priere, essai de psychologic religieuse. Paris: Felix
Alcan. 1911. Pp. 364. Y fr. 50.
Sidgwick, Alfred. The Application of Logic. London: Macmillan and
Co., Ltd. 1910. Pp. ix -+- 321. 5s.
Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth. Historia Animalium (The Works of
Aristotle translated into English). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1910.
Waterhouse, Eric S. Modern Theories of Religion. London: Charles
H. Kelly. 1910. Pp. xi + 448.
Wissenschaftliche Beilage zum dreiundzwanzigsten Jahresbericht (1910)
der Philosophischen Gesellschaft an der Universitat zu Wien. Ph.
Frank, Gibt es eine absolute Bewegung? A. Stb'hr, Monokulare
Plastik. W. Schmied-Kowarzik, Intuition. V. Stern, Die Philo-
sophic meines Vaters. Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth.
1911. Pp. 97. M. 3.
Wundt, W. Kleine Schriften. Bd. I. Leipzig: Englemann. 1910.
Pp. 640.
140 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
THE International School of American Archeology and Ethnology was
inaugurated in the City of Mexico on January 20. The founding patrons
of the school are the government of the United States of Mexico, the
government of Prussia, Columbia University, and Harvard University.
The University of Mexico has placed at the disposal of the school rooms
in which classes may be held, and will facilitate access to libraries, mu-
seums, institutes, and other scientific centers in which are pursued studies
like those of the school, and will aid in the support of the school with an
annual subsidy of $6,000. Each patron will in turn appoint and pay a
director of the school, and will also allot fellowships which will be suffi-
cient to cover the expenses of board and lodging and transportation of a
fellow. In accordance with the statutes the government of Prussia has
appointed as director Professor Eduard Seler, director of the section of
anthropology and archeology in the Royal Museum at Berlin, who has
already made extensive researches in Mexico. He will hold office for one
year, and will be aided by Professor Franz Boas, of Columbia, during his
presence in Mexico as professor of anthropology at the National Univer-
sity. Two appointments to fellowships have been made. Dr. Werner Von
Harchelmann by Prussia, and Miss Isabel Ranives Castaneda by Co-
lumbia University. All the explorations and studies of the school are to
be subject to the laws of the country in which the work is undertaken,
and all objects found in investigations or explorations will become the
property of the national museum of the country in which the studies are
carried out. In case similar specimens of the same kind of object are
discovered duplicates will be given to the patrons who supply the neces-
sary funds for the exploration. Most of the explorations will be con-
ducted in the rich fields of Mexico, and the government of that country
has already given the necessary authorization for the investigations which
will soon be begun and are certain to produce interesting and valuable
results. Science.
WILIBALD A. NAGEL, professor of physiology in the University of Ros-
tock, died at the age of forty years. While most of his work was devoted
to the physiology of sense, Professor Nagel took great interest in the
psychological side of his studies, and was always particularly hospitable
to those American students of psychology who worked under him.
THE spring announcements of the Oxford University Press include a
translation of Kant's " Critique of Judgment " by D. J. Chapman, and
a translation of Aristotle's " De Partibus Animalium " by W. Ogle.
THE Revue scientifique announces that Professor Hans Meyer has
presented 150,000 marks to the University of Leipzig for the establish-
ment of an institute of experimental psychology.
VOL. VIII. No. 6 MARCH 16, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE RELATION OF HISTORY TO THE NEWER SCIENCES
OF MAN 1
THAT history must from time to time be rewritten is an oft-
repeated commonplace. Why is this? The past, as ordi-
narily conceived, seems fixed and settled enough. No theologian has
ever conceded to omnipotence itself the power to change it. Why
may it not then be described for good and all by any one who has
the available information at his disposal? The historian would
answer that more and more is being learned about the past as time
goes on, that old errors are constantly being detected and rectified
and new points of view discovered, so that the older accounts of
events and conditions tend to be superseded by better and more
accurate ones. This is obvious ; but granting that each new genera-
tion of historians does its duty in correcting the mistakes of its prede-
cessors, is that all that is necessary ? Is there not danger that it will
allow itself to be too largely guided in the choice of its material and
in its judgments of it by the examples set by preceding writers ? It is
the aim of this paper to consider whether historians are now adjust-
ing themselves as promptly as they should to the unprecedented
amount of new knowledge which has been accumulating during the
past generation and to the fundamental change of attitude that is
taking place in our views of man and society. 2
1( This paper was read before the American Historical Association at
Indianapolis, December 30, 1910. The opening portions have, however, been
rewritten.
2 Professor George Burton Adams, in a very thoughtful and suggestive
address delivered before the American Historical Association, December 29,
1908, describes what for convenience he calls five hostile movements directed
against the methods, results, and ideals of the established political historian.
These " attacks " proceed from political science, geography, political economy,
sociology and " folk-psychology." " For more than fifty years," he says, " the
historian has had possession of the field and has deemed it his sufficient mission
to determine what the fact was, including the immediate conditions that gave it
shape. Now he finds himself confronted with numerous groups of aggressive
and confident workers in the same field who ask not what was the fact many
141
142
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The usual training which a historical student receives has a tend-
ency to give him the impression that history is a far more fixed and
definite thing than it really is. He is aware that various elaborate
attempts have been made to establish the Begriff und Wesen of his-
tory, that its methodology have been the theme of a number of treat-
ises, and that its supposed boundaries have been jealously defended
from the dreaded encroachments of rival sciences. Moreover, he
finds the general spirit and content of historical works pretty uni-
form, and he is to be forgiven for inferring that he has to do with
a tolerably well-defined subject-matter which may be investigated
according to a clear and prescribed set of rules. I am inclined, how-
ever, to think that this attitude of mind is the result of a serious
misapprehension, which stands in the way of the proper development
of historical study. Before proceeding we must therefore stop a
moment to consider the vague meaning of the term " history. "
In the first place, history has a long and varied history which it
is impossible even to sketch here. Suffice it to say that its subject-
matter, its purposes, and its methods have exhibited in the past a
wide range of variation which suggest many future possibilities when
we once perceive the underlying causes of these changes. History
can be shown to have somewhat reluctantly and partially adapted
itself to the general outlook of successive periods, and as times
changed it has changed. 3 In the second place, the scope of historical
investigation as actually carried on at the present day by those who
deem themselves historians is so wide as to preclude the possibility
of bringing it into any clearly defined category. The historian may
choose, for example, like Gibbon, to extract from Procopius's "im-
probable story" of Alaric's capture of Rome the circumstances which
have an air of probability. He may seek to determine the preva-
lence of malaria in ancient Greece, or to decide whether the humidity
of Asia Minor has altered since the days of Croesus, or to trace the
of them seem to be comparatively little interested in that but their constant
question is what is the ultimate explanation of history, or, more modestly, what
are the forces that determine human events and according to what laws do they
act. This is nothing else than a new flaming up of interest in the philosophy,
or the science, of history. . . . The emphatic assertion which they all make is
that history is the orderly progression of mankind toward a definite end, and
that we may know and state the laws which control the actions of men in organ-
ized society. This is the one common characteristic of all the groups I have
described j and it is of each of them the one most prominent characteristic "
(American Historical Beview, January, 1909). It is the aim of the present
paper to put the whole situation in a different light from that in which Professor
Adams presents it.
8 1 have recalled some of the phases of history's history in "History," a
lecture delivered at Columbia University in the series on Science, Philosophy,
and Art, Columbia University Press, 1908.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 143
effects of the issue of some forty billions of francs of paper money
in France between 1789 and 1800. As for method, a peculiar train-
ing is essential to determine the divergence between a so-called eolith
and an ordinary chip of flint which did not owe its form to human
adaptation ; and another kind of training is required to edit a satis-
factory edition of Roger Bacon's "Opus Majus." A judicious ver-
dict on the originality of Luther's interpretation of the words
justitia dei, in Romans, L, 17, demands antecedent studies which
would be inappropriate if one were seeking the motives for Bis-
marck's interest in insurance for the aged and incapacitated. I
think that one may find solace and intellectual repose in surrender-
ing all attempts to define history, and in conceding that it is the busi-
ness of the historian to find out anything about mankind in the past
which he believes to be interesting or important and about which
there are sources of information. Furthermore, history's chances of
getting ahead and of doing good are dependent, I believe, on refrain-
ing from setting itself off as a separate discipline and undertaking to
defend itself from the encroachments of seemingly hostile sciences
which now and then appear within its territory. To do this is to
misapprehend the conditions of scientific advance. No set of inves-
tigators can any longer claim exclusive jurisdiction in even the
tiniest scientific field, and indeed nothing would be more fatal to
them than the successful defense of any such claim. The bounds of
all departments of human research and speculation are inherently
provisional, indefinite, and fluctuating; moreover, the lines of de-
markation are hopelessly interlaced, for real men and the real uni-
verse in which they live are so intricate as to defy all attempts of
the most patient and subtle German to establish satisfactorily and
permanently the Begriff und Wesen of any artificially delimited set
of natural phenomena, whether words, thoughts, deeds, forces, ani-
mals, plants, or stars. Each so-called science or discipline is con-
tinually dependent on other sciences and disciplines. It draws its
life from them, and to them it owes, consciously or unconsciously, a
great part of its chances of progress.
As Professor Kemp has so graciously said of his own subject,
geology, it could not have matured without the aid of sister sciences
which necessarily preceded it. "The great, round world in its en-
tirety can not be grasped otherwise than with the assistance of
physics, mechanics, astronomy, chemistry, zoology, and botany. "
Not only was geology in its earlier growth "based upon the sister
sciences, but it now progresses with them, leans largely upon them
for support, and in return repays its debt by the contributions which
144
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
it makes to each." 4 The historical student should take a similar
attitude toward his own vast field of research. If history is to reach
its highest development it must surrender all individualistic aspira-
tions and recognize that it is but one of several ways of studying
mankind. It must confess that, like geology, biology, and most
other sciences, it is based on sister sciences, that it can only progress
with them, must lean largely on them for support, and in return
should repay its debt by the contributions which it makes to our
general understanding of our species. In short, whatever history
may or may not be, it always concerns itself with man. Would it
not then be the height of folly and arrogance for the historian to
neglect the various discoveries made about man by those who study
him in ways different from those of the traditional student of the
past?
In order to understand the present plight of the historian we
must go back to the middle of the nineteenth century, when for the
first time history began clearly to come under the influence of the
modern scientific spirit. Previously it had been a branch of litera-
ture with distinctly literary aims, when it was not suborned in the
interest of theological theories or called upon to stimulate patriotic
pride and emulation. But about sixty years ago a new era in his-
torical investigation opened which has witnessed achievements of a
character to justify in a measure the complacency in which historians
now and then indulge. The most obvious of these achievements seem
to me to be four in number, and the historian owes all of them, if I
am not mistaken, to the example and influence of natural science.
He undertook in the first place to test and examine his sources of
information far more critically than ever before, and rejected par-
tially or wholly many authorities upon which his predecessors had
relied implicitly. Secondly, he resolved to tell the truth like a man,
regardless of whose feelings it might hurt, to set forth wie es eigent-
lich gewesen, in Ranke's famous dictum. Thirdly, he began to real-
ize the overwhelming importance of the inconspicuous, the common,
and often obscure elements in the past; the homely, every-day, and
normal as over against the rare, spectacular, and romantic which had
engaged the attention of most earlier writers. Fourthly, he began
to spurn supernatural, theological, and anthropocentric explanations
which had been the stock-in-trade of the philosophers of history. I
do not propose to dwell upon these achievements, for no one will be
inclined to question their fundamental character. They have cost a
tremendous amount of labor, but they were the essential prelim-
* Kemp, J. F., " Geology," a lecture delivered at Columbia University in
the series on Science, Philosophy, and Art, November 3, 1907, Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1908.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 145
inaries to any satisfactory progress. Are they, however, more than
essential preliminaries? Do they not, on examination, prove to be
rather negative in character? To resolve to tell the truth about
what you have taken pains to verify according to your best ability;
to reckon with the regular and normal rather than with the excep-
tional and sensational, and to give up appealing to God and the devil
as historical explanations are but preparations for the rewriting of
history. They furnish the necessary conditions rather than the pro-
gram of progress. Moreover, they are by no means all of the neces-
sary conditions. Still further preparations are essential before the
historian can hope to understand the past.
Professor William I. Thomas (not a historian) well says:
( ' The general acceptance of an evolutionary point of view of life
and the world has already deeply affected psychology, philosophy,
morality, education, sociology, and all the sciences dealing with man.
This view involves a recognition of the fact that not a single situa-
tion in life can be completely understood in its immediate aspects
alone. Everything is to be regarded as having an origin and a
development, and we can not afford to overlook the genesis and stages
of change. For instance, the psychologist or the neurologist does
not at present attempt to understand the working and structure of
the human brain through the adult brain alone. He supplements
his studies of the adult brain by observations on the workings of the
infant mind, or by an examination of the structure of the infant
brain. And he goes farther than this from the immediate aspects
of the problem he examines the mental life and the brain of the
monkey, the dog, the rat, the fish, the frog, and of every form of life
possessing a nervous system, down to those having only a single cell,
and at every point he has a chance of catching a suggestion of the
meaning of the brain structure and of mind. In the lower orders of
brain the structure and meaning are writ large, and by working up
from the simpler to the more complex types, and noting the modifica-
tion of structure and function point by point, the student is finally
able to understand the frightfully intricate human organ, or has
the best chance of doing so." 5
It would seem as if this discovery of the incalculable value of
genetic reasoning should have come from the historians, but, curi-
ously enough, instead of being the first to appreciate the full signifi-
cance of historical-mindedness, they left it to be brought forward by
the zoologists, botanists, and geologists. Worse yet, it is safe to say
that, although the natural scientists have fully developed it, the his-
torian has hitherto made only occasional use of the discovery, and
history is still less rigidly historical than comparative anatomy or
6 " Source Book for Social Origins," 1909, p. 3.
146 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
social psychology. In even recent historical works one finds descrip-
tions of events and conditions which make it clear that the writer has
failed to perceive that everything has an origin and a development,
that we can not afford to overlook its genesis and stages of change,
''that not a single situation in life can be completely understood in
its immediate aspects alone. " Of course the historian has long
talked of the "rise" and "fall" of empires, the "growth" and
"decay" of institutions; he has of late devoted much attention to
the development of institutions, and to this extent he adopts a genetic
treatment ; but there none the less lies back of all his work the long
tradition of what we may call the episodal treatment of the past.
He is still constantly making the futile attempt to describe wie es
eigentlich gewesen without knowing wie es eigentlich geworden. The
popular misunderstanding of the French Revolution, for instance,
is due to the anxiety of the historian to depict the striking events
from 1789 onward rather than to interpret them in the light of their
antecedents, which are commonly despatched in an introductory
chapter which furnishes no sufficient clue to what follows. The
"Eenaissance" has been pretty completely misconceived, owing to
the ignorance of Burckhardt and Symonds in regard to the previous
period. The culture of the middle ages in turn remains a mystery to
one who has not scrupulously studied the Weltanschauung of the
fourth century. The historian still puts himself in the position of one
who should wake up in a strange bed and hope to comprehend his
situation by taking a scrupulous inventory of the furniture of his
room. The strangeness can only be dispelled and the situation under-
stood by falling back on the past in this case the simple historical
consideration that one had on his way from Chicago to San Francisco
been delayed and obliged to spend the night in Ogden. Should the
historian give us, for instance, the most minute description of the
conditions in the village of Salem in the year 1692, telling us just
where Goody Bishop's cellar walls stood in which the fatal "pop-
pets ' ' were found, and pointing out the spot where Nehemiah Abbot 's
ox met an untimely and suspicious end by choking on a turnip, we
should still fail to grasp this lamentable crisis in the affairs of New
England, for the really vital question is, Why did our godly ancestors
hang old women for alleged commerce with the devil? Only some
knowledge of comparative religions and of the history of the Chris-
tian church can make that plain. Cotton Mather was the victim of
a complex of squalid superstitions which the Protestant reformers
had done nothing whatever to reduce or attenuate. He is not
to be understood by the most prayerful study of his immediate
surroundings.
The modern historical student 's tendency to specialization, his as-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 147
piration to master some single field, often stands in the way of his
really understanding even what he seems to know most about. The
difference between the best historical writing, which is rare enough,
and the ordinary run of histories, lies in the historical-mindedness of
the author. This is susceptible of far greater development than it has
hitherto received, 6 for it should ultimately permeate all historical
treatises that pretend to be constructive and instructive and do not
merely confine themselves to the accumulation of data and the raw
material of history.
Historical-mindedness is by no means the only great debt that
historians owe to workers in fields seemingly remote from theirs.
Two historical facts of transcendent importance were discovered in
the latter half of the nineteenth century. Neither of them was in
any way attributable to historians. It was the zoologist who proved
that man is sprung from the lower animals, and it was an English
geologist who first clearly and systematically brought together the
evidence that man has been sojourning on the earth, not for six thou-
sand years only, but mayhap for six hundred thousand. The meth-
ods and outlook of the historian prevented him from making these
discoveries. He may exonerate himself for his failure to suspect
these truths on the ground that the data used to establish man's
animal ancestry and his vast antiquity are wholly unfamiliar to him.
Granting the propriety of this excuse, it may be asked whether he
has seriously reckoned with these two momentous facts after they
were pointed out to him by Darwin, Lyell, and others. He has cer-
tainly been slow to do so. They were new to the last generation of
historians and they would have seemed quite irrelevant to Ranke or
Bancroft in their undertakings. Even to-day I find that my Fach-
genossen are some of them inclined to deny that man's descent from
the lower animals is strictly speaking an historical fact, although
they would concede that Henry II. 's descent from William the Con-
queror was such. What is more important, most historical students
would frankly confess that they saw no way in which man's descent
or his long sojourn on the earth could be brought into any obvious
relation with the problems on which they were engaged. In this
they would be quite right. It is certainly true that most historical
investigation can be carried on without reference to man's origin.
6 An interesting paper could be written on the common view entertained by
historians that it is impossible to write the history of our own times; that
historical methods can not be applied to recent events. Those who at one
moment proclaim this doctrine at the next will freely acknowledge Thucydides,
who confined himself to his own time, the greatest of all historians! It is most
essential that we should understand our own time; we can only do so through
history, and it is the obvious duty of the historian to meet this his chief
obligation.
148 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
If one is endeavoring to determine whether Charles the Fat was in
Ingelheim or Lustnau on July 1, 887, it makes little difference
whether the emperor's ancestors talked with their creator in the cool
of the evening or went on all fours and slept in a tree. If one is
locating the sites of French forts on the Ohio Biver or describing the
causes of Marie Antoinette's repugnance for Mirabeau, the jaw of
the Heidelberg man may safely be neglected. Whole fields of his-
torical research can be cultivated not only without any regard to
man's origin, but without any attempt to understand man uber-
haupt. But there are many other and perhaps more important
fields, as I trust may become apparent later, in which it is essential
that the investigator should know everything that is being found
out about man, unless he is willing to run the risk of superficiality
and error.
While, then, the historian has been busy doing his best to render
history scientific, he has, as we have seen, left the students of nature
to illustrate to the full the advantages of historical-mindedness and
to make two discoveries about mankind infinitely more revolutionary
than all that Giesebrecht, Waitz, Martin, or Hodgkin ever found out
about the past. To-day, he has obviously not only to adjust himself
as fast as he can to these new elements in the general intellectual
situation, but he must decide what shall be his attitude toward a
considerable number of newer sciences of man which, by freely
applying the evolutionary theory, have progressed marvelously and
are now in a position to rectify many of the commonly accepted con-
clusions of the historian and to disabuse his mind of many ancient
misapprehensions. By the newer sciences of man I mean, first and
foremost, anthropology, in a comprehensive sense, prehistoric arche-
ology, social and animal psychology, and the comparative study of
religions. Political economy has already had its effects on history,
and as for sociology, it seems to me a highly important point of view
rather than a body of discoveries about mankind. But perhaps I
am mistaken. In any case I have nothing to say about it at present
in its relations to history. These newer social sciences, each study-
ing man in its own particular way, have entirely changed the mean-
ing of many terms which the historian has been accustomed to use
in senses now discredited such words as "race," "religion,"
"progress," "the ancients," "culture," "human nature," etc.
They have vitiated many of the cherished conclusions of mere his-
torians and have served to explain historical phenomena which the
historian could by no possibility have rightly interpreted with the
means at his disposal. Let us begin with prehistoric archeology.
The conservative historian might be tempted to object at the start
that however important the development of man would seem to be
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 149
before the opening of history, we can unfortunately know practically
nothing about it, owing to the almost total lack of documents and
records. Archeology has of course, he would admit, revealed a few
examples of man's handiwork which may greatly antedate the
earliest finds in Egyptian tombs; some skulls and bones and even
skeletons have been found, and no one familiar with the facts doubts
that man was living on the earth thousands of years before the
Egyptian civilization developed. But what can we know about him,
except the shape of his jaw and the nature of his stone and bone
utensils which alone survive from remote periods? If we feel ill-
informed about the time of Diocletian or Clovis, how baseless are our
conjectures in regard to the habits of the cave man !
It is certainly true that the home life of the cave man is still
veiled in obscurity and is likely to remain so. Nevertheless, the mass
of information in regard to mankind before the appearance of the
earliest surviving inscriptions has already assumed imposing propor-
tions. Its importance is perhaps partially disguised by the unfor-
tunate old term " prehistoric. " The historian glances at case after
ease of flint "eoliths," fist-hatchets, arrow-points, and scrapers,
pictures of animals scratched on bits of bone, fragments of neolithic
pottery and bronze celts, with emotions of weariness tempered by
some slight contempt for those who see anything more in these than
the proofs that there used to be savages long ago similar to those
that may still be found in regions remote from civilization. Further
reflection should, however, convince him that the distinction between
''historic" and "prehistoric" is after all an arbitrary one. I sup-
pose that ' ' prehistoric ' ' originally meant such information as we had
about man before his story was taken up by Moses and Homer, when
these were deemed the earliest surviving written sources.
History, however, in the fullest sense of the term, includes all
that we know of the past of mankind, regardless of the nature of our
sources of information. Archeological sources, to which the student
of the earlier history of man is confined, are not only frequently
superior in authenticity to many written documents, but they con-
tinue to have the greatest importance after the appearance of in-
scriptions and books. We now accept as historical a great many
things which are recorded neither in inscriptions nor in books. It is
an historical, not a prehistorical, fact that the earliest well-defined
and unmistakable human tool, the fist-hatchet, was used in southern
Europe, in Africa, India, Japan, and North America. This is ex-
actly as historical as the recorded word that Julius Caesar first
crossed the English Channel at the full of the moon and far more
important.
Should the historical student still find himself indifferent to what
150 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
has been called palethnology, 7 let him recollect that if, as it is not
hazardous to assume, the oldest fist-hatchets were made by men living
two hundred thousand years ago, the so-called "historical" period
of from five to seven thousand years has to do with but a thirtieth
or a fortieth of the time man has been slowly and intermittently
establishing the foundations of our present civilization. But the
fist-hatchet is, comparatively speaking, a highly perfected implement
and is pretty well diffused over the globe, so that it suggests a vista
of antecedent progress which separates man's speechless and tool-
less ancestors from the makers of the fist-hatchets. It must be clear
that if one ignores palethnology one runs the risk of missing the
whole perspective of modern change. We have outgrown the scale
which served for Archbishop Usher, who maintained that man and
all the terrestrial animals were created on Friday, October 28,
4004 B.C., and which has led to a great deal of shallow talk about our
relation to "the ancients" who are in reality contemporaries.
It seems highly improbable to suggest a single reflection that
human mental capacity has either increased or declined during the
trifling period which separates us from Plato and Aristotle. Indeed,
could we imagine a colony of infants from the first families of
Athens in the fifth century B.C. and another the offspring of the most
intellectual classes of to-day, completely isolated from civilization
and suckled by wolves or fed by ravens, both groups would start in a
stage of de-civilization suggesting that of the chimpanzee. No one
can tell how long it would take the supreme geniuses which such
colonies might from time to time produce to frame a sentence, build
a fire, or chip a nodule of flint into a fist-hatchet. Nor is there
reason to think that either colony would have the advantage in
making the first steps in progress. It is only education and social
environment that separate the best of us from a savagery far lower
than any to be observed on the earth to-day, lower probably than
that of the lowest man of whom any traces still exist.
Then there is the word "race," which historical writers have
used and still use with such recklessness. Most of the earlier the-
ories of "races" and of the origin of man in western Asia were
either consciously suggested or unconsciously reinforced by the
account in Genesis of the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, and the con-
founding of language during the construction of the Tower of Babel.
7 The term prehistoric, or some such term as palethnology (suggested by
de Mortillet) is still convenient, since the attempts to trace the stages of devel-
opment of man previous to the appearance of the higher, and really very recent,
forms of civilization which first meet us in Egypt and Babylonia involves a
particular technical equipment, including, for instance, some acquaintance with
geology and paleontology.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 151
The Aryan theory set forth, for example, by Mommsen in the opening
chapter of his "Roman History," to-day appears well-nigh as nai've
and grotesque as the earlier notion of the Tower of Babel. Since the
geological period when man may first have made his appearance on
the earth there have been vast changes in the distribution of land
and water, in climate and fauna. These natural changes in physical
conditions must have caused all sorts of migrations and fusions. Add
to these conquests and invasions, slavery and miscellaneous sexual
relations. These have brought the most varied peoples together and
produced an inextricable confusion of morals, manners, and tongues. 8
In spite of this, one still finds historical students talking of ' ' races ' '
as if we could still believe Max Miiller's persuasive tale of the plain
of Iran and the dispersion of the Aryans.
These illustrations should be sufficient to substantiate the impor-
tance of prehistoric archeology for all students of history, since they
all run grave risks of persisting in ancient error if they neglect its
results. We are, however, by no means confined to the remains of
man and his handiwork for our notions of what must have lain back
of the highly developed civilizations which we meet when written
records first become available. If, as Professor William Thomas has
so happily phrased it, ''tribal society is virtually delayed civiliza-
tion, and the savages are a sort of contemporaneous ancestry," 9
those investigators namely, the anthropologists who deal with the
habits, customs, institutions, languages, and beliefs of primitive man
are in a position to make the greatest contributions to the real under-
standing of history. From the standpoint of man's development,
anthropology may be deemed a branch of history in the same sense
that animal psychology or comparative anatomy are branches of
human psychology and human anatomy.
At least one historian of repute has recognized the truth of this.
Professor Eduard Meyer prefaces the second greatly revised edition
of his "History of Antiquity" with a whole volume of 250 pages on
the "Elements of Anthropology." He says: "To have prefaced my
work with such an introduction would formerly have excited the
surprise and encountered the criticism of many of my judges at a
time when the interests of most historians were entirely alien to
such questions. Now, when such matters are the order of the day,
no apology is necessary. . . . Indeed such an introduction is abso-
lutely essential for a scientific and consistently conceived history of
8 Cf. DeMorgan, " Les premieres civilizations," 10 sqq., for striking illus-
trations of bewildering human mixtures.
9 Op. tit., p. 13.
152 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
antiquity. " 10 I fear that the helpfulness of anthropology for the his-
torical student is still much obscured owing partly to his indifference
to the whole question of human development, and partly to a more
or less justifiable suspicion on his part that there is grave danger of
being misled in our attempt to interpret past events and conditions
by anthropological theories and schematism. It is one thing, how-
ever, to reject a tool because we are too stupid to see its use, and
another to be on our guard against cutting ourselves. I am con-
vinced that even the historical student who is stolidly and com-
placently engaged in determining past facts (except when he puts
on the armor of the Lord to defend the lawful frontiers of history
against invaders) would find the study of anthropology of value.
It would tend to give him poise and insight, preeminently in all
matters having to do with religion or religious sanction or the under-
lying forces of conservatism, and with these subjects he is constantly
engaged in one form or another. No branch of modern research,
indeed, has so upset older historical conceptions as the comparative
study of religions, a science which is quasi-historical and quasi-
anthropological in its sources and methods. The older historians
failed to see very deeply into religious phenomena; manifestations
of that class were commonly taken for granted and their origins
excited little curiosity. But few phases of human development have
proved to be more explicable than the religious. The complex syn-
cretism which resulted in orthodox Christianity has been laid bare,
as well as the very ancient and primitive superstitions which were
incorporated into the theology of the fathers.
Recently I was told by M. Solomon Reinach, the distinguished
director of the Museum of St. Germain-en-Laye, that when Mommsen
visited the collections some years ago he had never heard either of
the ice age or of totemism! He appeared to think that the terms
might be the ingenious discoveries of M. Reinach himself. Now,
Mommsen is properly ranked among the most extraordinary his-
torians of modern times. The mass of his work and its quality are
familiar to us all. Nevertheless, his ignorance of two of the com-
monplaces of prehistoric archeology and of anthropology prevented
him from seeing the Roman civilization in its proper perspective and
from thoroughly grasping the religious and perhaps even the legal
phenomena. Man, as Henry Adams has so neatly expressed it, is
10 " Geschichte des Altertums," 2te Aufl. (1907), I., 1, viii sq. "Die Ein-
leitung verdankt indessen keineswegs nur dem eigenen Interesse an diesen Prob-
lemen ihr Dasein, dem Streben nach Gtewinnung einer einheitlichen historisch
begrundeten Weltanschauung, welches fur mich iiberhaupt bei der Ergreifung
meines Berufs die innerste Triebfeder gewesen ist; sondern sie ist fur eine
wissenschaftliche, einheitlich gedachte Geschichte des Altertums iiberhaupt ganz
unentbehrlich," op. cit., p. ix.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 153
now viewed as a " function ' ' of the ice age during a very long period.
As for totemism, it has been called upon to explain such different
phenomena as the frescoes in the dark caves of the Magdalenien
period, the abhorrence of the Jew for pork, and the esteem of a base-
ball team for its mascot. Many beliefs and practises of the Chris-
tian church are now seen to go back by direct or by devious ways
to totemism, animism, and the mana.
The historical student who realizes this will hasten to acquaint
himself, if he has not already done so, with some of the most sug-
gestive works in this field of anthropology and comparative religion.
He will be a very dull person indeed if he does not find his concep-
tions of the past fundamentally changing as he reads, let us say, the
extracts which Professor Thomas has so conveniently brought to-
gether in his "Source Book for Social Origins" or the fascinating
"Folkways" of the late Professor Sumner; or Solomon Reinach's
"Orpheus," Conybeare's "Myth, Magic, and Morals," or DeMor-
gan's "Les premieres civilizations," to mention only the more ob-
vious examples of this class of literature.
So it has come about that the older notions of our relations to the
so-called "ancients," of religion in general and Christianity in par-
ticular, and of "race" are being gravely modified by the investiga-
tions of those who are not commonly classed as historians. These
latter have demonstrated the superficial character of the historians'
reasoning and pointed the way to new and truer interpretations of
past events and conditions. Other terms which historians have used
without any adequate understanding of them are "progress" and
"decline," "human nature," "historical continuity," and "civiliza-
tion." Even a slight tincture of anthropology, reinforced by the
elements of the newer allied branches of social and animal psychol-
ogy, will do much to deepen and rectify the sense in which we use
these terms.
Social psychology, as yet in an inchoate condition, is based on the
conviction that we owe our own ego to our association with others ; it
is a social product. Without others we should never be ourselves.
'Whatever may be the metaphysical impossibilities or possibilities
of solipsism, psychologically it is non-existent. There must be other
selves if one 's own is to exist. Psychological analysis, retrospection,
and the study of children and primitive people give no inkling of
situations in which self could have existed in consciousness except as
the counterpart of other selves. ' ' n
It may at first sight seem a far cry from the origin of the ego and
its dependence on the socius to such historical questions as the dates
u Mead, " Social Psychology as Counterpart to Psychological Psychology,"
Psychological Bulletin, Vol. VI., No. 12, 1910, p. 407.
154 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of Sargon's reign, the meaning of the Renaissance, or Napoleon's
views of the feasibility of invading England. There are, however,
plenty of matters of still more vital importance on which the judg-
ments of historical students are likely to be gravely affected by some
acquaintance with the recent discussions in regard to the laws of
imitation with which Tarde 's name is especially associated ; and with
the relation of our reason to the more primitive instincts which we
inherit from our animal ancestors. Indeed the great and funda-
mental question of how mankind learns and disseminates his discov-
eries and misapprehensions in short, the whole rationale of human
civilization as distinguished from the life of the anthropoids will
never be understood without social psychology; and social psychol-
ogy will never be understood without animal psychology ; and these
alone can serve to explain the real nature of progress and retrogres-
sion matters to which no historical student can afford to remain
indifferent. There is obviously no possibility of explaining ade-
quately on this occasion this rather perturbing proposition, but its
importance seems to me so great that I am going to venture to
present the situation very briefly.
In the first place, is it not clear that we still permit ourselves, as
is not at all unnatural, to be victimized by the old anthropocentric
conception of things ? This has been so long accepted by the western
world that in spite of the discoveries of the past sixty years we find
many unrevised notions from the past still lurking in the corners
of our judgment. We are constantly forgetting, I fear, that man
was not created, male and female, in a day, as Mark Hopkins and
those of his generation commonly believed. We did not begin our
human existence with pure and holy aspirations, a well-developed
language, and a knowledge of agriculture, but are descended from
a long line of brute ancestors, unable either to talk or to cultivate
the soil. All animals, that now live or ever have lived on the earth,
including man, "are mayhap united together by blood relationship
of varying nearness or remoteness. ' ' Every one of us has a pedigree
stretching back not merely a couple of hundred generations, but
through all geologic time since life first commenced on the globe.
Man's bodily resemblance to the anthropoid apes has long been a
subject of comment. Ennius gave expression over two thousand
years ago to the disconcerting discovery :
Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis?
With the modern development of zoology and comparative anatomy
more intimate structural similarities were brought to light; Darwin
sketched a portrait of the turpissima bestia , our hairy ancestor, with
his tail, prehensile foot, and great canine teeth. This hypothesis has
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 155
since been substantiated by the discovery of numerous vestigial
muscles and organs, atavistic reversions, and pathological conditions
which can be readily explained only on evolutionary grounds. But
if our bodies and their functions so closely resemble those of our
nearest relatives among the animals, what shall we say of our minds ?
Are these altogether different from the animal minds from which
they have gradually developed, or do they perpetuate, like our bodies,
all the old that is still available and perhaps not a few traits that
now merely hamper us or tend to beget serious disorders ? May not
the minds of our remote ancestors, who had not yet learned to talk,
still serve us not only in infancy and when senile dementia overtakes
us, but may they not be our normal guides in the simpler exigencies
of life ? I think that it is not hazardous to affirm that the perpetua-
tion in man of psychological processes to be observed in the other
primates would be conceded by all students of animal psychology.
If this be true, may we not look to the study of animal psychology,
as it develops, for information which will enable us to discover and
appreciate for the first time what really goes to make up a human
being as distinguished from his humbler relatives?
Comparative, or animal, psychology has only recently found a
place in some of our universities. Professor E. L. Thorndike was
perhaps the first, some ten years ago, to attempt to put the subject on
a modern experimental basis. Since then much has been done, espe-
cially in the United States. We can hardly hope to know very
clearly what an ape is thinking about as he looks out from under
his wrinkled brow. "Les animaux ne nous font pas des confidences,"
as Reinach has truly observed. But scientific observation and ex-
perimentation are throwing light on the educability of apes and
other animals and on the way in which they appear to learn. They
have already proved that the chimpanzee can readily master a vast
number of acts over and above anything that his ancestors have ever
known in the jungle. He is marvelously teachable. He appears to
learn by "trial and error" and by a process which we may term
"trick psychology," stimulated by rewards and punishments. The
exact nature and the role of "imitation" is not yet very clear, but I
think that no one can doubt its importance. Now the obvious ques-
tion forces itself on us, Do we not all learn for the most part much as
the chimpanzee learns, by trial and error and by mastering tricks,
stimulated by rewards and punishments, or by "imitation"? The
answer will be, I am convinced, that almost all our education is based
on modified simian principles. To a believer in the continuity of his-
tory that should be a cheering discovery, humiliating as it is in other
respects.
I am aware that to most students of history the results of com-
156
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
parative psychology will seem at first sight too remote to have any
assignable bearing on the problems that face them. This impression
is, however, erroneous, at least where questions of the character and
transmission of culture are involved. We can not understand the
nature of culture as distinguished from our merely animal heritage
without some notion of animal psychology. I can not but think that
the historical student will deal far more intelligently with the
changes of thought, the development of institutions, the progress of
invention, and almost all religious phenomena when he learns to dis-
tinguish between the higher and rarer manifestations of peculiarly
human psychology and the current and fundamental simian mental
modes upon which we still rely so constantly with the assurance of
ancestral habit.
I will give but a single illustration from this field of speculation.
Gabriel Tarde's great discovery is that every minutest element in
civilization, every atom of culture that we have, over and above our
animal outfit, must either be handed on from one generation to the
next, or else be rediscovered or lost. Now it should be part of the
historian 's business, and no unimportant part, to follow out the actual
historical workings of this rule. Civilization is not innate, but trans-
mitted by " imitation" in the large sense of the word. A word, or a
particular form of tool, or a book, will die out as surely as an organ-
ism unless it is propagated and regenerated. Let us apply this law
in a single case. How little addition to the general disorder and to
the chronic discouragements of learning is necessary to account for
the fatal disappearance of Greek books in the West after the dissolu-
tion of the Roman Empire! Suppose only half as many people in
Gaul learned Greek in the time of Gregory of Tours as had known
it in Constantine's time. How greatly would this increase the
chances of the complete disappearance of Xenophon's ' ' Cyropaedia "
or Euripides 's ' ' Elektra ' ' !
In bringing this paper to a close I am painfully conscious that
it may suggest serious dangers to some thoughtful readers. The
historical student may be ready to grant that he has neglected the
influence that discoveries in other fields should have on his own con-
clusions ; but how, he will ask, is he to find time to acquaint himself
with all the branches of anthropology, of sociology, political economy,
comparative religion, social psychology, animal psychology, physical
geography, climatology, and the rest? It is hard for him even to
keep up with the new names, and he has a not unnatural distrust of
those who tender him easy explanations for things that they still
know so little about. Some of the more exuberant representatives of
the newer social sciences remind the historian disagreeably of the
now nearly extinct tribe of philosophers of history, who flattered
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 157
themselves that their penetrating intellects had been able to discover
the wherefore of man 's past without the trouble of learning anything
about it.
But the historical student who classes the modern social sciences
with the old and discredited philosophy of history is making a serious
mistake. The philosophers of history sought to justify man's past
in order to satisfy some sentimental craving, and their explanations
were, in the last analysis, usually begotten of some theological or
national prejudice. The student of society, on the contrary, offers
very real and valuable, if obviously partial, explanations of the past.
It is true that he sometimes forgets what Hume calls the "vast
variety which nature has effected in her operations," and tries to
explain more than his favorite cause will account for, but this ought
not to blind us to his usefulness.
It seems to me that, like the geologist, the physiologist, and the
biologist, the historian is forced to make use of pertinent informa-
tion furnished by workers in other fields even if he has no time to
master more than the elements of the sciences most nearly allied to
his own. He may use anthropological and psychological discoveries
and information without becoming either an anthropologist or a
psychologist. These discoveries and this information will inevitably
suggest new points of view and new interpretations to the historian,
and will help to rectify the old misapprehensions and dispel the in-
numerable ancient illusions which permeate our older historical
treatises. Above all, let the historical student become unreservedly his-
torical-minded, and avail himself of the genetic explanation of human
experience, and free himself from the suspicion that, in spite of his
name and assumptions, he is as yet the least historical, in his atti-
tude and methods, of all those who to-day are so eagerly attempting
to explain mankind.
It may well be that speculation in the newer fields has often far
outrun the data accumulated, and the historical student has not in-
frequently been tendered explanations of the past which he has done
well to reject. The sociologist, anthropologist, and economist have
doubtless often thought too fast and too recklessly, and this has
engendered an excessive reserve in the historian who has sometimes
flattered himself on not thinking at all. But there is, in the long
run, more risk in thinking too little than too much, and the kind of
thought which I have ventured to recommend in this paper should
serve, if judiciously practised, greatly to strengthen and deepen the
whole range of historical study and render its results far more valu-
able than they have hitherto been.
JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
158
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
THE BASIS OF EEALISM
"rpHE Program and First Platform of Six Realists," which
appeared in this JOURNAL last July, 1 gives expression to a
growing movement in philosophy in a way which deserves the grati-
tude of all who are in sympathy with that movement. As I find
myself in almost complete agreement with the "six realists," I have
thought it might be desirable to attempt on my own account a some-
what similar statement of my philosophical opinions.
The fundamental doctrine in the realistic position, as I under-
stand it, is the doctrine that relations are "external." This doc-
trine is not correctly expressed by saying that two terms which have
a certain relation might have not had that relation. Such a state-
ment introduces the notion of possibility and thus raises irrelevant
difficulties. The doctrine may be expressed by saying that (1) re-
latedness does not imply any corresponding complexity in the relata;
(2) any given entity is a constituent of many different complexes.
Each of these propositions requires some expansion.
1. The view which is intended to be denied by this proposition is
the view that, whenever a term a has a certain relation R to a cer-
tain other term &, that implies some element in a in virtue of which
it has the relation R to &. It is usual in this connection to speak
rather of the ' ' nature " of a than of a, and it is not clear whether the
"nature" of a is or is not identical with a; but in any case, this
"nature," according to the view we are denying, is complex, and
contains a constituent which expresses or accounts for d's relation
to &. Writers who advocate the view in question do not state what
they mean by the "nature" of a. Three views may be suggested:
(a) We may suppose that the "nature" of a is identical with a. In
this case, we affirm, on the basis of a reductio ad dbsurdum, that the
contention that a's "nature" must contain a constituent which ex-
presses or accounts for a's relation to ~b, is demonstrably false.
(/?) We may suppose that a's "nature" is all the propositions that
are true of a, or all the complexes of which a is a constituent. In
this case, the view in question becomes a truism, but fails to yield
any of the consequences commonly deduced from it. (y) We may
define the "nature" of a as its predicates or attributes, as opposed
to its relations. This view requires a word of explanation. We are
accustomed to dyadic, triadic, tetradic . . . relations. A dyadic re-
lation may be defined as one which can occur in propositions contain-
ing only two other terms, i. e., as one such that the simplest proposi-
tions in which it occurs contain only two other terms. Similar defi-
l. VII., No. 15, pp. 393-401.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 159
nitions apply to triadic, tetradic . . . relations. Now there may also
be I do not say there are what we may call monadic concepts,
i. e., concepts which can occur in propositions having only one other
term. Such concepts may be called predicates or attributes. It is
of course the case that, whenever a subject has a predicate, there is a
dyadic relation of subject and predicate, but it does not follow that
there is not also a proposition in which the predicate is merely predi-
cated. The analogy of dyadic relations will make this clearer.
Whenever a has the relation R to ~b, there is a triadic relation of a
and R and 1), but in this relation R occurs as a term of the relation,
not as the relating relation of the proposition. Similarly, if there
are monadic concepts, the propositions in which they are said to
have the relation of predication to their subjects will not be identical
with the propositions in which they are actually predicated. As-
suming, then, that there are monadic concepts, the " nature" of a
may consist of all those monadic concepts which are predicable of a.
Then the view that a's "nature" contains a constituent which ex-
presses or accounts for #'s relation to & will be the view that there
is a monadic concept predicable of whatever has the said relation
to & and of nothing else. More generally, the view in question may
be stated as follows : ' ' Every prepositional function of one variable
is formally equivalent to some monadic prepositional function,"
where a monadic prepositional function is one which attributes a
monadic concept to a variable subject. It is no concern of the doc-
trine of external relations either to affirm or deny the above view,
though we must contend that there is no reason to suppose the above
view to be true. We must, however, deny that a term is composed
of all the monadic concepts which are predicable of it, i. e. f that a
particular subject is identical with the sum of its predicates.
I do not for a moment wish to suggest that any one of the above
three views (a), (ft), (y), is held by any of the opponents of ex-
ternal relations. They, I believe, hold a confused mixture of all
three, and would not continue their opposition if the confusion were
removed. My purpose in setting forth the above three views was
to make it clear what it is that I affirm, and what it is that I deny.
The view I advocate is, that a term a may have a relation to a term
& without there being any constituent of a corresponding to this
relation. If this were false, simple terms could have no relations, and
therefore could not enter into complexes; hence every term would
have to be strictly infinitely complex.
2. Authors who deny external relations hold, in addition to the
doctrine discussed above, that it is impossible for precisely the same
term to be a constituent of two different complexes, or to occur in
two different propositions. They say that if A is the father of B and
160 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the son of C, it is not strictly the same entity which is father and
son, but that it is "A qua father of B" who is the father of B, and
"A qua son of C" who is the son of C. This doctrine also is denied
by those who advocate external relations. They would argue that
"A qua father of B" is a complex containing the constituent A, and
"A qua son of C" is also a complex containing the constituent A.
Thus the attempt to avoid an identical constituent in two complexes
breaks down. The two parts of the doctrine of external relations
together constitute the justification of analysis, and the denial of the
view that analysis is falsification.
The importance of the question as to the value of relations lies in
the fact that current arguments against realism and pluralism al-
most all depend upon the doctrine of internal relations. When this
doctrine is rejected, the question as to the number of things that
exist becomes purely empirical, but no empirical fact is more cer-
tain, if a priori refutations fail, than that many things exist. I
should therefore prefer to call the philosophy which I advocate
"pluralism" rather than "realism," because realism, in most of its
accepted uses, involves long and difficult arguments which might be
rejected without contravening anything that was said above as to
the nature of relations. Nevertheless, if any case is to be made out
against this or that form of realism on the basis of external rela-
tions, it will have to be a new case, based upon quite different argu-
ments from those hitherto employed by idealists. I do not myself
believe that any such case can be made out ; at the same time, all the
questions involved seem to me to demand fresh discussion, and what
seems to me so far firmly established is a logic and a method, rather
than any positive metaphysical results. What is plain is that all
arguments based on the contention that knowing makes a difference
to what is known, or implies a community or interaction between
knower and known, rest upon the internal view of relations, and
therefore fail when this view is rejected. It is true there is another
argument for idealism, namely, the argument which Professor Perry
calls the ' ' egocentric predicament. ' ' This argument is, in brief, that
everything must be known, because we can not know of anything
else. This is a foolish fallacy, which would equally prove that I
must be acquainted with everybody whose name is Smith. Some-
times, more plausibly, it is urged merely that we can not know that
there are things we do not know; but this view rests upon a wrong
analysis of general propositions, in fact upon the same wrong analy-
sis which led Mill to regard Barbara as a petitio principii. When
we know a general proposition, that does not require that we should
know all or any of the instances of it. "All the multiplication-
sums that never have been and never will be thought of by any
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 161
human being deal with numbers over 1,000" is obviously a true
proposition, although no instance of such a sum can ever be given.
It is therefore perfectly possible to know that there are propositions
we do not know, in spite of the fact that we can give no instance of
such a proposition. Thus it is fallacious not merely to argue that
everything must be known, but even to argue that we can not know
that there are things which we do not know. This instance, like
many others, illustrates the elementary blunders which philosophers
have made owing to their neglect of logic.
To sum up: The primary philosophic effect of the logical doc-
trines which I share with the ' ' six realists ' ' seems to me mainly neg-
ative: it shows that most current philosophical argument is fal-
lacious, and that many questions which have been supposed amen-
able to a priori treatment must be dealt with empirically, since logic
leaves the alternatives undecided. At the same time, in all those
matters in which philosophy has been led to contravene science and
common sense, there is a presumption, if the arguments of philoso-
phers have been unsound, that their conclusions have been false;
hence the logic in question naturally associates itself with pluralism
and realism rather than with monism and idealism. Moreover, by
the rejection of a priori constructions the way is opened for philos-
ophy to become inductive, and to begin the patient cooperative
accumulation of results by which the triumphs of science have been
achieved.
B. RUSSELL.
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Mysticism in Modern Mathematics. HASTINGS BERKELEY. Oxford "Uni-
versity Press. 1910. Pp. 258.
The title of this work will, to many, appear wantonly paradoxical.
Mathematics, above all branches of knowledge, is usually credited with the
attributes of absolute certainty and of logical precision. Nevertheless,
Mr. Berkeley successfully maintains that it contains elements not incor-
rectly described by the term mystical. The term requires definition.
Mr. Berkeley's meaning will be gathered from the following passage.
:t What are we to think of, how shall we characterize, a mental process
which might, briefly and in general terms, be indicated thus: Explanation
of the derivation, from a primary conception (say that of quantity, or
again, of space), of another conception, followed by questions such as
these: What is, or what is the nature of, this derived conception? Or
say that Abracadabra is the name of the derived conception What is the
meaning of Abracadabra? The questions imply that the nature of a
162 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
derived conception is not made manifest in the account of its derivation,
that the meaning of a term may be something other than that which we
have agreed to assign to it. Yet, if a derived conception really is present
to the mind, to ask what this conception is can only be an indirect way
of asking for an explanation of the process by which we have come to
form it, that is, of its derivation; and, if we have given the name Abra-
cadabra to a certain idea, to ask, What is Abracadabra? is to imply that
the meaning of the term is not that idea. But select what term you please
to characterize a mental process such as this I can find none more appro-
priate than ' mystical ' and it will probably come to seem inappropriate
when you learn further that a notion which is derived, rather than that
from which it derives, is the fundamental notion of the subject of thought
which involves them both " (p. 64) .
To the author, mysticism is a form of illusion, nothing more. In his
preface he defines pragmatism as a "methodical and determined attempt
to rid philosophy of mysticism." Throughout the book mystical and mys-
tical illusion are used as synonymous terms. It should be remarked at
the outset that this attitude is hardly adequate to the complexity of the
problem before us. It is one thing to point out " mystical " tendencies
in mathematics; it is quite another to condemn them as mere illusions of
symbolism. Where mysticism is to be found, even in the most unlikely
places, let us, by all means, recognize it as such; and let us not confuse
it with the factual elements with which it is bound up. But the author's
attitude of absolute condemnation requires thorough philosophic sub-
stantiation.
The volume is divided into three sections entitled respectively:
" Thought and its Symbolic Expression," " Imaginary Quantities in
Algebra and Imaginary Loci in Geometry," " Metageometry." The first
section is somewhat loosely connected with the remainder and calls for
no special comment.
The second section is dominated throughout by the author's idea of
mysticism. In algebra, he deals first with negative quantities and then
at considerable length with V 1. His conclusions are somewhat vague.
He endeavors to show that the geometrical conception of V IX
V 1 becomes arithemetically intelligible by stating it in the form
+ 1: V=l:: V^l: 1 (pp. 125-6). Undoubtedly this form does
illustrate more clearly than the sign of multiplication the relation of
perpendicularity. But the arithemetical intelligibility of the process of
squaring a quantity which it is not allowable (according to Mr. Berkeley)
to isolate, is by no means clear. The problem does not appear to be
solved by informing us that " they are then at once recognized as fac-
tors or constituent parts of actual expressions, algebraically symbolic,
interpreted in terms of generalized number and abstract quantity." Mr.
Berkeley apparently means, though his meaning is obscure, that expres-
sions like V 1 X V 1 are similar to dy/dx, which represents an
operation. Only conventionally and for specific purposes do we separate
dy and dx. Unfortunately for the theory, the sign of multiplication
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 163
considered arithmetically does connote the existence of separate quanti-
ties to be multiplied, and is not, in any other sense, intelligible. More-
over, their use in algebra depends simply and solely on the convention
that they can be treated as separate quantities.
Mr. Berkeley's meaning would have been much clearer if he had dealt
with the subject of fractional and negative indices, a* and a~ 2 can, in
a sense, be called mystical expressions. They have no meaning until we
ask, in Mr. Berkeley's words : " What do they mean ? " Then we are able
to discover for them one interpretation and only one, in this case, purely
arithmetical. Why can the mystical and meaningless expression 2~ 2 be
used as equivalent to the plain, every-day i ?
The treatment of imaginary points and loci is more explicit, and,
whether or no it be philosophically adequate, may assist the elementary
teacher, who often finds it difficult to show that this section of analytical
geometry represents any form of practical utility. The following quota-
tion will indicate the author's treatment:
" The process, thus far, may be said to exhibit the mathematician at
play. To regard it as furnishing a geometrical interpretation of alge-
braic imaginaries in the usual sense of the word interpretation, or in any
sense that would ultimately prompt the question: What is the meaning
of an imaginary point? would be to take a jeu d' esprit seriously, or to be
unconscious or oblivious of the fact that the process is a subtle game in
which we play at interpretation, pretend to interpret. If we are conscious
of this fact we shall not ask the question; nor shall we suppose that we
have found an interpretation in pretending to find one. The game has
1 serious scientific value ' only if, when we say that the roots of this
quadric equation symbolize either real or imaginary abscissa, we can in
this paradoxical phraseology call attention to some geometrical property
involved in the system of the circle and the straight line which is inde-
pendent of their having, in any point or points, coordinates in common,
independent, that is, of the straight line being secant or non-secant of the
circle."
For purposes of instruction, the exposition will require simplification;
but every teacher will appreciate the advantage of being able, where pos-
sible, to postpone the consideration of philosophical problems by pointing
out that analytical treatment does call attention to new geometrical
properties.
The best section in the book is that dealing with metageometry. The
author makes an admirable point at the outset by remarking that there
is an absurdity, "even a contradiction," in the current term properties
of space. He also points out clearly and rightly that the admission of
the possible objective existence of non-Euclidean space involves a rejection
of our idea of direction. (" each conception of space must involve a
notion of direction peculiar to itself and not comparable with the others.")
With Cayley he agrees that the postulate of parallels is self-evident.
Those who uphold this view, however, are logically bound either to
assert the self-evidence of the complicated fifth postulate of Euclid (com-
monly called the twelfth axiom) or to find some satisfactory substitute.
164 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Up to the present the clearest axiom of parallels is that of Playfair.
Mr. Berkeley's substitute is worthy of attention. He divides the Euclidean
postulate into the following axioms:
" a. Straight lines which are identically inclined to the same straight
line are not mutually inclined.
" b. Straight lines which are not mutually inclined are identically in-
clined to the same straight line."
These should be noted for what they are worth, but it is very doubtful
whether they will be considered any simpler, if as simple, as Playfair's
axiom.
One other feature of the book it is necessary to mention. The sen-
tences are unnecessarily involved and the whole work is loosely constructed
and difficult to read. In many passages the author's meaning is far from
clear. For an original essay the quotations are too numerous. As the
quotations often convey a more vivid impression than the text, it becomes
still more difficult to follow the connection of ideas. Those who, like the
technical mathematician, will not agree with the author's main conclu-
sions, may infer confusion of thought from vagueness of expression. The
volume would be greatly improved by condensation, by the removal of
unessential matter, and by the inclusion of the discussion of other topics
(such as fractional and negative indices) which have a direct bearing on
the author's line of thought.
Notwithstanding these defects, Mr. Berkeley's essay is worthy of the
consideration of the technical mathematician and may be accepted as an
interesting addition to the literature on the philosophy of mathematics.
Such a volume constitutes further evidence of the growing dissatisfaction
with the dogmatism of the mathematicians when they mistake their con-
ceptualisms for objective reality, and when they put forward as probable
conclusions which conflict with the dictates of common sense.
H. S. SHELTON.
ASHFOED, MIDDLESEX, ENGLAND.
Spinoza's Short Treatise on God, Man and his Well-Being. Translated
and edited, with an introduction and commentary and a life of Spinoza.
A. WOLF. London : Adam and Charles Black. 1910. Pp. cxxviii -f-
246.
As indicated in the title, this work consists of four parts, the life of
Spinoza (pp. xi-cii), the history of the "Short Treatise" (pp. ciii-
cxxviii), an English translation of the " Short Treatise " (pp. 1-162),
and a commentary on the same (pp. 165-240).
The life is admirably done. It is certainly in many respects, probably
altogether, the best that has yet appeared in English. The author's birth
and religious association have given him certain advantages which he
has well utilized in the presentation of the earlier part of Spinoza's life.
The account, as a whole, is complete and well told. Little of the source
material, as such, has been presented, the author assuming that Freuden-
thal is sufficiently available to make such presentation useless. Consid-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 165
ering the purpose of Professor Wolf in presenting the life here, we can
not ask that a different treatment had been followed. It would seem,
however, that the English reading public might have access to more of
the sources than have heretofore been given. For example, the inventory
of Spinoza's library, so far as this reviewer can recall, is not available in
any English publication.
The history of the "Short Treatise" is good. "The beginner," to
quote Professor Wolf in another connection, " may omit on a first read-
ing" this part of the book. All other students, however, will enjoy the
clear statement of how much and how little is known of the making
of this long-lost book. The facsimile reproductions of Monnikhoff's
writing and of the pages from the two manuscript texts afford most con-
vincing proof of the dependence of B on A, and of MonnikhofPs connec-
tion with both, complete in the one case, partial and editorial in the other.
One could hardly ask a more interesting or more convincing exposition
of a point in textual criticism. We must note, in passing, that in the
" literature on the i Short Treatise ' : ' (p. cxxvii) no mention is made of
the English translation of the " Short Treatise " by Lydia G. Robinson
(Chicago, 1909), which appeared some months before the date appended
to Professor Wolf's preface.
The English translation of the " Short Treatise " is of course the heart
of the book. While every student of Spinoza, worthy of the name, will
willingly, and easily, familiarize himself with Spinoza's Latin, there are
many to whom the N ederduitsche of the Korte Verhandeling proves a
serious hindrance. Good translations in other languages do not meet
the needs of English readers. One's individual translation (perhaps
halting) of a German translation of a N ederduitsche translation of a
Latin original is nearly as bad as the middle age approach to Aristotle
via Averroes. Happily for us of the English tongue, a part of this cir-
cuitous route has now been cut out.
Moreover, we have here not merely a translation of van Vloten and
Land's second edition, but besides a reexamination of the manuscripts.
How much actual divergence Professor Wolf has made from the pub-
lished text does not of course appear in a cursory examination of the
translation; but the serious student will be glad to feel the additional
security furnished by this independent textual study. The translation
follows, and properly, the text of A; but all variants therefrom in B, as
well as the respective sources of the footnotes, are indicated by a suitable
system of signs.
The translation is in good idiomatic English. The sentences are as
clear as Spinoza's involved scholastic style allows. While the accuracy of
the reading can be determined only by extended comparison, what ex-
amination I have made convinces me that, on the whole, the translation
is close to the original and true to Spinoza. Some instances appear,
however, of a doubtful choice of terms. In the note on page 63 (vv and
i., iii, 38-9), Professor Wolf several times uses real as a translation of
wezeuflijk zijnde. For the popular reader, real, in one of its current
166 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
senses, may be a fair interpretation of Spinoza's meaning, but it is hardly
a fair rendering of his terminology. The more serious student will pre-
fer a transfer of Spinoza's own terms, with all their difficulties, to any
interpretation. Similarly the word gebeulijke (w and L, iii, 28) is on
page 48 rendered accidental. The comment on this passage is a true ex-
position of Spinoza's meaning; and the modern popular meaning of
accidental may justify its use in the translation. None the less, the stu-
dent of Spinoza's terms will feel somewhat of a shock to find this word
doing this service for Spinoza even in translation, so far is it removed in
meaning from accidens, the nearest cognate used by Spinoza. The word
wezenheid gives peculiar difficulty, being rendered by four different
words in as many successive occurrences. On page 136, line 7, it appears
as reality; on page 137, line 4, as existence; on page 140, line 16, as char-
acter; and on page 141, line 26, as essence. If the original Dutch trans-
lator rendered both existentia and essentia (to say nothing about reality
and character) by one Dutch word, he either had a meager vocabulary at
his disposal, or he was indifferent to Spinoza's distinctions.
The reviewer would not insist, however, on the criticisms of the ter-
minology. By others it may not be counted desirable to have Spinoza's
(Latin) terms represented by their English cognates, and if desirable, it
would be uncertain of attainment; for three languages set a difficult task.
But whatever may be said on this particular point, there can be no dif-
ference of opinion as to the general excellence of the translation. All
will agree that this is admirable.
The last fourth of the book is a commentary on the " Short Treatise."
Here Professor Wolf's studies in Jewish philosophy as well as in the
more usual Spinozistic literature put both beginner and advanced stu-
dent in his debt. Not all particular points, of course, will be accepted.
The reviewer questions, for example, that " nature " (p. 167) more com-
monly " means the material world, etc." His own notes, which he thinks
fairly inclusive, show about as many instances of " nature " signifying
" ' character ' or c essence.' '
In conclusion, it must be said that we have in Professor Wolf's book
an exceedingly valuable contribution to the literature on Spinoza. No
English reading student of Spinoza can afford to be without it. The
presswork and proofreading are excellent. A five-page index, fairly in-
clusive, completes the whole.
W. H. KlLPATRICK.
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. October, 1910.
The Prediction of Human Conduct: a Study of Bergson (pp. 1-15): B.
BOSANQUET. - An exposition and criticism of Bergson. The important
principle is that not foreknowledge but reduction is the impossible and
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 167
objectionable thing. You can predict for others in as far as you are the
same with them. And, contrary to Bergson's agnosticism, we can be and
are the same with others in a considerable degree. The Idealism of
Rudolph EucTcen (pp. 15-22) : S. H. MELLONE. - Eucken's philosophy is a
genuine contribution to the understanding of what is called the mystical
element in religion and life. Personality and a Metaphysics of Value
(pp. 23-36) : J. A. LEIGHTON. - Logical, ethical, esthetical, and religious
valuations can have no absolute basis unless personality have an absolute
basis. The ultimate foundation of spiritual values must reside in a su-
preme self or nowhere. On Thinking About Oneself (pp. 36-51) : HELEN
WODEHOUSE. - An analysis of the natures of the egoist, the self -satisfied
person, the poseur, and the self-consciously moral man. 7s Belief Essen-
tial in Religion? (pp. 37-67): HORACE M. KALLEN. - Belief is no more
essential to religion than to any other human institution. Religion is
belief, but it is religious belief only as it is belief in the reality of an
actual personal God powerful for the excellent outcome of human destiny.
Two Modern Social Philosophies (pp. 68-82) : ERNEST L. TALBERT. - A
comparison of the nature and genesis of socialism and anarchism. Booh
Reviews: Eudolph Eucken, The Problem of Human Life: ARTHUR O.
LOVE JOY. J. G. Hibben, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment: J. G.
CREIGHTON. E. Boutroux, Science and Religion in Contemporary Phi-
losophy: J. H. MURHEAD. George Galloway, The Principles of Religious
Development: S. H. MELLONE. Irving King, The Development of Re-
ligion: JAMES B. PRATT. T. Clark Murray, Handbook of Christian Ethics:
DAVID PHILLIPS. Henry Jones, Idealism as a Practical Creed: H. RASH-
DALL. James Bryce, The Hindrances to Good Citizenship: G. P. GOOCH.
William I. Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins: C. E. PARRY.
Henry Jones, The Working Faith of a Social Reformer: R. S. VARLEY.
B. Kirkman Gray, Philanthropy and the State or Social Politics: W. J.
ROBERTS. J. A. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism: W. J. ROBERTS. F. W.
Headley, Darwinism and Modern Socialism: G. P. GOOCH.
Baldwin, James Mark. The Individual and Society. Boston : The Gor-
ham Press. 1911. Pp. 210. $1.50.
Frankland, F. W. Thoughts on Ultimate Problems: being a series of
short studies on theological and metaphysical problems. London:
David Nutt. 1911. Is. 6d.
Freud, Sigmund. Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory. Trans-
lated by A. A. Brill. New York : The Journal of Nervous and Mental
Disease Publishing Co. 1910. Pp. x -f 91.
Gaste, Maurice de. Realites imaginatives. . . . Realites positives: Essai
d'un code moral base sur la science. Paris : Felix Alcan. 1911. Pp.
iv -f- 319. $1.50 net.
Goldenweiser, A. A. Totemism, an Analytical Study. Reprinted from
The Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. XXIII., April-June, 1910,
No. LXXXVIII. Pp. 115.
Jacks, L. P. The Alchemy of Thought. New York: Henry Holt and
Company. 1911. Pp. ix -f 349.
168 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Janet, Pierre. L'etat mental des hysteriques. Paris : Felix Alcan. 1911.
Pp. viii-f-708.
McGiffert, Arthur Cushman. Protestant Thought before Kant. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1911. Pp. 261.
Oesterreich, Konstantin. Die Phanomenologie des Ich in ihren Grund-
problemen. Leipzig : Barth. 1910. Pp. x + 532.
Podmore, Frank. The Newer Spiritualism. New York : Henry Holt and
Company. 1911. Pp. 320.
Sermyn, W. C. de. Contribution a 1'etude de certaines f acultes cerebrales
meconnues. Paris : Felix Alcan. 1911. Pp. 612.
Wundt, Max. Griechische Weltanschauung. Leipzig: Verlag von B. G.
Teubner. 1910. Pp. 130.
11
NOTES AND NEWS
PROFESSOR PAUL SHOREY, of the University of Chicago, will give six
lectures on " The Platonic Tradition in Philosophy and Literature " at
Columbia University. His program is as follows : March 16. The great-
ness of Plato. The difficulty of interpreting him rightly. The question
of his sources, and the extent of his originality. The anti-Platonic tra-
dition. Its causes. Influence of Plato on the philosophic' schools of
antiquity other than neo-Platonism. March 21. Neo-Platonism. What it
is psychologically. What it is historically. The Academy. The neo-
Pythagoreans. Philo Judaeus. Plotinus and his successors. Renaissance
and modern neo-Platonism from Picinus to Maeterlinck. March 23.
Platonism and Christianity. Resemblances and differences. Platonism
of the Christian fathers. Platonism of the Middle Ages. Platonism as
the source of " heresies " and the ally of " liberal " Christianity.
Schleiermacher. Cousin. Jowett. Matthew Arnold. March 24. The
Renaissance and after. The revival of learning and of Platonism. Neo-
Platonic coloring. Platonic mysticism. Platonic love. Platonism in
English poetry. March 27. From Bacon to Nietsche. Platonism and
the history of modern philosophy. A study of the analogies and the actual
historical connections. March 28. The nineteenth century and after.
The German renaissance of Greek a revival of Platonism also. The new
Platonic scholarship. Platonism in nineteenth century literature and
thought. Types of Platonist: Shelley, Coleridge, Mill, Arnold, Ruskin,
Jowett, etc. " The passing of Plato."
DURING the current month Professor James T. Shotwell delivered a
course of three lectures at Columbia University entitled " Mystery, Magic,
and Theology : A Study in the History of Religion." The subjects of the
several lectures were " What is Religion ? " " The Science of Mystery,"
and " Magic and Theology."
Two Sigma Xi lectures, one on " Attention " and one on " Types of
Mind," were given at the University of Minnesota, on February 9 and 10,
by Professor E. B. Titchener, Sage research professor at Cornell University.
VOL. VIII No. 7 MARCH 30, 1911
THE EMANCIPATION OF INTELLIGENCE
I PUT the following case as directly and as simply as I can, and
I put it not because I can prove it which I can not but
because I believe it. The dogmatic manner of statement is for
convenience and brevity.
I
If man had not, in the earlier stages of his history, found the
world full of precarious ambiguities, there is no reason to suppose
that the thing called intelligence would ever have been developed.
Men thought about the things that it was important they should
think about, food, fighting, and offspring. And very important things
like these made the acquisition of mana, the control of magic, and
the propitiation of deities indispensable. Thus, although primitive
man inhabits a world that is sufficiently complex, he nevertheless
proceeds to make it more complicated by the addition of elements
that constitute his superstition.
It is enough merely to refer to the intimate connection between
early social organization and religion, to the theory of animism and
especially to the attempts now being made to define a ' * preanimistie
stage, ' ' to the theory of totemism, to the constantly increasing study
of primitive magic. What we have learned to call the supernatural
flourishes like a jungle on certain early levels of culture, and to the
extent that it substitutes magic and the propitiation of deities for
the control and use of the energies of nature it makes men blind to
the primary conditions of progress. For anything that interferes
with intelligence, in its natural business is, to that extent, a burden
to the mind, and a point of view which leads us to overlook the
causalities resident in particular things does just that; for those
causalities are the resources upon which every one has to fall back
to accomplish anything whatever.
This may sound like writing down the supernatural as a mere
obstacle in the way of progress. Nothing of the sort is intended.
The service rendered by the supernatural to politics and to art is
169
170 THE JOURNAL VF PHILOSOPHY
not only granted but insisted upon. The more we can say for the
benefits of the Christian religion to European culture, the better for
my present thesis. Every laudation of the social value of religion
tries to make it clear that the function of the supernatural is so
important as surely to preserve it in the minds and hearts of suc-
cessive generations.
How the supernatural has provided an ever-recurring theme in
philosophy may be read in the history of either. In the manipulation
of that theme, however, three major ideas stand out, God, the soul,
the universe. It is easy to see what a role these have played if we
only consider what is left when we drop out all speculation about
God, all speculation about the soul, and all speculation about the
universe. Now for those who believe that the supernatural has
played its part as a subject-matter of technical speculation, that it is
not merely passing, but has passed, arguments for and against
theistic premises must appear as a mere waste of ingenuity. 1
Because, however, of their dramatic career in the history of culture
the three above-mentioned ideas are fascinating topics of inquiry,
both with regard to their origins and to their influence. Such an
inquiry must not be looked upon as a contribution to the study of
the validity of those ideas. Literally speaking, they have no validity
as descriptions of existence revealed to perception.
That the ideas of God and the soul had their origin in the ani-
mism of primitive culture may be taken as proved. The idea of
the universe, however, is more troublesome because its history has
not been sufficiently traced. I venture, therefore, a few suggestions
more for the sake of indicating a line of inquiry than of laying down
a conclusion.
The concept of the universe is not, of course, to be attributed to
animism, but it is an interesting question whether it may not be
traceable to primitive observation. The idea to which I refer is that
of a quantitative whole of existence, a bounded totality of existence ;
there is so much of it and no more, just as there is so much and no
more of an apple. Now if we keep clear of ontological arguments
and make empirical observation our criterion for judgments about
existence, then the idea of a bounded universe is no longer required
on logical grounds, and it remains to be seen whether it is justified
by observation. I wonder whether the concept of the universe seems
important to one who passes his days and nights in, let us say, the
1 At this point I will say, to avoid ambiguity, that I presuppose throughout
the only evidence of existence to be the evidence of empirical discovery. Exist-
ence is precisely the thing that can not be proved by any a priori method. To
define anything as supersensuous is to define it as a type of being that must
forever elude discovery as a case of existence.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 171
Lick Observatory. Yet before the invention of optical instruments,
when every man found himself at the center of a celestial sphere,
what could be more natural than to regard the universe as the most
obvious fact? There is the outer shell spangled with bits of fire;
within it is contained all the rest there is. The cosmology of the
Pythagoreans, of Aristotle, of Thomas Aquinas, did provide just
this conception of a universe. Dante could describe his passage with
Beatrice from sphere to sphere in good faith. That conception of
concentric spheres may properly be called the conception of a uni-
verse. But the concentric spheres no longer serve to describe the
earth and the heavens as we observe them. It is no longer the outer
sphere beyond which God abides that limits the range of existence,
but the technique of grinding lenses.
Very probably the idea of the universe, in just the form in which
I criticize it, does not constitute now a part of any philosopher's
equipment. Yet the concept of totality occurs in a strongly rem-
iniscent way. The recent book 2 of Professor James was directed
against the idea of a monistic universe which was and is taken very
seriously as a description of existence. We still find allusions to
' ' the all, " ' ' the all of things, ' ' and confidence in the inevitability of
that conception is, in certain quarters, so undisturbed that deductive
consequences are seriously defended, consequences which are not put
forward as mere exercises in formal logic, but as well-grounded con-
clusions about matters of fact.
A tradition which might prove difficult to identify with that of
the universe, as I have described it, is the neo-Platomc tradition of
eventual unity. This tradition too has carried the conceptions of
cosmic totality and unity. It may be, however, that this abstract
conception owed its vitality to the fact that the impression of an
empirical universe was so deep-seated. In any case, the idea of the
universe is lodged securely in the monistic absolute, and this brings
us to the later stage of the three ideas.
It is probable that the conception of a totality of existence would
long since have lapsed from use had it not been for a curious and
dramatic episode. The theistic ideas that once called for no argu-
ments needed in time the proofs of metaphysicians. That meant, in
fact, to give them a new identification. Has such a technique of
sophistry ever been displayed in the service of any other vanishing
idea? How the conceptions of God and the universe rescued each
other by becoming identified one with another in the conception of
the absolute, is matter of history. But what rendered this identifica-
tion so convincing to the metaphysically minded was the assistance
*"A Pluralistic Universe."
172
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
rendered by the remaining conception, the soul, attenuated by this
time to the Kantian concept of consciousness. The concept of con-
sciousness with its resulting "problem of knowledge" gave a new
lease of life to theological metaphysics by producing, in conjunction
with the other two ideas, the monistic idealism which has been so
successful in carrying the supernatural.
A proposal to recognize in the concept of an existential totality,
in the concept of the absolute, and in the idealistic concept of con-
sciousness three survivals, and to admit that dialectical problems
based upon them are problems about purely imaginary things which
our own range of perceivable facts does not include, may seem the
merest philosophical anarchy. And if the proposal appears to be
supported by evidence that commands respect, those who are inter-
ested in the future of philosophical studies may feel dismay at the
prospect. For what a catalogue of problems disappears! But the
thing has happened before. Of course the orthodox metaphysicians
in the universities must have thought that Descartes ignored most
of the problems, and just as the Cartesians had to break away from
the metaphysics of the Roman Catholic institution, so we have to
cut loose from the metaphysics of Protestant speculation and from
whatever is simply incidental to it.
The above three ideas have been the source of derived problems.
The "problem of evil" assumes a whole apparatus of theological
doctrine. But this is not the end of it ; theories call forth opposing
theories. Now a position taken to resist another position is an
alternative position on a certain question. Is the moon made of
roquefort or gorgonzola? Do the souls of unbaptized infants go to
hell or to heaven ? Is the universe one or many ? If a certain line
of philosophy happens to be a consideration of merely imaginary
problems, the criticism which takes that philosophy seriously, which
takes it, i. e., for a discussion of real problems, is itself not a discus-
sion of real problems. The fact that the former is a well-articulated
dialectic does not give its dialectical implications any relevance to
physics. The issue of a merely polemical philosophy is not in actual
inquiry but in what its own advocates declare to be error. In prac-
tical affairs, this gives a real issue, but in speculative ones its effect
is to make the subject-matter of the critic dependent upon the propo-
sitions which are anathema to him. The kind of realism that exists
only as a criticism of monistic idealism seems to me to be in this
position. The Oxford movement that calls itself "humanism" is a
movement in the direction of freedom; it is full of the promise of
good things ; and yet there is a clinging to the animistic presupposi-
tions upon which the idealism it criticizes is founded. That idealism
is a natural evolution of the three conceptions noticed above, and any
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 173
one who wants assurances about God, the soul, and the universe
should look to the philosophy which the interest in those ideas has
generated. Fifty years, however, have elapsed since the publication
of * ' The Origin of Species ' ' ; forty have elapsed since the appearance
of ''Primitive Culture," and twenty since the appearance of "The
Golden Bough." Whatever may be the shortcomings of Tyler,
Frazer, and their co-workers, there is no longer anything inex-
plicable about the existence in the world of a type of philosophy that
begins with a problem of knowledge and ends with the absolute.
Now, in the criticism of idealism at present going on, there is, I
think, much misrepresentation and much failure to appreciate its
real value. That is partly the fault of our contemporary idealists.
Instead of giving us the positive content that idealism has done so
much to develop large perspectives in history, stimulating points
of view in ethics and politics they have made themselves the apolo-
gists of the supernatural. They operate, in the main, with the idea
of the absolute, the concept of consciousness, and with a conception
of knowledge that results from the context established by the former
two. The philosophical situation that results is naturally very
unsatisfactory to those who do not regard the saving of the super-
natural as the first task of philosophy. For that the real message
of idealism has been confused by its alignment with this undertaking
is now beginning to be recognized. 3 So long as we are interested in
human experience and its problems, as such, we can best describe
that subject-matter in terms that are frankly naturalistic. Why
should anybody incline to a conception of reality which puts the
label of appearance or some other derogatory tag upon all empirical
distinctions unless he aims to support a claim that the empirical
world does not support ? If the supernatural is really the theme of
idealism it is not surprising that idealism is passing too. But its
passing is attended with much confusion, as the many suggestions
for improving philosophic method sufficiently attest.
II
The remedy for a difficulty depends upon the nature of the diffi-
culty. That is why an inquiry like the present one may have some
justification. What has happened is largely this : the subject-matter
which was once supposed to be fact has been discovered to be not
fact but ideas. The technique of ideas is dialectic. And since the
subject-matter always was ideas, the technique of it always had to
be dialectic. The ideas were, however, taken literally; people sup-
posed they were investigating matters of fact, and therefore it was
8 Cf. Ralph Barton Perry, " The Cardinal Principle of Idealism," in Mind,
July, 1910, p. 325.
174 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
inevitable that they should suppose their technique applied to mat-
ters of fact. This error in method was, however, supported by the
circumstance that ideas born of the supernatural symbolized real
values or affairs. For that matter, when real or supposed matters of
fact find definitions that appear to be complete and satisfactory, the
definitions are forthwith substituted for the facts and dialectic takes
the place of empirical description. It is not necessary to suppose that
final definitions have been secured in order to fall into the fallacies
of scholasticism. So long as the ideal to be accomplished is sup-
posed to be a body of permanently acceptable definitions, the ideal
of philosophic method remains, consciously or unconsciously, un-
hampered dialectic. Now the whole scholastic tradition, circling
forever about an element of dogma, perpetuated this ideal. And
what other critical method could possibly be required by such a task
as justifying the supernatural?
In proportion, however, as the impression gains ground that a
traditional subject-matter is not fact but idea, the logical analysis
of ideas appears to be important. Concepts formulated clearly for
the sake of analysis and dialectical manipulation are now taken
strictly; i. e., they are deprived of whatever existential relevance
(symbolical representative value) they once had. The tradition,
however, persists that the subject-matter now formulated as con-
cepts is a subject-matter of existence, and so the tradition that
dialectic can reveal existence is more or less unconsciously nursed
along. For the ideas that are analyzed are not treated merely as
concepts, but as concepts having cognitive importance, and this in
the context of a theory of knowledge based on the idea of a sensation.
This is the stage represented by epistemology. The rather naive
handing out of dialectical arguments with the claim that they are
inquiries into existence, under conditions determined by the disin-
tegration of idealism, has resulted quite naturally in a state of things
where no man quite understands what his neighbor in philosophy is
talking about, and where there is a general demand that the gram-
mar of the conversation be revised. Dialectic must be disciplined,
we are told ; dialectic must be made more expert. A juster observa-
tion would be, it seems to me, that dialectic must be made to mind
its own business.
The trouble is not that dialectic is inexpert but that in its appli-
cations it becomes either irrelevant or artificial. If it is applied to
existence it is irrelevant. 4 If it is applied to ideas saved out of the
debris of animistic idealism, the resulting problems may be dialec-
4 This is, of course, an extreme statement. My meaning is that dialectical
derivatives of accepted propositions may serve to direct experimental research,
but can be substantiated only by experimental verification.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 175
tical but they are nothing else; that is, they are artificial because
the motive behind the dialectic is an interest in existential meta-
physics. It has been well pointed out 5 that the contrast between
straightforward mathematics and even the most distinguished proofs
more mathematico in philosophy is the contrast between success and
failure. The reason for this contrast ought to be evident enough.
The mathematical method in philosophy has been used with the pur-
pose of reaching conclusions about matters of fact, and it has been
applied to ideas that did not lend themselves to dialectical analysis.
To that extent the use of the method has been fallacious in purpose
and unfruitful in subject-matter. The former defect needs no fur-
ther explanation; the latter one, the unfruitfulness of the subject-
matter, is due, at least in very great part, to the fact that it has
consisted so much of disguised survivals.
Thus it has been a symptom of the passing of idealism that
philosophers turned ardently to the logical analysis of concepts.
And so long as this is the business of philosophy, of course mathe-
matics is the ideal of philosophic method. The facts that I have
referred to above and I think they are facts explain in a large
measure the current faith in mathematics as a type of method. But
is this faith so well grounded as has been supposed ? Assuming that
we wish to inquire into matters of fact and not merely to analyze
definitions, the naturalist with his laboratory, not the mathematician,
is the proper example for the philosopher.
Ill
In any program of reform in philosophy, one of the most im-
portant points, I believe quite the most important at the present time,
should be that of distinguishing between genuine and artificial prob-
lems. The elimination of artificial problems was really the purpose
of the men who initiated the so-called modern philosophy. They did
indeed break away from the metaphysics of the Roman hierarchy
but they did not break away from the supernatural. The definite
katharsis of the mind by ridding it of animism is likely to be no easy
matter, for although we do not so often, nowadays, read arguments
about God, freedom, and immortality, we still meet with conscious-
ness, appearance, and epistemology. If we distinguish between the
kernel and the husk of idealism, it seems to me that the former
mijrht l>c called the autonomy of human interests, while the latter,
which provided the features usually called distinctive of idealism, viz.,
subjectivism and absolutism, appears more and more as a transi-
i TV, " Realism as a Polemic and Program of Reform," this JOURNAL,
Vol. VII., p. 338.
176 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tory accident which, however, lent itself admirably to conserving the
supernatural by identifying the theistic with the human. The auton-
omy of human interests is a real principle, which even the greatest
absolutists, Plato, Spinoza, Hegel, have begun by recognizing. Ideal-
ism was regarded by its creators as a discovery which guaranteed a
secure foundation to this principle, and completed the long process
of the winning of freedom from authority. In so far, idealism was
viewed as an emancipation of the mind, and in its day it was so. It
is simply a fact of history that the husk which carried this message
of emancipation was evolved out of the ideas of God, the soul, and
the universe. That is, however, if any one likes, a detail, but it is a
detail which throws a certain light. Now, in the onslaughts being
made on idealism it is problems which have resulted from the analy-
sis of the husk that occupy the embattled critics. What wonder,
under the circumstances, that something seems to be the matter with
philosophy, and that there is a growing demand that something be
done about it ! It seems to me that what is needed is not greater ex-
pertness in the dialectic of the old problems, but the recognition that
much of the current subject-matter is thoroughly artificial. How
much of it is so, no single individual ought to say very confidently.
To find that out is part of the improvement so generally desired.
The above-mentioned sources of artificiality ought to assist, how-
ever, in getting an orientation.
The fact that a problem is an ever-present theme in professional
discussion is, at the present time, no guarantee of its legitimacy.
The claim that reform should take the line of improvement in logic
permits current and traditional problems to be taken for granted;
but this, it seems to me, is precisely the point where examination
should be very searching. It is one thing to accomplish a highly
analytic formulation of a problem; it is another to state the condi-
tions which generate the problem. A problem generated by mythical
conditions may contain a perfectly logical sequence, but it is just as
mythical as the conditions that generate it. The important thing to
find out in the case of any suspected problem is what raises the
question. For no friend of philosophy will admit, I suppose, that
its questions should be like the aimless and unceasing queries of chil-
dren. Is a question raised (1) by a perplexity in pure dialectic, or
(2) by uncertainties in existential research, or (3) by the precarious
prospects of a favorite symbol, or (4) by the mere inertia of a tra-
dition? To mistake number one for number two, and to take liter-
ally numbers three and four, is surely to have problems that are
either certainly or presumptively artificial.
In seeking to determine the status of a problem help ought to be
derived from remembering the original function of intelligence. To
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 177
maintain that philosophy is a resource and a method of inteJJigence_
may seem to many extremely radical. However that may be, phi-
losophy is often enough put forward as a method of intelligence, and
thus viewed, its practise should be one "that looks to science for its
view of the facts and to the happiness of men on earth for its ideal." 6
A tradition which erects a screen of professional problems between
the philosopher and the natural subject-matter of intelligence is one
to be suspected, and if remnants of animism interfere with the study
of human nature and its natural values, here is a real burden of the
mind; I will cite one instance. The idea that "pragmatism" was an
apology for theism has seriously interfered with the profitable dis-
cussion of the former, and in so far as it aimed at an empirical defi-
nition of "truth" it was damned as being solipsistic or meaningless
because it seemed to clash with dialectical conceptions (totality,
finality, ultimate truth), behind which, in their surreptitious existen-
tial reference, it would not be surprising to discover the idea of the
universe. Pragmatism asked precisely, ' * What raises the question ? ' '
Now those who take problems dialectically have, of course, no inter-
est in this point. It is, for them, merely a matter of clear defini-
tions and then go ahead. Here was a point of view capable of bring-
ing emancipation, and which, in spite of its reception, has already
done so. But the fact that it was immediately laden with alien
responsibilities is melancholy evidence.
If philosophy is anything really important, the situation is of
more than merely academic interest just because important ideals
have come to be represented by ambiguous conceptions. Discussion
of the concepts is substituted for examination of the ideals, and as
modern life becomes freer and more diversified, these conservative
symbols become less and less adequate to the substance of experience.
What can be more nai've than to substitute the dialectic of a symbol
for the direct study of conditions, if what one is after is a knowledge
of actual conditions? It is certainly to be regretted if profes-
sional philosophy has assumed a character that renders it unavail-
able as a method of intelligence. That does not mean that guid-
ing philosophy has ceased to exist, but only that it has changed
its name and fled into other departments of our universities, where
chairs are not maintained for either saving the supernatural or
threshing the husks of idealism.
" Three Philosophical Poets," by George Santayana, p. 5. Compare Berg-
son, " L'Evolution Cre"atrice," p. 1 : " De la devrait resulter cette consequence
que notre intelligence, au sens e"troit du mot, est destined a assurer 1'insertion
parfaite de notre corps dans son milieu."
178 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
IV
But, I may be told, it is not facts but ideals that form the sub-
ject-matter of philosophy, and ideals handled in such a way as to
produce inspiration. It is to get a "vision" of reality that we come
to philosophy. Idealism, in its day at least, was a philosophy of
vision, and the animistic tradition upon which the machinery of it
rests has been, and doubtless to many still is, a source of inspiration.
To such as these freedom from that signifies, very probably, only an
impoverishment of the imagination. If men can not dream dreams,
but can only toil, where is any emancipation worthy of the name?
The method of intelligence, it has been said, is "to look to science
for its view of the facts and to the happiness of men on earth for its
ideal." Surely the heightening of the value of things by the imagi-
nation is to be desired if only it does not hinder our looking to science
for our view of the facts. And our concern with the facts is not a
dedication of self to indifferent truth, but a concern with the causali-
ties that alone are going to produce to-morrow and its vision. If I
can be so responsive to the world as to see in all things the counsel of
Zeus as I see the light upon the hills, why forbid that enrichment of
life? To forbid it would be narrow and pedantic as long as poetry
does not pass into superstition, i. e., so long as the imagination does
not mutilate common sense. It happens, however, to be the case that
man's resources are the causalities inherent in things. When any-
thing whatever is to be accomplished, causalities have to be invoked
that make no concession to vision. That is only to say that they can
be depended upon. To put into operation causalities that will gen-
erate specific results is the aim both of the man that plants a potato
and the man that seeks to reform the state. Causality is bound to
operate in any case, and intelligence will see to it that, so far as
possible, the causalities that operate are the causalities of its choice.
Only thus can there be a technique for generating a chosen future
out of a given present. Science is, no doubt, oftentimes narrow and
pedantic, but it is the best knowledge of facts that we have, and an
adequate knowledge of facts would surely be science. The greatest
poets have always esteemed science, and a reasonable Naturforscher
ought to have a high regard for poetry. Is it not narrow and
pedantic to maintain that loyalty to the facts is incompatible with
vision ? It may well be that metaphysicians have not yet learned to
compose their vision in any terms except those of the animistic tradi-
tion, but it does not follow that nature is less able than theology to
provide its content. But vision is an absorbing thing, and although
it is the material of poetry, its composition can hardly be irrelevant
to the business of intelligence. Our vision must either represent or
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 179
misrepresent the conditions which determine progress. The vision
that misrepresents those conditions can not fail to be a burden from
which intelligence must sooner or later seek its emancipation.
V
Treated objectively, the history of philosophy is not to be sepa-
rated from the history of the supernatural. That explains why the
passing of idealism is coincident with the passing of the supernat-
ural. But that aspect of idealism which is passing is, I contend, not
the central burden and meaning of it, but its metaphysical ma-
chinery, a product of supernaturalistic absolutism. Yet the great
day of idealism is so recent, its vision has still such a compelling
quality, its essential theme, the priority of human interests, is so
important, and the animistic origin of its apparatus is so generally
unsuspected, that problems resulting from the examination of this
apparatus seem naturally real and significant. And yet if the pass-
ing of the supernatural is to be viewed as an emancipation of the
intelligence from animism, a good many anti-idealists appear in an
almost reactionary light. We don't seek to overthrow the meta-
physics of the mass or of the doctrine of purgatory ; why should we
care so much about the metaphysics of the absolute or of the
"external world"?
A story is told of a little girl who said, ' ' That boy is my brother,
but his mother is not my mother and his father is not my father."
Now here, if you like, is a problem, but the solution of it is easy:
the little girl lied. When a problem rests upon fictitious assump-
tions it can not be solved by pursuing the dialectic of those assump-
tions. To show that the problem is about a fictitious subject-matter
is to solve it. For even if mythical assumptions do produce a log-
ical conclusion, the conclusion will be as mythical as the premises,
and can not be regarded as the kind of solution which a reasonable
mind seriously seeks.
To sum up, the emancipation of which I speak is emancipation
from a perfectly definite thing, animistic reminiscence, the per-
sistence of which in various unsuspected forms has had a pervasive
influence upon philosophy, resulting in a set of problems (episte-
mology) to which most thinkers are becoming increasingly indifferent
but which no one has ever solved, for the good reason that they are
pseudo-problems and therefore capable of solution only by another
method. The study of origins has made it sufficiently clear how
philosophy came to be flooded with such problems. Legitimate prob-
lems are such as nature would provide us with even if tradition had
never heard of them ; and the first thing to ask in examining a sus-
180 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
pected problem is, What raises the question? For if a question is
to have a scientific or philosophical character and is to be, at the
same time, a question about existence, it must be raised by a situa-
tion which is not merely an ambiguity in dialectic, nor concern for a
treasured metaphor, nor the inertia of a tradition.
WENDELL T. BUSH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
MIND AS AN OBSERVABLE OBJECT 1
IT is seldom given to philosophers to enter into one another's
enthusiasms, but they are sometimes allowed to share a disap-
pointment. And could anything be more generally disappointing
than the attitude of a certain important group of natural philos-
ophers toward the study of minds? I refer to that curious bit of
reasoning commonly known as the " analogy argument" which runs
somehow thus: I am aware, and I alone am aware, that certain of
my bodily acts are accompanied by mental states. When I observe
similar acts in other bodies I infer that they too are accompanied by
like states of mind. No experience can be brought to confirm this
inference, but then nothing can transpire to refute it. Meanwhile,
my feelings are spared a severe strain by risking it the loneliness
of not risking it is too tragic to be faced.
The objectionable points of this line of argument are just all the
points that make it up. To begin with, it is so far from self-evident
that each man's mental state is his own indisputable possession, that
no one hesitates to confess at times that his neighbor has read him
better than he has read himself, nor at other times to claim that he
knows his neighbor's state of mind more truly than the neighbor
himself knows it. No one finds fault with Thackeray for intimating
that the old Major is a better judge of Pendennis's feeling for the
Fotheringay than is Pendennis himself. To be sure, we are more
likely to accept such situations when the state of mind read from the
outside is complex and subtle; but there should be no difference in
principle between the diagnosis of love and a test for color-blindness.
It is quite as likely that under certain conditions I do not know what
red is, as that, under other conditions, I do not know what love is.
In a word, so long as we are social beings our judgments, even the
simplest of them, have social meanings, and each knows himself
through others.
1 Paper read before the American Philosophical Association at Princeton,
December 29, 1910.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 181
Next, the analogy argument calls its procedure an inference.
Now, everybody knows that an inference from a thousand cases is
more valuable than one drawn from a hundred, that an anticipation
based on a hundred observations is safer than one which has only ten
to support it. But there are those who, knowing all this, would con-
clude that an inference from one instance has some value. If in my
case mental states accompany my body's behavior, there is at least
some ground for supposing that like acts of another's body are in
like manner paralleled. This illusion, for it is one, springs, I think,
from a failure to catch the meaning of inference. An inference from
a single case, if it be really an inference from a single case, has
exactly no value at all. No one would be tempted to attribute eight
planets to every sun because our sun has eight such satellites. The
reason that a single observation is sometimes correctly assumed to
have weight is that the method of observing has been previously
tested in a variety of cases. The shop-keeper measures his bit of
fabric but once ; he has, however, measured other fabrics by the same
method numberless times, and has a fairly clear idea of the probable
error of his result. But the principle holds absolutely of all results :
no series of observations, no probable error, no ground for inference,
no meaning as a datum.
Nor is our line of argument happier in its next point. The
hypothesis of other minds is one that must be regarded as referring
to the jenseits of things that make a difference to my experience.
There is a definition of pragmatism that is to be found among the
last sayings of the man whose absence this day leaves us lonely
indeed ; a definition that tempts me to think that I have always been,
in all innocence, a pragmatist.
'The serious meaning of a concept," writes James, following
Peirce, "lies in the concrete difference to some one which its being
true will make. Strive to bring all debated conceptions to that
' pragmatic' test, and you will escape vain wrangling. ... If it
can make no practical difference whether a given statement be true
or false, then the statement has no real meaning. ' '
If the method defined in this passage be accepted, and I can not
see how one can fail to accept it even if one prove unfaithful to it
afterwards, then could anything more fully illustrate the meaning of
the "meaningless" than that hypothesis of other minds in which the
analogy argument culminates? Whatever may be said for the
reasoning, is its conclusion at least right? Alas, I can not know.
If ri^rlit, my experience can not inform me; if wrong, my experience
can not disillusion me. It makes no practical difference to me
whether I am right or wrong. Pragmatic conclusion: I can net have
made a meaningful hypothesis.
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But here I hesitate. The same writer whose definition of method
I was eager to accept as pointing the lack of meaning in the hypoth-
esis under consideration, is capable of interpreting his own words,
1 ' that which makes a practical difference," in a way one might be
excused for having overlooked as a possibility. He had once said
quite as we should have expected him to say that " 'God' and
'matter' might be regarded as synonymous terms so long as no dif-
fering future consequences were deducible from the two concep-
tions. ' ' Should we not equally have expected him to say that a soulful
neighbor and a soulless one were synonymous terms so long as the two
neighbors treated us in the same way ? Yet not only does he refuse
to go so far, but, coming face to face with the problem, he hastily
retraces steps already ventured. "I had no sooner given the ad-
dress (containing the statement respecting 'God' and 'matter') than
I perceived a flaw in that part of it. The flaw was evident when,
as a case analogous to that of a godless universe, I thought of what
I called an 'automatic sweetheart,' meaning a soulless body, which
should be absolutely indistinguishable from a spiritually animated
maiden, laughing, talking, blushing, nursing us, and performing all
feminine offices as tactfully and as sweetly as if a soul were in her.
Would one regard her as a full equivalent? Certainly not, and
why? Because, framed as we are, our egoism craves above all
things inward sympathy and recognition, love and admiration. The
outward treatment is valued mainly as an expression, as a manifesta-
tion of the accompanying consciousness believed in. Pragmatically,
then, belief in an automatic sweetheart would not work, and in point
of fact no one treats it as a serious hypothesis. The godless universe
would be exactly similar. Even if matter could do every outward
thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily,
because the chief call for a God on modern men 's part is for a being
who will inwardly recognize them and judge them sympathetically.
Matter disappoints this craving of our ego ; so God remains for most
men the truer hypothesis, and indeed remains so for definite prag-
matic reasons."
I conceive that no criticism could make heavier the burden of
disappointment which these words of their own weight carry with
them into the soul of any man who, having found no better reason
for believing in God and his fellows than the analogy argument
furnishes, now finds no better motive for believing than this kind of
pragmatism holds forth. Instead of criticizing, let me use the pic-
ture to contrast with it another which, in spite of certain elements
that may at first sight offend previous ideas on the subject of soul,
must at least satisfy the reason of an empiricist.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 183
No, I suppose no one would regard a soulless sweetheart as a full
equivalent for a soulful one, as these words soulless and soulful are
ordinarily used. But just there is the point: how are they ordi-
narily used ? If I imagine myself come to believe that my mistress,
with all her loveliness, is really without soul, I can not think what
I should mean by this, if it be not that I fear her future conduct
will not bear out my expectations regarding her. Some trait or
gesture, a mere tightening of the lips, hardening of the eye, stifling
of a yawn, one of those things we say are rather felt than seen,
would have raised in my mind the suspicion that she might not, to
my fuller experience of her, remain indistinguishable from a spirit-
ually-minded maiden. Aye, now that I come to think of it, has she
ever been, except to my blinded eyes, indistinguishable from one who
had that "inward sympathy and recognition, love and admiration,
that above all things my egoism craves"?
Isn't this what we mean by the practical issue involved in the
disjunction soul or no soul? Of course they are not equivalent,
these two, and they are not so just because a soul is not the kind of
thing the analogy argument takes it to be. It would never occur to
me to try to hold this suspicioned lady's soul by tying an eject around
her neck. What she is for me and what she is an sich constitutes
just such a difference, now that it is a question of a soul, as it would
were any other fact of nature up for discussion. The poorer and the
fuller experience of the thing, these and these alone define such a
difference. I am afraid to know my sweetheart better lest I come
upon that trait of her behavior which would only too surely distin-
guish her from the soul-inspired maiden I had taken her to be. If,
per impossible, I could be assured that no such trait of behavior
would ever reveal itself to the fullest experience, and if the hypoth-
esis were still thrust upon me that she might nevertheless be without
soul, my feelings would react as they might be expected to do were
one to assure me that a given figure must prove to all possible ob-
servation three-sided and plain enough, yet might an sich be without
triangularity.
If my analysis of this concrete situation has not been too badly
received, I shall have courage to utter the full thought that lies
behind the criticisms and suggestions that have been submitted. It
is this : Consciousness is not something inferred from behavior, it is
behavior. Or, more accurately, our belief in consciousness is an
expectation of probable behavior based on an observation of actual
behavior, a belief to be confirmed or refuted by more observation, as
any other belief in a fact is to be tried out.
You will ask me : What aspect of the behavior of certain objects
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leads us to call them conscious? I answer, I do not know, and
expect never surely to know. Had I been asked : What aspect of the
behavior of certain objects leads us to call them alive? I must have
returned the same answer. The deep, blind instincts of the race,
slowly working themselves out into the classifications we now so
readily accept and so facilely apply, these instincts are not easily to
be enticed out into the light of day. But though I don 't know what
life means, nor what consciousness means, I feel that I know how we
may go to work to find out these things, if once we see that neither
stands for an eject forever veiled and hidden in the land beyond
experience. Instead, then, of venturing a word where a long and
patient analysis would alone suffice, I may confine myself to the
weighing of certain objections that would attack the very method
here suggested for finding out what consciousness means.
The whole situation out of which the analogy argument springs
is that seized upon by English sensualism. Here the essential idea
is that I have certain immediate data, recognizable and namable
each by itself. Out of these simple ideas (whether of sensation alone
or of sensation and reflection) I build my world of objects, including
my own body and the bodies of other humans. If I am to suppose
these other beings have minds at all, I must suppose that their minds
work in the same way to build up a world in which my body is an
object. But if they do, then they start from data as independent of
any reference to mine as I assume mine to have been from any allu-
sion to theirs.
To one who can not rid himself of this way of philosophizing, it
is impossible that any analysis of behavior that I might undertake
should prove satisfying. The whole idea of my thesis would be
simply an absurdity. For and if I have not emphasized the point
sufficiently I now take the opportunity to do so it is essential to my
thesis that I regard my own mind as behavior, quite as frankly as I
take my fellow's mind to be nothing else. It is of course a type of
behavior that is in question, and it is my observation that I act like
or unlike others in certain situations which makes me class my ex-
perience as of such and such a kind. If the part of my behavior
that is dependent upon my eyes being open and directed toward an
object is identical when that object is blood and when it is grass,
while that of other men similarly placed is different toward the two,
I judge that I have only one color sensation where they have two.
In all such cases my notion of my mental state, as also the fact
that I have any notion on the subject at all, is dependent upon my
observation of behavior. It is impossible that any one should come
even a first step toward agreeing with me if he is wedded to the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 185
theory of experience that starts with a datum as a mason starts with
a brick or a chemist starts with an atom.
I have on a former occasion before this association accepted the
thesis that there is no such datum, and as even at that time there
seemed to me nothing novel in such acceptance, but merely an insist-
ence that we should not keep on forgetting what we had some time
accepted as true, I need not argue the point here. As nearly as so
complex a matter can be put in a few words, the thought is this:
The beginning of our epistemological building is not a datum which
might be known by itself, not, e. g., the first sensation of a babe
in utero or of a Condillac statue, but just any point at which it oc-
curs to us to ask ourselves, What is it you know? and, How do you
know it? From this point it may as well be for a Newton the
evening of the day he has given to the world his law of gravitation
from this point stretch out two wearily endless ways. The one leads
toward, but never arrives at, the real object the other leads toward,
but never culminates in, the bare datum. We shall never have the
one before the other, nor yet come nearer to the one save as we come
nearer to the other. Sensualism is the philosophy of the impatient
thinker who will arrive at all costs the analogy argument is one of
the costs.
But when I have made the sensualistic philosophy the soil from
which the analogy argument favorably springs, I have not yet dug
down to the roots. The whole attitude toward souls and the rela-
tion of souls to bodies which makes the outcome of "analogy" seem
meaningful, even if regrettably insecure, is the result of much older
habits of thought than those that guide the highly reflective pro-
cedure of a Locke or of a Hume. These primitive habits are inti-
mately mixed with ethical motives, yet I think their deepest signifi-
cance is to be caught by viewing them as early attempts at scientific
method.
From this point of view, one must recognize the satisfaction that
the most unreflective mind has in treating any complex thing as an
additive result, a sum of simpler things. This instinct for adding
might be illustrated almost indefinitely; but one or two cases will
serve to show how addition has been used and abused.
We are barely through those long chapters in the history of
science in which the theory of a hot body composed that object of a
body plus heat. This heat was first conceived as itself a kind of
body a congeries of small, round atoms; then, since heat did not
increase the mass to which it was added, it became the vaguer stuff
called caloric. Nevertheless, however ghostly this caloric had be-
come, it still went in and out of bodies like a stuff, fell under the
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same principle of individuation that bodies fall under, was in short
a sort of body, though a mysterious sort of body. We know with
what travail this strong, primitive instinct to add was overcome,
and men had the courage to say, "Heat is not something inferred
from the heated behavior of a body, it is that behavior. A hot body
differs from a cold body only in the way its parts move." The
mystery had vanished. A quantity of heat had no longer an indi-
viduality of its own, but if it could be said to travel, it did so as a
wave travels, and the theory of its nature became clear.
Again, we see this same instinct to add in a theory of life not yet
past, perhaps, but certainly passing. As a hot body is a body plus
heat, so a living body is a carcass plus life. The history of this
conception is strikingly like that of the previous one. At first the
thing added to body to make it alive was another body the psyche
differing, may be, in certain of its qualities, but still falling under
the same principles of individuation, having a history of its own
when disembodied. Now, this psyche is reduced where it survives
at all to that vague principle called "the vital," of which all that
can be said is that it is a mystery. Few thinkers cling to this sur-
vival ; for most of us a living body is a mechanism that behaves in a
certain way, one that is well calculated to attain certain ends. Life
is no longer a thing to be inferred from behavior ; it is behavior, and
while it is an aspect of a body's behavior from which other aspects
may be distinguished, we no longer think of these aspects as sepa-
rable. Disembodied life has been placed among the myths.
And now, should we not expect the same instinct to add to have
played a part in our theory of consciousness ? Aristotle, close as was
his doctrine of forms to the treatment of life advocated in this paper,
yet fell into the old habit when he composed a rational animal of
an animal plus a rational soul "come from without." Descartes,
close as he was to the theory that a living body is a mechanism behav-
ing in a certain purposeful way, had yet to compose a human being of
such a living body and a soul perched in the pineal gland. Are we
so far from this when we confection a real sweetheart of an auto-
matic one and an eject? To be sure the eject is not located and the
kind of individuality it may have is not specified; but therewith we
have taken from the additive soul the last thinkable trait it possessed.
It has now the complete mystery of the meaningless.
Have we not come to the point of realizing the meaninglessness of
the mystery?
EDGAR A. SINGER, JR.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 187
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Thought and Things of Genetic Logic. Vol. II., Experimental Logic.
JAMES MARK BALDWIN. London: Swann Sonnenschein & Co.; New
York: The Macmillan Company. 1908. Pp. xv + 436. There are
three appendices and a fair index to the first two volumes.
This is the second of three volumes, appearing in French, German,
and English, on the subject of genetic logic, a subject never before
so comprehensively treated by an American author. It follows through-
out the genetic method of tracing out the successive stages in the em-
bodiment of belief. It is logic from the point of view of the knower
rather than that of the analyst who only looks on from the outside. As
conceived by Baldwin the process of knowing has for the knower char-
acters which it does not have for the outsider. For the knower it involves
continual reference to similar processes dealing with the same material
and going on either actually or possibly in other minds. For the knower
it also involves reference to the " external control " of things. This dual-
ism of inner, personal, or social, and outer or external controls is the
characteristic presupposition of the book, as it was also of relume one,
but we are warned against supposing that Baldwin asserts these two
controls as realities. They exist only " for consciousness," for the
knower, and, however essential they seem to the knower and the knowl-
edge process, I suppose that in the author's third volume on " Real
Logic " the dualism will be interpreted as phenomenal. " The dualism
of control is all the while ' for consciousness,' not for our final theory of
reality" (p. 5, note). Italics are used in the text "because of certain
misconceptions of the theory of control worked out in volume one."
Nevertheless, certain things in this book are calculated to give rise
to misunderstanding on this point. Take, for example, the statement on
page 25 : " Moreover, experience, of which each judged content is part, is
a whole of inner meaning, a life of ideas, and this meaning is controlled
by the subject-self functioning for the realization of its interests and
purposes. It would seem then to be altogether true that judgment is
self-assertion." " The self is the subject-agent of judgment, but not
commonly the subject-matter, the psychic subject, not the logical sub-
ject " (p. 28). "The subject of control claims and owns the entire or-
ganization of ideas as its experience as making up its very self, the
1 me ' of the whole of experience. It thus becomes at once available for
ejection. All other selves are subjects also, and all subjects are subjects
of experience; the whole of experience is yours as well as mine unless
there be characters of personal or private meaning which I have rijrht
and reason to reserve from the body of my ejection" (p. C5). The doc-
trine seems to run through the entire book, but we say " seems " because
Baldwin, in the passages referred to above and in a personal letter, denies
that he believes the dualism of controls to be real or to have an existence
of any sort except " for consciousness." This complicates the whole dis-
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tinction between subject and object, between consciousness and its world.
On page 289 two different kinds of persistence are spoken of, outer and
inner. Outer or external persistence is " sameness-of -recurrence " of an
object which also has the meaning " sameness-when-absent." External
sameness is identified by recurrence and the testimony of others, or
" secondary conversion." " In the matter of inner identity, however, the
procedure is not the same; we neither wait for recurrence, nor do we ask
our neighbors. We find in the immediately persisting and continuous
mental life the experience that enables us to call the self identical." Is
this distinction between outer and inner identity only phenomenal?
Nothing in the language of the immediate text suggests that it is. On
page 328 occurs the statement, " This is to say that reflection in fact can
not dispense with one of its criteria, the dualism of self and the objects
of thought." On page 379, " Facts enter as control over -ideas ; but ideas
also mediate relative control of the self over facts." Does this mean that
all this seems to the knower to be the case, but that really it is not the
case?
One other source of difficulty to the present reader in connection with
this whole doctrine of control is the fact that Baldwin attacks the doc-
trines of control held by other writers because they are not dualistic.
Indeed, in stating Dewey's conception of control, " The ' control ' of the
' Studies in Logical Theory ' and other works of the Chicago School so-
called," Baldwin practically identifies it with his own doctrine of " inner
control." "It is control of a personal sort" (p. 349). It is not "knowl-
edge through control " (Baldwin's view) but " control through knowl-
edge " ; " but here it may be easily seen that the ' control ' to the latter
theory is the ' inner ' or personal control of the former one only of the
sorts of control found actual by the present writer" (p. 349). Now for
the writers of " the Chicago School so-called " control is neither inner,
nor outer, nor both. Their doctrine simply can not be stated in terms of
Baldwin's conception of dual control, especially when this dualism of con-
trols exists all the while only " for consciousness, not for our final theory
of reality." But when Baldwin compares his own conception with that
of Dewey, without mentioning that his own dualism of controls exists
only for the knowing processes and not really, he ought not to be sur-
prised if some of us are misled. Notwithstanding his expressed " hope "
(p. 349, note) that " he may not be found to misrepresent these authors,"
the present reviewer finds that his account of them positively refuses to
be characterized as anything but a misrepresentation. Moreover, when
Baldwin goes on to say (p. 360, note), " See the exposition of Miss
Adams's ' The ^Esthetic Experience.' I suppose Miss Adams's is an ac-
credited exposition and I should say a very clear and able one of the
position of Professor Dewey and his colleagues," one wonders at the
term " accredited exposition of the position of Professor Dewey and his
colleagues," and wonders whether " these authors " and Baldwin are ad-
dressing themselves to the same problem at all. Does Baldwin mean that
his doctrine of dual control is not true? Or does he mean that there are
two kinds of truth, namely, relative or phenomenal truth for the con-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 189
sciousness of the knower, and a real truth to which this dualism of con-
trols is foreign? Perhaps the latter, but in that case how can his own
dual control be compared at all with the doctrine of control of " the
Chicago School"?
In explaining the subtitle of this volume Baldwin writes : " The logical
operations as such, considered as the essential method of advance or
progress in the mode of thought, proceed by experimentation, or, to use the
more special term, employed in the first volume of this work (Chap.
VIII., 6 ff.), by a process of schematism. This consists essentially in
the experimental erection of an object already made-up in consciousness,
and its treatment as having a meaning or value which it has not yet
been found to have with the expectation and intent that in the result it
may be found to have it" (p. 4). But while schematism and experi-
mentation are the essential method of advance in knowledge, judgment
does not appear until they have been passed. The stages in the advance
are schematism, direct experimentation, generalization, and judgment.
Like Mill, Baldwin confines the logical to the sphere of established
implications. Logical judgment is always the embodiment of belief.
The general, the concrete, and the logical are all retrospective, while
schematism is always prospective. Contents are retrospective, intent and
control are always prospective. And yet, " no predicated or judged
knowledge is ever free from that instrumental and problematical refer-
ence which one or other of these tests would further fulfill. Either that
which is reasonable is still to be elucidated for some mode of acceptance,
or that which is generally accepted is still to be proposed for individual
confirmation as reasonable" (p. 164). All logical meanings have two
aspects, the one accommodative, experimental, prospective, and the other
habitual, relational, retrospective (p. 165).
There are two sorts of schematism, namely, the recognitive or scien-
tific and the selective or appreciative. Tn so far as they become subject-
matter of judgment, selective meanings are recognitive, appreciations
are truths (p. 8 ff.). Both are purposive, but scientific schematism alone
must agree with facts and satisfy the theoretic or knowing interest. Four
kinds of interest are distinguished, namely, the " practical," the " prag-
matic " (which is the practical interest considered from the objective or
psychological point of view), the "theoretic," and the " pragmatelic "
(which is interest in the system of knowledge as satisfying, fulfilling,
consequential, etc.). " ' Practical ' interest is that which motives the mass
of contents of cognition and action fused together in their early flow
and development" (p. 10). These four are the practical and theoretic
interests viewed now as motives to action (using the words broadly) and
now as psychological phenomena possessing certain values. The former
view is recognitive, the latter selective. The two types of schematism
are named, in the prelogical mode, presumption and lower assumption,
and in the logical mode, presupposition and higher assumption. A child
presumes the existence of a toy for which it cries: it assumes a control
when it tries to " feed " its doll. We presuppose the law of conservation
in physics: we assume a control in the illusion of the theater. This is
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an adaptation of Meinong's distinction between Annahme and Voraus-
setzung, an adaptation to the " inner " and " outer " controls and the
distinction between prelogical and logical modes which are presupposed
throughout this volume.
Section three of chapter two classifies modes of control as a basis for
classifying modes of belief. (1) Direct internal and external control
issuing in assertorial forms of judgment, such as, " John is a good fel-
low"; 1 (2) semblant and other selective controls issuing in appreciative
judgments, " Let us pretend John is a good fellow," " Hurrah for John
who is a good fellow"; (3) alternative control issuing in disjunctive
judgments, " Either he is a good fellow or my informant is mistaken " ;
(4) experimental or schematic control issuing in the hypothesis, " Sup-
pose he is a good fellow," and the interrogative, " Is he a good fellow ?"
(5) the attitude toward accidental or anomic constructions expressed in
such statements as " I dreamed he was a good fellow," " What a conceit,
fancy him a good fellow!" Every shade of attitude toward earlier
meanings is comprehended in this scheme, and hence the spheres of
reality, possibility, and unreality, the spheres of modality (p. 38). Ap-
preciative meanings are always immediate: they are not under various
controls, but are added to each of them (p. 43). Possibility or partial
belief is expressed in experimental, disjunctive, and conditional state-
ments, and disjunctive meanings are either exclusive, indefinite, or in-
clusive. Disjunction expresses belief in a whole of uncertain content,
while the conditional judgment expresses belief in a definite content of
an uncertain whole. The former is genetically the earlier. This chapter
follows Venn to some extent.
Chapter three investigates " common acceptance and acknowledg-
ment," or what we might call the social character of knowledge. All
judgment as such is syndoxic, i. e., its meanings are not only held in
common, but held as common (p. 60). Mind content is always syndoxic
because ejective (p. 64). In so far as it is singular, a meaning represents
a variation toward the fulfillment of a special personal interest or the
satisfaction of a caprice. Singularity is either " essential," imposed by
external control, or " imported " and due to selective interest or internal
and private control. In the former case it is in community one with the
universal, the difference between them being the difference between a
group of different objects with the same meaning and a group of recur-
rences of the same object with the same meaning. In the latter case it
is not logical. Like the schematic and the self-identical subject, it is
alogical or superlogical. Section three of chapter three distinguishes
between meanings which are actually and aggregately held in common
(the earlier form of syndoxity) and those which are syndoxic only in the
sense of being fit or appropriate for actual holding in common (syn-
nomic syndoxity).
On the one hand, " the persistence of a world of minds becomes, then,
as soon as I reflect and judge, a presupposition of my judgment" (p. 93).
" A judgment which constitutes a meaning as universal for a process cf
1 The illustrations are mine.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 191
thought, also universalizes the process of thought by which that mean-
ing is constituted" (p. 63). On the other hand, the private individual
and the private judgment alike are treated as a sort of precipitate or
crystallization of a universal mental medium. To this manifold of minds
face to face with a common external world is due the dual character of
all logical meanings as both experimental and relational, both elucidative
and proposive, both retrospective and prospective. " The solution is to
be found only in an experience that is not indeed a-logical but super-log-
ical and immediate in its mode to anticipate our discussions of ' Real
Logic'" (p. 165, note).
In chapter four the problematical is defined to comprehend both the
disjunctive and the contingent. The former has a definite control, but
expresses as yet indefinite internal relations. In the contingent judg-
ment the internal relations of the content are very definite while the
control is undetermined. The former is a judgment with presupposition:
the latter, a judgment with postulate. Presupposition is an attitude of
acceptance: postulation, one of assumption.
There follows a discussion of quantitative distinctions. These express
judgments of possibility, probability, and improbability, and cover a wide
range of degrees, " one," " a few," " some," " half," " many," " most,"
and " all." The unquantified universal, such as, " Virtue is praiseworthy,"
is intensive in meaning while quantified universals are extensive. The
same is true of quantified and unquantified singulars (p. 122 f.).
Chapter five deals with the contingent. Presupposition is the ac-
knowledgment of the contingent as holding in some implied sphere of
control: postulation, the contingent acknowledgment of an implication
which may hold in some sphere or other. All presupposition is implica-
tion, part of the intent, of the subject-matter, of the judgment: 2 it may
itself become subject-matter in existential judgments (p. 134). In pos-
tulation the mode of existence is undetermined and the whole meaning
is schematic.
Chapter six has to do with the development of logical meaning through
predication and intercourse. Language embodies social habit: social
accommodation is effected through speech and intercourse. Elucidation
and proposal are the two motives of logical intercourse, the former being
retrospective and the latter prospective. There are no judgments which
are purely elucidative to both speaker and hearer.
Chapter seven has to do with the development of logical meaning by
terms. Section four deals with abstraction, pointing out that selective
meaning is its basis and repeating that selective meaning always embodies
individual and personal disposition and interest. Not that certain mean-
ings are selected for abstraction, but rather that logical meanings are
abstracted by a process of selection (p. 186). In an interesting section
Baldwin points out that singularization is not a process of individu-
ation in extension, that the singular has properly no extension. The
correlation of the concrete and the abstract is only another illustration
'Why then is not control an implication, part of the content or subject-
matter of judgment?
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of the dual character of all logical meanings, a character of which the
recognitive and the selective, the retrospective and the prospective,
elucidation and proposal, implication and experimentation, content and
control, the habitual and the accommodative, presupposition and higher
assumption, the analytic and the synthetic, the static and the proces-
sional, etc., are other illustrations. It is the distinction which, as a dis-
tinction in functions, has played so large a part in the logic of the
Chicago School.
In chapter eight proposition is denned as " that mode of predication
in which relation is individuated as a meaning " (p. 211), but the relation
is not expressed in the copula, it is embodied in the predicate (p. 262).
The characters of propositions are grouped under two main heads as
content-wise and control-wise. Each comprehends three characters.
From the point of view of control or belief, these are modality (telling where
or in what sphere the meaning is valid), quantity (telling how much),
and community (telling by whom) : from the standpoint of the content
or relations expressed, quality (telling what), relational character (tell-
ing why), and community (telling for whom) (pp. 212-15). This chapter
is chiefly devoted to the subject of quality, and of the two, to negation.
Limitation is here recognized as a quality distinct from both affirmation
and negation. The limitation of a cognitive field motives the distinction
of quality as affirmative and negative. But limitation may be selective,
as well as recognitive, and in that case we have " the intentional exclusion
of whatever else there is except what is then and there selected." This is
privative or imperative negation. Both types of exclusion are applied to
singulars. The singular may be exclusive for either reason. The only
" pure exclusion " is the denial of one singular of another, as, " John is
not James." The imperative privative, such as " Let A be B and nothing
else," is the case of the will-to-believe, and so far as it is intended to ad-
vance the meaning of A it is a pure proposal. But really it is not log-
ical, because it is not an experimental proposal. It is really a will-to-
deny that A is anything but B, without regard to evidence, and hence it
is dogmatic and obstructive.
Chapter nine, on the import and character of the proposition, identi-
fies synthetic with proposive judgments, and analytic with elucidative.
All judgments have both characters. No one can express what he has
not conceived and the proposal motives the redistribution of elements
whose issue is a new stage of conception (pp. 245-46). Negation always
denies synthesis or proposal and is analytic (p. 249). All judgments
equally, whether affirmative or negative, intend existence (p. 256). All
quantified affirmative propositions presuppose existence. To deny a mean-
ing is to reject it from a control, not to reject the control. Disbelief is a
form of belief: the opposite of belief is doubt.
This discussion concludes the second part of the book entitled " Genetic
Theory of Thought and Knowledge: How Thinking Goes On." It is the
largest and on all accounts the best part of the work. It makes the book
worth while. Indeed, the discussion of the negative alone is reason
enough why it should be carefully studied. Part one is a single intro-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 193
ductory chapter. Part three is devoted to the subject of implication as
a necessary relation of the elements of a whole of logical meaning to
each other. Two great characters of propositions are fundamental: one
dynamic, synthetic, developmental, the character of wholes as such; the
other static, analytic, implicative, the character of relations established
within wholes (p. 272). The former receives the general name of
" modality," and the latter, " relation." These are of course the same as
the reconstructive and habitual aspects of logical meaning pointed out
by the Chicago School of logicians. The former character, called con-
trol in earlier chapters of the book, is the main theme of eight of the
first nine chapters. Hence, in part three, the discussion takes up the
other theme, devoting chapters ten, eleven and twelve to it.
" Every implication is a subject-matter identical with itself, different
from or exclusive of any other, and, taken together with its contradictory,
exhaustive of the sphere of control in which they are both found " (p. 283).
There is no a priori law of identity above and beyond the individuation
of an object of thought as such. Its being identical and its being an ob-
ject of thought are one and the same thing, namely, its being this object
and not any other. Implication grows by judgments of identity.
In chapter eleven induction is treated. It is the transition from pre-
logical sameness in difference to logical identity and difference, and it
issues in logical classification, ordination and definition. It is the ex-
perimental establishing of judgments of identity. " When may I be sure
that among the varieties of natural happenings 'I have found a recurring,
persistent, and invariable grouping of facts ? " To answer this question
" a meaning already achieved is used experimentally to secure by further
experience the definition and limitation of its comprehension " (p. 303 f.).
But in formulating this method more exactly, Baldwin falls back on Mill's
canons of induction and apparently accepts them without modification,
although he supplements them as we shall see. Now Mill's methods are
for the discovery of invariable sequences, to the neglect of coexistences, an
oversight that has persisted in inductive logic even in this discussion of
Baldwin. Moreover, they are methods of elimination and presuppose a
system of nature made up of a manifold of kinds and causal agents which
are self-identical and already known. They assume that the data of in-
duction are the same as the content of the judgment of identity which
results from them. Mill's canons were deduced from this a priori con-
ception of nature or the objects under investigation. They are not de-
rived by generalization from actual scientific procedure. Consequently
they are largely deductive methods, presupposing as they do that we al-
ready know the nature of the elements of the phenomena under investiga-
tion. It will be found upon investigation that the method of induction
outlined by Baldwin (pp. 304-07) is also essentially deductive. I know by
agreement that "man is vocal whenever I find him"; and by diftVromv
that " the not-vocal wherever I find it is not man." " I could not then
say," writes Baldwin, " that men who are non-vocal might not still be
come upon. But if I now have an experience that correlates non-speech,
as in the anthropoids, with certain anatomical characters which also ex-
194
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
elude some of the essential marks of man, I can then say ' the non-vocal
are not-man ' reaching the exhaustive limitative judgment ' man is not
non-vocal ' or ' man is vocal/ . . . We can now say ' man must be articu-
late, for to take speech from him places him in another anatomical class
than that of man ' " (p. 306). Let us suppose that the crucial anatomical
characteristic is the absence of a certain palate. How do I come by the
information that the absence of a palate is universally characteristic of
not-men, and that its presence is a universal characteristic of man, and
that it is universally correlated with speech? Is it not evident, if Bald-
win's method is to be followed, that before we can establish by induction
any one of these judgments we must establish some other a priori judg-
ment of identity upon which to base them, and so on ad infinitum? Is
not the judgment, " man is not non-vocal," according to Baldwin's method,
an obvious deduction? If we have a priori grounds for correlating non-
speech with certain anatomical characters which exclude man from the
class of non-speaking animals, we may then deduce analytically the con-
clusion that man is not non-speaking; but in that case the inductive
methods of agreement and difference are entirely superfluous; while, in
the absence of any such a priori correlation, induction, as outlined by
Baldwin, is a futile regress of inductions to back up inductions.
The discussion of deduction fails to bring out the close and vital rela-
tion of the process to induction in scientific procedure. Indeed the book
makes no serious attempt to treat either of these great topics. They are
classed under the head of implication and left to the treatises on formal
logic. The present reviewer feels that Baldwin has handled a great theme
seriously up to the point where its climax should begin, and there the dis-
cussion dwindles into sketchy commonplaces.
Part four, including chapters thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, is de-
voted to the dualisms and limitations of thought. For the most part it is
a discussion of what Baldwin calls pragmatism. It identifies pragmatism
with his own doctrine of " inner control " and treats it as though the
pragmatists held that that is the only control an altogether disappoint-
ing procedure.
This paper is already too long, but we can not conclude without a brief
word as to the most characteristic feature of this book, the doctrine of
control. To me it is the name of a problem which Baldwin has not gone
to the bottom of. Whence are these " spheres of control " so often ap-
pealed to ? What is their justification ? The book contains no thorough-
going answer to these questions. Their relations to the real are reserved
for treatment in the third volume. But is it possible to treat experi-
mental logic thoroughly without discussing them? They are the very
universes of discourse which make exhaustive judgments of limitation
possible and we have seen that in the discussion of induction they are
simply assumed. Nevertheless, it repays study, and we are sorry to leave
the subject with this note of regret.
G. A. TAWNEY.
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 195
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. November, 1910. Depersonalisation
et emotion (pp. 441-460) : L. DUGAS ET F. MOUTIER. - Depersonalization
is a dissolution of attention springing from a general weakening of the
emotions. Apathy is its essential feature and cause. Psycliologie gene-
rale et psych ologie musicale (pp. 461-482) : L. DAURIAC. - There is a knowl-
edge of the particular in which the senses merely collaborate. How they
work with intelligence comes out clearly in certain results of the psychol-
ogy of music. Les travaux de I'ecole de psychologie russe: etude objective
de la pensee (pp. 483-507) : N. KOSTYLEFF. - These studies concern them-
selves primarily with the phenomena of ideation, and successfully de-
velop the thesis of Setchenoff that thought is the " reflexes of the brain."
Revue critique. L'oubli, d'apres le recent livre de Renda: F. PAULHAN.
Analyses et comptes rendus. Varisco, I problemi massimi: P. FONTANA.
Schultz, Die Maschinentheorie des Lebens: DR. S. JANKELEVITCH. J.
Duclaux, La chimie de la matiere vivante: F. LE DANTEC. Ludemann,
Das ErJcennen und die Werturteile: J. SECOND. J. Charmont, La renais-
sance du droit naturel: L. DUGAS. J. Dewey and J. H. Tufts, Ethics: J.
SECOND. Dr. E. Diirr, Grundziige der Ethik: J. SECOND. Sarlo e G.
Calo, Principi di scienza etica: J. SEGOND. B. Alimena, Principi di
diritto penale: G. RICHARD. L. Paschal, Esthetique nouvelle fondee sur
la psychologie du genie: L. ARREAT. A. Prandtl, Die Einfiihlung: C.
LALO. Revue de periodiques etrangers.
Henderson, Ernest Norton. A Text-book in the Principles of Education.
New York : The Macmillan Company. 1910. Pp. xiv + 593. $1.75.
Mangold, G. B. Child Problems. New York : The Macmillan Co. 1910.
Pp. xv + 381.
McGilvary, Evander Bradley. The " Fringe " of William James's Psy-
chology the Basis of Logic. Reprinted from the Philosophical Review,
Vol. XX., No. 2, March, 1911. Pp. 137-164.
Shaw, Charles Gray. The Value and Dignity of Human Life. Boston:
The Gorham Press. 1911. Pp. 403. $2.50.
Sunne, Dagny Gunhilda. Some Phases in the Development of the Sub-
jective Point of View during the Post-Aristotelian Period. Chicago :
University of Chicago Press. 1911. Pp. 96. $0.55.
Traite international de psychologie pathologique. Tome deuxieme: Psy-
chopathologie clinique. By A. Marie and others. Paris : Felix Alcan.
1911. Pp. xxiii -f 1000. 25 fr.
Walker, C. E. Hereditary Characters and their Modes of Transmission.
London : Edward Arnold. 1910. Pp xii -f- 239. 8s. 6d.
196
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
To THE EDITORS OF THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SCI-
ENTIFIC METHODS:
Sufferings, even the sufferings of hell, may be looked at from different
angles. The readers of this JOURNAL have just had the benefit of Pro-
fessor Santayana's and Professor Fletcher's reflections on Dante's aston-
ishing view. Possibly a few words of Nietzsche's may not be without
interest. His attitude to Dante is generally a critical, not to say hostile,
one; but he says (Werke, Tasclienausgabe, Vol. X., pp. 205-6, 1030):
" A full and mighty soul will not only get on with painful, even ter-
rible losses, deprivations, forced dispossessions, contempts; it comes out
of such hells with greater fullness and might and, what is most essential,
with a new growth in love and its blessedness [mit einim neuen Wachs-
thum in der Seligkeit der Liebe]. I believe that he who has divined
something of the bottommost conditions of any growth in love will under-
stand Dante, when he wrote over the portals of his Inferno : ' Also me did
eternal love create.' '
The difference, it must be confessed, is that one can not get out of
Dante's hell, while one may and the strong man does out of Nietzsche's.
WILLIAM M. SALTER.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,
March 6, 1911.
THE editors of the Psychological Review for March make the follow-
ing announcement:
The officers of the International Congress for Psychology, 1913, con-
sisting of the two vice-presidents, Professors E. B. Titchener and J.
McKeen Cattell, and the secretary, Professor John B. Watson, voted some
time ago to ask the past presidents of the American Psychological Asso-
ciation to serve as vice-presidents of the Congress. At a recent meeting
in New York of the enlarged body of officers, called by Professor Cattell,
details and plans for the organization of the Congress were discussed.
It was decided to hold the Congress at Easter, 1913. The executive com-
mittee which now jointly represents the interests both of the Congress
and of the American Psychological Association consists of the following
members : James R. Angell, W. V. D. Bingham, J. McKeen Cattell, Hugo
Miinsterberg, E. C. Sanford, E. B. Titchener, John B. Watson.
A NEW journal for philosophical essays and criticism has just been
founded by Giovanni Papini and Giovanni Amendola, entitled L'Anima.
The contents of the first number are from the two editors. The address
of the journal is Florence, Via dei Bardi, 6.
THE Huxley lecture at Birmingham University is to be delivered by
Professor Henri Bergson, lecturer on philosophy at the University of
Paris.
PROFESSOR J. G. FRAZER has been appointed Gifford lecturer in the
University of St. Andrews, 1911-12 and 1912-13.
VQL. VIII No. 8 APRIL 13, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
CONSCIOUSNESS IN PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 1
nnHE great problem of ancient philosophy was the relation of the
universal to the particular. The Greeks and Romans had no
problem of consciousness, because both the universal and the par-
ticular were for them essential aspects of existence. They had con-
ceptions very much like our notions of consciousness, but they had no
term which is an exact equivalent to ours. The words o-vvaisOdvoncu,
crvvaia-djiGis, and crvvi8r)<ri<? probably came nearer to meaning the
same as our word consciousness than any other words in the Greek
language. The only Latin word which approaches consciousness in
meaning is conscientia, which usually means about the same as our
word conscience, although it is occasionally used to mean self-knowl-
edge in general. Later came Christianity with its emphasis on the
soul and heart, with their motives, sins, and destiny.
Descartes not only distinguished a substance whose essence is
thinking from a substance whose essence is extension, and conceived
minds as individual things related to each other and to non-mental
things; he also for the first time in modern philosophy emphasized
the idea that consciousness is essentially the perception of what goes
on in one's own mind. This notion that consciousness is essentially
self-consciousness is one of the two commonest current meanings of
the term, the other being the various processes that enter into and
constitute tht* mental life. Descartes 's controversy with Gassendi
developed the doctrine of the subjectivity of the sensory attributes
of things, and the distinction between primary and secondary attri-
butes WHS introduced into philosophy.
The ancients were aware of the importance of the fact that many
minds imiy know the same object; they frequently refer to it; and
when in modern times the word con-scious-ness was invented, this
was its earliest signification the knowing of things together by
many minds. Professor Baldwin's name for the same thing in his
recent book is "syndoxic meaning" the word translated into Greek.
1 Read before the joint session of the American Psychological Association
and the Western Philosophical Association, Minneapolis, December 20, 1910.
197
198 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
This idea was generalized into the knowledge of knowledge, and con-
sciousness came to be the individual's perception of what passes in
his own mind. This is the primary meaning of the term in Locke 's
"Essay," 1690. In 1715 Samuel Clarke wrote, "Consciousness . . .
signifies . . . the reflex act by which I know that I think and that
my thoughts and acts are my own and not another's." Late in the
nineteenth century, Sir William Hamilton wrote that consciousness
is purely intuitive, "the recognition by the thinking subject of its
own acts and affections." 2 In his "Discussions of Philosophy and
Literature" (the New York edition), page 570, we read, "Whatever
comes into consciousness is thought by us either as belonging to the
mental self exclusively (subjective-subjective), or as belonging to
the not-self exclusively (objective-objective), or as belonging partly
to both (subjective-objective)." Certain curious riddles follow from
this doctrine, but we shall not stop to dwell on them here. Hamilton
took consciousness about as seriously as anybody could.
The usage of the early English psychologists shows, however,
another tendency. Locke all but identifies consciousness with the
thoughts and emotions of which one is conscious. Thus, "It is alto-
gether as intelligible to say a body is extended without parts, as that
anything thinks without being conscious of it or perceiving that it
does so." One might as well say that a man is always hungry but
does not always feel it, as that he thinks but does not always perceive
it. 3 "Thinking consists in being conscious that one thinks." Thus
all states of consciousness are essentially states of self-consciousness.
In its empirical aspect, mind is the same thing as consciousness
it is the place where mental processes go on. Of course mind has
another aspect. It is that phase of reality which is more and other
than mere matter in motion (G. F. S. and J. M. B.). 4 It differs
from the thinking substance of Descartes in that its content is proc-
esses and functions, and also in that it is organically related to the
habits and the general physiology of the individual. But, as in the
"First Alcibiades" of Plato, the "Nicomachean Ethics," Cicero's
"Somnium Scipionis" (8), and Descartes 's second meditation, the
mind is the man, properly speaking. It is an individual thing sus-
taining relations to other things and comprehending a various con-
tent. Baldwin and Stout do not speak of it as substans, but if the
word still retained its original meaning of that which subtends or
underlies, it might be applied to their conception of mind without
incongruity. Consciousness is thus the place of ideas, sensory quali-
ties, images, emotions, choices, and so on ; it is the workshop of mind.
2 Hamilton's "Lectures on Metaphysics," Boston, p. 111.
3 ' ' Essay, ' > Bk. II., Ch. I., Sec. 19.
4 See Baldwin 's Dictionary.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 199
It is conscious of itself in all that it does, and is very active in the
production of contents, relations, resolutions, and other psycholog-
ical things. It might be compared to the workshop of the great
patron saint of the Yuletide, if only we could think of Saint Nick as
identical with his own toy-factory. Sometimes the mind is passive.
Emotions sweep over it, it is bathed in the mists of moods, stimuli
rain in upon it, and associations shoot across it. But it is saturated
with purpose and usually it is busy building and maintaining a
world.
This individual and wonderful affair is the "mind" of much
modern idealism and modern psychology. It gives rise to some of
the fundamental problems of modern philosophy and psychology,
such as the relation of the mind to the body, the relation of ideas to
their objects, the elements of which ideas are composed and the laws
of their compounding and growth, the problem of finding some
bridge of identity between this inner world of consciousness and the
outer world of reality. Some recent psychologies discuss the ques-
tion whether sensations are the same as or different from the em-
pirical properties of things. Some still hold a doctrine differing
only in -the terms in which it is expressed from Berkeley's esse est
percipi. The opposition of this consciousness to the objective world
is still regarded by many, as it was by Hamilton, as "the primary
and most important analysis and antithesis of philosophy. " r>
The romantic movement in the nineteenth century had much to
do with emphasizing the independence and autonomy of this inner
life of man, but it found the instruments of its emphasis already
forged by modern philosophy and psychology. Since Kant and
other philosophical romanticists, the most general of the problems of
epistemoloiiy lias been, How is knowledge possible? So close were
the curtains of the great stage of the world drawn across the vision
of the mind, that the most important question philosophy could ask
was, How d<M's the mind acquire its knowledge of what transpires on
the stajze? (Jod and the absolute have been defined as the indiffer-
ence of subject and object and as the unity of subject and object.
We have hoard that as this unity of subject and object does not itself
stand in the relation of object to the subject, it can never be known
as ii The mystics say it can only be felt. We hear, too, that
the ohjret is only the external meaning of the mind's ideas, and a
partial fulfilment of its purpose. We have feared that the complete
fulfill!, ; its purpose might prove its Nirvana and extinction.
Berkeley said that the divine mind is the external world of man's
mind, hut we never see God. We only see our own ideas, the laws
of nature being the axioms according to which God puts ideas into
"Lectures on Metaphysics," p. 111.
200
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our minds. The realists, from Thomas Reid to the programists,
have done what they could to give dignity to this type of doctrine
by protesting that what we know is real and not a mere idea. The
recent concerted asseveration concerning the externality of relations
is the latest edition of that dogmatic protest.
But, you say, the functional psychology! Surely the functional
psychology has not been guilty of this mythology. Well, the func-
tional psychology builds largely on biology and is the newest hopeful
word on the subject of mind. But the functional psychology has
not always applied its convictions ruthlessly, or one of the best
known of functional psychologists in America would not be reassert-
ing the Lockean conception of mind in his latest book, and the psy-
chophysicists would not be wasting time over the relation of body
to mind as parallelism, interactionism, or automatism. Moreover,
functional psychology has not yet defined mental function in terms
which are applicable to all the phenomena with which psychology
deals. Largely because of its conception of mental function as a
reflex act, the psychologist begins with a chapter on brain anatomy
and physiology and then opens a new chapter when he wishes to
speak of mind or consciousness. Owing to the reflex act conception
of mental function in combination with the traditional conception of
consciousness, his treatment of his subject lacks continuity and sys-
tem. He discusses isolated topics, and he does it in such a way that
the student who happens to look up from his page to behold the
living presence of a man often wonders whether there can be any
connection between the two. The psychologist's mind turns out to
be either a nervous system or else an individual and independent
thing, dwelling in the body and sustaining relations of contrast and
exclusion toward all other things.
Many students of philosophy and psychology to-day are looking
for a substitute for this traditional Cartesian conception of mind.
Professor Woodbridge finds its chief defect in the idea that con-
sciousness is always a subject in relation to an object. Now it hap-
pens that every object of thought is either a term or a relation be-
tween terms, and if consciousness is not to be regarded as a term
related to other terms called its objects, it must be a relation.
Hence, as every one knows, Professor Woodbridge holds that con-
sciousness is simply an order of relations like time and space. It is
like time and space in being an order of relations, but unlike them
in the type of relation which it denotes. Consciousness is an order
of relations of implication and suggestion. Professor Woodbridge
has not, so far as I know, compromised his conception by insisting
that this order of relations is objective rather than subjective, thereby
reasserting the very dualism which his conception would avoid. His
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 201
realism is consequently no mere dogmatic protest against subject-
ivism. Indeed, his assertion that consciousness is an order of rela-
tions analogous to time and space is, in interest and importance, the
first creditable attempt of any recent realist to construct a positive
theory of knowledge which is more than a protest. Here is some-
thing which had not been said before, a doctrine which might well
serve as the program of further constructive work.
Meanwhile, certain factors of experience point to legitimate uses
of the terms conscious and consciousness. The erroneous, the illu-
sory, the fanciful, the problematic, in short, all immediate values,
stand out as unique aspects of things, and psychology might be de-
fined as the science of such values. Everything that enters into the
life of a young child is immediate, every knowing process has an im-
mediate aspect, all the things we love, hate, or desire are of course
immediate, the absolute in the sense of the unique, complete, and
perfect is immediate, and so also are the useful, the beautiful, and
the good. I do not mean that these things are merely immediate.
Far from it. But everything which can be thought or felt or known
or chosen has an immediate value, and some science should specialize
upon it. Immediate value is not a thing in a sphere by itself, like
a gold-fish swimming in an aquarium. It is in no sense an indi-
vidual thing, it is always an aspect, a flavor, an atmosphere. Like
light, it is nothing that the eye can see. It makes seeing possible,
in a sense it is seeing ; but what we see is always things upon which
the light shines. We do not experience immediate values. On the
contrary, immediate value is, or rather becomes, the experience of
things. It is possessed by everything which serves as occasion for
the exercise of powers and capacities of action.
How things are associated and immediate values become sug-
gested values, how assimilation and complication transform and
organize them, how reflective power develops, how an instinctive
animal becomes a moral and political person, how science and
religion appear these remain as a few of the most important prob-
lems of psychology. But the language in which they are treated
need no longer prejudice the mind of the student with a crude meta-
physic which it will take him years to outlive. Consciousness will
no longer be a wonderful universe in parvo, an individual thing in a
world of things. It will have the significance of any abstract noun
such as roundness or justness. Consciousness will be simply the con-
tinuum of immediate value. The unit of immediate value may still
be sensation. But the total unity in manifoldness which compre-
hends all values will no longer be a mind in a body, but a person,
and the self will be treated as the highest discovery of reflection.
It was certainly a mistake to confuse self -consciousness with the
202
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reflective consciousness of self by assuming that all psychical proc-
esses are accompanied by self -perception like a running commentary
to a text. Self-consciousness is a synthesis of immediate values due
to the operation of certain instinctive motor tendencies, while the
consciousness of self is a highly reflective synthesis of values which
are largely implied and therefore mediated. The idea that the con-
sciousness of self is a sort of continuous intuition of something called
the mind or the soul is one of the most uncritical vagaries of tradi-
tional psychology. What we are conscious of in this immediate and
intuitive way is always some memory, or some muscular contraction
or organic condition, not the self in any true sense of the term. At
times we do definitely and objectively think of our selves, but this is
reflection, not intuition, and it is not continuous. For my own part,
it is simply a case of malobservation to say that it is as easy to think
of an extended thing without parts as to think of anything as think-
ing without being conscious that it does so. My own observation is
just the opposite. When I think about myself I am not thinking
about other things, and when I think about other things I am not
thinking about myself.
Every one who has had the misfortune to teach psychology, ethics,
and the philosophy of religions as well must have felt the lack of a
psychology which develops without serious break or chasm into the
other disciplines. As treated by psychology, consciousness is an
individual affair, whereas a man is an absolute individual neither in
his thinking, his emotions, nor his will. The psychology of con-
sciousness recognizes the dependence of the individual upon his phys-
ical environment for stimuli ; it does not sufficiently recognize man 's
dependence upon his social environment for his actual thoughts and
emotions. It emphasizes stimulation as fundamental, it often says
nothing about suggestion. Indeed, the whole matter of suggestion
and social influence is treated as unscientific by a very large part of
the psychological fraternity. They leave all these matters to such
works as Boris Sidis's "Psychology of Suggestion," Le Bon's "Psy-
chology of Peoples and Psychology of Crowds, " " Les Lois de 1 'Imi-
tation," and other books written chiefly by sociologists. Conse-
quently the foundations of logic, ethics, and the philosophy of
religions are not furnished by empirical psychology. Aside from
James's brilliant chapter on the consciousness of self and Baldwin's
discussions of the self in his "Social and Ethical Interpretations,"
contemporary psychology offers the merest scraps and fragments of
such a basis, and even these chapters stand out as logically unre-
lated to other chapters of their authors' psychologies.
The teacher of ethics must either try to invent a psychological
foundation for his subject, gathering what materials he can from the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 203
sociologists and the writers on imitation and suggestion, or else
leave his teachings without scientific foundation. The former pro-
cedure is unconvincing to the student, and the latter leaves him
without a guide out of the wilderness of ethical methods to which he
is introduced. It is all very well to write psychology for the sake of
psychology, and to work steadily under the lead of facts. We all
believe in scientific method, but contemporary psychology is far less
scientific than she should be. She has permitted the reflex arc
concept and methods of investigation based upon it to blind her to
the actual laws of experience. She has permitted a traditional,
almost mythical notion of consciousness, devised originally in full
view of the doctrine of a future life, to stand between her and the
men and women of this world. We need a psychology of human
conduct to supplant the psychology of consciousness. 6
I have had dreams of such a psychology. It begins with an
account of the law of mental growth, the combined law of selection
and repetition among modes of action. It proceeds to a description
of all the capacities of action with which a child comes into the
world, with some definition of the difference between a human babe
and the lower animals, and some hint as to the child's capabilities
of growth. It should contain an account of the child 's environment,
the milieu in which he must grow up. It should devote a chapter
or two to the immediate values which are the child's life, and pro-
ceed to the laws of association and suggestion. It should trace the
growth of that distinctly human thing, the consciousness of self and
the reflective aspect of the world which comes with it. And there
should be chapters on perception, imagination, reasoning, emotion,
volition. Last of all should stand the psychology of truth, utility,
esthetic value, and that sense of individual completeness and per-
fection which plays so large a part in all forms of religion. In this
psychology consciousness is the principle of continuity, sensation the
unit of discrete value, and the self the totality within which all its
studies fall.
G. A. TAWNEY.
UNIVEBSITY OF CINCINNATI.
' It is refreshing to see such a psychology outlined in the opening para-
graphs of the supplement to the last edition of "Men of Science."
204 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
SOCIETIES
THE NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMER-
ICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
THE American Psychological Association met at Minneapolis,
December 28-30, 1910, for the nineteenth annual meeting
amid fortunate external conditions as regards both weather and
place of meeting. Although there were the usual number of persons
in attendance at the sessions, there was a notable absence of eastern
psychologists, but five registering from east of the Alleghanies. On
the other hand there were a number present from the far west.
There were smokers at the University of Minnesota and the usual
social functions. The sessions were held in close proximity to the
psychological laboratory, which was open to inspection during the
week.
The one subject which more than any other dominated the meet-
ing was the use and meaning of the word consciousness. Of the
thirty-three names which appeared on the program for the three
days' sessions, one third were scheduled for papers or discussions
on this topic. The president's address was upon "The Place of
Movement in Consciousness," and extemporaneous discussion was
freer upon this subject than upon any other. The best place on the
program, the morning of the second day, was devoted to a joint ses-
sion with the Western Philosophical Association, the subject of the
conference being "Philosophical and Psychological Usages of the
Terms Mind, Consciousness, and Soul. ' ' The term soul was quickly
disposed of as signifying an entitative something with which neither
psychologists nor philosophers, as such, had anything to do. The
term mind, in so far as it bore a similar reference to the cognitive
experience, suffered a like treatment. The heat of discussion cen-
tered about the use of the term consciousness, but the speakers were,
for the most part, merely descriptive or critical, and only indirectly
constructive. Mr. Bode opened the discussion for the philosophers
with a critique of the definitions of consciousness that have been
offered by current realism, particularly of those definitions which
identify consciousness with awareness or apprehension, with context
or setting, and with the function of representation or meaning. The
first of these fails because it must recognize two kinds of objects,
namely, those which exist only when there is awareness e. g., pleas-
ures and pains and those which may exist apart from awareness.
Hence, it is obliged to postulate two different types of response on
the part of the perceiving organism, the one being a condition of
awareness and the other a condition both of awareness and of those
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 205
qualities or objects which exist only when there is awareness. This
implication of the position finds no support in the present-day psy-
chology of perception. The actual test between the kinds of objects
is not this hypothetical difference in our responses, but in context or
relationship. In applying this test, however, the realist confuses the
distinction between fact and meaning or validity with the distinction
between valid fact and validating experience. The same confusion
occurs in the form of realism which discards awareness and finds in
context or relationship the source of the differentiation between con-
sciousness and object. It therefore has no advantage over the other
theory. The assertion that consciousness is the function of meaning
assumes a hard and fast distinction between sense quality and mean-
ing which does not exist in fact. The view of instrumentalism is
that consciousness is a name for the entities created by the psycholo-
gist in the furtherance of his particular purpose. It is not a distinct
entity or function or relationship.
Mr. Tawney, the other speaker from the Philosophical Associa-
tion, called attention to the objectivity of the ancients, and showed
how, through the influence of Christianity and the Cartesian philos-
ophy, the modern problem of consciousness arose. He sought to
show how from the Cartesian point of view there came to be the doc-
trine of the subjectivity of the sense properties of things and the
distinction between primary and secondary qualities, the independ-
ence and autonomy of the "inner life" or " inner world, " and how
this conception has precipitated the whole modern problem of the
relation of the body and mind. Even the functional psychology is
only an attempt to adjust this traditional conception of consciousness
to the laws of biology and physiology. It is still the psychology of
the inner life, a psychology of subjectivity, and as such it fails to
lay scientific foundations for logic, ethics, the philosophy of religion,
and sociology, which necessarily deal with human experience and
human character. A return to the objectivity of the ancients would
be a great gain. Woodbridge's definition of consciousness as an
order of relation came in for a bit of commendation, and the speaker
laid emphasis upon the phenomenon of immediate value as the dis-
tinctive mark of the kind of behavior with which psychology chiefly
deals.
Mr. Angell spoke first for the psychologists, reviewing the steps
by which the terms soul and mind had disappeared from current
psychological discussion, and indicating certain evidences to show
that the term consciousness was about to suffer a like fate. Genetic
psychology, it was pointed out, could make no use of the term with its
traditional connotation as signifying something open only to private
introspection. In this field it was shown that the scientist could
206 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
make use of such terms only as indicated behavior. The speaker
further contended that even in the study of human psychology atten-
tion was being given more and more to, the objective facts connected
with a mental state. Thus in the study of the memory psychologists
attempt to find out the number of repetitions necessary to learn a list
of nonsense syllables, the most economic periods of work and rest in
the learning, the most economic method of dividing a selection to be
learned, etc. all objective facts. Facts of this sort, the speaker
thought, point to an increasing interest in the study of behavior and
a decreasing interest in the study of ' l consciousness, ' ' a tendency so
strong as to presage the possible disappearance of the word conscious-
ness from psychological literature.
Mr. Lindley was the other speaker for the psychologists. He
called attention to the fact that the breaking up of an established
order in science, as well as in government, usually came about by the
uprising of neglected interests. The present dissatisfaction with the
term consciousness he thought was a case in point. For a long time
psychologists had insisted on using the term to mean a state of aware-
ness, and had thus thrust out of the proper realm of psychology a
large amount of material most intimately connected with states of
awareness, and had invoked the phrase unconscious cerebration to
take care of the neglected data. This was an unsatisfactory pro-
cedure; and after suffering this sort of treatment for a time, the
neglected interests were demanding recognition, and such a revision
of the term consciousness as to make it more inclusive, or the discard-
ing of the term for some other more appropriate one. The speaker
cited animal psychology, experimental psychology, and abnormal
psychology, all of which were finding that the facts that they must
consider could not be included under the traditional concept of
consciousness.
The discussion of the foregoing papers was opened by Mr. Ewer,
who insisted that there was an imperative need to fill the gap between
the term consciousness as used by psychologists and the term as it
was used by philosophers. He, however, did not attempt to offer a
definition suited to the purpose.
Mr. Judd thought that, while it was the duty of empirical psy-
chology to define consciousness, it was a matter of little importance
to psychology what connotation was given to the term by philosophy.
The speaker offered a definition based on a distinction between modes
of behavior. Digestive behavior differs from locomotive behavior,
and the latter from behavior based on ideas. These types of behavior
tend to grow into systems, and that which characterizes the human
system is that its system is a world of ideas. Now, there is need for
some word to define this world of ideas. Experience might be used ;
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 207
this would not be in danger of being fused with physical terms.
But it might be easier to escape metaphysical difficulties by defining
a new term.
Mr. McGilvary did not agree with Mr. Judd in the diverse inter-
ests of psychology and philosophy. Both sciences start with a pres-
ent experiential group; this group behaves in some manner: it
excludes and it includes. The behavior of this group constitutes the
subject-matter both of psychology and of philosophy. He pointed
out, as had Mr. Lindley before him, that we know less about the
brain than we do about the behavior of the present group, to which
the speaker chose to give the name consciousness. The philosopher
has, like the psychologist, a real empirical problem.
Mr. Thorndike, who was scheduled to close the regular discussion,
had presented his views somewhat at length on the previous day.
At that time he had pointed out that psychologists were accustomed
to make two sorts of statements about human nature: statements
about consciousness, about the "inner life of thought and feeling,'*
the ' ' self as conscious, ' ' the ' ' stream of thought ' ' ; and statements
about behavior, "statements about the life of man that is left unex-
p]ained by physics, chemistry, anatomy, and physiology, and is
regularly compassed for common sense under the terms intellect and
character." The prevailing attitude in psychology has been to re-
strict its subject-matter to statements about consciousness. But this
becomes meaningless when one approaches the study of animal psy-
chology. It appears that in human psychology, as well, it is unneces-
sary and perhaps inadmissible to continue a pretense that there is
an impassable gap, a real discontinuity, between any and all of the
animal's movements and his states of consciousness. Scientific judg-
ments about a man's toothache, about his state of anxiety, or about
his judgment that three times seven are twenty-one, do not differ
essentially from judgments about his stature or his temperature.
The former differ in their greater dependence upon a man's verbal
reports and the greater likelihood that one will have, in respect to
them, certain sources of information denied to other men. But the
difference is one of degree rather than one of kind. The facts of
mental science need not be known to one observer only. The only
kinds of facts with which science can concern itself are facts that
are open to common observation. The pain of psychology must be
the pain of medicine, the pain known to the physician and to the
sufferer long after he had it or was it. By thus making the material
of psychology objective, two noteworthy advantages are gained:
first, the evidence about intellect and character offered by action and
the influence of intellect and character upon action are given due
attention; second, the connection of conscious states is studied as
well as their composition.
208 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
In continuing the discussion after Mr. McGilvary, Mr. Thorndike
pointed out that consciousness is always a feature of some particular
living organism. Any definition of consciousness must take account
of this, its most universal attribute. He insisted further, in opposi-
tion to Mr. Judd, that any serviceable definition of consciousness
must be of such a nature as to include the behavior of the fish, the
worm, and the month-old baby.
General comment upon the papers and discussion of the concept
of consciousness was participated in by Messrs. Colvin, Jastrow,
Huey, and others. Significantly enough there appeared no cham-
pion of the doctrine that a little while ago was used in certain quar-
ters to define the subject-matter of psychology, namely, that psy-
chology is the study of self -consciousness.
Consciousness was discussed from a somewhat different point of
view in the president's address on "The Place of Movement in Con-
sciousness." The modern motor theory ascribes to movement prac-
tically all of the important conscious qualities and functions. Move-
ment is said to be the fundamental element in space and time and
other forms of perception and in memory, it is the selecting agent in
attention, and makes possible the complex functions of recognition,
meaning, and related operations of reasoning. Examination of
each of these claims in turn shows, Mr. Pillsbury thought, that
they have little if any basis in fact. To assert that all qualities
of consciousness are motor, means, in the last analysis, that all
mental qualities are derived from kinesthetic sensations. Kinesthetic
sensations are obviously too poor in quality to furnish content for all
perceptions and memories. Direct observation, too, shows that other
qualities are present and fully as prominent as these. The attempt
to place the consciousness that accompanies movement in the motor
cortex seems not to be justified by the facts. The men who hold this
view bring no new evidence to controvert that which led to the aban-
donment of sensations of innervation, and Gushing 's experiment af-
fords convincing proof that the action of the motor cortex is known
only through the nerve ends in the contracting muscles.
Close examination of the argument that preparedness for move-
ment is the deciding factor in determining attention and other forms
of selection, shows that decision is made not by the movement, but
by the stimuli that induce the movement. If one stops the explana-
tion with the condition of the motor tracts, all is left to chance ; and if
one asks why the motor tracts are active, the explanation is in terms
of stimulus and the results of earlier experience, and is not motor.
The motor explanation of recognition and meaning suffers from
much the same defects. To argue that recognition comes automat-
ically when the same movements are made as when the object was
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 209
first seen, is to assume that there are as many sorts of movement as
there are recognizable objects, and that one may always recognize
the movements when they appear. Neither of these assumptions is
probable, to say nothing of being self-evident. Similarly, movements
do not have meaning of themselves, and it is difficult to see how they
can give to another conscious process that which they do not them-
selves possess. While the motor theory has gone too far, it has been
of value in making the explanations of consciousness more concrete.
All that it needs is the reminder that movements grow out of sensory
and associatory processes, and that all are organized into a common
system.
Educational psychology was given the right of way at a joint
session with Section L (Education) of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science. Mr. Baldwin presented the first paper,
dealing with "Individual Differences in the Correlation of Physical
Growth of Elementary and High-school Pupils. ' ' The paper gave a
report of an investigation in the correlation of yearly and half-yearly
increments of growth in height and weight of 350 boys and 435 girls
from the University of Chicago elementary and high-schools, the
Francis W. Parker school, and the Horace Mann school of Columbia
University. The records include consecutive measurements of the
same individuals for periods of from 3 to 11J years, giving a total of
6,000 measurements. A median found for all the measurements in
the two Chicago schools shows that the children in the three schools
form "a practically homogeneous group." Individual measure-
ments show that there are different correlations for growth in height
and weight for both boys and girls who are above the median from
the correlations for those who fall below the median height. Those
above begin and end their various periods of acceleration and re-
tardation, on the average, earlier than those below the median. For
boys above the median the average maximum acceleration in absolute
height occurs between thirteen and fourteen years of age, and for
boys below the median it occurs between fourteen and fifteen years
of age. For girls of the first class the acceleration is between 11 J
and 12J years, while for those of the second class it occurs between
12J and 13J years of age. The same general law seemed to hold
for weight.
Individuals above or below the median height maintain their rela-
tive position throughout the period studied, but they show individual
variations of slight amounts at different periods. These facts show
how "one may prophesy the probable development of a boy or girl
after once knowing his or her relative position in regard to the given
median." However, the fluctuations in weight do not follow in
detail the correlations in height, as in some cases of accelerated
growth in height there was an actual loss in weight.
210
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Mr. Freeman reported a series of experiments which had for their
purpose the comparison of the scope of attention and number per-
ception in adults and children. The objects used were spots of light
one centimeter in diameter, presented tachistoscopically upon a large
cotton screen, the source of light being hidden by the screen. For
the scope of attention the objects were arranged at equal intervals
in horizontal rows, as any other arrangement favored subjective
grouping. For the perception of number the objects were grouped
in various ways.
The results showed that with an increasing number of objects the
percentage of correct judgments decreased more rapidly in children
than in adults. This difference is not a difference in the scope of
attention, for experiments showed that up to four objects the judg-
ments of children averaged only 4.5 per cent, poorer than the judg-
ments of adults. Since the average scope of attention for the adults
proved to be between four and five, the difference in scope of atten-
tion was less than one. That the adults were able to judge more
correctly when five or more objects were presented was due, it was
thought, to "the tendency of the adults to subjectively group the
objects presented to them." The results showed that in adults the
attention was better distributed than in children. An important
pedagogical conclusion from the experiments was that number work
should be introduced by training in the recognition and manipula-
tion of grouped objects.
Two papers, one on "Periods of Work in Learning" and one on
"Transference of Practise," were presented by Mr. Starch. Both
were reports of experimental work, the first dealing with the learning
to associate certain numbers with letters. In this experiment the
workers were divided into three groups. The first group worked ten
minutes at a time twice a day, the second worked twenty minutes at a
time once a day, and the third worked forty minutes at a time every
other day. Each group worked six days. The records show that the
ten-minute group improved more rapidly than the twenty-minute
group, and that the latter improved more rapidly than the forty-
minute group. The twenty-minute group transcribed on the average
thirty-one more letters in every five minutes than the forty-minute
group, and the ten-minute group transcribed on the average ten more
letters than the twenty-minute group.
In Mr. Starch's second experiment, the object was to determine
the effect of training in one fundamental arithmetical operation
upon efficiency in other arithmetical operations. A group of persons
were trained for fourteen days in mental multiplication. Before and
after this training they were tested in other arithmetical processes,
such as adding fractions, subtracting and dividing numbers. These
tests were also made upon another group of persons who did not have
the fourteen days of training. The improvement of this latter group
was deducted from the improvement of the first group. This left an
improvement fifteen per cent, as large as the improvement during the
fourteen days. This improvement seemed due to the ability acquired
during the period of practise.
A paper on "The Genesis of Attention in the Educative Process"
was read by Mr. Swift. He reviewed the doctrine that clearness is
the essential nature of attention and that education is the "securing
of the attention to ideas which make for growth." He showed how,
in the process of securing the attention, the feelings are an unsafe
guide, and again how the teacher can not rely upon rewards and
punishments. He pointed out that the "growing point in elemen-
tary and secondary education is the special school for delinquents
and the reformatory institutions," and that the inmates of these
institutions had secured the very best schools of all by their rebellion
against the regular school organization. The methods employed in
such schools, it was pointed out, were strikingly similar in that the
teachers made a special effort to appeal to the primitive instincts of
the persons to be instructed. The success of these schools, the
speaker thought, pointed out to the public school the necessity of
utilizing the racial and social instincts as the basis of the appeal to
the attention.
Quite in keeping with the spirit of the earlier papers was Mr.
Seashore's paper on "The Consulting Psychologist," which closed
the joint session. This person should be "an expert in psychology
who may be employed as adviser in matters pertaining to the ascer-
tained facts of mental life with reference to their bearing upon a
given practical situation, or may be employed to search for or verify
such facts by a special investigation." The field to be covered is
one that lies beyond that of academic teaching and research and the
common application of psychology in practise. The opportunities
for the consulting psychologist fall roughly into four general fields :
(1) mental pathology; (2) arts, crafts, professions, and industries;
(3) education; (4) eugenics. Mr. Seashore illustrated the scope of
these fields in some detail and gave concrete illustrations of actual
work. He further pointed out the need of the thorough training of
the consulting psychologist and what in detail this training should
be. He must be a man endowed with scientific freedom, yet not a
pure scientist. He must be neither an administrator, a teacher, a
practising physician, nor a reformer. He must be a man who,
choosing the field of the consulting psychologist as a profession, will
devote himself to intensive work in his chosen field, rising through a
series of apprenticeships to efficiency in his work.
212 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Discussion of this paper took the turn of personal experiences of
academic psychologists in the applications of psychological facts to
practical situations. Mr. Seashore, in closing the discussion, pointed
out again that he was not arguing for an extension of the field of the
general psychologist, but for the creation of a new department of
work.
The problems of the psychology of religious experience consumed
the time of an entire session, the afternoon of the second day.
Mr. Starbuck read a paper on "The Instinctive Bases of Religion."
He pointed out what he held had been admitted by genetic psycholo-
gists generally, namely, that there is a "sense which guides animals
on through to the highest in appreciating and stressing just those
reactions which are for their well-being, and depreciating and reject-
ing those which mean maladjustment." There are two phases which
have been passed over lightly by most students. The first is the
direct and immediate evaluation, in terms of the result of the reac-
tion, of its value to the organism. This the speaker proposed to call
"the cosmoesthetic sense, meaning thereby a sense of order, of rela-
tion, of proportion." Without this cosmoesthetic sense, the trial-
and-error method of learning could not be learning at all, but merely
a mechanically stimulated reaction-type of response. This concept,
so essential to the understanding of animal life, it was held, is also
essential in understanding "the non-rational successes of religion
and art in feeling their way into higher modes of reaction. Religion
has wilfully cultivated the non-rational and cosmoesthetic attitudes
toward life."
Religion is again like the life of animals in its forward-looking
aspect. This was called "the teleoesthetic sense." It is only by
"the assumption of such a sense that one can explain the forward-
reaching phenomena in religion and in the life of animals, the antici-
patory qualities of moral intuition, the non-rational character of
the poetic passion, and the apparent success of religion in feeling
after an adjustment to an ideal reality."
That there is no sufficient reason for postulating an innate re-
ligious sense was the ground taken by Mr. King in a paper on ' ' The
Question of an Ultimate Religious Element in Human Nature."
Contrary to the views of many thinkers, both religious and scientific,
who believe that there is an ultimate religious element in human
nature which they variously call a "revelation," an "inner light,"
a "perception of the infinite," etc., Mr. King held that religion in
the individual is "a construct in which instinctive factors play a
part as they do in all else that pertains to human nature." The
speaker attempted to account for religion as the result of the inter-
play of social influences.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 213
Mr. Haynes presented a paper on the subject of "Case-taking in
the Psychology of Religious Experience." By case-taking the
speaker meant a procedure similar to that of the physician or the
psychiatrist in diagnosing a case. The genetic method much in
vogue, and valuable as giving the background for all study of reli-
gious experience, was objected to because it reveals only the geology of
religious experience and not its chemistry. The biographical method
was rejected because of its long-range results and consequent snap-
shot sort of data, and the questionnaire method was likewise rejected
for careful diagnosis. Reliance, it was urged, could be put only
upon careful laboratory methods which reveal the past experiences
of the subject. This method uses as sources of information observa-
tion of the subject under questioning, tests, as in a clinic, the answers
of the subject studied, and the testimony of friends and relatives,
where obtainable. It includes information on the family history of
the subject, his past religious history, and his present religious status.
On the basis of this information it seeks to diagnose the individual's
religious experience, to prescribe treatment whereby he may make
the most of his religious capacities, and to watch the reaction under
this treatment. One objection to the method is that the clinical
picture is likely to be distorted by the bias of the case-taker. A
second objection is that the facts relevant to the religious experience
in question are not easy to note.
In a paper on "The Genesis of the Group Spirit," Mr. Ames
sought to show that imitation does not suffice to explain how the
group spirit comes to arise. Within a group there are many ego
and alter relations, but these are not the only effective relations at
hand. Each individual in the group is determined by the relation
of the group as a whole to "ends and plans which lie beyond" the
immediate situation. Thus the family has relations to every other
family, "to neighborhood life, and to the plan and sphere of action
characteristic of the family." "The consciousness of the family
group arises, not through the imitation and opposition of its mem-
bers, but through their cooperation in reaching certain ends. The
sense of the group comes to consciousness with the effort to work out
this cooperation. To be sure, the act is carried out through the
process of stimulation and response, the response being, however, not
always an imitation of the act, but more often a reaction for which
the stimulation is merely the cue. The overt responses become in
their turn the stimuli to other acts, which again do not necessarily
imitate the act already performed, because all the acts are determined
by their reference to the common end. In this interplay there arises
a complex of associations and implications which is felt by the par-
ticipants as something urgent and insistent, as something wholly
objective.
214
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Besides exercising a marked influence on the discussion of con-
sciousness and the psychology of religion, animal psychology was
represented on the program by two reports of experimental work.
Mr. Cole reported a study on "The Relation of the Strength of
Stimulus to the Rate of Learning in the Chick." Chicks were
taught to discriminate the darker of two passageways in order to
escape from a box. Three differences of brightness were used, one
easy to discriminate, one of medium difficulty, and one of extreme
difficulty. For these differences in brightness opal flash glass screens
were illuminated by electric lamps placed at different distances from
the screen. ' ' For each condition of discrimination, groups of chicks
of exactly the same age were trained under the influence of a weak,
a medium, and a strong electric shock. When the discrimination was
easy for the chick, the number of trials for perfect discrimination
decreased with increase in the strength of the stimulus, i. e., the
stronger the stimulus the quicker the learning. For medium diffi-
culty of discrimination this relation did not hold in the case of the
stronger stimulus. It produced slower instead of more rapid learn-
ing. " In this particular the results confirm those of Yerkes and
Dodson for the mouse. Under difficult discrimination the chicks
divided into two groups, those that learned the stronger stimulus
more quickly, and those that failed to make the discrimination.
The latter group included one half the number of chicks tried with
the strong stimulus.
Mr. Shepard reported work with rats, cats, and ants in a laby-
rinth. Diagrams showing certain modifications of the labyrinth
used by other experimenters were exhibited. These modifications
consisted in arranging the labyrinth in such a manner that the en-
trance to a blind alley was not uniquely distinguishable from the
entrance to the other blind alleys of the labyrinth, and in arranging
the entrances to the blind alleys so that by changing certain doors
the labyrinth could be transformed into a labyrinth of a different
sort. The results of experimentation showed that the rats and cats
learned the passageways by correcting errors near the food-box first.
Of two alternate passageways of the same length, that with the least
possibility of error was learned first. In other labyrinths of equal
difficulty the same animals dropped the errors from both ends and
learned the whole in a very short time. The ants learned labyrinths
built on the plan of those used for cats even when the bottoms of the
alleys were frequently changed during the learning. They learned
less perfectly with light on both sides than with light on one side.
Rotation of a section produced no effect. Changing the side of the
light after learning controlled almost absolutely the movements of
the ants. Relearning when the light was changed required three
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 215
times as long as the original learning. Definite associations were
retained at least a week.
A total of nine experimental studies in normal human adult psy-
chology were reported. A paper by Mr. Hollingworth (read by
Mr. Bingham) reported an experimental analysis of the normal
drowsiness hallucination recorded by two observers during the past
two years. This experience was described as a ''flashlight percep-
tual fusion or complication, and is further characterized by change
of type of imagery, ideal substitution, fluid association on a sensory
basis, and by isolation of association trains when they tend to
develop. It is accompanied by tendencies toward vastness and
grandeur, by rapidly ensuing amnesia, and by absence of sym-
bolism. ' '
Mr. Jastrow, in discussion, called attention to the corroboration
of the paper by a forthcoming book by Havelock Ellis. He thought
the study was a welcome antidote to the recent Freudian movement,
but raised a question as to the absence of symbolism.
Miss Richardson reported an unusual case of color-blindness.
A young man about twenty-four years of age, who at one time had
passed the examination for brakeman on a railroad, found difficulty
in getting certain colored after-images. Investigation with the
Holmgren yarns, the Nagel cards, the spectral charts, and Hering
color-discs showed a complete absence of sensitivity to yellow and
blue, a weak sensitivity to any but very saturated greens of a low
order of light intensity, and a normal sensitivity to reds. Inquiry
into the family history showed that color-blindness was congenital.
An account of some recent experiments with the projection
method was presented by Miss Martin. Five series of tests were
made : to ascertain whether visual images are projectable at will, and
if so whether, when so projected, they are amenable to examination,
and whether anything is gained by having the images so projected;
to learn whether the projection method can be used advantageously
to study the difference between memory and imagination; to learn
whether the method is applicable to the study of illusions, hallucina-
tions, etc. ; and to learn whether the projection method can be used to
advantage in investigating auditory memory and imagination. The
results showed that the projection method is strong in that it fur-
nishes an objective standard for the comparison of visual images
and thus makes questions regarding visual imagery concrete; it
permits an examination of the image and the standard simultane-
ously under the same objective conditions ; it makes it easier to keep
the image at the same size and distance, and diminishes the likelihood
of interference by other images. Extension of the experiment
showed that the method was adequate to the study of the various
processes to which it was applied.
216
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Mr. Arps gave an introspective analysis of certain tactual phe-
nomena. Judgments were made on the intensity of standard and
comparative pressure stimuli applied to the upper phalanges of the
index and middle fingers. The introspections center chiefly about
the subjective variations of the standard stimulus. The results show
that the comparative stimuli render constancy in intensity in a given
norm impossible. This seems due to the assimilative effects which
are most efficient within certain limits of a series, above and below
which assimilative effects are minimal or entirely lacking. The fluc-
tuations varied according to whether the normal stimulus preceded
or followed the comparative stimulus, as to whether the comparative
stimulus was given in the ascending or the descending series, and
according to the duration of the norm and the comparative stimulus.
As to the duration of the stimulus, the results seem to show that the
normal stimulus has an effect on the comparative stimulus similar to
that of the comparative on the normal in regard to intensity. The
above results were obtained when the norm varied in duration but
remained constant in intensity. When the standard stimulus re-
mained constant both in intensity and duration, there was no notice-
able assimilative effect. Duration, then, seems to be the determining
factor in the production of assimilation.
A useful demonstration of tonal fusion was given by Mr. Bing-
ham. He showed how a clang could be reconstructed by a method
of synthesis. The reeds of a harmonium are tuned to the exact
pitch of a series of forks that represent all the partials which have
been found to be components of the clang. The forks are mounted
on resonance boxes, and by means of a depression bar there is played
on the harmonium a loud chord which includes among its notes all
the pitches of the desired partial tones. The tuning-forks are set
into sympathetic vibration. If the loudly sounding harmonium is
now suddenly silenced, there is heard a simple clang, strikingly
resembling in color the sound of the monochord. Indeed, the listener
is at first apt to judge that the monochord has been actuated. The
forks used in the demonstration were the Koenig series c', g', c", e",
7b flat", c'", d'", e'". These are the upper partials of the fundamental
128 v.d. Although no fork of 128 v.d. was among the series, the
clang as heard seemed to have that pitch. The explanation is that
since each of the forks makes with its next neighbor in the series a
subjective difference of 128 v.d., the total effect is a difference tone
sufficiently intense to predominate strongly over the objectively
weaker higher tones, and to serve as a fundamental for the clang.
A case of colored gustation was reported by Miss Downey.
Through reliance upon the color and tactual components of taste
blend, a young man was enabled to pass accurate judgments upon
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 217
taste qualities. His thresholds for the presence and the recognition
of sweet, sour, bitter, and salt were found to be average. Extensive
stimulation and the presence of an odor increased the vividness and
the persistency of the taste colors. They did not appear in minute
stimulation. These taste colors were definitely localized in the
mouth, were of a hallucinatory vividness, and possessed a uniform
color tone and persistence under stimulation. The presence of
objective colors introduced noticeable conflicts with taste colors;
they tended to conflict with each other, to modify each other, and to
fuse at times. The interpretation offered was that the synesthesia
was an actual part of the perceptual fusion and in the present case
easily accounted for by the color stimulation present in taste ex-
periences.
Abnormal psychology, mentioned frequently in the course of the
general discussions, came in for one paper. Mr. Huey called atten-
tion to certain matters of classification and terminology which had
been settled tentatively by the American Association for the Study
of the Feeble-minded at its Lincoln meeting, May, 1910. This classi-
fication follows:
1. The term feeble-minded is to be "used generically to include
all degrees of mental defect due to arrested or imperfect mental
development as result of which the person so affected is incapable of
competing on equal terms with his normal fellows or managing him-
self or his affairs with ordinary prudence. ' '
2. The feeble-minded are divided into three classes, viz. :
Idiots. 'Those so defective that the natural development never
exceeds that of a normal child of about two years. ' '
Imbeciles. Development higher than that of an idiot, but not
exceeding that of a normal child of about seven years.
Morons. Higher than imbeciles, but not exceeding the mental
development of a normal child of about twelve years.
Mr. Huey discussed this classification, pointing out that the
Binet scale has proved itself most useful thus far in determining
mental age, but other scales of norms are needed. Following Binet 's
suggestion, it may be well to apply these terms only when the mental
retardation amounts to at least three years, or to at least two years
when the child is not above nine. The term retarded may be used
for the lesser degrees, permitting backward as its popular equiva-
lent. Examination and classification in these terms, at the Illinois
Institution, shows imbeciles to be the most numerous, morons next,
and idiots least, though a mental age of one and a half to two years
is the most frequent of all. Admissions above the mental age of
ten are infrequent and hard to retain. Above twelve they are almost
unknown, though this is the most populous and most troublesome zone
218
TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of defect. Special study of 32 of these border cases shows lines of
transition from feeble-mindedness to "normal" dullness and instabil-
ity, to neurasthenia, hysteria, insanity, epilepsy, and suggests these
and other groupings of border cases. The characteristics of each
group should be brought out by further clinical studies. New tests
for local geographical orientation, for ability to classify objects, and
for levels of play seem likely to be of service.
On recommendation by the council, amended by the association,
the following resolutions were voted: (1) that the association extend
a hearty welcome to the Seventh International Congress of Psychol-
ogy for its meeting in 1913 ; (2) that in place of the regular meeting
in December, 1912, the association meet in the spring of 1913 in
conjunction with the International Congress; (3) that a committee,
composed of Messrs. Cattell, Miinsterberg, Sanford, Titchener, Wat-
son, and Bingham, be appointed to cooperate with the officers of
the congress.
Professor Carl Seashore was elected president and Professor W.
V. D. Bingham was elected secretary for the ensuing year. Two
places on the council were filled by the election of Professors Pierce
and Warren. Through the secretary announcement was made of the
proposed publication of The Journal of Animal Behavior and the
Animal Behavior Monograph Series, both publications to begin with
the first month of 1911.
M. E. HAGGERTY.
INDIANA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Theology and Human Problems : a comparative study of absolute idealism
and pragmatism as interpreters of religion. EUGENE WILLIAM LYMAN.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1910.
Professor Lyman has been known for some time to his colleagues as a
successful teacher and the author of a number of thoughtful articles
which have revealed a sound philosophical training and an agreeable lit-
erary style; but this book, which consists of the Nathaniel William
Taylor lectures delivered before the Divinity School of Yale University
in the year 1910, is his first introduction to a larger public.
It may be said at once that the impression which is produced is a
favorable one. The author shows himself a theologian of independence,
grasp, and virility, a welcome addition to the list of constructive thinkers
in the field of the philosophy of religion.
In the first place, he is master of a clear and lucid style. No one is
for a moment in doubt as to what he means, and he has, moreover, the
faculty, possessed in supreme degree by the great leader of the pragmatists,
whose untimely departure we all mourn, of vivid and happy illustration.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 219
In the second place, he writes out of an adequate knowledge. Pro-
fessor Lyman knows his philosophy and is able to use it without being
burdened by the consciousness of his knowledge.
In the third place, he shows evidences of independent constructive
power. A sense of proportion marks his workmanship, which gives pleas-
ure to the man who is accustomed himself to deal with problems of con-
struction.
The subject which he has chosen is " Theology and Human Problems,"
and the task which he has set himself is a comparative study of the two
methods of approach to these problems which divide the attention of
serious thinkers to-day. Four problems engage the author's attention:
first, the problem of our knowledge of God; second, the problem of the
nature of the religious experience; third, the problem of the interpreta-
tion of the world, as a whole, or, in other words, the question at issue be-
tween teleology and mechanism; and fourth, the problem of evil.
The methods of approach which Professor Lyman contrasts are those
of absolute idealism and of pragmatism. By absolute idealism he under-
stands the doctrine that " mind is the only reality, and every existing
thing is part and parcel of some mind" (p. 10), with its corollary that the
ultimate test of reality is " logical necessity " (p. 14). By pragmatism, on
the other hand, he understands the doctrine that will is more fundamental
than intellect in human nature, that knowledge is " essentially purposive "
(p. 43), and that truth is to be tested by its final results. In the first
chapter, indeed, he distinguishes Ritschlianism as a third type, but soon
dismisses it as a half-way house to pragmatism. In this the reviewer be-
lieves that he is correct. Ritschl, following Kant, makes a sharp contrast
between the theoretical and the practical reason. He believes in two
kinds of knowledge, the theoretical knowledge of science and philosophy,
which deals with causes, and the practical knowledge of ethics and relig-
ion, which deals with values. Thoroughgoing pragmatism, on the other
hand, rejects this dualism. It bases all our certainties, intellectual as
well as moral, upon practical demands, and judges theory in every realm by
its serviceableness. Professor Lyman believes that in this attitude prag-
matism is entirely right. Between its position and that of absolute ideal-
ism he sees no middle way. They are the two great highways to knowledge,
between which we must choose, and he himself unhesitatingly chooses the
former.
It is impossible within the limits of this brief review to follow the
author's reasoning in detail. In general, it may be said to be a defense of
the ethical as contrasted with the mystic interpretation of religion. A
few sentences will serve to indicate the author's attitude toward one ques-
tion which has been keenly debated in recent years, that, namely, between
monism and pluralism. Professor Lyman refuses to be impaled on either
horn of the dilemma. It would seem, he tells us, that ethical monotheism,
his own position, " should neither seek the protectorate of a rigid monism
nor allow itself to be stampeded by pluralism, but that it should stand forth
as an independent metaphysical point of view. The definition of monism,
as given by its chief sponsors, is too restricted, and that of pluralism is
220 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
too loose, to do justice to the facts of life when moral and religious ex-
perience is included, and we should insist on refusing allegiance to either
of these terms till one or the other of them has been remolded and de-
veloped in accordance with the requirements of an ethical metaphysics "
(P. 147).
To the philosopher who desires to keep in touch with the newer thought
in theology this book of Professor Lyman's may be confidently commended.
WILLIAM ADAMS BROWN.
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINABY.
Introduction to Philosophy. WILHELM JERUSALEM. Authorized transla-
tion by Charles F. Sanders. New York: The Macmillan Company.
1910. Pp. x + 319.
This is a translation of the fourth edition of the German work. It is
very unlikely that an introduction to philosophy has ever been, or ever
will be written, which will satisfy more than a small minority of philos-
ophy teachers. Jerusalem's book is, however, a real addition to the field.
It has many merits, and perhaps no more defects than are bound to attach to
any method of dealing with the subject that may be selected. The plan that
is followed is in general to combine a brief historical and analytic survey
with a constructive outline which sets forth the writer's own interpretation.
There are naturally objections to be found to either of these procedures.
Both are likely to be too sketchy to be altogether satisfying; and in the
expression of his own opinions a writer is under temptation to let his
private idiosyncrasies take space from the real task. But the first objec-
tion belongs, so far as I can see, to the ideal of an introductory book,
rather than to any particular form that it takes ; and Jerusalem's point of
view is sufficiently synthetic and objective to avoid any very sharp con-
demnation on the second ground, and to enable most teachers to get with-
out much trouble a point of attachment. It is to be expected that the
German origin will present certain drawbacks. Most of the references to
recent literature are naturally to Germans though it may be noted that
among other countries America fares particularly well; and in some
instances, where the authors are not yet fully naturalized, the treatment is
alike too extended and too general to be easily utilized. This, I suspect, is
the case with the rather extended account of Avenarius, for example; and
occasionally in other places the author assumes an acquaintance with
recent German developments which the average American professor pos-
sibly ought to have, but in all likelihood does not possess. This, however,
does not affect seriously the general value of the book. On the whole the
treatment is lucid, straightforward, and reasonably exact; and it is ren-
dered into clear and adequate English.
It is perhaps hardly fair to attempt much criticism of the doctrine of a
book which is professedly an introduction. On the whole, I am inclined
to think that the attempt to keep such a book entirely objective necessarily
involves the lack of any real organization and unity in it; and until
philosophers all agree of course a personal point of view will be unac-
ceptable to its opponents. If the writer wishes to insert his own doc-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 221
trines, and does this clearly and with due perspective, he has perhaps met
all legitimate pedagogical demands; many teachers, indeed, will be glad
to find things to criticize, up to a point, as an aid to class method.
It would not be difficult to find a good many things in detail with
which to quarrel, especially in the metaphysical section; and there is a
tendency, more noticeable in the sections that deal with some of the other
disciplines, toward generalizations, sociological generalizations in par-
ticular, that lack something in sharpness of outline and logical rigor.
But perhaps this is a necessity of the case, and on the whole the effect of
the book is cumulative in leading up to a pretty definite philosophical
outlook. Two quotations will perhaps sufficiently indicate the general
animus. Philosophy is defined, to begin with, as the " intellectual effort
which is undertaken with a view to combining the common experiences of
life and the results of scientific investigation into a harmonious and
consistent world theory; a world theory, moreover, which is adapted to
satisfy the requirements of the understanding and the demands of the
heart." Again, of method : " The formal demands which the present age
imposes upon an effective philosophy are, that it should be empirical and
strictly scientific in its nature and method, and that it return to sound
common sense." " Briefly stated, the points of view secured for philos-
ophy by means of this influence are the genetic, the biological, and the
social methods of studying psychical processes." The book has some
points of contact with American pragmatism, though the actual treat-
ment of pragmatism in the text will scarcely be accepted as adequate.
A. K. KOGERS.
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
MIND. October, 1910. The Psychological Explanation of the Devel-
opment of the Perception of External Reality (pp. 457-469) : H. W. B.
JOSEPH. - An examination of Professor Stout's view that " the two factors
involved in the perception of external reality are motor adaptation and
the projection of the self." It is maintained that this view lacks " real
coherence." The Truth of Protagoras (pp. 470-492) : C. M. GILLESPIE. -
Objection is made to Mr. Schiller's interpretation of the dictum of Pro-
tagoras, " Man is the measure of all things," as being the first statement
of the fundamental principle of pragmatism, or humanism. " There is
no justification whatever for the view that Protagoras taught that truth is
a ' value ' or any similar pragmatist doctrine." Difference as Ultimate
and Dimensional (pp. 493-522) : ARCHIBALD A. BOWMAN. - An examina-
tion of the negative logical judgment " S is not P." It is contended that
41 such an assertion is in its nature sui generis" that " behind the logical
indifference to quality there is a vital distinction of kind between the
affirmative and negative judgment," a distinction that is " unsolvable,"
and which, when taken into account, renders impossible the logical proc-
ess of obversion. The Apprehension of Feeling (pp. 523-532) : HELEN
222
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
WODEHAUSE. - The contention is, in opposition to Dr. Stout, that the
primary act in feeling " is simply to know-and-desire," and that " to know
that we desire" is an act of subsequent reflection. Discussions: Abso-
lutism in Extremis? (pp. 533-540) : F. C. S. SHILLER. -It is pointed out
that Mr. Bradley's article No. 74, in addition to a restatement of his
views, contains important admissions " which threaten to end the long
controversy about the logical character of absolute idealism." Philo-
sophic Pre-Copernicanism. An Answer (pp. 541-543) : H. A. PRICHARD. -
A reply to Mr. D. L. Munay's criticism of two chapters of his " Kant's
Theory of Knowledge." The Enumerative Universal Proposition and the
First Figure of the Syllogism (pp. 544-546) : H. W. B. JOSEPH. - A brief
objection to Mr. W. J. Robert's above-entitled paper appearing in the
April number of Mind. The Humanistic Theory of Value (pp. 547-549) :
JOHN E. RUSSELL. - Indicating " how a pragmatist can successfully meet
Mr. Quick's criticism of " the humanistic theory of value." Critical
Notes: Emile Boutroux, Science and Religion in Philosophy: ARCHIBALD
f
A. BOWMAN. Georges Lechalas, Etude sur I'Espace et le Temps: LEONARD
J. RUSSELL. Leslie J. Walker, Theories of Knowledge: Absolutism, Prag-
matism, Realism: F. C. S. SHILLER. E. B. Titchener, Lectures on the
Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention: H. J. W. J. M.
O'Sullivan, Old Criticism and New Pragmatism: R. A. P. ROGERS. Leon
Robin, La Theorie Platonicienne des Idees et des Nombres d'apres Aris-
tote. Etude Historique et Critique: R. PETRIE. L. Levy-Bruhl, Les
Fonctions Mentales dans les Societes Inferieures: R. R. MARETT. New
Books. Philosophical Periodicals. Notes.
Benett, W. Justice and Happiness. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
1911. Pp. 140. 3s. 6d.
Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Authorized translation by Arthur
Mitchell. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1911. Pp. xv -f-
407. $2.50.
Bernard, Luther Lee. The Transition to an Objective Standard of Social
Control. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press. 1911. Pp. 96.
$0.54.
DeVries, Hugo. The Mutation Theory: Experiments and Observations
on the Origin of Species in the Vegetable Kingdom. Volume II.
Translated by J. B. Farmer and A. D. Darbishire. Chicago: The
Open Court Publishing Company. 1910. Pp. viii + 683. $4.00.
Ellis, Havelock. The World of Dreams. Boston and New York : Hough-
ton Mifflin Company. 1911. Pp. xii + 288. $2.00.
Jourdan, E. F. On the Theory of the Infinite in Modern Thought. Lon-
don: Longmans, Green and Co. 1911. Pp. 55. $0.75.
Liard, Louis. Wissenschaft und Metaphysik. Authorized translation of
the fifth edition by F. and G. Valyi. Anhang : Emile Boutroux. Die
Philosophic in Frankreich seit 1867. Leipzig: Dr. Werner Klink-
hardt. 1911. Pp. vi -f 410.
Lipps, G. F. Weltanschauung und Bildungsideal. Leipzig und Berlin :
B. G. Teubner. 1911. Pp. viii + 230.
Natorp, Paul. Volkskultur und Persohnlichkeitskultur. Sechs Vortrage.
Leipzig : Quelle und Meyer. 1911. Pp. iv -f- 176.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 223
NOTES AND NEWS
THE Government Printing Office at Washington has issued an abstract
of the " Report on Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immi-
grants," by Professor Franz Boas, of Columbia University. The questions
on which evidence was collected were the following : " 1. Is there a change
in the type of development of the immigrant and his descendants, due to
his transfer from his home surroundings to the congested parts of New
York? 2. Is there a change in the type of the adult descendant of the
immigrant born in this country as compared to the adult immigrant
arriving on the shores of our continent ? " The following is from the
statement of the general results of the investigation : " In most of the
European types that have been investigated the head form, which has
always been considered one of the most stable and permanent character-
istics of human races, undergoes far-reaching changes due to the transfer
of the people from European to American soil. For instance, the east
European Hebrew, who has a very round head, becomes more long-headed;
the south Italian, who in Italy has an exceedingly long head, becomes
more short-headed; so that in this country both approach a uniform type,
as far as the roundness of the head is concerned. The head form may
conveniently be expressed by a number indicating the transversal diameter
(or width of the head) in per cents of the diameter measured from fore-
head to the back of the head (or the length of the head). When the head
is elongated (that is, narrow when seen from the front, and long when
seen in profile), this number will be low; when it is rounded (that is, wide
when seen from the front, and short when seen in profile), this number
will be high. The width of the head expressed in per cents of the length
of the head is about 78 per cent, among Sicilians born in Sicily and about
83 per cent, among Hebrews born in eastern Europe. Among Sicilians
born in America this number rises to more than 80 per cent., while among
east European Hebrews born in America it sinks to 81 per cent. This
fact is one of the most suggestive discovered in the investigation, because
it shows that not even those characteristics of a race which have proved
to be most permanent in their old home remain the same under the new
surroundings; and we are compelled to conclude that when these features
of the body change, the whole bodily and mental make-up of the immi-
grants may change. These results are so definite that, while heretofore
we had the right to assume that human types are stable, all the evidence
is now in favor of a great plasticity of human types, and permanence of
types in new surroundings appears rather as the exception than as the
rule. ... In order to understand the causes which bring about these
alterations of type, it is necessary to know how long a time must have
elapsed since the immigration of the parents to bring about a noticeable
change of type of the offspring. This investigation has been carried out
mainly for the cephalic index, which during the period of growth of the
individual undergoes only slight modifications. It appears in those cases
that contain many individuals whose parents have been residents of
America for a long time that the influence of American environment upon
224 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the descendants of immigrants increases with the time that the immigrants-
have lived in this country before the birth of their children."
AT the meeting of the Aristotelian Society on February 6 Miss H. D.
Oakeley read a paper on " Value and Keality." The theory that the
world of values is objective in its source may be connected with natural
realism. The qualities of the objects of perception which are objective
for natural realism are the experiential foundation of our estimates of
value. The " secondary qualities " have a degree of reality ; the stage at
which the recognition of value is aroused in consciousness is a higher
degree. This view is founded on the exposition of natural realism in the
late Professor Laurie's " Synthetica," though it does not follow that
exposition into the absolute idealism in which it seems to culminate.
A recognition of the reality of value seems also to be involved in the
metaphysical meaning of Plato's ideal theory. The character of experi-
ence as not only significant, but also symbolic, is not adequately explained
either psychologically as association, or epistemologically as expression of
that which is universally valid. The reality of the world increases in
proportion to its increase in value, and the valuable is a force with power
over the existent. The ideas can not intelligibly be reduced to forms of
a force originally without value. From the point of view here taken, the
appearance of things as in space and time, if symbolic, must be so in that
sense in which the symbol is part of the truth. Reality must also be
allowed to individua, since the simple witness of experience, if not cor-
roborated on the plane of the understanding, has its credentials in the
recognition of value. Of this reality, however, the inner side seems to be
unknown to us. The account of the reality of things as ultimately pur-
pose is unacceptable, since experience of reality would thus be inseparably
associated with practical experience. The truth in this view appears to
be that there must be some value as the substance of any reality. The
law of value in nature, corresponding to that of purpose in human life,
may be described as manifestation. The metaphysical relation of purpose
to that of other values is in this view the struggle from a lower to a higher
grade of reality, or a form of the tendency of any existence to increase its
value. The Athenaeum.
DURING the current month the Reverend J. Nevell Figgis, Litt.D.,
Honorary Fellow of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, delivered three
lectures at Columbia University on " Nietzsche," " George Bernard Shaw,"
and " Bergson."
THE Macmillan Company announce as forthcoming " The Social Basis
of Religion " by Professor S. N. Patten. Professor Patten describes
religion in terms of social function instead of in terms of theological
ultimates.
GEORGE PLIMPTON ADAMS, assistant professor of philosophy at the
University of California, has been appointed lecturer in philosophy at
Harvard for the year 1911-12.
GEORGE CLARKE Cox, Ph.D. (Harvard, 1910), has been appointed lec-
turer in philosophy at Dartmouth College for the year 1911-12.
VOL. VIII. No. 9 APRIL 27, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
CONTINENTAL CRITICS OF PRAGMATISM
I. FRENCH CRITICS
IT is now possible to obtain a literal orientation of pragmatism.
The continental critics have taken the western philosophy in
hand. In this there is manifest advantage, since by the time the
ardent movement has crossed the Atlantic the controversial spirit
has cooled off. For this orientation, for this alleviation, let us turn
to the Latins, for it is they who are especially fitted to interpret our
ways of thinking the French for their clarity of style and luminous
vision, the Italians for their penetrating practicality and social
instincts. We begin with the Gauls because they, in a fine revenge
for the material partition of their country, have become adepts in
the intellectual delimitation of other realms. Many of these critical
Caesars are known for their commentaries, but not all. We are
familiar with the conquerors and classifiers of the dark continent of
Kant, but not with those of the land of James. Here is a new race,
they exclaim; no one has understood it; let us therefore undertake
the task of setting in order these transatlantic barbarians. ' ' When, ' '
says Marcel Hebert, ' ' I first heard the word pragmatism, I fancied it
was a sort of American slang a useful practical formula to put
truth at the service of men of affairs and men of action, men not
particular as to the point of view of logic and criticism. But the
interest with which their books have been welcomed in Latin coun-
tries has undeceived me. It appears that there are so many excel-
lences and also so many paradoxes in the system that it would be
useful to explain them in their broad outline. ' n
In the same manner J. Bourdeau refers to pragmatism as a
system to be expected of Yankees, because it is a philosophy of
results, a philosophy of action, a philosophy of profits. It is in
harmony with the American attitude towards science, which puts
Edison and Morse in the first rank, Ampere and Fresnel in the
second. Nevertheless, for all its insistence on the practical, it has
1 " Le pragmatisme," Paris, 1909, Avant-propos.
225
226 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
its good points. One may expect from a semi-barbarous race only a
philosophy of engineers, merchants, brokers; yet that philosophy is
an excellent antidote to an aristocratic intellectualism, disdainful
of consequences. In France the prestige of ideas has been abused,
the people have become soft, the classes over-civilized. Hence the
value of the pragmatist as an apostle of energy, a philosopher who
proves his ideas not by dreaming them, but by acting them. In short,
pragmatism is a practical matter, obvious to men of affairs, "business
men," plutocrats by economic power and the conquest of material
comfort. Now while there is to be recognized in pragmatism the
Anglo-Saxon instinct, with its scepticism of pure ideas and its dis-
regard of general notions, its love of empiricism and its aversion to
complexity of thought, yet there are in France men not without
affinities with James and Pierce. Thus Bergson attacks the so-called
general truths of science, and traces the hypothesis to a personal
source. So, too, Maurice Blondel advocates a method which would
confront the various systems of intellectualism, from Descartes to
Taine, from the point of view of practical consequences. 2
This attitude of gleaning the practical factors from rationalistic
systems is what Rey designates as the new tone in philosophy. It
is not an eclectic positivism, for positivism lays too much stress on
pure science, and tends to disregard the emotional and passional side
of life. Nor is it the French neo-criticism which piously hands
down the traditions of absolutism from Descartes to Hegel. The
latter group of thinkers is a mere survival of the past; somewhat
fossilized, it has not taken account of the anti-intellectual and mys-
tical current, which starts with Schelling and Schopenhauer in their
rehabilitation of the indeterminate, the unconscious, the irrational.
Hence it is that recourse should be had to the aspirations of the
heart, to the obscurer instincts of humanity. True knowledge is, in
fine, to be sought not from positivistic science, not from proud intel-
lectualism, but in the intuitions of sentiment, in moral ideas, in
religious beliefs. Of all these pragmatism is the synthesis. 3
From the French critics thus far cited it is evident that the
"western Goth, so fiercely practical, so keen of eye," is, after all, not
so barbarous, but well in the vanguard of progress. At the last
r
International Congress of Philosophy Emile Boutroux showed how,
of the two dominant groups of thought, the pragmatists have as-
sumed the most advanced position. On the one hand are the intel-
lectualists who, completely satisfied with science, believe that there
is little knowledge outside its boundaries. On the other are the
anti-intellectualists who, going beyond the present limits of science,
2 Bourdeau, " Pragmatisme et modernisme," Paris, 1909, pp. 45, 60, 62.
8 Abel Rey, " La philosophic moderne," Paris, 1908, pp. 22-25.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 227
honor certain irrational powers of the human soul, such as instinct,
intuition, the sense of action. Berthelot stands for the former
group ; inheritor of the doctrines of the eighteenth century, successor
of the Encyclopedists, he makes a religion of science and believes
that it is the sole irrefragable foundation for the morality of races
as well as of individuals. Up to 1890, continues Chaumeix, such a
role was held by science in philosophy, sociology, and morality. But
in 1893 Emile Boutroux maintained against the mechanism and
materialism of the scientists the notions of liberty and spirituality.
Next, Ferdinand Brunetiere followed with his attack on the fallacies
of science, and showed that phenomena are always in formation and
that opinions must be modified by new experiences. Finally, Henri
Poincare, criticizing the values of the sciences, showed that, in place
of the fixity of general ideas, we must hold to the relativity of
hypotheses, that the simplicity of nature is but a convenient con-
vention, and that scientific formulae are but approximate accommoda-
tions to reality. 4
All this prepared the public the better to understand Bergson
and James in their criticism of intellectualism. Of these two au-
thors the latter was perhaps the most advanced, for five years prior
to the former's first book James showed that there already existed
in America a tendency to return to direct observation and psycho-
logical experience. Translated into French, the works of James,
with their simple and vivid style, were most acceptable to Gallic
taste. In subject-matter they went beyond the outworn positivism
of Comte, Renan, and Taine, since their author held that man pro-
gresses not so much by reason as by action. From these, his virtual
predecessors, the American obtained a terminology and observations
useful in explaining the mechanism of our living. But to these he
superaddod the vision of a spiritual and personal power in every
man, and to the neglected emotions he gave the proper function of a
motive force. For example, without attempting to solve the ques-
tion of freedom (which appears to transcend psychology), he at-
tributed to the belief in liberty a principle of energy and of improve-
ment. So his recent book, "A Pluralistic Universe," in its vigorous
attack on certain doctrines once made in Germany, rejects monism
with its immovable and glacial absolute, and prefers a recourse to a
pluralism which allows for human communication with diverse
powers by means of the subconscious.
So much for pragmatism as taught by its cultivated American
protagonist. Its practicality and energy exhibit the excellences of
the Anglo-Saxon temperament. Yet it has its weaknesses and its
4 Andre" Chaumeix, " Les critiques du rationalisme," La revue hebdoma-
daire, January, 1910, pp. 5-15.
228 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
defects. It has been useful in its attacks upon an overweening
rationalism, but, like rationalism itself, its critical output has been
over-proportionate to its constructive results in sociology, morals,
and pedagogy. 5
The defects of pragmatism, here merely intimated, are more fully
exposed by the other critics. Rey had broadly divided the contem-
porary groups into two rationalists and irrationalists. If the
former have been guilty of the dogmatism of the idea, the latter are
equally guilty of the dogmatism of the act, and thereby prevent the
ending of the unfortunate divorce between science and philosophy.
The old positivism had accentuated the differences between the two
disciplines, for to the followers of Comte knowledge did not neces-
sarily lead to action, but pure thought, the correct formula, was
deemed entirely sufficient. Now pragmatism has gone to the other
extreme. If, according to it, cognition follows the necessities of
action, then science is not the mistress but the handmaid of fact.
No longer principal, but subordinate, science has become merely a
special industry. Thus, with Bergson, there is no scientific truth,
but only truths contingent and fortuitous constructions, valuable
not in themselves, but only as instruments. 6
All this upholds the contention of James that pragmatism is not
a mere renewal of positivism. No Comtean would put on the same
level the experiences of science, of metaphysics, and of religion.
But this is what the pragmatists do; they reverse the Comtean for-
mula of development when they assert that pragmatism can utilize
all experiences, from the clearest to the most obscure, from the clari-
ties of pure science to the obscurities of the subconscious. For the
metaphysicians Rey considers this a perfect windfall. Just as ortho-
doxy in the face of modernism has brought back the practical sense
of dogma, in place of its esoteric or real sense, so in America he
predicts a violent return to older forms of belief. 7 Rey makes the
prediction, Bourdeau carries it out. It is to him a paradox that a
Yankee philosophy should lead to mysticism, but such seems to be
the fact. While the French critic refers this to a reaction against
scientific snobism, tracing it through the pragmatic appeal from
the intellect to the emotions, 8 in the case of James an American
might prefer to trace the latter 's mystic leanings to a directly
inherited interest in Swedenborgianism. But, whatever the source,
it is a veritable paradox that Occidental thought is approximating
Oriental. The American mind-cure has no historic connections, as
I
" Les critiques du rationalisme," pp. 19-32.
6 "La philosophie moderne/' p. 31.
7 Ibid,, pp. 31, 36.
8 " Pragmatisme et modernisme," p. 63.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 229
Bourdeau would hold, with the spiritual exercises of Ignatius de
Loyola; except for the Quakers, mystic manuals have had no pre-
vious vogue among the cultivated classes in our land. Rather should
this so-called auto-imperialism, this revived Yoga system, be traced
to the Platonic element in New England Puritanism and more espe-
cially to Emerson's interest in the sacred books of the East. It is
therefore not untrue to say that the most ingenious of the modern
remedies against the evils which assail us was discovered in America
in the mind-cure, the gospel of relaxation, the " don't worry " move-
ment. And an American, cognizant of this degraded form of New
England transcendentalism, this perversion of the Emersonian doc-
trines of self-reliance and compensation, can agree with the witty
Gaul when he compares the mind-cure to the grinding of the soul,
like a hand-organ, for the sake of those optimistic previsions: "Fata
viam inveniant; tout s'arrangera, parbleu! parfait! bravo!" 9
At first sight, the doctrine of auto-suggestion, of auto-persuasion,
might appear a mere by-product of pragmatism ; yet Bourdeau claims
it as a legitimate though extreme resultant of previous processes.
Therein intelligence plays but a secondary and subordinate role, and
thereby pragmatism shows its essential hostility to rationalism. That
hostility is historically shown in the way in which the movement
makes a tabula rasa of all that is not English or American. Des-
cartes, Leibnitz, and Kant do not exist for the pragmatist ; with him,
as with Herbert Spencer and Lord Bacon, there is manifest a positive
disdain for past thought. 10 This contempt for culture strikes all the
French observers as an earmark of the Anglo-American movement.
Chaumeix has already noticed it. Eey devotes a chapter to the prag-
matist disregard for the traditional solutions of the problem of
truth, 11 while Hebert neatly turns the tables by asking if these con-
temners of the past have not in fact had numerous predecessors.
The latter writer's search for sources is perhaps carried to excess; he
has made too many of the historic figures pragmatists uncon-
scious of their pragmatism. Socrates is obviously an early repre-
sentative in the line of succession, also the nominalists in their in-
sistence on the purely human value of general terms. But to make
Kant a precursor of James is far-fetched. The primacy of practical
reason is one thing, its pragmatic basis another. It is hardly a
seductive pragmatic distinction that one knows the existence, but
not the nature, of an object. 12 James, and particularly Dewey, are
opposed to such a transcendental agnosticism. The one makes truth
" Pragmatisme et modernisme," pp. 64, 89, 90.
10 Ibid., p. 91.
11 " La philosophie moderne," Ch. VII.
u " Le pragmatisme," pp. 66-68.
230 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
"happen to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events." The
other defines truth as "an experienced relation of the characteristic
quality of things." 13 The French interpreter is perhaps unaware
of the American pragmatist's aversion to the high a priori road of
Kant. From this arises his false identification of the philosophers of
Cambridge and of Konigsberg. He is nevertheless correct in ex-
pressing his surprise at beholding Schopenhauer numbered among
the precursors of pragmatism. His metaphysics is no doubt volun-
taristic, but the famous will to live is not the supreme principle. It
is intelligence which redeems the will by exposing the futility of that
will and the ultimate necessity of self-denial and self-annihilation. 14
Hebert is right. There has been a tendency to connect the will to live
with the will to believe and to trace the pragmatist's voluntaristic
element back to Schopenhauer through Nietzsche and Von Hartmann.
But that is a confusion of temperaments; to put James among the
pessimists is an absurdity to one familiar with his personality. The
will to believe, as his compatriots take it, is a will to believe in the
better, and upon this temperamental quality, more than upon logic,
is based the pragmatic doctrine of meliorism. It is unfortunate, in a
way, that the flamboyant western optimism should not be somewhat
modified. A dose of Schopenhauer might do the country good. In
view of the trusts and the tariff, of the high cost of living and unde-
sirable foreign immigration, many of James's readers are wondering
whether he should not have put more of his "bitters in the cosmic
cocktail. ' '
The excesses of optimism, and especially of the make-believe va-
riety offered by the so-called New Thought, have been exaggerated
by pragmatism. And here the French critic might have made more
of the similarities than of the dissimilarities with another movement
which emanated from his own country. It is true, as he intimates,
that positivism is unpragmatic in its insistence on the supremacy of
reason ; and that Comte, in his ardor for pure science, maintained that
the human spirit should proceed to theoretical researches, completely
abstracting itself from every practical consideration. 15 The imprac-
ticability of positivism is a forgotten phase of that Gallic cult which,
at one time, had such a vogue in America. And so is its optimistic
spirit which, through certain of its precursors, like Condorcet and the
Encyclopedists, seized so strongly on influential minds of the type of
Thomas Jefferson. If the French are here unaware of their past con-
tributions to the structure of pragmatism, so are they of the present.
Hebert gives the interesting information that Maurice Blondel, as
"This JOTJBNAL, Vol. V., pp. 124-125.
14 "Le pragmatisme," p. 69.
" Ibid., p. 71.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 231
far back as 1888, used the sacred word, but that his conscience was
clear as to his having stolen the term. But Hebert has noted that, as
early as 1879, Pierce 's now famous article on "How to Make our
Ideas Clear" was reprinted in the Revue Philosophique. Hence,
with the possibilities of plagiarism, we are left with the materials for
a philosophic affaire scandaleuse. But leaving that aside, Hebert
shows that another of his compatriots should not be haled into the
pragmatic court. The vogue of Bergson has been immensely in-
creased by James 's appreciative chapter on the author of * ' Evolution
Creatrice, ' ' but the two thinkers should not be confused ; armadilloes
have stripes, but some have more than others. The two additional
stripes which the French species possesses are these: the value of
pure perception, the possibility of an intuition of the absolute: 18
' ' We think in order to act ; we also act in order to think. ... It is
necessary to think of being directly, without making a detour. . . .
Here it is necessary to attempt to see for the sake of seeing, and no
longer to see for the sake of acting. ' ' 17
It is upon distinctions and differences of this sort that Hebert
bases the varieties of pragmatism. Here he gives an illuminating
classification and exhibits the various international affiliations. Of
the three chief varieties, pure pragmatism is exemplified by Pierce
and Schiller. Of these, in turn, the former's principle is one of
method, while the latter 's aim is to think the ancient formula over
again in pragmatic terms. Of pragmatism more or less modified, we
have those who admit in greater or less measure the knowledge of the
nature of reality. James accords that knowledge with an increasing
approximation; Le Eoy makes certain concessions; Poincare an-
nounces that we know relations. Partial pragmatism is that which is
modified in regard to its extension. Here one can restrict pragma-
tism to the scientific fact in so far as it is scientific, or one can apply
it to the theories or hypotheses and not to facts. Or again one can be
non-pragmatic on the subject of science and, at the same time, prag-
matic in metaphysics, in morals, in religion. As to the last there are
further distinctions to be made, such as pure religious pragmatism or
moralism, and modified pragmatism or symbolism. Finally, there is
pragmatism in the very broad sense, the variety that attaches more
importance to life than to doctrine; in general this is little more than
simply a tendency towards pragmatism. 18
What a classification! In addition to the thirteen varieties of
American pragmatists exhibited by Love joy, 19 we have now a host
19 " Le pragmatisme," pp. 72, 74.
1T " Evolution CrSatrice," pp. 321, 323.
" " Le pragmatisme," pp. 63, 64.
19 This JOURNAL, Vol. V., pp. 5-12, 29-39.
232 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of transatlantic cousins, for Hebert now cites among the diverse
forms of the religious species alone the moralism of Ch. Secretan,
the fideism of Pascal, Ritschl, and E. Menegoz, the symbolism of
Loisy, Le Roy, Laberthormiere, and Tyrrell. Having finished his
acute classification, Hebert proceeds to estimate American pragma-
tism from the cautious point of view of one writing for the Bib-
liotheque de critique religieuse. In regard to the theistic conception
he agrees with James that, as an over-belief, it is true because it is so
useful ; but he recoils from the representation of the relation between
man and the higher spirits as that of dogs and cats towards their
masters. This sort of Pickwickian humor, which has attracted other
Gallic writers, does not appeal to one who holds that the deity is an
object of worship not merely because he is primus inter pares, but
because he is the possessor of infinite perfections. 20 To this modern
scholastic, then, God is to be estimated not solely ex consequentiis, but
rather as an objective reality raised far above the level of probabil-
ity. In fine, since human nature is capable of seeing for the sake of
seeing, of knowing for the sake of knowing, it is necessary, over and
above such an utilitarian pragmatism, to affirm the excellence of
pure disinterestedness. 21
SOCIETIES
THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE WESTERN
PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
THE Western Philosophical Association held its eleventh annual
meeting at the University of Minnesota, December 28 and 29,
1910. The following officers were elected for the current year : presi-
dent, A. W. Moore ; vice-president, B. H. Bode ; secretary and treas-
urer, B. C. Ewer; executive committee, E. D. Starbuck, D. F. Swen-
son, J. H. Tufts. The treasurer reported a balance on hand of
$59.91. Professors Samuel Weir, E. H. Hollands, G. D. Walcott,
and L. A. Weigle were elected to membership in the Association. A
vote of thanks was extended to the department of philosophy and
psychology of the University of Minnesota for its cordial hospitality
in entertaining the Association.
The program consisted of sessions on Wednesday morning and
afternoon, the presidential address on Wednesday evening, and a
joint session with the American Psychological Association on
Thursday morning. The subject of the latter was "Philosophical
and Psychological Usages of the Terms 'Consciousness,' 'Mind,' and
" Le pragmatisme," p. 97.
21 Ibid., p. 100.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 233
'Soul.' " Papers were read by B. H. Bode, J. R. Angell, G. A.
Tawney, and E. H. Lindley. The address of the president, Pro-
fessor E. B. McGilvary, was on "The 'Fringe' of William James's
Psychology as the Basis of Logic." This address and that of the
president of the Psychological Association on Thursday evening
were followed by enjoyable smokers.
Abstracts of the papers presented follow :
Spencer's Interpretation of Derivation: J. H. FARLEY.
The idea of force and the derivation of various experiences or
ideas from the idea of force, as is well known, occupies a large por-
tion of Spencer's study in his "First Principles." The treatment
of force by Spencer, though ambiguous and nominally contradictory,
is predominantly identified with the element of resistance in experi-
ence. As thus conceived we ask, What is the precise method em-
ployed by Spencer in his attempt to derive phenomena, objective,
subjective, and psychophysical, from force?
Spencer does not aim to interpret or rationalize this specific prob-
lem. It might well be that he was not even conscious of its difficulties.
However, this in no way lessens the interest and value of a study of
the actual ideas which functioned to express for him the heart of
derivation.
In a brief, abstract way we may contrast and summarize his
methods of derivation as follows :
1. He does not specifically treat derivation as a process of un-
folding.
2. Nor as a mere intensity growth.
3. Nor as a history series.
4. Nor as a mechanical addition.
5. Nor as a developing purpose, as in theistic evolution.
6. Nor, finally, as the letting loose of naturalistic potentialities.
He docs specifically treat derivation as a rise of the new:
1. Tlmmirh combination as fusion.
2. Through a manipulation of the notion of intensity as alone
expressive of the difference between past and present.
3. Through a tacit assumption of bodily transference from state
to state.
4. By means of the concept of transformation in psychophysical
relation*
5. By relating the elements in a complex to one of its features
and treating it as a subject or prospective ground for the other ele-
ments of the complex.
6. By showing how a situation is a prior prospective condition of
a given phenomenon.
7. By applying a form of experienced growth to a specific ele-
ment in experience.
234
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
8. And, finally, by showing how the heterogeneous develops from
the homogeneous by manipulating a relatively heterogeneous en-
vironment, i. e., the homogeneity assumed by Spencer is never abso-
lute, never complete.
The Import of Propositions: DAVID F. SWENSON.
This paper seeks to establish a distinction between the sense of
propositions and their implications. Most of the historical theories
of the import of propositions confuse this distinction; while pur-
porting to give the sense, they actually give one of the possible im-
plications. They are in reality formulas for drawing from given
propositions certain types of immediate inference. This is especially
evident in the case of all theories that take their stand upon a dis-
tinction between subject and predicate, and which seek the nature of
judgment in the relation supposed to exist between these two aspects
of its meaning. The method adopted in the paper to demonstrate
this thesis is a reductio ad absurdum; namely, the double application
to typical propositions of the form of interpretation demanded by
each theory, first to the original proposition, and a second time to the
result of the first interpretation. This method serves to bring out
into bold relief the nature of the transformation effected, and to
vshow that it involves a real change in meaning. The conclusion
reached is that no theory of the import of propositions in the usual
sense is possible. The primary sense of a proposition can only be
conveyed in its own terms, or in terms exactly synonymous. The
historical theories are rules for inferring from a proposition of one
type an equivalent proposition of a different type, and they should
be used in logic to enrich the doctrine of immediate inference.
The Psychology of Punitive Justice : WILLIAM K. WRIGHT.
Westermarck, in "The Origin and Development of the Moral
Ideas," has successfully traced the origin of punishment to resent-
ment. This, however, can not be regarded as its ultimate instinctive
source, since resentment is not the primary spring to any form of
action, but only arises in support of other instincts that have first
been thwarted. Therefore, though the immediate source of punish-
ment is resentment, its ultimate source is always to be found in other
instincts, chiefly in the gregarious instinct. In the attitude of so-
ciety toward an offender, the gregarious instinct is often evoked
against him, both through his attack upon the social order, and at
the same time in his favor as a member of the social group. This ex-
plains (1) the necessity for rationalizing punishment by measuring
its severity, (2) the later emergence of the idea of forgiveness, and
(3) the rise of the reformatory theory of punishment. The applica-
bility of the reformatory theory in any given case depends upon the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 235
instinctive reaction aroused by the offense, and not upon logical
deduction from an abstract principle. The deterrent theory of pun-
ishment arises as a correct interpretation of the protective function
of resentment. Its applicability is limited to offenders against whom
resentment is felt. In behalf of the doctrine advocated in the paper,
it is argued that it covers Westermarck 's own cases better than his
account, and that the researches of Sharp and Otto also tend to con-
firm it. Probably the deterrent theory is more popular to-day, but
if reformatory methods shall prove more successful in actually di-
minishing crime, the reformatory theory will become the most ade-
quate expression of human nature, since it will then be able to appeal
to the fullest possible coordination of instincts.
Preliminary Report of the Committee on the "Introduction to Phi-
losophy": BERNARD C. EWER.
In the absence of the chairman of the committee, the secretary of
the Association reported briefly the work done. A questionnaire was
sent to fifty teachers of philosophy, asking about methods, texts, etc.
Replies were received from thirty-four. From these it appears that
some doubt the utility of the course ; that most regard it as a system-
atic statement of philosophical problems, and rely mainly on the
history of philosophy for material; and that there is a comparative
neglect of the synthesizing functions of philosophy as applied to the
special sciences. The text preferred by a majority is that of Paulsen.
A full report will appear later.
The Ethical Rationalism of Richard Cumberland: FRANK CHAPMAN
SHARP.
Cumberland defines right action as action in conformity with the
demands of reason. Reason is not regarded as a special faculty; it
is merely a name for man's intellectual powers. The most funda-
mental law of the intellect is, avoid contradiction. Similarly moral
truth, or rightness, consists in avoiding the self -contradictory in con-
duct. It involves a contradiction to choose (1) the less good in pref-
erence to the greater good of self, (2) the less good of self in prefer-
ence to the greater good of another or others. Hence in content
morality is "the endeavor to the utmost of our power of promoting
the common good of the whole system of rational agents. ' ' If Cum-
berland's theory is supplemented by the doctrine of obligation first
skctrixMl by Butler and completed by Price, the result is a theory
identical in every important point with that of Sidgwick.
The Social Standpoint in the Study of Religion: E. S. AMES.
There is an increasing tendency to introduce the social and
genetic study of religion into college and university curricula.
1. Such a study emphasizes the fact that religion is native in
236
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
human experience, not in the sense of arising from a single instinct,
but of being a later development within the social structure to which
the instincts give rise.
2. A social study affords a perspective within which the different
stages and types of religion may be placed and compared. These
stages correspond to the general character of social organization and
progress. If religion did not partake in some definite way of the
ethical standards of different ages, it would be as impossible of scien-
tific treatment as if it had no natural place in experience at all.
3. The social point of view furnishes a necessary setting and rela-
tion for various subjective, individual aspects of religion which have
been dealt with at times in isolation; for example, the phenomena
of conversion and mysticism.
4. Such a study of religion has certain educational qualities. It
deals with live and concrete human problems, which are often vital
and sometimes dominant in the personal experience of the students.
There is good opportunity to cultivate the detection of the operation
of custom and tradition in inhibiting more rational and vital meth-
ods of social control. Advanced college students are already fa-
miliar, in other fields, with the point of view of biological and social
sciences, so that they are very soon able to make illuminating and
constructive application of this standpoint in the study of religion.
The social study of ethics has brought into new focus and alignment
the questions of justice and truth and ultimate values. In the same
way and by precisely the same readjustment, the social study of
religion is beginning to afford materials and insight for a more ade-
quate philosophy of religion.
The Empirical and Normative Method in the Study of Religion:
E. D. STARBUCK.
Two attitudes of mind have become fixed habits in science since
the Baconian revival. One is that every science must be a diligent
and industrious gatherer and organizer of facts. The other, equally
important, is the habit of selecting facts according to their use
and discarding the useless. This second lesson, as important as the
first, has been difficult to learn. Science has had to supplant the
evil habit of caring for facts as such. To succeed best a scientist
must be guided by a refined sense of the worth- whileness of the thing
he studies. No fact has any value except in relationship to the will,
and all science is, therefore, without particularly distorting the term,
essentially normative. The historic lesson is perhaps well enough
learned to guide any future science into an attitude that is at the
same time wilfully and purposefully both empirical and normative.
It is a noteworthy fact that the study of religion, which has been
so long under the tutelage of theology and rationalistic philosophy
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 237
and has been dominated by the belief in a complete, once-for-all
revelation, has been coming so rapidly into line with the prevailing
conception of the true scientific method. Although the formation
of an empirical science of religion is happily on the way, the work
has only fairly begun. The following were suggested as some of the
lines along which the study may be expected to develop and the
methods it should employ :
A. An intimate and exhaustive study of individual cases. In-
stances in point are Royce's "Essay on John Bunyan" and Riley's
"Study of John Smith." This is the most natural method of pro-
cedure and in many respects it is the most useful, in the interest not
only of the study of religion as a science, but also with reference to
its applied phases in the therapeutics of religion.
B. A comparative study of individuals in groups and of groups
with each other. This will proceed by first-hand observation of relig-
ious phenomena and by the use of the questionnaire method. The
study of religion must establish the equivalent of what in the exact
sciences are called norms or averages. It is only in this way that
one can estimate what is the central stream of religious consciousness
and distinguish between normal and pathological experiences.
C. A combination of the first and second methods already sug-
gested as employed, for example, by James in his "Varieties of Reli-
gious Experiences." These three methods must remain the right
point of departure for the study of religion, since they are handling
at first hand real facts. It is the recognition that the facts of
religion, with their life-blood still warm within them, can be directly
studied that has created a science of religion. This could never come
about so long as the student of religion continued to depend upon
second or even third-hand reports of savage beliefs and customs, and
upon the crystallized expressions of the religious impulse, such as the
sociologists and historians use.
D. The application of the psychophysical methods to the study of
religion. It should have its own laboratory, or work in conjunction
with one. Persons or groups of persons with like and different
religious experience of a pronounced kind might well be studied
exhaustively with reference to all their mental and physical reactions
in order to discover the soil in which the variety of religious experi-
ences flourishes.
E. The study of religion may confidently expect as much help
from physiological psychology as comes to the psychologist proper.
The point of approach will be, presumably, a knowledge of the nerve
connections of the lower senses and particularly a knowledge of the
sympathetic nervous system and its various connections, which seem
to be the mechanism for controlling the immediate instinctive re-
238
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sponses to outward situations, and the equivalent of these in the
higher life of worth and value.
F. The pathology of religion. The study of religion may expect
the same enrichment from an analysis of abnormal religious experi-
ences that psychology has had from psychiatry.
G. The adaptation of the results of related sciences. Up to a
decade or two ago the study of religion was under the tutelage of the
other sciences entirely. It will continue to draw from these, but at
the present time it has its own technique and its own subject-matter,
and can stand upon its own feet.
JOINT SESSION WITH THE WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
Topic: Philosophical and Psychological V sages of the Terms Mind,
Consciousness, and Soul.
J. B. ANGELL.
The term soul has generally been applied to the supposed spiritual
essence of human personality which persists after death. As such it
is connected with problems not soluble by ordinary empirical meth-
ods. Psychology as an empirical natural science has consequently
ceased to use it as a familiar part of its terminology.
The term mind as meaning a durable psychic entity has also come
to enjoy a highly precarious position. William James's defense of
the "Thought of the Moment" as the only thinker needed in psy-
chology is the classic expression of the passing of the old-fashioned
conception of the mind. Mind as a term applicable to the entirety
of mental phenomena, but not to a stable entity, continues to serve
a useful function.
If concrete psychological events could be explained more effect-
ively than otherwise by the hypothesis of a soul or a permanent
mind, no doubt these terms and their corresponding concepts would
still be actively represented in our literature. But this is- not gener-
ally thought to be the case.
Signs are not wanting that the term consciousness itself is like-
wise in danger of extinction or at least essential modification. As a
class name valuable for designating a group of phenomena presenting
peculiar problems, it will presumably long remain with us. This
will no doubt prove true despite the difficulty of defining it and
despite the efforts of certain metaphysicians to reduce consciousness
to one among other relations sustained to one another by objects.
But there is unquestionably a widespread movement on foot in which
interest is centered in the results of conscious processes, rather than
in the processes themselves. This is peculiarly true in animal psy-
chology; it is only less true in human psychology. In these cases
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 239
interest is in what may, for lack of a better term, be called " be-
havior"; and the analysis of consciousness is primarily justified by
the light it throws on behavior, rather than vice versa.
If this movement should go forward, we should probably have a
general science of behavior, recognizing two main subdivisions,
physiological and psychical.
In any event this is a period in which sharp distinctions of one
science from another are commonly regarded as both impracticable
and unprofitable. With the movement in psychology over toward
biological and physiological conceptions, it may reasonably be ex-
pected that the word consciousness will take on more marked dynamic
and functional characteristics, so that even if the term persists, it
will undergo material alteration in its implications.
B. H. BODE.
The realistic movement has contributed a variety of definitions
of consciousness, the definitions here discussed being those which
identify consciousness respectively with awareness or apprehension,
with context or setting, and with the function of representation or
meaning. The first of these is obliged to recognize two kinds of
objects, viz., those which exist only when there is awareness e. g.,
pleasures and pains and those which may exist apart from aware-
ness. Hence it is obliged to postulate two different types of response
on the part of the perceiving organism, the one being a condition
of awareness only, while the other is a condition both of awareness
and of those qualities or objects which exist only when there is aware-
ness. This implication of the position finds no support in the
present-day psychology of perception.' The actual test between the
kinds of objects is not this hypothetical difference in our responses,
but in context or relationship. In applying this test, however, the
realist confuses the distinction between fact and meaning or validity
with the distinction between valid fact and validating experience.
This same confusion occurs in the form of realism which discards
awareness and finds in context or relationship the source of the dif-
ferentiation between consciousness and object. It, therefore, has no
advantage over the other theory. The assertion that consciousness is
the function of meaning assumes a hard and fast distinction between
sense-quality and meaning, which does not exist in fact. The view
of instrumentalism, which has much to say for itself, is that con-
sciousness is a name for the entities created by the psychologist in
the furtherance of his particular purposes. It is not a distinct entity
or function or relationship. The business of the psychologist is with
the acts which constitute the course of experiencing.
240
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G. A. TAWNEY.
The ancients were familiar with the facts that man may know his
own knowing and that many men know the same things, con-scious-
ness. But they had no terms which regularly denoted these facts,
and they knew no problem of consciousness such as ours. They were
interested in the relation of the universal to the particular, of form
to matter, both terms of the problem being for them aspects of exist-
ence. Christianity et al. laid emphasis on the soul and the heart
with their motives, sins, and destiny. Like some of the ancients, it
identified these with the man. Descartes distinguished thinking
substance from extended substance, conceived minds as individual
things related to each other and to other things, and used the new
term consciousness to mean the mind's recognition of its own con-
tents. The word consciousness already meant the knowledge by
many minds of the same things. Descartes was chiefly responsible
for the doctrine of the subjectivity of the sense-properties of things
and for the distinction between the primary and secondary proper-
ties. Locke, and the early English psychologists generally, use con-
sciousness to mean the mind's perception of its own processes. But
they also tend to use it for these processes themselves. The empirical
aspect of mind is identical with consciousness. Metaphysically, mind
is something more than matter in motion. Thus, mind or conscious-
ness is the locus of ideas, emotions, choices, etc., and is made up of
these things themselves. Most of the central problems of modern
philosophy grow out of this conception. Romanticism and especially
the romantic philosophers, such as (e. g.) Kant, emphasized the
independence and autonomy of "inner life" or "inner world," and
modern psychology is, on the whole, the science of this ' ' inner life, ' '
its relations to the body and the ' ' external ' ' world, its elements, and
the laws of their compounding, etc. The terms "'mental states,"
"states of consciousness," etc., do not alter the situation. The func-
tional psychology defines function in terms of reflex sensori-motor
process an adjustment of the traditional conception of consciousness
to the laws of biology and physiology. It still discusses the relation
of mind to body and other problems growing out of the traditional
conception of consciousness. It fails to lay a scientific foundation
for logic, ethics, the philosophy of religions, and sociology, which
deal with actual human experience and human beings rather than
with that ideal construct called mind or consciousness. What is
needed is a psychology of that kind of behavior which is marked by
immediate value, selective repetition, and, to use words of much nar-
rower connotation, intelligence and character. If we could return
to the objectivity of the ancients it would be a distinct gain. Of
recent attempts to revise the traditional conception of consciousness,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 241
the paper gave special attention to Woodbridge's definition of con-
sciousness as an order of relations.
E. H. LlNDLEY.
The recent developments in the domains of animal behavior and
of abnormal psychology have subjected the orthodox conceptions of
consciousness to a severe stress.
The present trend toward a purely objective study of behavior
(Thorndike, Judd) tends to eliminate consciousness and to substitute
experience or intelligence, terms as yet equally vague.
The problem of the subconscious, often conceived crassly enough,
is a real problem. The hypothesis of unconscious cerebration, on the
other hand, carries a load already staggering. And inasmuch as we
know less about the brain than about consciousness, the effort to
banish all the difficulties of psychology to the limbo of unconscious-
ness seems little short of evasion.
Awareness as the criterion of consciousness is attacked from two
radically different quarters. Dr. Morton Prince has shown that in a
case of dual personality a somewhat elaborate computation was car-
ried on without the awareness of the dominant personality of the
moment. And Professor Titchener in his "Experimental Study of
the Thought Processes" says: "I doubt if meaning need be neces-
sarily conscious at all." And he describes a given recognition as
"simply a recognition without consciousness." He and other writers
insist that the Aufgabe, which determines the trend of consciousness
in the solution of problems, may be unconscious. In short, the most
essential factors in the composition of so-called conscious attitudes
are themselves unconscious. In a word, consciousness and aware-
ness are not coextensive. These cases from normal and from abnor-
mal psychology emphasize the dilemma in which our science finds
itself.
If psychology minimizes the conscious factor, if it subordinates
the psychic to the physiological, does this not involve the surrender
of the peculiar and unique task of psychology as distinguished from
biology and physiology ? Is it not the problem precisely of psychol-
ogy to make the most of consciousness rather than to minimize it?
To conceive consciousness in terms of levels or forms and not as a
point ; to employ to the utmost the principle of gradation, so fruitful
elsewhere ; to examine exhaustively the evidence of the subconscious ;
to try out the hypothesis that the transition from neural to conscious
is an elaborate series; to be stimulated by the new conceptions of
energy, now developing in physics, to hope for a new and illuminat-
ing statement of the psychophysical relation ; and to seek to conserve
to the conscious end of the series all the distinguishing marks that
truly belong thereto; to supply for the psychology of religion and
2*2
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
for abnormal psychology a theory of consciousness adequate to their
needs such constitute a portion of the urgent tasks of psychology.
BERNARD C. EWER,
Secretary.
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY.
DISCUSSION
NOTE ON METHODS OF REFUTATION IN PHILOSOPHY
~1V /rATHEMATICAL rigidity and certainty in philosophical argu-
-i-VJ ment have been sought by perhaps all philosophers of note
since the day of Socrates, though in varying measure. Only a few
have believed that it has been found. Therefore, in reading Mr.
Russell's article on "The Basis of Realism" in this JOURNAL/ any
student of philosophy would be impressed by the tone with which the
logician deals with the "idealist's" contentions. "Foolish fallacy,"
"elementary blunders" owing to "neglect of logic," such words
from such a source suggest that the goal so long sought is within the
sight of the giants of the newer logic. But experience may suggest
caution in thus interpreting Mr. Russell's tone. Descartes and
Spinoza believed that from the study of mathematics they had at-
tained power to submit philosophical argument to mathematical
standards of precision and certainty. Yet nowhere in my philo-
sophical reading have I noted a fallacy apparently more glaring than
the direct fallacy of accident in Spinoza's proof of Proposition XI.
of the first part of his "Ethics" or the circular argument by Des-
cartes in his "Meditations," wherein he proves God's reliability by
the reliability of the natural light, and then the reliability of the
latter by that of God.
An examination of Mr. Russell 's arguments in the very sentences
in which the forceful, hopeful phrases that I have quoted occur,
seems to reveal a succession of logical derelictions which are very
discouraging. Either Mr. Russell's logical studies are not so very
helpful in philosophical discussion, or else his thought moves in a
plane or dimension inaccessible to mine.
On page 160 it is asserted that the "idealist's" contention that
we can not know that there are things we do not know rests upon
the same "wrong analysis" of general propositions "which led Mill
to regard Barbara as a petitio principii." Now perhaps an idealist
might so rest his view. Whoever says he "did should give name and
page. Then Mill's analysis is rejected because, "when we know a
1 Vol. VIII., No. 6.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 243
general proposition, that does not require that we should know all or
any instances of it. 'All the multiplication-sums that never have
been and never will be thought of by any human being deal with
numbers over 1,000,' is obviously a true proposition, although no
instance of such a sum can ever be given. " I do not defend Mill 's
analysis of Barbara. I would, however, point out that the major
proposition of Barbara must be a general proposition of such a kind
that in "S" an instance of the class "M" is given. Hence in citing
a class of "general" propositions in which no instance can be given
of the genus named in its subject, Mr. Russell appears guilty of
ignorantia elenchi.
He goes on to argue, from the illustration of the "general"
proposition already cited, that some propositions we do not know
and of which no instance can be given, are propositions of whose
existence we can know. But, in that illustration, these propositions
must have for their subjects instances of sums of which (according
to Mr. Russell and the argument) no instances can be given. And
so they can not be named. A proposition of which no subject is or
can be given or named seems to me a contradition in terms. 2
Finally, in the argument thus far the propositions we are said not
to know have been known as to their genus but not as to their differ-
entiae. Even if we grant that some things which are unknown in
this specific way can be known to exist, it by no means follows that
some things which are not known in any way, to which the category
things can only be applied for convenience in expression, can be
known to exist. Hence the very proposition which Mr. Russell cites
to contradict the "idealist's" contention, that no things which we
do not know can be known to exist, does not contradict that conten-
tion. Must we not debit Mr. Russell with a converse fallacy of
accident. 3
1 have thought it justifiable to use so much space in this analysis
partly because Mr. Russell is attacking not only idealists but philos-
ophers generally. "Most current philosophical argument is fal-
lacious," he says (p. 161). Perhaps if it were so I should not so
quickly have been impressed by what seemed to me the peculiar
character of Mr. Russell's arguments.
PERCY HUGHES.
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY.
2 Of course the existence of the sums in question (whose existence, indeed, is
not implied in affirming the proposition cited) has nothing to do with the exist-
ence of the propositions of which such sums might be the subjects if they could
only be named.
8 It is as though one argued that because some people not Londoners are
effete, therefore some people not Europeans are effete, which does contradict the
assertion, No people not Europeans are effete.
244
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
How We Think. Part I., The Problem of Training Thought. Part II.,
Logical Considerations. Part III., The Training of Thought. JOHN
DEWEY. New York: D. C. Heath & Co. 1910. Pp. vi-f 224.
On page 72 Mr. Dewey analyzes a complete act of thought into five
steps, which may be condensed into three, thus : (1) a felt difficulty
denned, (2) suggested solutions developed by reasoning, (3) experi-
mental application of the suggestions. His book in its structure is an
example so far as printed matter can be of one complete act of thought
as so analyzed.
Part I. is the presentation and definition of the problem of training*
thought.
Part II. is the presentation and development of ideas which bear upon
the problem.
Part III. indicates the concrete application of the ideas there devel-
oped to the training of thought.
Thus the feature of this book, as an exposition of the new logic, is,
that it is what it declares true thought to be. In that respect it is unique.
And that is the respect in which its author is eminent among those who
are called pragmatists. Therefore I venture to say that this little " edu^-
cational " book contains the heart of his philosophy. It contains it,
moreover, in a form and language comprehensible to minds uncorrupted
by philosophic scholarship.
For those to whom the observation and classification of thought is an
end in itself, the most interesting parts of the book will be
First, in Part I. : (a) The emphasis upon the specific nature of
thought. " Thinking is not a case of spontaneous combustion ; it does
not occur just ' on general principles.' There is something specific which
occasions and evokes it" (p. 12).
(fr) The discussion of the relation of the psychological and the logical
(Ch. 5). I quote a characteristic passage: "Logical, however, is used
in a third sense which is at once more vital and more practical ; to denote,
namely, the systematic care, negative and positive, taken to safeguard
reflection so that it may yield the best results under the given condi-
tions. . . . No argument is needed to point out that the educator is con-
cerned with the logical in its practical and vital sense. Argument is
perhaps needed to show that the intellectual (as distinct from the moral)
end of education is entirely and only the logical in this sense; namely,
the formation of careful, alert, and thorough habits of thinking"
(c) A combination of (a) and (fe) in these sentences : " The dis-
ciplined, or logically trained, mind ... is the mind able to judge how
far each of these steps needs to be carried in any particular situation.
No cast-iron rules can be laid down. Each case has to be dealt with as
it arises, on the basis of its importance and of the context in which it
occurs. To take too much pains in one case is as foolish as illogical
as to take too little in another" (p. 78). These quotations may be
merely innocent pieces of advice to nervous teachers, and, as the publisher
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 245
fears, beneath our philosophic notice. But I doubt if they are so inno-
cent as they appear.
Second, all of Part II., in which the author's original contribution to
logical theory is more clearly set forth than anywhere else. I mention,
somewhat at random but yet with reference to the special interests of the
logician, four features of this part.
(a) The order of the chapters. Induction is the first thing mentioned.
And with that we know that we are set free from the Holy Writ. Our
logic is no longer to be a set of rules for a debating society, but an effort
to understand the technique of sagacity and science. Surely that tech-
nique will not be generally understood until it is viewed and described as
beginning with facts. But in the same sentence with induction, follows
deduction ; and we are introduced at the start to the " double movement
of reflection/' " back and forth between facts and meanings." I had the
feeling that I rarely get from a logic book that we are here dealing with
something that really happens. And the reflection recurred to my mind
that this logic believes in itself. It tells you that thought starts with
facts, and it starts with a fact.
After induction and deduction, judgment, which is a name for the act
of explicit discrimination within that back-and-forth process, and for
the conclusion of it the final determination, that is, of the meaning of
the facts given, which may abide in memory as a principle for future de-
termination.
After judgment, conception, which is the highest and latest achieve-
ment of thought the fixation of meanings themselves in terms, so that
discrimination in the back-and-forth process may become still more
explicit. Meanings become facts.
That is what has made all the trouble. To philosophers as such, mean-
ings are the interesting facts, and that is why logic has been handed
down to us back-end-foremost. It has been a science not of human
thought, but of philosophic thought ; and not of philosophic thought as it
actually is, but as philosophers like to think it is. Philosophers do not
acknowledge that their meanings, which they start with, are facts; they
think they are ideas. And so they describe thought as the interrelating of
ideas, with a short tail-piece or addendum granting that there is a kind
of ignoble thought called induction which has doubtful relations with
matters of fact. And it will always be difficult for philosophers to ac-
knowledge that their meanings are facts, and their philosophies back-and-
forth movements of thought from those facts to the ideas they suggest,
because such acknowledgment requires the humility of a Christian and
the courage of a sceptic.
(Z>) In each chapter we deal with the same process: inference, judg-
ment, conception names somewhat loosely and variously used in English
for different aspects or parts of the back-and-forth movement of thought.
Thus not only is the order of the parts of the old logic reversed, but the
parts are merged together.
It is interesting that a theory which emphasizes the specific nature of
every thought process, and a philosophy which absolutely capitulates to
246
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
variety, should have for its most characteristic contribution to future
books a new unification, a resolution of various principles of explanation
into one. But the paradox is only apparent, I believe, so long as that
one is held as it is here to be only a higher generalization, based upon
observation, and open to include whatever old distinctions are sustained
or new ones discovered in the facts.
(c) The definition of an idea, as " a meaning that is tentatively enter-
tained, formed, and used with reference to its fitness to decide a perplex-
ing situation; a meaning used as a tool of judgment." To that let me
add this quotation : " Ideas are not then genuine ideas unless they are
tools in a reflective examination which tends to solve a problem. Suppose
it is a question of having the pupil grasp the idea of the sphericity of the
earth. This is different from teaching him its sphericity as a fact. He
may be shown (or reminded of) a ball or a globe, and be told that the
earth is round like those things; he may then be made to repeat that
statement day after day till the shape of the earth and the shape of the
ball are welded together in his mind. But he has not thereby acquired
any idea of the earth's sphericity; at most, he has had a certain image
of a sphere and has finally managed to image the earth after the analogy
of his ball image. To grasp sphericity as an idea, the pupil must first
have realized certain perplexities or confusing features in observed facts
and have had the idea of spherical shape suggested to him as a possible
way of accounting for the phenomena in question. Only by use as a
method of interpreting data so as to give them fuller meaning does sphe-
ricity become a genuine idea. There may be a vivid image and no idea ; or
there may be a fleeting, obscure image and yet an idea, if that image per-
forms the function of instigating and directing the observation and rela-
tion of facts." The importance of this paragraph in logical method is as
great as its importance in educational method. It makes psychology, or
a consideration of mental processes, the basis of both these normative
sciences.
(d) A final feature of this part one that seems to need emphasis in
this JOURNAL is the discussion of the " theoretical, or strictly intellectual."
" The abstract thinker (the man of pure science, as he is sometimes
called) deliberately abstracts from application in life; that is, he leaves
practical uses out of account. This, however, is a merely negative state-
ment. What remains when connections with use and application are
excluded? Evidently only what has to do with knowing considered as an
end in itself." It ought to surprise some of the critics of this kind of
logic to find that it allows that man of pure science to exist. It not only
allows him to exist, but encourages him. " Interest in knowledge for the
sake of knowledge, in thinking for the sake of the full play of thought, is
necessary then to the emancipation of practical life to make it rich and
progressive." And it even goes so far as to encourage us to emulate with
moderation his example. " Every human being has both capabilities, and
every individual will be more effective and happier if both powers are
developed in easy and close interaction with each other."
As to the question what knowledge for the sake of knowledge is, and
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 247
how distinguished from error that is not explicitly answered. But per-
haps we can frame an answer out of two statements. On page 138, speak-
ing of thinking when it is employed merely as a means to more thinking,
the author says : " To a theorist an idea is adequate and self-contained
just because it engages and rewards thought." On page 142, speaking of
an example of " theoretical " thinking, he says : " No overcoming of
physical obstacles, no adjustment of external means to ends, is at stake.
Curiosity, intellectual curiosity, is challenged by a seemingly anomalous
occurrence; and thinking tries simply to account for an apparent excep-
tion in terms of recognized principles."
The answer to the question what " true thinking " is, when it is an
end in itself, that I derive from those quotations and my own reflection
upon the point of view of the book, is as follows:
True thinking is an inventory of actual facts for some reason attractive,
facts as near bare of meaning as the naming of them allows; or it is the
formulation of the relation of deliberately observed facts to established
meanings just for the fun of seeing how they fit; or it is the discovery
of relations between established meanings. All those are isolated parts
of the whole process of practical thinking. To them we must add that
practical process itself when its specific predicament is a conflict of the
intellectual taste of the thinker with his conceptual environment, and its
outcome a reconciliation which has its truth in the satisfaction it gives
him. If we ever found these four types pure of practical intention, and
distinct from each other, we might get the pleasure of the first type by
naming the first three pure science descriptive, explanatory, and mathe-
matical-philosophic and the fourth, philosophy proper.
In Part III. we return, with wisdom, to the classroom, where the
problem how to train thought arose. But the publishers will hardly
expect us, as teachers of philosophy, to descend into these concrete appli-
cations of the theory.
To the book as a whole I have intended to give the highest praise in
saying that it believes in itself. I wish to add, however, the observation
that throughout my reading of it I felt every now and then, when I came
to a word like bridge, or relation, or connection, or organization, organized
situation, coherence, etc., that I was touching bottom so far as this book is
concerned. I was harassed with the question, What is the difference
between an organized and an unorganized situation? I think the book
would be more clear, to those to whom it was especially addressed as well
as to us, if that point were explicitly dealt with.
Perhaps that would only start us off, however, upon another of those
" spiral movements of knowledge," to which justice is done, for the first
time so far as I know, upon page 120, leading us astray among still other
intellectual problems. There are plenty of loose ends in this logic one
of the most tantalizing to me being the question what a " meaning " is,
when you get it away all by itself. The chapter on meaning, as indeed
each of those theoretical chapters, wears very clearly the marks of an
origination and not a concluding codification. It wears also the marks
of origination in a mind loyal to things as they are. Its thesis does not
248
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
put it in fear of the facts. It is too full of specificness and free pieces
of wisdom to satisfy a regular scholar. And in this respect again it
obeys its own moral, a moral which has little academic backing besides
that of the author, but which I am by a happy chance able to reinforce
with the authority of the great Christy Mathewson of the National
League, speaking upon the all-important subject of " inside baseball."
" Those who are too scientific," he says, " stick to the rules when the rules
are no good that is worse than no rules."
MAX EASTMAN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Theories of Knowledge. LESLIE J. WALKER. London : Longmans, Green,
& Co. 1910. Pp. xxxix -f 696.
The problem of knowledge is approached by Mr. Walker from three
different angles, which are indicated by the titles of the three main divi-
sions of his book, viz. : " The Psychological Analysis of Cognition," " The
Metaphysical Conditions of Knowledge," and " The Epistemological Value
of Cognition." Under each of these headings he presents an extended
discussion of absolutism, pragmatism, and realism, the purpose being to
show that of these three realism alone offers a tenable view. Realism, as
he maintains, furnishes a " higher synthesis " which, by means of perti-
nent distinctions, reconciles antitheses and conserves what is true and
significant in the other theories.
The realism which the author professes is asserted to be the realism
of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. While he brings to his task a wide
acquaintance with the literature of his subject and a commendable spirit
of fairness, it is also evident that he is under the influence of a dualistic
bias which, to all appearances, has not been subjected to any serious
analysis and criticism. The subject-object relation, as he contends, is
present, as an experienced element, in all our sense-perceptions. Percep-
tion ordinarily presents us with things, although, on occasion, the object
of perception may be a sensation. " Sometimes we merely ' get a taste/ a
sensation of bitterness or sweetness localized loosely in the mouth, or we
feel hot from the effects of violent exercise or cold on account of a chill "
(p. 49). Again, " Sensation may be perceived and located in the tips of
the fingers, if we attend to them and not to the object touched. Even
color may appear as a sensation when the eyes are almost closed and all
variations in tone, tint, and outline are, as far as possible, eliminated "
(p. 50). Barring these rather exceptional cases, however, it may be said
that, while sensations are always the means by which we perceive (id quo
percipitur), they are never the object of perception (id quod percipitur).
The author frankly avows his adherence to what is commonly known as
copyism. " Sensation is an effect produced in a sentient organism by an
objective cause which it resembles ; and that resemblance is not destroyed
by the cooperation of the organism in the production of the effect "
(p. 389).
The contention that sense-perception presents things and not con-
scious states may not seem particularly compatible with the view that
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 249
sensations bear a relation of resemblance or correspondence to the external
agency which is their cause. This apparent incompatibility, however, is
eliminated, in the opinion of the author, through the instrumentality of
concepts or ideas, whose business it is to transcend the gap between sensa-
tion and object. Just how this is accomplished is not made very clear,
nor is the reader made to feel at home after he has been safely trans-
ported to the world of substantial realities. The author discourses of
substance and accident, of activity and passivity, of God as infinite and
as existing a se, with a freedom which is quite bewildering and altogether
unhampered by any constraints of reflective criticism (cf. Chapter XIII.).
This absence of self-criticism is presumably the reason why Mr.
Walker's objections to absolutism and pragmatism are, on the whole,
rather ineffective. The problem pressing for a solution is to bring into
harmonious relation the sensuous and the conceptual contents presented
in experience. If, for example, we grant Bradley's premises concerning
the character of these contents and the author does not explicitly deny
them it is no answer to his conclusions to appeal, e. g., in connection
with the discussion of time and change, to the fact that duration is real
or that Bradley himself asserts the universe to be unity in difference.
Neither is it pertinent to criticize pragmatism, unless it be recognized
that the latter intends its doctrine as a challenge of the Bradleian prem-
ises, i. e., unless we bear in mind that it offers a different interpretation
of sensation and thought. If we first define sentiency in the manner of
Bradley and the author, it is indeed true that pragmatism is unable to
evolve thought from sentiency (p. 84), or that thinking is not reducible
to " names and images." The author's loose way of treating sensations
betokens a failure to get at the inwardness of the epistemological problem.
To begin with, sensations are not clearly distinguished from perceptions.
But apart from this, we are told in one connection that sensations are
more or less adequate copies of their objective causes, while on another
occasion it is stated that, " strictly speaking, sensations when functioning
in a percept are not sensations at all, but merely nervous processes " (p.
51), a "short and easy method" of eliminating a troublesome factor
which might well excite the envy of T. H. Green. This seems to throw
the burden of the problem upon the concept or idea; yet, with regard to
the latter, the upshot of it all is that the idea is " a function of the mind
by means of which, somehow or other, we apprehend the nature of objects;
and its content, even though unconscious, functions in the mind when-
ever that idea is recalled, and so controls both association and assent "
(p. 63).
It must be added, however, that Mr. Walker's book is serviceable, not
only as a convenient summing up of current objections to absolutism and
pragmatism, but as a kind of index to the more important utterances on
these topics, and to divergences in doctrine and emphasis among leading
thinkers. It is written in a clear style and is provided with a very use-
ful index.
B. H. BODE.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.
250
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
RIVISTA DI FILOSOFIA NEO-SCOLASTICA. October, 1910.
Nel mondo del pensiero ellenico. Studi eraclitei (pp. 383-397) : MARIO
BRUSADELLI. - Heraclitus may be regarded as a connecting link in the his-
tory of Greek thought. To Xenophanes he owes the religious character
of his philosophy; to Thales and the Ionian school, his doctrine of fire
and his confusion of a philosophical with a scientific problem. He may
be regarded as a precursor of the philosophy of becoming and of the phi-
losophy of the " logos." La teoria delta causalitd nel positivismo e nella
scolastica (pp. 398-414) : E. CARONTI. - We can not analyze the concep-
tion of cause into constant conjunction, as positivists do ; but we are
bound to admit a true efficiency. Da G. Duns Scoto a Kant (pp. 415^430) :
SERAFINO BELMOND. - Duns Scotus is not, as has been believed, the Kant
of the Middle Ages. He introduces a few modifications in the traditional
theory of the genesis of concepts ; but it must be admitted that his opposi-
tion to St. Thomas bears on points which, even in our day, are not yet
settled. La teoria della veritd e delta realtd nel prammatismo (pp. 431-
451) : EMILIO CHIOCCHETTI. - An exposition of the pragmatic theories of
truth and reality. Le categorie di Aristotele (pp. 452-466) : AMBROGIO
RIDOLFI. - Substance must not be made to stand over against the other
nine categories : it is an element of them all. These nine categories pos-
sess entity only in so far as they participate of the category of substance.
Previsioni e predizioni (pp. 467^479) : C. F. SAVIO. - Just as physical
phenomena are governed by laws which are the expression of present and
future facts, whose cause exists in nature; so psychological phenomena
may be at least partially explained by the experience of the past, the law
of association, our subconscious life. Note e discussioni. Cronaca
scientifica. Tribuna libera. Analisi d'opere. Elie de Cyon, Dieu et
science, Essais de psycliologie des sciences: A. GEMELLI. O. Zimmermann,
Gottesbedurfniss. Als Gottesbeweiss den Gebildeten dargelet: A. CLERICI.
E. Formiggini-Santamaria, La psicologia del fanciullo normale ed
anormale con speciale riguardo alia educazione: A. GEMELLI. Hitter
Constantin, Platon. Neue Untersuchungen uber Platon: A. M. Grab-
mann, Die Geschichte der scholastichen Methode: M. DE WULF. A. D.
Sertillanges, Saint Thomas d'Aquin: L. BIANCHI. Mandonnet, Des ecrits
authentiques de Saint Thomas d'Aquin: CAN. MASNOVO. A. Daniels,
Quellen, Beitrdge, und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Gottesbeweise
im dreizehnten Jahrhundert. G. Grumwald, Geschichte der Gottes-
beweise im Mittelalter bis zum Ausgang der Hochscholastik. Baeumker,
Witelo, Ein Philosoph und Naturforscher 'des XIII Jahr. : M. DE WULF.
E. Vansteenberghe, Le " De ignota litteratura" de Jean WeencJc de
Herrenberg contre Nicolas de Cuse: A. PASSERINI. F. Tocco, Studi
Kantiani: A. D. A. C. Haddon, Lo studio dell' uomo: A. GEMELLI. A.
Brass, A. Gemelli, L'origine delV uomo e le falsificazioni di E. HaecJcel:
P. PAOLI. A. Gemelli, Cesare Lombroso : G. FARAONI. Note bibliografiche.
Notiziario. Sommario ideologico delle opere e delle riviste di filosofia.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 251
EEVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE. November,
1910. William James (pp. 711-743) : E. BOUTROUX. - An appreciative ac-
count of the life and works of William James. L'espace et le temps des
physiciens (pp. 744-775) : R. BERTHELOT. - The space and time of the
physicist are not reducible to the space and time either' of the mathe-
matician or of the psychologist. La logique de I'action (pp. 776-794) : J.
M. BALDWIN. - An examination of the conditions and extent of affective
implication. Etudes critiques. Les fonctions mentales dans les societes
inferieures (pp. 795-822) : P. LAPIE. Questions pratiques. Le lien
juridique: E. LEVY. Tables des matieres. Supplement.
Abramowski, Edouard. L'analyse physiologique de la perception. Col-
lection de psyclwlogie experimental et de metapsychie. Paris : Bloud
& Cie. Pp. 120.
Bajenoff and Ossipoff. La suggestion et ses limites. Collection de psy-
chologie experimental et de 'metapsychie. Paris : Bloud & Cie. 1911.
Pp. iv +. 117.
Bohn, Georges. La nouvelle psychologic animale. Paris: Felix Alcan.
1911. Pp. ii -f 200. 2 fr. 50.
Padagogisch-psychologische Arbeiten. P. Schlager, Das Institut fiir ex-
perimentelle Padagogik und Psychologic. Pp. i-xii. M. Brahn,
Experimentelle Padagogik. Pp. 1-16. Rud. Linder, Der erste Sprach-
unterricht Taubstummer auf Grund Statistischer, experimenteller
und psychologischer Untersuchungen. Pp. 17-87. Frank N. Free-
man, Untersuchungen iiber Aufmerksamkeitsumfang und die Zahlauf-
fassung bei Kindern und Erwachsenen. Pp. 88-168. G. Deuchler,
Ein Pendeltachistoskop. Pp. 169-178. Rud. Scholze, Neue Apparate
fiir experimentelle Untersuchungen. Pp. 180-208. Leipzig: Alfred
Hahns Verlag. 1910.
Pfungst, Oskar. Clever Hans: A Contribution to Experimental, Animal
and Human Psychology. Translated from the German by Carl L.
Rahn. New York : Henry Holt & Company. 1911. Pp. vii + 274.
$1.50.
Reininger, Robert. Philosophic des Erkennens. Leipzig: Johann Am-
brosius Barth. 1911. Pp. iv -f 464.
Taylor, Henry Osborn. The Medieval Mind: A History of the Develop-
ment of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages. Two volumes.
London : Macmillan and Co. 1911. Pp. xv -f 613, viii -f 589. $5.00.
Toulouse, Ed., et Pieron, H. Technique de psychologic experimentale.
Deuxieme edition, entierement refondue et tres augmentee. Deux
volumes. Paris : Octave Doin et Fils. 1911. Pp. 303 -j- 288. 10 fr.
Ufer, Christian. Grundlegung der Psychologic fiir Seminare und Frau-
enschulen. Leipzig : Quelle und Meyer. 1911. Pp. v -f- 169.
252 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
AT the meeting of the Aristotelian Society on March 6 the Honorable
Bertrand Russell read a paper on " Knowledge by Acquaintance and
Knowledge by Description." There are two sorts of knowledge of objects,
namely, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Of
these it is only the former that brings the object itself before the mind.
We have acquaintance with sense-data, with many universals, and possibly
with ourselves, but not with physical objects of other minds. We have
descriptive knowledge of an object when we know that it is the object
having some property or properties with which we are acquainted; that is
to say, when we know that the property or properties in question belong
to one object and no more, we are said to have knowledge of that one
object by description, whether or not we are acquainted with the object.
Our knowledge of physical objects and of other minds is only knowledge
by description, the descriptions involved being such as involve sense-data.
All propositions intelligible to us, whether or not they primarily concern
things only known to us by description, are composed wholly of constitu-
ents with which we are acquainted, for a constituent with which we are
not acquainted is unintelligible to us. When a judgment is rightly
analyzed, the objects which are constituents of it must all be objects with
which the mind which is a constituent of it is acquainted. This conclu-
sion forces us to analyze descriptive phrases occurring in propositions,
and to say that the objects denoted by such phrases are not constituents
of judgments in which such phrases occur (unless these objects are
explicitly mentioned). This leads us to the view (recommended also on
purely logical grounds) that when we say " the author of ' Marmion ' was
the author of ' Waverley,' " Scott himself is not a constituent of our
judgment, and that the judgment can not be explained by saying that it
affirms identity of denotation with diversity of connotation. It also,
plainly, does not assert identity of meaning. Such judgments, therefore,
can only be analyzed by breaking up the descriptive phrases, introducing
a variable, and making prepositional functions the ultimate subjects.
The Athenceum.
WE learn through the Atlienoeum that the first course of a new series
of Hibbert lectures is being given by Dr. L. R. Farnell concurrently in
London and Oxford, and should attract wide attention. His subject,
" The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion," includes marriage, family life,
and theories of divine punishment, and the development of the individual
conscience. The first London lecture was delivered on April 25 in the
University of London, South Kensington.
DURING the past month Professor Leonard T. Hobhouse, of the Uni-
versity of London, delivered a series of eight lectures at Columbia Univer-
sity on " Social Evolution and Political Theory."
THE third annual meeting of the Minnesota Psychological Conference
was held on March 31 at the University of Minnesota.
THE Fourth International Congress of Philosophy was held at Bologna,
April 6-11.
VOL. VIII. No. 10 MAY 11. 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE SPIRIT OF CONSERVATISM IN THE LIGHT OF
HISTORY
IT is a long, long time since human history began, when a species of
apes, closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee of the African
forests, found itself able to go on its hind legs without the assistance
of its fore limbs, leaving these free to become ever more dexterous
arms and hands. This new being, with his good, big brain case,
found that his ability to do begat a tendency to use his advantages in
novel ways. By casting bits of flint into the fire he perceived that
they would crack into convenient pieces for cutting and scraping,
and so he perhaps made his first tools. What manner of creature
he was, still hairy or no, sleeping, mayhap, in trees like his congeners
the apes of to-day, is a matter of conjecture. The veteran French
archeologist Mortillet guessed that the earliest of the chipped stone
tools found in the drift along river banks might be assigned to a time
extending back 240,000 years. 1 Suppose we allow some two hun-
dred and fifty thousand years back of that for the ancestors of
paleolithic man, the makers of the so-called dawn stones (eoliths),
and we arrive at the conclusion that man and his upright forerun-
ners have lived on the earth for at least a half million years. I think
that few versed in prehistoric archeology or in biology would feel
inclined to reduce this period, although we have no way of deter-
mining it with any satisfactory degree of accuracy. Now to judge
from the cavern remains, it would appear that no great progress was
made except in the skill with which the flints were chipped, in the
variety of their forms, and in the decoration of bone objects, until
perhaps ten thousand years ago, when the so-called neolithic or
ground stone period, with its pottery, its agriculture, and its rude
dwellings, comes clearly in sight. It is the neolithic stage in which
*De Mortillet, G. et A., "La Preliistoire, " Paris s. d. (1900), pp. 663 sq.
Archeologists who are unconvinced that the so-called "eoliths" indicate human
adaptations do not usually question the fact that man probably long used flint
and shells before the fist -hatchet was elaborated.
253
254 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the American aborigines remained. until the arrival of Europeans in
the late fifteenth century.
These facts about man's past have only recently been discovered
and have not as yet so fundamentally revolutionized our thought as
they should and will. Lyell's famous book on "The Antiquity of
Man/' which first brought home the truth to intelligent English
readers, was published in 1863, the year that I was born. I venture
to associate these two events, not on account of their parity in impor-
tance, but to emphasize the startling fact that it is only since my
appearance on the earth that any considerable number of persons
have even suspected the great age of the human species. It is true
that Augustine found it necessary, in order to secure precedence for
the Hebrew prophets, to refute the "lying vanity" of certain authors
who maintained that the Egyptians had been carrying on their
astronomical observations for no less than a hundred thousand years.
How was this possible, he scornfully asks, when not six thousand
years had elapsed since the creation of the first man? 2 This esti-
mate of the great church father was somewhat reduced by an English
prelate, Archbishop Usher, in the time of Cromwell. With laudable
precision he assigned to Friday, October 28, 4004 B.C., the creation of
all the terrestrial animals, the appearance of Adam, who, wholly
inexperienced as he was, was called upon to devise a complete zoolog-
ical nomenclature. Before the close of the day Eve was created to
solace his loneliness, and the nuptials, duly performed, constituted
the last act of the first working week. 3 Although some thoughtful
philosophers and theologians of the early church had expressed
doubts as to the literal truth of this story, Archbishop Usher's exact-
ness found favor in the eyes of Protestants in the seventeenth cen-
tury, and it was left for Darwin, Lyell, Huxley, and the anthropolo-
gists fundamentally to readjust our historical perspective, not half
a century since.
In order to understand the light which the discovery of the vast
age of mankind casts on our present position, our relation to the
past, our hopes for the future, let us borrow, with some modifications,
an ingenious device for illustrating modern historical perspective. 4
Let us imagine that the whole history of mankind were crowded into
-"De Civatate Dei," ed. Dombart (Teubner edition), lib. XVIII., cap. 40:
i( De Aegyptiorum mendacissima vanitate, quae antiquitati scientiae suae centum
milia ascribit annorum. ' '
3 ' ' Annales veteris Testamenti a prima mundi origine deducti, ' ' London,
1651, p. 1.
4 One of Haeckel J s students, Heinrich Schmidt, seems to have first hit upon
this method of representing " cosmological perspective.' 7 See Lester F. Ward,
''Pure Sociology," 1907, p. 38, note.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 255
twelve hours, and that we are living at noon of the long human day.
Let us, in the interest of moderation and convenient reckoning,
assume that man has been upright and engaged in seeking out inven-
tions for only two hundred and forty thousand years. Each hour
on our clock will represent twenty thousand years, each minute three
hundred and thirty-three and a third years. For over eleven and a
half hours there is nothing to record. We know of no persons or
events; we only infer that man was on the earth, for we find his
stone tools, bits of his pottery, and some of his pictures of mammoths
and bison. At twenty minutes before twelve do the earliest vestiges
of Egyptian and Babylonian civilization begin to appear. The
Greek literature, philosophy, and science, to which we owe so much,
are not seven minutes old. At one minute before twelve Lord Bacon
wrote his "Advancement of Learning," to which we shall recur
presently, and not half a minute has elapsed since man first began
to use the steam-engine to do his work for him. There is, I think,
nothing delusive about this reduced scale of things. It is much
easier for us to handle and speculate upon than the life-sized picture,
which so transcends our experience that we can not grasp it.
Two reflections are obvious: In the first place, those whom we
call the ancients Thales, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
Hipparchus, Lucretius are really our contemporaries. However
remote they may have seemed on Archbishop Usher's plan of the
past, they now belong to our own age. We have no reason whatever
to suppose that their minds were better or worse than ours, except
in point of knowledge, which has been accumulating since their day.
In the second place, we are struck by the fact that man's progress
was at first shockingly slow, well-nigh imperceptible for tens of thou-
sands of years, but that it tends to increase in rapidity with an ever-
accelerating tempo. Our forefathers, the drift men, may have satis-
fied themselves for a hundred thousand years with a single stone
implement, the so-called coup de poing, or fist-hatchet, used, as Sir
John Lubbock surmises, for as many purposes as a boy's jack-knife.
In time they learned to make scrapers, borers, arrow heads, harpoon
points and rude needles of flint and bone. But it was scarcely more
than half an hour before twelve by our clock that they can be shown
to have invented pottery and become the possessors of herds. The
of bronze and iron is much more recent. They still had a pious
devotion to the venerable stone hatchet, which the priests appear to
have continued to use to slay their victims after the metals began
to be used.
The Greeks were the first of all peoples, so far as we know, to use
their minds freely. They unquestionably demonstrated the capacity
of our intellects in ethics, metaphysics, logic, and mathematics, but
256
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the incalculable importance of the common things about them escaped
them in the main. Aristotle seems to have conceived that all the
practical arts had been discovered. He was willing that the slaves
should be left to carry them on, while the philosophers reasoned on
the ideals of a contemplative life, on the good, the true, and the
beautiful. Doubtless some advance was suggested in what we should
call applied science, especially at Alexandria, but conditions were
unpropitious, and mankind had no better ways of meeting his prac-
tical needs in Roman times than he had before Aristotle summed up
all the achievements of the preceding Greek thinkers. The great
Christian fathers, Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, if they did not
think material things absolutely bad, at least had no interest in
them. 5 Their gaze was fixed on the relations of the soul to God.
This transcended knowledge. Their contemporaries, the neo-
Platonists, maintained that the highest truth came through intuition.
Reason could reveal at best only unimportant matters. Both neo-
Platonists and Christians were far more interested in miracles and
various magical and sacramental methods of promoting man's
heavenly interests than in a study of God's world. It was with
this heritage that the Middle Ages began. A great part of what
had been known in the fathers ' time was forgotten. The text-books
handed down a little Greek knowledge, half understood and mixed
with incredible errors. The world was at best a sort of gigantic
allegory. The minerals possessed moral and magical virtues, rather
than chemical and physical. The alleged habits of the lion recalled
the death and resurrection of Christ, and those of the wren illus-
trated our dependence on the past. With the rediscovery of Aris-
totle's works, which were prayerfully studied in the universities in
the thirteenth century and elaborately explained and interpreted by
the great Dominican friars Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas,
a new barrier was erected to the fruitful study of nature and the
application of knowledge to man's material welfare. All of
Aristotle's mistakes became sanctified as well as all of the mistakes
of his new interpreters.
Roger Bacon, the first person, so far as we know, to express
an unbounded confidence in the possibilities of experimental science
and its usefulness, impatiently declared that it would be far better
if all the works of Aristotle were destroyed than that the universities
should be engaged in attempting to get at the sense of the bad Latin
translations upon which they were dependent. Aristotle, he con-
cedes, certainly knew a great deal, but at best he only planted the
tree of knowledge, and it had still many branches to put forth.
6 Henry Osborn Taylor, "The Medieval Mind," 1911, Ch. IV.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 257
"If we mortals could continue to live for countless centuries, we
could never hope to reach full and complete knowledge of all that
is to be known." Bacon held that the intelligent man of science
should acquaint himself with the simple, homely things that farmers
and old women know about. While in many ways the victim of his
age, Eoger Bacon, a little over six hundred years ago, gave first
expression to the promise of man's happiness that lay in a study of
plain material things. Experimental science, 6 he prophesied, would
enable men to move ships without rowers, carriages might be pro-
pelled at an incredible speed without animals to draw them, flying
machines could be devised to navigate the air like birds, and bridges
might be constructed ingeniously to span rivers without supports. 7
These tentative suggestions came about two minutes before twelve.
But a minute more was required before the expostulations of Roger
Bacon were really heeded. The leaders of Protestantism had no
heart in what we call progress. Luther decried reason as a "pretty
harlot" who would blind us to the great truths God had revealed
in the Bible. Melanchthon reedited with enthusiastic approval an
ancient astrology. Calvin declared man innately and unspeakably
bad and corrupt, utterly incapable of essentially bettering himself.
But Pomponazzi and Giordano Bruno and then Francis Bacon and
Descartes, about one minute before twelve, began to batter down the
great edifice which the scholastic doctors had reared from the blocks
they had appropriated from Aristotle. They pleaded for reason and
denounced the senseless respect for tradition. Descartes says, at the
close of his immortal treatise on "The Method of Seeking Truth,"
that he is writing in his own native French instead of the Latin of
his Jesuit instructors because he hopes to reach those who use their
own good wits instead of relying on old books. A little earlier Lord
Bacon published his wonderful "Advancement of Learning," also
in his own mother tongue; and at the end of his life his "Novum
Organon," in Latin. In both he deals with what he calls "the king-
dom of man." Augustine knew only of a kingdom of God and a
kingdom of the devil. Lord Bacon first popularizes in his varied and
resourceful English the promises of experimental science. He says :
"Perhaps the most striking presentation of Bacon's view is to be found in
his following words: "Quia licet per tria sciamus, videlicet per auctoritatem,
et rationem, et experientiam, tamen auctoritas non sapit nisi detur ejus ratio,
nee dat intellectum sed credulitatem ; credimus enim auctoritati, sed non propter
earn intelligimus. Nee ratio potest scire an sophisma vel demonstratio, nisi
conclusionem sciamus experiri per opera." "Compendium studii," Opera
Inedita, ed. Brewer, p. 397.
T ' ' Epistola Fratris Eogerii Baconis de secretis operibus artis et naturae, ' '
loc. cit., pp. 532 sqq.
258
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should take a stand thereupon
and discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is well taken, then
to make progression. And to speak truly, Antiquitas saeculi juventus mundi.
These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those
which we account ancient ordine retrograde, by a computation backward from
ourselves. . . .
Another error that hath also some affinity with the former, is the conceit
that of former opinions or sects after variety and examination the best hath
still prevailed and suppressed the rest; so that if a man should begin the labor
of a new search, he were but like to light upon something formerly rejected,
and by rejection brought into oblivion: as if the multitude, or the wisest for
the multitude's sake, were not ready to give passage rather to that which is
superficial, than to that which is substantial and profound; for the truth is,
that time seemeth to be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down
to us that which is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is
weighty and solid. . . .
Another error hath proceeded from too great a reverence and a kind of
adoration of the mind and understanding of man; by means whereof, men have
withdrawn themselves too much from the contemplation of nature, and the
observations of experience, and have tumbled up and down in their own reason
and conceits. Upon these intellectualists, which are notwithstanding commonly
taken for the most sublime and divine philosophers, Heraclitus gave a just cen-
sure, saying, Men sought truth in their own little worlds and not in the great
and common world; for they disdain to spell, and so by degrees to read in the
volume of God's works. . . .
But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the
last or furthest end of knowledge. For men have entered into a desire of learn-
ing and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite;
sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for
ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and
contradiction and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to
give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men; as
if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and
restless spirit ... or a shop for profit and sale; and not a rich storehouse for
the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate. 8
Bacon thus undermines reverence for the past by pointing out
that it rests on a gross misapprehension. Living before us, the
ancients could not be expected to be our peers in knowledge or experi-
ence. He would have the universities give up worshipping Aristotle
and his commentators, cease tumbling up and down in their own
metaphysical exaltations, and turn to the study of real things in the
world about them. The reason for such study should be, first and
foremost, the bright prospect of relieving man's estate. Like Sir
Thomas More, Bacon wrote a Utopia, the "New Atlantis." The
central feature of his ideal community was a sort of national academy
of sciences, a Carnegie Institution, in which all sorts of experiments
were carried on with a view to making discoveries which would better
8 " Advancement of Learning," Bk. I., Ch. V., sections 1-11, passim.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 259
the people's lot. Bacon has often been reproached with making no
real contributions to science. 9 The criticism is probably just, but
his role was that of a herald, as he himself recognized. He was the
trumpeter who announced the dawn of our own day.
It was in 1605 that the "Advancement of Learning" was first
published. And we may safely say that it is scarcely four centuries
since the idea of the possibility of indefinite progress through man's
own conscious efforts first clearly emerged in the minds of a very few
thoughtful persons. Francis Bacon first popularized this great idea
the greatest single idea in the whole history of mankind in the vista
of possibilities which it opens before us.
The idea of progress was essentially new. It could only develop
in an obviously dynamic social environment and with the growth of
historic perspective. The Greek thinkers did not have it in its mod-
ern form, so far as we can judge. It is true that Herodotus had a
lively appreciation of the general debt of Greek civilization to the
Egyptians, and Plato now and then refers to Egypt, but there is no
clear comprehension of just what we call progress. Aristotle was
keenly aware of the development of Greek philosophy since the Ionian'
philosophers, but there is nothing to indicate that he thought of
mankind as going on indefinitely discovering new truth, and he had
none of Lord Bacon's interest in seeing the results of natural science
applied to the gradual amelioration of the general lot of mankind.
Lucretius, the Epicurean philosopher of Cicero's time, doubtless
reflecting earlier Greek speculations, guessed that there had been a
stone age, a bronze age, and an iron age. 10 But his was no philos-
ophy of progress. Men might, it is true, understand the universe so
far as to perceive that it was the result of a fortuitous concourse of
atoms, limited in kinds and obeying certain fixed laws. But the chief
significance of this lay in abolishing all fear of the gods and of death.
He did not discover in his mechanistic universe any promise of steady
human progress. Indeed, he thought that a degeneration was set-
ting in which foreboded the complete dissolution of the universe as
we know it. In short the Greek and Roman philosophers would have
agreed with the medieval theologians in accepting the stationary
character of the civilization with which they were familiar.
Tor example by Draper, in his "History of the Intellectual Development
of Europe. ' '
10 In the oft -quoted and remarkable lines:
Arma antiqua manus, ungues, dentesque fuerunt
Et lapides, et item sylvarum fragmina rami,
Posterius ferri vis est aerisque reperta;
Sed prior aeris erat quam ferri cognitus usus.
"De rerum natura," V., 1281 sqq.
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Augustine and his disciple, Orosius, gave history a new back-
ground, and illustrated God's dealings with man, from the Garden of
Eden to the sack of Rome by Alaric ; but they knew little or nothing
of man's long history and unconscious progress in the past, nor did
they anticipate any future improvement, for to the ardent Christian
no earthly betterment could compare with the overwhelming issue
which awaited man after death, when every one entered into eternal
and unchanging bliss or misery. 11 Accordingly, emulation consisted at
best until the opening of the seventeenth century in striving to reach
standards set by the past. The mere age of an institution or a belief
came to be its surest sanction. The present might consider itself
fortunate if it was at any point as good as the past. Only with
Giordano Bruno and Lord Bacon did the strength of authority and
tradition begin to be weakened, in spite of the hostility and con-
sistent opposition of those who believed that they were defending
God-given arrangements against the attacks of infidels, free-thinkers,
and rationalists.
The process of weakening authority has been very rapid, consider-
ing its novel and fundamental character. It went on apace in the
eighteenth century. Beccaria, the Italian jurist, who pleaded so elo-
quently for the revision of the horrible criminal law, foresaw that the
conservatives would urge that the practises which he sought to abolish
were ratified by a hoary past ; he begged them to recollect that the past
was after all only an immense sea of errors from which there emerged
here and there an obscure truth. 12 During the early years of the
French Revolution and under discouraging circumstances, Condorcet
wrote his famous treatise on the indefinite perfectibility of man.
In it he seeks to trace the steps which humanity has taken in the past
toward truth and happiness. "Ces observations," he trusts, "sur
ce que rhomme a ete, sur ce qu'il est aujourd'hui, conduiront ensuite
aux moyens d 'assurer et d'accelerer les nouveaux progres que sa
nature lui permet d'esperer encore. Tel est le but de 1'ouvrage que
j'ai enterpris, et dont le resultat sera de montrer, par le raisonne-
ment et par les faits, qu'il n'a ete marque aucun terme au perfec-
tionnement des facultes humaines, que la perfectibilite de rhomme
est reellement indefinie; que les progres de cette perfectibilite,
11 This cursory treatment of a great theme, the origin of the idea of progress,
may be supplemented by Laurent, "Etudes sur 1'histoire de 1'humanite, " 1866,
Ch. XII., pp. 63 sqq.; Flint, "History of the Philosophy of History," pp.
88 sqq.; and A. Grotenfelt, " Geschichtliche Wertmasstabe in der Geschichts-
philosophie bei Historikern und im Volksbewusstsein, " 1905, pp. 10 sqq. The
latter is able to add little to what Laurent and Flint discovered.
"Beccaria, "An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, ' ' 1788, p. 113.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 261
desormais independent de toute puissance qui voudrait arreter, n'ont
d'autre terme que la duree du globe ou la nature nous a jetes." 13
These genial speculations tending to turn men's eyes toward the
future rather than the past were tremendously reinforced by the
scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century. These proved, first,
that man was learning a great deal more than any one had ever
known before about the world and his place in it. Secondly, he was
applying his knowledge in such a way as to make older methods of
manufacture and transportation and communication appear very
crude and antiquated. Lastly, Darwin, Lyell, Boucher de Perthes,
Huxley, G. de Mortillet, Haeckel, and the rest established the fact
that man had long before historic times proved himself capable of
the most startling progress. He had not only made his way from
savagery to civilization, but from the estate of an animal to that of a
man. Not only had his ancestors gone on all-fours and lived as the
beasts of the field, but their remoter ancestors had mayhap lived in
the sea and, as Darwin conjectures, resembled a so-called Ascidian
larva, a tadpole-like creature not yet supplied with an unmistakable
backbone. Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Beccaria, Con-
dorcet, these and many like them had stoutly maintained that man
could learn indefinitely more than any of his predecessors had
known, and could better his estate indefinitely by the use of this
knowledge and the desertion of ancient prejudices and habits. The
nineteenth century proved conclusively that he had been learning
and had been bettering himself for hundreds of thousands of years.
But all this earlier progress had been unconscious. For the first
time, close upon our own day, progress became an ideal consciously
proclaimed and sought. So whatever the progress of man has been
during the twelve hours which we assign to him since he became man,
it was only at about one minute to twelve that he came to wish to
progress, and still more recently that he came to see that he can
voluntarily progress, and that he has progressed. This appears to
me to be the most impressive fact that history reveals, and the most
vital in the light that it casts on the conduct of life.
If it be conceded that what we rather vaguely and provisionally
call social betterment is coming to be regarded by large numbers of
thoughtful persons as the chief interest in this game of life, does not
the supreme value of history lie for us to-day in the suggestions that
it may give us of what may be called the technique of progress, and
ought not those phases of the past especially to engross our attention
which bear on this essential point? History has been regularly ap-
13 ' ' Esquisse d J un tableau historique des progres de 1 'esprit humain, ' '
1797, p. 4.
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pealed to substantiate the claims of the conservative, but has hitherto
usually been neglected by the radical, 14 or impatiently repudiated as
the chosen weapon of his enemy. The radical has not yet perceived
the overwhelming value to him of a real understanding of the past. It
is his weapon by right, and he should snatch it from the hand of the
conservative. It has received a far keener edge during the past cen-
tury, and it is the chief end of this paper to indicate how it can be
turned with the most decisive effect on the conservative.
So far as I know, no satisfactory analysis has ever been made of
the conservative and radical temperaments. It is commonly assumed
that every boy and girl is born into one or the other party, and
doubtless as mere animals we differ greatly in our bravery, energy,
and hopefulness. But nurture is now seen to be all that separates
even the most uncompromising radical from a life far lower than
that of any savage that exists on the earth at the present time. Even
the recently extinct race of Tasmanians, still in a paleolithic stage
of development, represented achievements which it took man long to
accumulate. The really uneducated European could neither frame
a sentence nor sharpen a stick with a shell. A great part, then, of all
that goes to make up the conservative or radical may be deemed the
result of education in the broadest sense of that term, including
everything that he has got from associating since infancy with civil-
ized companions. I think that the modern anthropologist and psy-
chologist would agree on this point, and every one who allows his
mind to play freely over the question must concede that a great part
of what has been mistaken for nature is really nurture, direct and
indirect, conscious or, more commonly, wholly unconscious.
Now it has been the constant objection urged by the conservative
against a reform of which he disapproved that it involved a change
of human nature. He has flattered himself that he knew the chief
characteristics of humanity and that, since it was hopeless to alter
any of these, a change which seemed to imply such an alteration was
obviously impracticable. This argument was long ago met by Mon-
taigne, who declared that one who viewed mother nature in her full
majesty and luster might read so general and so constant a variety
that any individual and even the whole kingdom in which he hap-
pened to live must seem but a pin's point in comparison. 15 But
there is a wholly new argument now available. Whether the zoolo-
gists are wholly right or no in denying the possibility of the heredi-
tary transmission of acquired traits, there is no reason to think that
14 The Marxian socialist, of course, uses his version of the past in support of
his plan of social amelioration.
15 "On Education," "Essays," Bk. I., Ch. XXV.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 263
one particle of culture ever gets into the blood of our human species ;
it all must be transmitted by imitation or inculcation or be lost, as
Gabriel Tarde has made clear. We doubtless inherit the aptitudes
of our parents, grandparents, and remoter ancestors; but any exer-
cise that they may have made of the faculties which we share with
them can not influence us except by example or emulation. Those
things that the radical would alter and the conservative defend are
therefore not traits of human nature but artificial achievements of
human nurture. Accordingly, the anthropologist and historian can
rule out this fundamental conservative appeal to human nature by
showing that the most extraordinary variety has existed and still
exists in the habits, institutions, and feelings of various groups of
mankind; and the student familiar with the chief results of embry-
ology will see that the conservative has constantly mistaken the arti-
ficially acquired and hereditarily non-transmissible for constant and
unalterable elements in our native outfit. But, good heavens! if it
has proved possible to alter an invertebrate tadpole-like creature liv-
ing in the sea into an ape-like animal sleeping in a tree, and to trans-
form the ape-like animal into an ingenious flint-chipping artist, able
to paint pictures of bison and deer on the walls of a cave; and to
derive from the flint-chipper of the stone age a Plato able to tell a
most edifying tale about a cave full of conservatives, what becomes
of the argument for the fixity of human nature in any important
sense ?
While it is then highly unscientific and unhistorical to consider
the way in which men behave and feel at any particular time as ex-
hibiting the normal and immutable principles of human nature, his-
tory and anthropology nevertheless concur in proving that each new
generation is indebted to the previous generation for very nearly all
that it is and has. This is true of even the most rapidly progressing
societies, and there is reason to think that a group of mankind could
live indefinitely adhering to an unchanged scheme of civilization so
long as they were undisturbed and their environment remained con-
stant. We have seen how very recently the idea that progress is pos-
sible has dawned upon a small portion of mankind. The alterations
which any people can effect within a half century in its prevailing
ideas and institutions and in the range and character of its generally
diffused knowledge are necessarily slight when compared with the
vast heritage which has gradually been accumulating during
hundreds of thousands of years. In order to make the nature and
variety of our abject dependence on the past clear, we have only to
consider our language, our laws, our political and social institutions,
our knowledge and education, our view of this world and the next,
264
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
our tastes and the means of gratifying them. On every hand the
past dominates and controls us, commonly unconsciously and with-
out protest on our part. We are in the main its willing adherents.
The imagination of the most radically-minded can not transcend
any great part of the ideas and customs transmitted to him. When
once we grasp this truth we shall, according to our mood, humbly
congratulate ourselves that, poor pigmies that we are, we are per-
mitted to stand on the giant's shoulders and enjoy an outlook that
would be quite hidden from us if we had to trust to our own short
legs ; or we may restf ully chafe at our bonds and, like Prometheus,
vainly strive to wrest ourselves from the rock of the past in our
eagerness to bring relief to the suffering children of men.
Es erben sich Gesetz' und Eechte
Wie eine ew'ge Krankheit fort.
In any case, whether we bless or curse the past, we are inevitably its
offspring, and it makes us its own long before we realize it. It is
almost all that we can have. The most frantic of us are like a squir-
rel in his revolving cage.
There is no space here to discuss the general relation of history
to the causes and technique of progress, but a word can be said of the
effect which our modern outlook should have on our estimate of the
conservative mood. Mr. John Morley has given an unpleasant but
not inaccurate sketch of the conservative, "with his inexhaustible
patience of abuses that only torment others ; his apologetic word for
beliefs that may not be so precisely true as one might wish, and insti-
tutions that are not altogether so useful as some might think pos-
sible ; his cordiality towards progress and improvement in a general
way, and his coldness or antipathy to each progressive proposal in
particular; his pigmy hope that life will one day become somewhat
better, punily shivering by the side of his gigantic conviction that it
might well be infinitely worse." How numerous and how respect-
able is still the class to which this man belongs ! It is made up of
clergymen, lawyers, teachers, editors, and successful men of affairs.
Doubtless some of them are nervous and apologetic, and try to find
reasons to disguise their general opposition to change by taking
credit for improvements to which they contribute nothing or by
forwarding some minor changes which exhaust their powers of
imagination and innovation. But how rarely does one of them fail,
when he addresses the young, to utter some warning, some praise of
the past, some discouragement to effort and the upward struggle!
The conservative is a perfectly explicable and inevitable product of
that long, long period before man woke up to the possibility of con-
scious betterment. He still justifies existing conditions and ideas by
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 265
the standards of the past rather than by those of the present or fu-
ture. He neither vividly realizes how mightily things have advanced
in times gone by, nor has he the imagination to see how easily they
could be indefinitely bettered, if the temperament which he repre-
sents could cease to be cultivated.
Should the conservative be roused to defend himself, having been
driven from the protection which his discredited conception of "hu-
man nature" formerly offered, he may ask peevishly, "What does
progress mean, anyway ? ' ' But no one who realizes the relative bar-
barism of our whole civilization, which contains on a fair appraisal
so little to cheer us except promises for the future, will have the
patience to formulate any general definition of progress when the
most bewildering opportunities for betterment summon us on every
side. What can the conservative point to that is not susceptible of
improvement ?
There is one more solace, perhaps the last, for the hard-pressed
conservative. He may heartily agree that much improvement has
taken place and claim that he views with deep satisfaction all de-
liberate and decorous progress, and ascribe to himself the modest and
perhaps ungrateful function of acting as a brake which prevents the
chariot of progress from rushing headlong down a decline. But is
there any reason to suppose that any brake is necessary ? Have fiery
radicals ever got possession of the reins and actually driven for a
time at a break-neck speed? The conservative would find it ex-
tremely difficult to cite historic examples, but doubtless the Reign of
Terror would occur to him as an instance. This certainly has more
plausibility than any other alleged example in the whole recorded
history of mankind. But Camille Desmoulins, one of its most ami-
able victims, threw the blame of the whole affair, with much sound
reasoning, on the precious conservatives themselves. And I think
that all scholars would agree that the incapable and traitorous Louis
XVI. and his runaway nobles, supported by the threats of monarchs
of Prussia and Austria, were at the bottom of the whole matter. In
any case, as Desmoulins urges, the blood shed in the cause of liberty
was as nothing to that spilt by kings and prelates in maintaining
their dominion and satisfying their ambitions. 16 We may, therefore,
rule out this favorite instance of o'er-rapid change, and safely as-
sume that so far the chariot of progress has always been toiling up a
steep incline and that the restraining influence of the conservatives
has been worse than useless. Maeterlinck exhorts us never to fear
that we shall be drawn too far or too rapidly ; and there is certainly
nothing in the past or present to justify this fear. On the contrary,
18 II'
g in the past or present to justify th
'Vieux Cordelier," No. 3, December, 1793.
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as he says, "There are men enough about us whose exclusive duty,
whose precise mission, is to extinguish the fires that we kindle."
"At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, each pro-
gressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the
past. Let us have no fear lest the fairest towers of former days be
sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can
do is not to add to the immense dead-weight which nature drags
along. ' '
History, the whole history of man and of the organic universe,
seems now to put the conservative arguments to shame. Indeed it
seems to do more; it seems to justify the mystic confidence in the
future suggested in Maeterlinck 's ' ' Our Social Duty. ' ' Perhaps, as
he believes, an excess of radicalism is essential to the equilibrium of
life. "Let us not say to ourselves," he urges, "that the best truth
always lies in moderation, in the decent average. This would per-
haps be so if the majority of men did not think on a much lower
plane than is needful. That is why it behooves others to think and
hope on a higher plane than seems reasonable. The average, the
decent moderation of to-day, will be the least human of things to-
morrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good
sense and of the just medium was certainly that people ought not to
burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable
opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all."
Here again we may turn to the past for its authenticating testimony.
A society without slaves would have been almost incomprehensible
to Plato and Aristotle. To the latter, slavery was an inevitable corol-
lary of human society. To Innocent III. a church without graft was
a hopeless ideal. To Eichelieu a foreign service without bribery w r as
a myth. To Beccaria a criminal procedure without torture and
courts without corrupt judges were a dream. It would have seemed
preposterous enough to Franklin to forecast a time when a Phila-
delphian could converse in his home with friends far beyond the
Mississippi, or to assert that one day letters would be carried to all
parts of the earth for so small a sum that even the poorest would not
find the expense an obstacle to communication. But all these hope-
less, preposterous dreams have come to pass, and that in a little
more than a hundred years.
From these achievements the conservative has hitherto held him-
self aloof, whether from temperament, ignorance, or despair. Let
us exonerate him. He did not know any better. He had not the
wit to see that he was a vestige of a long, unenlightened epoch. But
history would seem to show that this period of exemption from service
is now at an end. It is plain that his theory that human nature
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 267
can not be altered is exploded, as well as his belief that a fractious
world needs him to apply the brakes.
The conservative has, in short, been victimized by a misunder-
stood past. The radical has hitherto appealed to the future, but now
he can confidently rest his case on past achievement and current suc-
cess. He can point to what has been done, he can cite what is being
done, he can perceive as never before what remains to be done and,
lastly, he begins to see, as never before, how it will get done. It has
been the chief business of this paper to suggest what has been done.
If there were time I might try to show that progress in knowledge
and its application for the alleviation of man's estate is more rapid
now than ever before. But this scarcely needs formal proof ; it is so
obvious. A few years ago an eminent French litterateur, Brunetiere,
declared science bankrupt. This was on the eve of the discoveries in
radioactivity which have opened up vistas of possible human read-
justments if we could but learn to control and utilize the inexhaust-
ible sources of power that lie within the atom. It was on the eve of
the discovery of the functions of the white blood corpuscles, which
clears the way for indefinite advance in medicine. Only a poor, dis-
couraged man of letters could think for a moment that science was
bankrupt. No one entitled to an opinion on the subject believes that
we have made more than a beginning in penetrating the secrets of
the organic and inorganic world.
In the fourth canto of the "Inferno" Dante describes the con-
fines of hell. Here he heard sighs which made the eternal air to
tremble. These came of the woe felt by multitudes, which were many
and great, of infants and of women and men who, although they had
lived guiltless lives, were condemned for being born before the true
religion had been revealed. They lived without hope. But in the
midst of the gloom he beheld a fire that conquered a hemisphere of
darkness. Here, in a place open, luminous, and high, people with
eyes slow and grave, of great authority in their looks, sat on the
greensward, speaking seldom and with soft voices. These were the
ancient philosophers, statesmen, military heroes, and men of letters.
Neither sad nor glad, they held high discourse, heedless of the wails
of infants, unconscious of the horrors of hell which boiled beneath
them. They knew nothing of the mountain of purgatorial progress
on the other side of the earth, which others were climbing, and heaven
was forever inaccessible to them. And why should they regret it-
were they not already in the only heaven they were fit for ?
As for accomplishing the great reforms that demand our united
efforts the abolition of poverty and disease and war and the promo-
tion of happy and rational lives the task would seem hopeless
enough were it not for the considerations which have been recalled
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above. Until very recently the leaders of men have looked back-
wards for their standards and ideals. The intellectual ancestors of
the conservative extend back in an unbroken line to the very begin-
ning of human history. The reformer who appeals to the future is
a recent upstart. He belongs to the last half -minute of our historical
reckoning. His family is a new one, and its members have often
seemed very black sheep to the good old family of conservatives who
have found no names too terrible to apply to the Anthony Collinses,
the Voltaires and Tom Paines, who now seem so innocent and common-
place in most of their teachings. But it is clear enough to-day that
the conscious reformer who appeals to the future is the final product
of a progressive order of things. While the conservative sullenly
opposed what were in Roger Bacon's time called "suspicious novel-
ties," and condemned changes either as wicked or impracticable, he
was himself being gradually left behind in a process of insensible
betterment in which he refused consciously to participate. Some
mysterious unconscious impulse appears to be a concomitant of
natural order. This impulse has always been unsettling the exist-
ing conditions and pushing forward, groping after something more
elaborate and intricate than what already existed. This vital im-
pulse, elan vital, as Bergson calls it, represents the inherent radical-
ism of nature herself. This power that makes for salutary read-
justment, or righteousness in the broadest sense of the term, is no
longer a conception confined to poets and dreamers, but must be
reckoned with by the most exacting historian and the hardest-headed
man of science. We are only just coming to realize that we can
cooperate with this innate force of betterment which has so long been
silently operating in spite of the respectable lethargy, indifference,
and even protests of man himself, the most educable of all its
creatures.
At last, perhaps, the long-sought sin against the Holy Ghost
has been found; it may be the refusal to cooperate with the vital
principle of betterment. History would seem, in short, to condemn
the principle of conservatism as a hopeless and wicked anachronism.
If what has been said above is true, or any considerable part of it,
is not almost our whole education at fault ? We make no consistent
effort to cultivate a progressive spirit in our boys and girls. They
are not made ito realize the responsibility that rests upon them the
exhilaration that comes from ever looking and pressing forward.
They are still so largely nurtured upon the abstract and the classical
that we scarcely dare yet to bring education into relation with life.
The history they are taught brings few or none of the lessons it
might. They are reared with too much respect for the past, too
little confidence in the future. Does not education become in this
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 269
way a mighty barrier cast across the way of progress, rather than a
guide-post to betterment? Would not those in charge of education
tremble before the possibility of having the young realize fully what
has been hinted in this paper ? What would happen if the teachers
in our schools and colleges, our theological seminaries and law schools
should make it their business to emphasize the temporary and pro-
visional character of the instruction that they offer, and urge the
students to transcend it as fast as a progressive world enabled them
to ? The comical nature of such a suggestion shows how far we are
still from any general realization and acceptance of the great lesson
of history. It opens up a vista of discussion into which I have no
desire to enter here, and I will bring this paper to an end by one
more admonition. As Maeterlinck urges :
Let us think of the great invisible ship that carries our human destinies
upon eternity. Like the vessels of our confined oceans, she has her sails and her
ballast. The fear that she may pitch or roll on leaving the roadstead is no
reason for increasing the weight of the ballast by stowing the fair white sails
in the depths of the hold. They were not woven to moulder side by side with
cobble-stones in the dark. Ballast exists everywhere; all the pebbles of the
harbor, all the sand of the beach, will serve for that. But sails are rare and
precious things; their place is not in the murk of the well, but amid the light
of the tall masts, where they will collect the winds of space.
JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
SOCIETIES
THE SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOUTHERN
SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY
THE sixth annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy
and Psychology was held in affiliation with the Southern Edu-
cational Association at Chattanooga, Tennessee, on December 27 and
28. The program extended over four sessions, and there were twelve
members of the Society in attendance. With but one exception the
program was carried out as announced, and all the papers presented
evoked a keen interest and profitable discussion. At the business
meeting eleven new members were accepted into the Society. Only
two reports were presented on philosophical themes, the others being
in the nature of pure and applied psychology.
At the first session Professor Turner discussed the place of Locke
in the history of thought, pointing out, after a careful analysis of
Locke's doctrine, that he is imperfectly interpreted as the founder
of sensationalism and the forerunner of Condillac. Locke does not,
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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in reality, advocate the passive mind, but is rather an empiricist who
makes considerable use of intuitionalism, and is thus more akin to
Kant in his general position. The place usually accorded to Locke
in our histories of thought should therefore more properly be given
to Hobbes.
Professor Ogden reported informally on the probable significance
of the Pythagorean philosophy in determining the sequence of names
which designate the days of the week. These names are, of course,
derived from the seven planets of antiquity. Pythagoras conceived
these planets as circling about the earth in orbits which duplicate the
relations of the seven notes of the musical scale. If one applies to
the planets, thus conceived, the same method for determining their
relations to each other which is applied in deriving the intervals of
the scale, the order of the days is apparent. The sun, which occupies
the median position in the system, with three planets beyond, and
three planets between it and the earth, is analogous to the Mese or
tonic of the Greek scale. The remaining order is determined by
proceeding from this point alternately downwards and upwards, by
intervals of four and five, respectively. This names the planets in
the order which denotes the sequence of the days of the week.
The second session was held jointly with the child study depart-
ment of the Southern Educational Association. Professor Hill spoke
for the urgent need of medical inspection of school children and
schoolhouses, and also advocated the establishment of state and
municipal bureaus of research which should study all matters per-
taining to child life, and cooperate with the work of the proposed
federal bureau.
A. J. McKelway, for the Southern Educational Association,
brought to the attention of the meeting a carefully digested statis-
tical report as to the illiteracy of children in the southern cotton-mill
villages, and urged the necessity of passing and enforcing laws for
compulsory education and the prohibition of child labor.
Professor Ogden presented a paper in which he advocated greater
emphasis on the expressive side of education, particularly oral and
written. This he based upon experimental results which have led
him to conclude that knowing is a process distinct from and independ-
ent of any direct mode of expression. Meaning is not necessarily
given adequately in the expression, because of the fact that the
mental antecedents are not usually in terms of images which permit
of ready representation, but consist, rather, in "thoughts" in rela-
tion to which the particular nature of the expression is more or less
a matter of indifference.
This session closed with the presidential address, which was deliv-
ered by Professor Buchner on the subject of "Learning and Forget-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 271
ting. ' ' The speaker outlined the history of the problem of learning,
and dilated on the vast importance to education of the modern con-
ception made possible by the classic experiments of Ebbinghaus, sup-
plemented by the point of view advanced by genetic and comparative
psychology. Learning " seems to be a species of 'behavior' which
mechanizes itself by the elimination of the useless as the organic
scale is ascended. It is also a constant mode of psychophysical
adjustment in which consciousness plays an increasingly important
role."
The second day's sessions were opened by Dr. Dunlap's report on
some investigations of rhythm which are under way in the Johns
Hopkins psychological laboratory. After criticizing the so-called
"attention wave" and "motor" theories for explaining the phe-
nomena of rhythm, the speaker advanced the opinion that the per-
ception of rhythm is essentially connected with the specious present,
in that all members of the group are "present" in the observer's
consciousness, and become simultaneously "past" when the group
terminates. He also discussed some of the problems under investi-
gation, together with the technique of the experimentation, appa-
ratus, etc.
Dr. Shepherd was detained at the last moment, and his paper on
"Imitation in Raccoons" was not received in time to be read.
Dr. Bailey presented for discussion the psychology of the Amer-
ican negro. He pointed out the almost entire lack of any reliable
psychological data on the subject, and urged that the psychologist
turn his attention to this matter in order that certain much-needed
information may be supplied to those who are grappling with the
social aspects of the negro problem.
The morning session concluded with a paper on the interpretation
of dreams and visions by Mr. Williams. The speaker explained the
essential likeness of dream states with certain morbid conditions of
the waking consciousness. He opposed Freud's contention that a
dream is always the gratification of an unfulfilled desire, and that it
is not influenced to any degree by external stimuli. He also main-
tained that one dreams all the time, when asleep, though the sub-
stance of the dream is rapidly forgotten unless brought to mind by
an associated idea.
The last session was opened by two reports presented by Pro-
fessor Hill. In the first the results obtained in some class experi-
ments on mirror drawing were discussed. It was concluded that
this sort of test serves as a good introduction to, and illustration of,
the learning process, but that it is not sufficiently standardized for
demonstrating the transfer of skill acquired by special practise. In
his second paper the speaker outlined the results of a comparative
272 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
study of children's ideals as obtained from a questionnaire answered
by 1,431 children. Although subject to many difficulties of exact
interpretation, the results agreed with similar studies in ''attesting
(a) diminution of acquaintance ideals with age; (&) increase of
public characters as ideals with age; (c) predominance of acquaint-
ance ideals with girls; (d) small number of ideals from fiction and
also (e) from religion; (/) girls choose more ideals from the opposite
sex than do boys."
Mr. Williams 's paper on "Precocity" gave a detailed treatment
of the methods employed and results achieved in the education of
John Stuart Mill and the son of Boris Sidis. In his conclusions he
maintained that "proper intellectual education inevitably leads to
precocity," and that the prime factor in this is the maintenance of
an affective disposition of satisfaction in performing the work pre-
scribed. A set of rather definite rules of procedure were also laid
down.
The sessions of the Society were brought to a close by Professor
Barnes's report on the pressure curve in voluntary control. His
experiments had to do with learning to move the ring finger volun-
tarily. Comparative results in the pressure curve of the two adja-
cent fingers were obtained by instructions to relax and to contract
the muscles of these fingers. Automatism was acquired more rapidly
by the subjects instructed to relax, than by those instructed to con-
tract. The curve was at first irregular, but after inhibition was
learned it remained practically constant, being more regular and less
in extent for the subjects instructed to relax. "When the hand is
supported, pressure seems to be an important element of the process
of inhibition during the learning process, but gradually decreases in
intensity as automatism is approached."
ROBERT MORRIS OGDEN,
Secretary.
UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
A Text-'booTc of Psychology. EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER. New York:
The Macmillan Company. 1910. Pp. 565.
The present " Text -book " was prompted by the insistence of col-
leagues, pupils, and publisher that a book be written to take the place of
the author's " Outline." The book aims to furnish an example of the
"type of texts which emphasize the necessity of an experimental control
of introspection, but which seek further to systematize the experimental
data and to relate the psychology of the laboratory to that of the pre-
experimental and non-experimental treatises."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 273
As compared with the 350-page " Outline," the " Text-book " contains
565 pages, with 149 sections informally organized under general topic
headings. Selected references for further reading, absent from the " Out-
line," are given after each section. The book contains 65 figures, chiefly
of laboratory apparatus for the most part neither described nor referred
to in the text.
The " Text-book " is not in any way a working over of the " Outline,"
but seems to be a totally fresh writing up of the fundamental principles
of normal introspective psychology from the original point of view, a
point of view which emphasizes, as did the " Outline," for the most part,
the doctrine of elements and laws of connection, the process character of
elements, the analysis of attributes (including clearness), the doctrine of
parallelism, the two-level theory of attention, the elementary psychology
of affection, the one-dimensional character of feeling, the method of intro-
spection a fairly consistent body of doctrine which has characterized all
the writings of this author.
Yet the order of treatment follows, in a general way, the arrangement
of chapters in the " Outline." The discussion of method is omitted
because adequate treatment at the present stage is beyond the limit of a
text -book. Since the " Text-book " is designed to replace the " Outline,"
it may be worth while to point out briefly the chief points of difference
between the two.
An introductory section discusses the subject-matter, method, and
problem of psychology, and adopts parallelism as a working hypothesis.
The problem is conceived to be the discovery of mental elements and the
laws of their combination. The method is declared to be that of intro-
spection, but introspection in such a sense that " it is not so absurd as at
first thought it seems, to say that we require the animal and society and
the madman to introspect." Reference to the nervous system is made
only for the sake of the " unity and coherence which a strictly descriptive
psychology can not achieve."
In the section on sensation the emphasis is on the attributes, which
are now quality, intensity, duration, and clearness, instead of the quality,
intensity, duration, and extent of the " Outline." There are sensations
for which the list is longer. " Vision and cutaneous pressure possess
extent; hearing and smell are spaceless; the other cutaneous sensations,
organic pressure and pains, and kinesthetic sensations, are endowed with
the spatial attribute, although they play parts of varying importance in
space perception."
Thirty-four pages are given to vision instead of the five of the " Out-
line." There is less effort to enumerate qualities for the mere sake of
number, and Bering's theory is given prominence. Sound, taste, and
smell come in for a clear discussion of 49 pages as compared with the 11
of the " Outline." There are separate sections for cutaneous, kinesthetic,
and organic sensations, and for synesthesia. Organic sensations receive
unusually complete and careful description and analysis. Less emphasis
is placed on the numerical expression of Weber's law. Instead there is a
more general discussion of the validity of units of mental measurement.
274
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
In the " Outline " the differences between sensation and affection
were stressed. In the " Text-book " the emphasis falls on their common
ancestry. " The writer holds that there is an elementary affective process,
a feeling element, which in our minds is coordinate with sensation and
distinguishable from it, but which is nevertheless akin to sensation and is
derived from the same source, made out of the same kind of primitive
mental material." Affection possesses the attributes of quality, intensity,
and duration, but is distinguished from sensation by lack of clearness and
by the presence of qualitative opposition. " The resemblance is so great
that the two processes are evidently derived from a common mental
ancestry; the difference is so great that we have no choice but to rank
affection in human psychology as a second type of mental element distinct
from sensation." The notion advanced in the " Outline " that the ana-
bolic and katabolic bodily changes give rise to the affective processes is
abandoned. The author hazards the guess that the peripheral organs of
affection are the free afferent nerve endings not yet developed into special-
ized sense organs and that pleasantness and unpleasantness might have
become sensations if mental development had only been carried further.
This is an interesting leap of scientific imagination, and one is tempted
to hope that since it has " lived long enough to be mentioned in a text-
book," it will not " die and be dissected in the pages of psychological
magazines" (see p. 49). The author warns the student, who is con-
stantly being advised against speculation, that this theory of the bodily
conditions of affection is simply a guess. Nevertheless four pages are
devoted to it.
In the " Outline " attention was discussed as a process of reinforce-
ment or inhibition of an excitation by the explosive discharges of cells in
the frontal lobes. In the " Text-book " the situation is much modified.
" Attention is identical with sensory clearness." The specific rhythmic
reinforcement or inhibition by the frontal lobes as the physiological con-
dition of attention is replaced by such general terms as cortical facilita-
tion and inhibition, and further judgment is suspended until more is
known of the physiological mechanism of these processes.
The two-level theory is deliberately expounded in the text, although
hidden away in the references for further reading is the confession that
the author " has fallen into the common psychological mistake of gen-
eralizing his own experience " (p. 302). The " consolation that the multi-
level modes of attention were first observed" in the author's own labora-
tory seems hardly sufficient justification for concealing them from the
student.
In place of the long and rather loosely organized chapter on percep-
tion and idea in the " Outline," we have here five excellently presented
special sections on spatial, temporal, qualitative, and composite percep-
tions, and the psychology of perception.
Association receives shorter treatment, with less emphasis on formal
classification and more on the analysis of the association consciousness.
The section on memory and imagination stresses chiefly the introspective
content of the memory and imaginative consciousness, and is character-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 275
ized by the ever-present tendency to explain things by " cortical set," the
assumption of which is said to outrun by far the experimental evidence.
The paragraphs subsumed under the general title " Action " discuss
the reaction experiment in detail, the genesis and classification of action,
and will, with a gratifying extension of analysis and introspection to the
action consciousness, and with emphasis on the reaction as an end, rather
than as a mere means of psychometry. This section seems, however,
rather long drawn out, while the whole topic of instinct is dismissed in
four paragraphs of fine print.
A conservative and trenchantly written section on emotion emphasizes
the need for further introspective work. The section has for its core the
exposition, criticism, and modification of the James-Lange theory. The
modification points out the importance of affection as an elementary
process attaching to simple perceptual material, and as the chief com-
ponent in the emotion, which is defined as the affective reaction to a total
situation. A brief discussion of the sentiments follows, replacing the
long chapter on sentiment found in the " Outline."
The recent study of the higher thought processes is recognized in a
section of 45 pages, dealing with such topics as conscious attitudes, cor-
tical set, feelings of relation, determining tendencies, the reduction or
decay of ideas and emotions, judgment, comparison and discrimination,
the self, etc. Every teacher will appreciate the value of such a summary,
though all may not agree that the subject is ready for incorporation in
standard text-books. The book throughout gives one the impression that
the author has great faith in the ultimate explanatory value of " uncon-
scious cortical set " and the " universal law of mental growth and decay."
And one senses a certain note of expectancy in the constant tentative
introduction of the two ideas into every section dealing with the so-called
higher mental processes.
Criticism, in such a review, must be largely confined to the book as a
whole. To the structurally minded, whose introductory students are
college juniors or seniors, the book will be at once welcome as a class text,
and will easily supplant anything else in the field. But it seems to have
been written for students much more mature than those for whom the
" Outline " was adapted. To those for whom the biological point of view
is a desideratum in an introduction to psychology, the text is, neverthe-
less, admirably suited for reference work; or, on the table of the in-
structor, it will afford a wholesome check on ultra-biological tendencies.
The book will be especially valuable to the advanced student and to the
young instructor for its honest attempt at complete systematic treatment,
its insistence on verification, and the wealth of elementary fact contained
in it.
The author's excuse for not including discussions of the nervous sys-
tem and sense organs is that the student should get this knowledge from
the physiologist, and that the psychologist needs all the time at his dis-
posal for his own science. But a text-book should be adapted to present
needs rather than to ideal conditions. As a matter of fact the ordinary
student beginning the study of psychology has not yet been provided with
276 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
adequate neurological information, and the psychologist usually finds it
necessary to devote some of his time to laying this most necessary founda-
tion. A text-book designed for present needs should help the teacher
minimize this time. To that end the reviewer feels that nothing would
be lost and much gained by the inclusion of cuts of the sense organs,
brain, and cord, and the nervous elements, even if the space required
should necessitate the omission of such pictures as that of the horse hair
and match, the horopter model, Exner's model and Koenig's difference
tone apparatus. The mere inclusion of the cuts with simple lettering or
brief description would undoubtedly increase the serviceableness of the
book for a considerable number of teachers.
H. L. HOLLINGWORTH.
BARNARD COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
The Reasoning Ability of Children of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth
Grades. FREDERICK D. BONSER. Columbia University Contributions
to Education, No. 37.
This monograph is by far the most thorough statistical study of the
reasoning ability of children that has been published. The tests used
were carefully chosen, care was exercised in giving the tests, the plans for
grading the results were well carried out, while every approved method of
manipulating the figures so as to show just what the data signify were
used.
Tests I. and II. consisted of well-selected arithmetical problems in-
volving reasoning ability with only slight mechanical use of figures.
Test III. consisted of incomplete sentences and of sentences involving the
use of one or the other of two words, such as " Days are longer (or shorter)
in summer than in winter." Test IV. consisted of a number of shorter
words whose opposites were to be written. Test V. consisted of a number of
statements of reasons from which the children were to select those that
seemed good. Test VI. consisted of a number of definitions of simple
words from which the pupils were to select those that were good. Test
VII. called for the writing of the meaning of two stanzas of poetry.
The children tested were 385 boys and 372 girls of the fourth, fifth,
and sixth grades. The general conclusions as summarized by the author
follow :
"1. In the progressive development shown in median ability through
the grades tested, and in the high group correlations among these tests, it
is evident that they are valid measures of several phases of that complex
capacity we call reasoning ability.
" 2. In the contrasts between grade progress and progress with age, in
the generally superior showing made by the younger groups of children of
any grade when contrasted with the older pupils of the grade, and in the
fairly substantial percentage of pupils from lower grades found in the
highest quartile of ability for all, it is shown that native capacity is
measured to a high degree by the tests.
" 3. In consideration of the rather varied range of information re-
quired, as well as the sagacity necessary to resolve the problems, all of the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 277
foregoing differences between grade standings and age standings suggest
that these tests are even better measures of intellectual capacity than are
the usual factors determining the school grade in which the pupil is
placed.
" 4. In the general superiority of the boys over the girls in tests I. and
II., III., and V., and of the girls over the boys in tests IV., VI., and VIE.,
it is clear that there are real, measurable sex differences, small, to be sure,
but no less real, among these more than seven hundred children.
" 5. While the variability of the boys is slightly greater than that of the
girls in some tests, in other tests the girls are more variable ; so that, taken
as a whole, the boys are only slightly more variable.
" 6. The point of greatest pragmatic significance for the school lies in
the implications from the two facts, first, that there are quite substantial
percentages from both the lower grade groups and lower age groups who
are found in the highest quartile of ability for all ; second, that most of the
groups of the youngest 25 per cent, in each grade show higher ability than
the oldest 25 per cent, and sometimes higher than that of the median
ability of the whole grade.
"The highest coefficients (of correlation), as shown by the averages,
Table LVIIL, are, in their order, that for tests III. and IV., the two
forms of controlled association, completing sentences and the opposites,
.53; that for tests IV. and V., the opposites and the selection of reasons
in one of the tests in selective judgment, .49; that for tests V. and VI.,
the two tests in selective judgment, .47; and that for tests III. and VII.,
controlled association and interpretation of the poems, .45. By correc-
tion, these would probably all be raised to above .75, those for III. and
each of the others approaching 1.00 very closely. Among the lowest of
the average coefficients are those of tests III. and VI., controlled associa-
tion and the second test in selective judgment, .24, and for tests VI. and
VII., selective judgment and interpretation of the poems, .24. Relatively,
the correlations with spelling are all low, the highest, .25, being with test
VII., interpretation of the poems, next in order, .24, that with the mathe-
matical tests, then .22 with III. and .21 with IV., the two forms of con-
trolled association tests. The lowest coefficients for spelling are .09 with
test VI., and .12 with test V., the two tests in selective judgment. The
highest correlations for spelling are with those tests involving most the
linguistic forms of ability, and with the mathematics tests, the lowest
with those involving selective judgment. In these facts there may be
food for reflection relative to the question of the disciplinary conception
of education.
" The best test among those here used for this general ability is test
IV., that of the opposites, the next that of the form of selective judgment
in test V., and third, tests I.-IL, the mathematics tests. The poorest is
test VII., the interpretation of the poems.
" Children distributed on the basis of age show a correlation consider-
ably higher than children distributed on the basis of school grade.
" Children extreme in ability, either in the direction of poorness or
excellence, show higher correlation than the children of median ability.
278
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
" There is slightly higher correlation among boys than among girls in
the abilities measured by these tests.
" The results here derived point to the conclusion that the correlations
among the abilities here tested are a matter of native capacity rather than
the result of training."
It is a matter for deep regret that such a thorough study, involving so
many careful mathematical computations, should have been made before
increasing the number of children tested in such a way that they would
consist of a more typical group. Figures are given for ages from eight
to sixteen, but the number of children of each age below ten and above
thirteen and a half is too small to justify general conclusions as to changes
in reasoning with age, especially when we realize that children of eight and
sixteen who are in the grades tested are exceptional rather than normal
children. Other studies have indicated, as does this, rhythms of increase in
ability with age differing as to time for boys and girls; and if more chil-
dren had been tested the results here given as to those rhythms might well
serve as standards. As it is we are grateful to Dr. Bonser for devising
these tests and for the high ideal he has set in the use of statistical meth-
ods ; but we feel that some of the time spent in calculations was wasted and
regret that the conclusions for other ages than from ten to thirteen and
a half can not be accepted as reliable until further studies have been made.
E. A. KIRKPATRICK.
FITCHBUBG, MASSACHUSETTS.
History of Medieval Philosophy. M. DE WULF. Third edition. Trans-
lated by P. COFFEY. Longmans, Green, & Co. 1909. Pp. xii + 519.
Interest in medieval philosophy, while largely developed through. the
neo-Thomistic movement in Belgium, England, and elsewhere, is by no
means confined to this new-old Stream of thought. M. de Wulf's book
could not otherwise be now in its third French edition and also translated
into English. As the second edition was extensively reviewed, we need
call attention here only to the changes found in the third. " The relations
between philosophy and theology down to the twelfth century have been
reconsidered; also the realist and anti-realist systems of that century and
the classification of the theological schools. The divisions of philosophy
in the thirteenth century have been modified. A new section has been
devoted to the neo-Platonic current of thought, represented mainly by
Witelo and Theoderic of Freiburg." It is perhaps worthy of comment
that the author gives not a little attention to the extra-philosophical
setting of the great medieval systems. Scholastic methods of teaching
are described lucidly. The philosophical literature accessible to the
scholastics is pretty fully catalogued. And, in his account of the sources
of the philosophical Eenaissance, M. de Wulf incorporates an interesting
page or two on the rise of the universities and the influence of the great
mendicant orders on the intellectual life of the day. A criticism of M. de
Wulf's interpretations on any of these or other points involves, of course,
an evaluation of the whole orthodox Roman attitude something quite
uncalled for here. Waiving all the crucial questions this underlying one
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 279
involves, the reviewer finds the volume an admirable specimen of the his-
torian's art. Immense learning and a keen sense of exposition are visible
on every page. Cross-references have been worked out at great length,
and bibliographies, while not presuming to be exhaustive, cover their
respective fields thoroughly. The translator has done his work well.
Quarrel as one may with this honestly and openly biased history, one
must admit that it supplies information on an obscure, neglected, but rich
field of philosophy as no other volume does.
WALTER B. PITKIN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE NEO-SCOLASTIQUE DE PHILOSOPHIE. November,
1910. Morale thomiste et science des mceurs (pp. 445-475) : S. DEPLOIGE.
- Modern sociologists have unconsciously come back to the Thomistic con-
ception of morality. Their moral science -f- their rational art = the
" sciencia practica " of St. Thomas. Metaphysique thomiste et critique
de la connaissance (pp. 476-509) : PIERRE ROUSSELOT. - Like the " new
philosophy," Thomistic metaphysics is above all a critique of the cate-
gory of thing. La morale et la sociologie (pp. 510-542) : F. PALHORIES. -
The traditional system of morals rests upon empirical facts from which
human reason, by a legitimate and logical process, ascends to the con-
cept of obligation. The new morality, on the other hand, of which Levy-
Briihl is the best known representative, is antiscientific and antimoral.
La philosophic de Jaime Balmes (pp. 543-572) : JUAN ZARAGUETA. - An
exposition of the philosophy of the Spanish philosopher, Jaime Balmes.
Comptes rendus. Leslie J. Walker, Theories of Knowledge. Absolutism,
Pragmatism, Realism: FRANCIS AVELING. A. Lang, Aphoristische Be-
trachtungen iiber das Kausalproblem. Grundlinien einer Theorie der
Kausalitdt: G. SIMONS. A. W. Benn, The History of English Rational-
ism in the Nineteenth Century: ED. JANSSENS. Joseph Fabre, La pensee
moderne. De Luther a Leibniz: ED. JANSSENS. G. Gentile, Giordano
Bruno nella storia della cultura: E. J. H. Hoffding, Histoire de la
philosophie moderne: J. LEMAIRE. B. Varisco, I massimi problemi: B.
NARDI. Rene Gillouin, Henri Bergson. Choix de textes avec etude du
systeme philosophique : C. MATHIEU. Paul Archambault, Emile Boutroux.
Choix de textes avec une etude de I'ceuvre: C. MATHIEU. Paul Gaultier,
La vraie education: G. RYCKMANS. Chronique philosophique. Som-
maire ideologique des ouvrages et revues de philosophie.
Brown, George. Melanesians and Polynesians: their life-histories de-
scribed and compared. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. 1910. Pp.
xv -f- 451. 12s.
Hodgson, Shadworth H. Some Cardinal Points in Knowledge. (From
Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. V.) London: Henry
Frowde, Oxford University Press. 1911. Pp. 61.
280 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
AT the meeting of the Aristotelian Society on April 3 Mr. H. W.
Carr read a paper on " The Theory of Psychophysical Parallelism as a
Working Hypothesis in Psychology." The nature of the relation of mind
and body is a metaphysical problem, but the method and scope of psychol-
ogy depend on the formulation of the problem. The hypothesis most
generally adopted in psychology is that mental phenomena form an inde-
pendent series concomitant with a series of physical changes in the matter
of the brain, and that there is a point-to-point correspondence between the
two series. The hypothesis was considered as a possible description of fact
apart from any metaphysical explanation, and it was held that it involves
a direct logical contradiction from whatever point of view it is consid-
ered. To an idealist it is impossible, because for idealism there is no
independent physical thing to run parallel with the mental existence; and
to a realist it is equally impossible, because the independent reality which
realism regards as essential to perception is not the physical movement in
the brain. The Athenaeum.
THE Committee of the American Philosophical Association on Early
American Philosophers reports that the Columbia University Press will
issue this year a reprint of President Samuel Johnson's " Elements of
Philosophy," under the editorship of Professor E. J. E. Woodbridge; that
the Princeton University Press will issue also this year a uniform reprint
of President John Witherspoon's " Lectures on Moral Philosophy," under
the editorship of Professor V. L. Collins; and that the Publication Com-
mittee of the University of Pennsylvania has approved the reprinting of
Dr. Benjamin Rush's "Diseases of the Mind."
THE New York Branch of the American Psychological Association
met on April 24 in conjunction with the Section of Anthropology and
Psychology of the New York Academy of Sciences. The program in-
cluded two sessions, one in the afternoon at Columbia University and one
in the evening at the American Museum of Natural History. The mem-
bers dined at the Faculty Club of Columbia University. A fuller notice
of this meeting will appear in a later number of the JOURNAL.
THE Walter Channing Cabot fellowship, which has just been awarded
to Professor Josiah Royce, is supported by a fund of $50,000, given to
Harvard University in 1905 to provide " an additional remuneration to
some distinguished man in recognition of his eminence."
IT is reported that Trinity College has given Cambridge University
the sum of 1,000 to be used toward the erection of buildings for physiol-
ogy and for experimental psychology.
LONGMANS will publish this month "Some Problems in Philosophy:
being an Uncompleted Introduction to Philosophy," by William James.
PART I. (two volumes) of the third edition of " The Golden Bough "
has been issued by Macmillan and Co.
VOL. VIII. No. 11 MAY 25, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE LOGIC OF ANTITHESIS
rFVHE antithesis, such as life and death, finite and infinite, reality
-L and unreality, one and many, plenum and vacuum, internal
and external, cold and hot, pleasure and pain, or good and evil, is a
peculiarly interesting form of negation. In many cases of antithesis,
it is true, both the terms are positive at least in form. In meaning,
however, each is a negative of the other. The logic of antithesis,
then, must afford an interesting chapter in the general logic of nega-
tion and, if antithesis may be denned as extreme difference, then also
in the logic of difference.
The subject of antithesis is, of course, a very old one. Also it
has received many treatments, as might be expected. Still, whatever
may have been said or done in the past, a new statement or a reword-
ing always has some chance of proving worth while. Accordingly,
without making claim to a serviceable originality and without even
feeling any certainty of such originality, I would venture in the fol-
lowing six paragraphs to indicate some principles of all antithesis
that seem very important to me, making thus what the scientists
call, and what may be, only a preliminary report. The principles
are these:
1. Mutual Reproduction. The terms of any antithesis can not
but be relative. This is no less true of finite and infinite, real and
unreal, plenum and vacuum, than it is of cold and hot or good and
evil. Indeed in the case of finite and infinite, if not in those other
cases, the relativity is a very old story. But, each term being rela-
tive, neither can be without the character of the other. The relative
is always the mixed. Wherefore the terms of an antithesis reproduce
each other; and, emphatically, this is not to say that each implies
the other only by contrast. What it says is, again, that each has in
its own right or in its own nature the character of the other. In
fact the reproduction must be seen as not only of each term by the
other, but also in its entirety as of the antithesis itself by each term.
Each term has that within itself whereby, as if internally, it harbors
281
282 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the very antithesis as a whole of which, externally, it is only one
member.
2. Duplicity of Meaning. Since the terms of any antithesis are
thus reproductive, each reproducing the other and so harboring
within itself both itself and its opposite, they must always have
double meanings. The antithesis and the reproduction make this
duplicity absolutely necessary, for where each is on both sides each
must get, besides its first meaning, the one-sided meaning, a second
meaning that is adequate to the both-sidedness. The opposition of
life and death affords a simple but not at all peculiar or exceptional
illustration. Here the distinction is a reproductive and so trans-
posable one, but only if the terms after transposition have new
meanings. Briefly to indicate the new meanings, there are the life
that is simply before death or is the mere absence of death and the
life that is superior to death ; there are, on the other hand, the death
that is only the cessation of life and the death how shall I express
myself, not being either theologian or biologist? that belongs even
to life itself, not merely to its cessation, if the life be not superior
to death. And, as of life and death, so of knowledge and ignorance,
rest and motion, reality and unreality, external and internal, and so
on. Also, in general, the duplicity, now so evident, plainly must
always have this form : a local, narrow, one-sided meaning, to begin
with, and then a meaning big and deep enough to take both sides up
into itself. Wherefore we may conclude that involved in any antith-
esis there is more than just the opposition of two terms or even
than the possible transposition of those terms. There is also, as
the warp in the woof, the important tension of part and whole, the
peculiar opposition of the particular and the general; and, if this,
then, as a result at once of the opposition, the transposition, and the
insistent wholeness, in the very duplicity there is involved a differ-
ence of quality. A whole is not merely more than any of its parts ;
it is different.
3. Identity of the Opposites. What this identity means, not to
say also what it does not mean, is fairly clear from what has been
said. With the reproduction and the double meaning it is easy to see
why, and in particular how, opposites can be declared identical;
why and how paradoxes so often go with insight. The identity is
indeed very far from being a superficial one; superficially there
appears anything but identity; and one who can never see or think
beneath the surface will find in paradoxes only verbal gymnastics or
formally logical subtleties ; but opposites are identical, being so, again,
through their mutual reproduction and, above all, through the two
meanings of each, one meaning being indeed always exclusive, but
the other free and hospitable. And because of the two meanings, the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 283
identity of opposites must always indicate a becoming, for that
identity necessarily connects the two meanings, marking a change
in the case of each term from one meaning to the other. No wonder
that Heraclitus has always been a hard man to understand with his
becoming, his paradoxes, and his hidden but very certain double
meanings for all his terms! As for the becoming, too, of course it
can not refer to any mere flat reconciliation of the antithesis, but
also it can not refer even to a mere inversion and, except for quanti-
tative changes, literal repetition of the antithesis; on the contrary,
it must involve, in the first place, instead of reconciliation, a great
sharpening of the antithesis and, in the second place, instead of
repeating the antithesis merely in larger terms or on a larger scale,
it must take the antithesis into a new region, new not for size alone,
but for the difference of quality which has been pointed out. In
short, the becoming which the identity of opposites necessarily indi-
cates is in general nothing less than the persistence of all the antith-
eses of life or of reality, but always with a real change of meaning
or quality for the antithetical terms. In any antithesis, let me say,
risking perhaps useless repetition, each term has two meanings, one
small and obvious, the other big and hidden, and the big and hidden
meaning, because it comprehends the things that are opposed, is
more than just big ; it is different ; so that the identity of opposites
means only a becoming that brings generalization, qualitative varia-
tion, and renewed opposition. Were there becoming on any other
plan, could reality change and yet be also conserved?
4. Serial Mediation. Doubtless to ordinary thought an antith-
esis signifies two terms that are in what I will call a single, un-
graded, cataclysmic difference, meaning of course a difference of
complete exclusion, a difference under which neither term has any
contacts, or any dealings, with the other. Metaphysical dualism as
representing the antithesis of the material and the spiritual or im-
material is doubtless the most notable instance of such thinking.
The principles of reproduction, however, of duplicity, and of iden-
tity show conclusively how inadequate any such cataclysmic differ-
ence must be to any real antithesis. In dualism or in any other an-
tithesis the opposed terms can no more truly have a cataclysmic
difference than in the familiar case of day and night. Those prin-
ciples call irrevocably for mediation through an infinite series. They
make the antithesis seem only such a series short-circuited. Has not
each term in its own character, in its own meanings, a "one-to-one'*
or * * part-f or-part " correspondence with the antithesis, let me say the
differential antithesis, as a whole, to which it belongs as a part, and
can anything but an infinite series satisfy the reproductiveness which
such a correspondence must always imply ? Again, where the oppo-
284 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sites are identical through their duplicity, can anything but the in-
finitely serial functional relation of the two things be adequate to
their peculiar entanglement? The functional series, it is true, out-
wardly shows merely the orderly and parallel, parallel and orderly
movement of two terms, say, in the typical case, of one term from
zero to infinity, of the other from infinity to zero ; but the logic of any
such function is larger or deeper than the mere outward quantitative
form is likely to suggest. Thus, besides the quantitative form, there
is the infinity, with its peculiar innuendo of qualitative difference,
and there are also, not less peculiar or significant in their innuendo,
the inverse relation of the serial approximations to zero or to infinity
of the different terms, and the persistent differential, constituting a
controlling principle or law, by which the series proceeds. So, em-
phatically, the terms of an antithesis are not in a cataclysmic differ-
ence. Their difference is serial ; they have a serial mediation ; and,
if one remember both warp and woof, the mediation is not more of
the opposite terms than of the different meanings. Moreover, as to
this mediation, in a sense which I hope to make clear and which at
the same time will prevent the too easy misunderstanding of the
word itself, instead of reducing the difference the serial mediation
intensifies it, making it truly extreme. Thus, just because the differ-
ence is so graded, it must constitute or realize what might be called
an unchecked and cumulative differentiation, and must therefore, as
was said, make the difference or the antithesis extreme as no single
cataclysmic instance could possibly do. Think of the immeasurable
excess of the sum of all possible cases over just one last case of any
difference. Here, once more, the familiar but wholly typical antith-
esis of life and death may be used in illustration. Let death be
cataclysmic, and its opposition to life is really of comparatively
little import ; but let there be a serial difference or a serial mediation
between them, let there be such a thing as either dying or living, let
neither ever be unmixed, that is, unaccompanied at any time by the
other, and the opposition or antithesis is supreme, made so no other
word could be more expressive or more pertinent by the very
immanence of each term in the other. To be always dying even while
one lives is no ordinary death. To be always living even while one
dies is no ordinary life. And, as of life and death, so, mutatis mu-
tandis, of good and evil, motion and rest, plenum and vacuum. The
logic that lies back of the series would thus seem to suggest that in
some way true opposites must be not merely reproductive, nor yet
only double in meaning and so identical, but also, as if to make the
intimacy as close as possible, mutually immanent. The serial media-
tion, to say the least, shows them immanent in the sense of being, not
indeed structurally, but functionally identical.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 285
5. Difference at Once in Kind and Degree. Here little can be
added to what has been said already. Frequently, however, differ-
ence in degree is treated as no real difference, gradation and con-
tinuity being falsely taken as synonymous, and it is, accordingly,
well in this separate paragraph to give emphasis to what is certainly
the consistent and logical view, namely, that gradation must always
mean real difference, the realest sort of difference. Gradation is al-
ways some difference functionally expressed, and this, involving two
terms, can hardly signify continuity. A continuous series, where the
series is a function and any other series seems meaningless is a
self-contradiction. The functional series, too, may have unity, but
riot of the sort that continuity usually denotes. Where there is dif-
ference in degree, there is supreme difference in kind, although at
the same time there is the real unity of the functional relation.
But such confident association of difference in kind with differ-
ence in degree, and the previous suggestion of immanence as expres-
sive of the relation between things quite antithetical, or of serial
mediation as sharpening an antithesis even while it connects the
things opposed, certainly do call for explanation along other lines
than those which have so far been followed. However cogent and
imperative the logic so far presented here may have been, there is
still a sense of something not yet said. All that has been said may be
quite true of difference or of antithesis, but the question remains:
What else is true? What, if anything, will make the foregoing as
intelligible as it seems logical? In the next paragraph at least a
partial answer to this question will, I think, be found.
6. Dimensional Difference. The fact that difference, especially
as expressed in antitheses, may be dimensional, may not be the key,
but I believe it to be a very important notch in the key that will un-
lock the remaining mysteries of antithesis or of difference in general.
Indeed, as seems to me, what has been said so far in this paper, es-
pecially in the last two numbered paragraphs, virtually has been an
indication of dimensional character or rather, more exactly, of the
peculiar relation that one dimension bears to another. In other
words, any antithesis, having two terms, would seem to be also two-
dimensional. Slightly to reword what has been said, the terms of
any antithesis imply qualitative difference; being "identical" or
"immanent," although different, they are necessarily mutually
implicative or general to each other ; and a functional series expresses
at once their unity and their difference. Just these things, however,
constitute what seem to me to be the essential conditions of a two-
dimensional region. Thus, to take the simplest and most direct illus-
tration available, length and breadth are certainly internal implica-
tions of each other, and their difference very plainly involves some-
286 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
thing besides a quantitative distinction. All dimensional differences,
not merely that of length and breadth, are qualitative. Of course as
differences of direction they are quantitatively measurable; so are
the differences of distance in either of their particular directions ;
but the former differences distinctly are not of the same sort or kind
as the latter. Also the quantitative variations within any given
direction or dimension may be functionally related with those of any
other direction or dimension, or quantitative differences of direction
or dimension, that is, angular differences, may be functionally related
with the differences within any direction or dimension; but in all
cases a functional relation involves more than mere quantitative
difference. In a word, therefore, the spatial dimensions, length and
breadth, or, let me say, the spatial dimensions in general, whatever
their names or whatever their number, being characteristically the
terms of functions, are qualitatively rather than quantitatively
different; and space itself as dimensional, whether two-dimensional
or w-dimensional, is no mere mass or quantum, but is a proper
medium, or, if you please, a proper container, of things at once quan-
titatively variant, qualitatively different, and functionally related.
By the kind ordering of providence or by the pleasant accidents of
nature, the multi-dimensional character of space seems eminently
suited, I can not quite say, to a pluralistic universe, but to a universe
that is big with more than just one sort of thing, to a universe that
is qualitatively plural. 1 It is suited, too, to a universe whose differ-
1 This is hardly the place, nor am I competent, for a critical discussion of
space in general or of the Euclidean space in particular. The above references
to space and its dimensions have been rather boldly made for purposes of needed
illustration of the dimensional difference which I seem to see in any antithesis.
The terms of any antithesis are qualitatively different and yet functionally
related; so are the dimensions of space; and doubtless with such an analogy
between the two I should be content. In this note, however, I have to go a little
farther with my layman's account of dimensional space. Thus, it has seemed
to me as if the Euclidean space with its three rectangular dimensions might be
spoken of as the logical whole in extension. Thus, no science being so hospitable
to hypothesis as mathematics, I would hypothesize that the right angle is the
spatial representative of any distinct difference in kind; and on this hypothesis
I would venture to say that any single difference is two-dimensional, but that a
multiplicity of differences, that is, of different differences, in short a general
plurality, must be three-dimensional. Logically, it should be remembered, the
third dimension is not just one dimension among others; it is third, and is,
accordingly, a dimensional variant or a differential compounding of the region
already defined by the first and second. Moreover, add a fourth dimension and,
at least on the rectangular hypothesis, the resulting region, if it may still be so
called, will spring from an involution or an intensification of the extensive three-
dimensional region already defined. Beyond the third dimension, the dimensional
variation or increases can be seen only as giving matter or content to Euclid's
merely geometrical solidity. Indeed, if now I be not too fantastic, it even seems
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 287
ences are antithetical, for the antithetical difference characteristically
is dimensional, being, to repeat the story very concisely, qualitative,
implicative, and functional.
That the second dimension is an implication of the first may not
yet be as clear as it should be, and yet mathematically simple addi-
tion, which is one-dimensional, implies multiplication, which is two-
dimensional, or the defined line implies the plane, the given length
or side the area. Moreover, the implication here is truly inherent.
Thus, addition and limitation, as in the case of the given length, al-
though formally representing number or length only as mass, very
plainly do imply the character of the ratio ; and this distinction be-
tween mass and ratio is a distinction involving just the difference
between one and two or, even more generally, between n and n + 1
dimensions. Ratio, too, is always functional, not simply quantita-
tive. But, more than this, the implications of any dimensional field,
be the number of dimensions one or n, may be said to be made ex-
plicit whenever any operation within the given field is projected to
infinity. Such projection, by virtually abstracting the given field,
or, say, by reducing this to "zero," liberates the principle of the
operation from its formal and always somewhat one-sided setting,
and so exposes or at last reveals, what at least those who have eyes
may see, the hitherto hidden other dimension of the operation. There
always is another dimension when there is an operation. Thus, at
infinity such a series as the following: 1, J, J, J . . . 0, or, geomet-
rically, 1, J, , |, has for its last term the operation of halving with-
out anything left to halve, and this is certainly equivalent to a sepa-
ration, a splendid isolation, of ratio from the given mass, and so to
what is at least a very strong innuendo for another dimension. In-
deed, remembering that infinity is meaningless without an "opera-
tion" of some kind, I find myself constrained to translate any n-
dimensional region at infinity into an n -f- 1 dimensional region, and
accordingly to conclude perhaps a digression in this paper that as
applied to space infinity means dimensional rather than merely
quantitative variation. Quantitatively any space may be as large as
you please, but no space, no line, no plane, no solid, is infinite, just
to me as if any additional dimension, be it second or fourth or nth, might be
said in some sense to express something that is implicit to the dimensional region
just below, perhaps as multiplication is implicit to addition or area to definite
length, and so to make the difference in general between n-dimensions and
n -f- 1 -dimensions quite parallel to that between form and content. Only, again
on the rectangular hypothesis, at the fourth dimension the material significance
of the new dimension is forced upon the attention, as in neither of the earlier
cases, for at this dimension the dimensional field is plainly seen to be necessarily
turned into itself. (Cf. article in Mind, April, 1911, " Dualism, Parallelism,
and Infinitism," especially pp. 221-5.)
288 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
quantitatively infinite. Still, the mere infinity of space aside, what
all this means here is simply that spaeially one dimension inherently
implies another, and that infinity is always an innuendo for that
other dimension, and consequently that with good reason the dif-
ference expressed in any antithesis may be spoken of as dimensional.
Recall that the terms of the antithesis, like spacial dimensions, not
only are qualitative, implicative, and functional, but also imply the
infinite series.
7. Parallelism in All Difference. Any single case of real differ-
ence is dual and is in so far a case of antithesis. The terms of an
antithesis, however, logically require serial mediation, as has been
explained here, and the serial variation, so determined, is analyzable
into an ' ' orderly and parallel, parallel and orderly, movement of the
terms." In other words, incidentally to the mediation, each term
shows variants that correspond specifically in every instance to the
variations in the other, so that all the important conditions of what
at least when the question is of mind and matter is commonly
known as parallelism seem to be fulfilled in any difference or an-
tithesis. But the parallelism in all antithetical difference is no mere
"occasionalism." The relation is very far from being external to
its terms. Indeed this has been indicated quite definitely, although
perhaps not as directly as it should be, in a foregoing paragraph.
Thus, more directly and in more detail, given the condition of
parallelism between two terms that are antithetical, and given as
valid the conclusion, reached here, that antithetical terms are repro-
ductive, double, identical, and serially mediated, then in the paral-
lelism, which is incident to the serial mediation, there can be detected
a process, the very becoming to which reference has been made
already, having the following important aspects :
(a) Identification, but in the sense that each term gradually
loses itself in the other or takes the other into itself, in either way
of putting it, the two terms becoming indifferent or identical in
respect to their first meanings.
(&) Transformation, or qualitative change, in the sense that with
the parallelism, or at least with the becoming which this must imply
or be a sort of cross-section of, the terms necessarily pass from their
first to their second meanings, from their small meanings before iden-
tification to their large and qualitatively new meanings after identi-
fication.
(c) Persistence or renewal of the antithesis; persistence in the
sense that, because the identification and the transformation are
coincident processes, the opposition is always rising and assertive,
even while it is passing, rising as to the new meanings, passing as to
the old, or renewal in the sense merely of such repetition as the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 289
change of meaning must require. Thus who sees only the parallelism,
external and occasionalistic, sees a very small part of what is
going on.
And here I must bring this possibly merely preliminary report
to a close. Only, as I do so, I can not refrain from suggesting some
of the important problems that may find interesting solutions from
the treatment of antithesis given in this paper. The problems I
would mention are three, and from widely removed quarters. Thus :
(1) What is the effect on psychophysical parallelism of the fact that
the "parallel" terms are always antithetical? (2) If the two
schools, either of ethics or of theory of knowledge, the intuitional or
idealistic and the utilitarian or empirical, may be said to base
morality, or valid knowledge, on the internal and the external re-
spectively, what effect on the interpretation of the history of ethics
or theory of knowledge must result from the present logic of antith-
esis? And (3), What are the consequences to a doctrine of motion
of the conclusion, here reached, that quantitatively space is always
finite, its infinity standing, not for infinite quantity, but for dimen-
sional or qualitative variation? Is an infinite velocity, for example,
to be entertained even in thought?
ALFRED H. LLOYD.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
CONTINENTAL CRITICS OF PRAGMATISM
II. ITALIAN CRITICS
IN pointing out the deficiencies of the current pragmatism from the
point of view of theology the French criticism has reached its
highest point. We may therefore turn to the Italian attitude
towards this subject. Bourdeau has already given a somewhat un-
favorable account of the southern variations of the system. Accord-
ing to him, pragmatism, which began as an Anglo-Saxon reaction
against intellectualism and rationalism, has among the subtler
Latins been transformed into a Machiavellian opportunism, an
abandonment of the world to our particular fancies, in fact to what-
ever volitions eventuate in success. 22 Reference is here obviously
made to James's protege, the sky-rocket Papini. 23 His individualism
is further exemplified in the case of Prezzolini, one of the founders
of the obsolescent journal II Leonardo. The latter 's modification of
pragmatism is then designated a pure sophistication. When James,
" Pragmatisme et modernisme," pp. 83, 84.
28 C/. my review of his " II Tragico Quotidiano," The Nation, November,
3907.
290 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in his treatment of the deity, reserves the name of gentleman for this
prince of shades, Prezzolini, imitating his master, sees fit to define
man as a sentimental gorilla. To dominate one's fellow beings it is
but necessary to play upon their fancies and prejudices. By the
arts of rhetoric, by the tricks so skillfully employed by diplomat,
politician, and auctioneer, one can overcome all opposition and
mold intractable humanity to one's wishes. This is the French-
man's interpretation of the Italianate pragmatism. 24 It is scarcely
fair thus to resolve that variation. There is more in it than the crea-
tion of a modern Machiavelli, for other writers of the Peninsula have
disparaged this revival of the opportunist teachings of ' ' II Principe. ' '
Among these writers it is Chiappelli who has most successfully
exposed the insufficiency of opportunism for the deeper problems of
thought and life. To him the recent renaissance of philosophy in
America and France has shown a veritable originality of the specula-
tive spirit, a new restlessness against the older forms of thought.
The very revolt against the great dogmatic systems has included a
revolt against science itself. Pragmatism itself is a proof of this.
Its very discontent with intellectualism betokens a wider vision.
In giving play to the emotional and the passional, in emphasizing the
primacy of will, it tends towards an idealism transcending mere
utilitarianism. 25
Chiappelli here brings to notice the latent idealism in the Amer-
ican nature with which the primitive pragmatist, the Yankee ex-
ponent of mere success, is bound to reckon. The principle of Pierce,
which resolves our choice of speculative systems into a game of pitch-
ing pennies, can not hold indefinitely in a land which has known
Emerson 26 and harbored Berkeley. The latter 's subjective idealism
Chiappelli considers to be revived in James's humanism. Whether
such idealism can be rendered objective, and therefore serve as a
check to the radical pragmatic empiricism, is a problem. That result
has been in a measure already obtained in Italy. If subjective
idealism is manifested in the Leonardo of Florence, a broader
idealism is coming to light in the Einnuovamento and the Coenobium
of Lugano.
Italian modernism as a partial reflection of the new humanism
furnishes a suggestive hint as to the theologic fate of American prag-
matism. The Italian clergy at first eagerly grasped a doctrine which
would rehabilitate a waning faith. The first work in James 's trilogy
34 " Pragmatisme et modernisme," p. 87.
20 Alessandro Chiappelli, " Les tendances vives de la philosophic contem-
poraine," Revue philosophique, March, 1910, pp. 219, 224.
28 Chiappelli (Eevue philosophique, March, 1910, p. 231) traces Emerson's
idealism to Germany. I am endeavoring to show elsewhere that it was
indigenous.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 291
gave to religious beliefs a new vogue. But the second of these works
burned the fingers of the orthodox. The Fechnerian hierarchy of
world-souls advocated in ' * A Pluralistic Universe ' ' could scarcely be
understood, much less accepted, outside of Swedenborgian and pos-
sibly Mormon circles ! The Italian critic is therefore right in pre-
saging little success amongst us for this revival of animism and poly-
theism. If he had known the rigors of monotheism in America, he
might justly have called James a sort of Yankee Julian the Apostate.
In all this an essential weakness of pragmatism is implied. As a
cosmology it is an historic retrogression. As Chiappelli observes,
the religious conscience has reached the highest point of its evolution
in monotheism. So while a pluralistic conception may be just as a
natural protest against a too abstract absolutism, yet ultimately that
pluralism is nothing but an empirical and provisional view, an
atomistic form like that of the cell in a monadology. 27
How then can pragmatism and rationalism be reconciled? In the
modern renaissance of spiritual values, in the attempts to complete
science, justify religion, and ennoble life, there is, as Chiappelli
declares, something really solemn. In the rise of American prag-
matism there is, therefore, more than a grandiose manifestation of
energy brought out in a young civilization greedy of imperialism.
Rather is it a new philosophy of faith and feeling necessary to estab-
lish the human equilibrium after the negations of agnosticism and
the limitations of criticism. 28 For these words from a foreign ob-
server an American may be grateful. But is it still possible to bring
about that suggested reconciliation between pragmatism and ration-
alism? Hebert had expressed a pious wish for that result in his
hope that the twentieth century would see a closer union of positive
science and speculative philosophy. And while Chiappelli believes
that the contrast between the new radical empiricism of the prag-
matists and the rationalism of the idealists is not an irreducible
antinomy, yet he confesses that their approximation may be indefi-
nitely prolonged. He aspires to a cooperation between natural
science and metaphysics, but that is as far as he gets. The difficul-
ties of the cooperation are too great, and these difficulties are brought
out by his compatriots.
To Aliotta is left the task of showing the inherent nature of
pragmatism to be irreconcilable with idealism. The American move-
ment is to him little but a revival of British empiricism. Bacon,
Hume, and Spencer are the real ancestors of James, and consequently
in the latter there is an inherited tendency to relativism at the
expense of rationalism. When James talks of practical results he
a " Les tendances vives de la philosophic contemporaine," p. 242.
*Il>id., p. 247.
292 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
does but echo Lord Verulam. The latter may have let slip some
words about the value of contemplatio rerum, but his paramount
interest lay in inventio fructus. So with Hume; he did not wholly
deny the value of disinterested research, but his main advice was to
make science human, refer it directly to action. And Spencer also,
while holding to a theory of evolution, made even the logical struc-
ture of thought a means of adaptation which, like all the other
organs, has its origin in vital needs. 29
Pragmatism is in truth an Anglo-Saxon plant, but it has likewise
some continental roots. Relativism as opposed to rationalism, the
reasons of the heart as opposed to the reasons of the head, are to be
found in Pascal, while the will to believe is adumbrated by the doc-
trines of Eenouvier. Nevertheless, along with these similarities
there are differences, for American pragmatism possesses a distinct
physiognomy of its own. This is shown indirectly by the fact that
the "new" French philosophy, such as that of Bergson and Le Roy,
emphasizes not so much the external, practical, empirical, as the
internal, spiritual, profound. Now of the three varieties of prag-
matism specified by Dewey, as respectively applying to objects, to
ideas, and to beliefs, the criterion is not so much one of internal as of
external harmony. The pragmatic laws are less ends in themselves
than means to success; and while the logical function has an active
part in the evolution of experience, every cognitive act is judged in
so far as it "makes a difference to and in things." 30
In emphasizing the empirical at the expense of the rational,
pragmatism, claims Aliotta, lacks a real ontology, since it makes the
universe appear not sub specie ceternitatis, but sub specie genera-
tionis. In this there is discovered a certain mark of modesty, for
pragmatism does not wish to say that thought creates reality, as
idealism pretends to do, because its function is solely that of recog-
nizing, of reconstructing, an empirical situation, already existing.
But does this functional, this non-ontological program lead to rela-
tivism, as Aliotta claims? In making reality plastic, and indeter-
minate except for our volitions, there would seem to be some ground
for a certain disregard of environmental restrictions of which Bald-
win complains. 31 That such is a limit of pragmatism James denies
in his replies to the misunderstanders of pragmatism. 32 But that
denial does not appear adequate, for pragmatism remains predom-
inantly subjective ; its dynamic point of view turns into an indeter-
29 A. Aliotta, "II pragmatismo anglo-americano," La cultura filosofica,
March-April, 1909, p. 106.
"II pragmatismo anglo-americano," pp. 108-121.
31 Psychological Review, January, 1904.
32 Philosophical Review, Vol. 18, No. 1.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 293
minism; indeed, with all its practicality, it is averse to that form of
realism which holds that things have a proper nature, and follow
certain rules that are not made by us, but are to be recognized as
independent of our subjective activity if we wish in any way to
dominate them. In short, these new empiricists should follow the
dictum of their great predecessor, the dictum of Bacon natura non
nisi parendo vincitur. 33
So much for Aliotta; with Giovanni Cesca we have a view of
pragmatism which pushes it back to the beginnings of Protestantism.
Like the latter, it is called a reaction of the interior against the
exterior, a revolt of faith against authority, And this new Protest-
antism, like the old, being based upon the principle of individualism,
runs the danger of falling into atomism and anarchy, and into the
inertia of mysticism. 34 Cesca 's strictures are evidently called forth
by the north Italian pragmatists whose motto appears to be fingunt
creduntque. But the kindred American subjectivism is also in-
volved. If belief creates its object, there is truly manifest a tend-
ency away from the scientific and towards the transcendental. If
the laws of the world lie solely in the human judgment, this would
indeed turn the pragmatist into the man-god of Novalis whom Prez-
zolini holds up to admiration. 35
This resolution of pragmatism is somewhat curious. As Bour-
deau has previously shown, 36 it is a pure sophistication. But such a
tendency to sublimate the subjective, to build a world out of indi-
vidual fancies, is not characteristic of the entire movement. There
is one wing that leans to irrationalism, there is another that has
rational bases to its thought. If the Italian school has inclined
towards the transcendental and metempirical, the early American
school has been more cautious. Pierce rightly contended against the
transformations by his successors of his pragmaticism into their
pragmatism; that which started as an heuristic principle should
never have been permitted to develop beyond the principle of
Nietzsche which distinguishes the truth and falsity of doctrines by
their validity. 37
Cesca 's criticism appears a trifle reactionary and contradictory.
He would keep the movement in its primitive, larval state, yet he
grants that one cause of its rapid development has been its approxi-
mation to the functional as against the older structural psychology.
88 " II pragmatismo anglo-americano," p. 131.
"Giovanni Cesca, " La filosofia dell' azione," Biblioteca Sandrone, No. 3b,
p. 2<
*"La filosofia dell' azione," p. 263.
16 " Pragmatisme et modernisme," Ch. V.
OT " La filosofia dell' azione," p. 272.
294 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
An acceptance of modern biological notions is given as another cause
of its success. But while functionalism and pragmatism agree in
their instrumental interpretation of knowledge, they differ in their
philosophic conclusions. The one gives merely a vital, the other tends
towards a veridical, interpretation of the useful, and thus runs off
from bionomics into epistemology. Cesca finds no fault with the
biological theory of utility as being one of relativity, yet he criticizes
pragmatism for a relativity which tends towards the solipsistic and
away from the social. 38 The criticism is well taken, but hardly in
this connection. It is from a biological and not an epistemological
standpoint that the last and most weighty objection to present prag-
matism may be raised. There is that narrow opportunism which is
contented with immediate personal success, a Machiavellian self-
satisfaction which, as Cesca says, may prove of grave harm to the
individual. But that broader opportunism, which passes beyond
the absolute autonomy of the individual and takes into consideration
the external criterion of social authority this pragmatism has not
yet reached. 39
I. WOODBRIDGE RlLEY.
VASSAB COLLEGE.
"
AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE FUSION OF COLORED
AND COLORLESS LIGHT SENSATION
THE LOCUS OF THE ACTION
npHE following is a brief preliminary statement of the results of
-L experiments carried on in the Bryn Mawr college laboratory
during the past year to determine at what physiological level the
action of brightness 1 upon color excitation may be assumed to take
place. A full report of this work will take the following form:
(1) A brief statement will be made of previous work done by the
writers on after-image and contrast sensations aroused by stimuli in
which no color was sensed. (2) An explanation will be sought for
the results obtained in this work in terms of the influence of bright-
ness upon color excitation. (3) Evidence will be submitted that the
level at which this influence takes place is posterior to that usually
ascribed to the paired processes, positive and negative. (4) A sug-
gestion will be made as to the level at which other visual fusions take
place, subject to modification by the results of work now in progress.
In a paper read before the Princeton meeting of experimentalists
88 "La filosofia dell' azione," p. 273.
39 IUd., pp. 281, 283.
1 For the sake of brevity, brightness is used here as a general term for the
colorless sensation series white, black, and the grays.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 295
in 1908, one of the writers discussed the experimental conditions
under which he had obtained colored after-image and contrast sen-
sations from stimuli in which no color was sensed. A formulation
of these conditions, together with the evidence of allied limen and
fusion experiments, showed the phenomenon to be a peculiarity of
the inhibitive action of brightness upon color. Brightness fused with
color inhibits its saturation. With the possible exception of the re-
gion just within the limits of sensitivity for two colors, the following
may be stated roughly as a law of this action for all colors and all
parts of the retina : white inhibits most, grays in the order from light
to dark next, and black the least. The technique, then, of getting,
for example, a colored after-image from a stimulus in which no color
is sensed becomes merely a matter of fusing the least favorable
brightness quality with the stimulus color, and the most favorable
with the after-image color. -When this technique was carried out in
its best form, the colored after-image was gotten in practically every
case.
Two interpretations of this phenomenon are possible. It may be
considered (1) that this action upon the stimulus color takes place
in the retina at the level of the paired processes, positive and nega-
tive, in which case we should expect the negative excitation to be
diminished by whatever diminishes the positive excitation; or (2)
it occurs posterior to the level of the paired processes, in which case
neither the positive nor the negative color excitation would be af-
fected by the brightness excitation. The central response alone
would be modified. If the results of the preceding investigation are
granted, the second interpretation alone seems tenable. If the color
in the stimulus is inhibited by the addition of a brightness excitation,
and no effect of the inhibition is observed in the after-image, it seems
fair to infer that the inhibition takes place posterior to the level of
the after-image process. But the previous investigation was not
quantitative. The results obtained did not show, for example, that
the inhibition of the stimulus color had no effect upon the after-
image. They showed merely that, working near the limen, the
stimulus color might be inhibited and the complementary color still
be sensed in the after-image. A part of the present program, then,
becomes the attempt to determine, as accurately as possible, to what
degree, if at all, the intensity of the after-image excitation is de-
creased by adding to the stimulus color a brightness excitation un-
favorable to its saturation. This determination should have a two-
fold bearing. First, it should make plain, once for all, why it is
possible to get color in the after-image when none is sensed in the
stimulus. (It has never been claimed, for example, that it is pos-
sible to get an after-image of a brightness stimulus so weak as to be
296
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
below the limen of sensation.) And, secondly, it will throw some
light on the broader problem presented by the fusion of brightness
with color. By serving to indicate the level at which this fusion
takes place, this determination helps, for example, to explain a num-
ber of somewhat puzzling phenomena attendant upon the fusion of
brightness with color, in case of positive, contrast, and after-image
sensation.
The question of the level at which the action takes place, how-
ever, need not rest upon one line of evidence alone. There are two
effects of brightness upon color. (1) It reduces its saturation, and
(2) it changes the quality or tone of certain colors. Both types of
effect have been pressed into service in this investigation. Further-
more, the problem has been extended to contrast as well as to after-
image. It has been found, for example, that a change in the satura-
tion or quality of the inducing color caused by adding a brightness
excitation does not produce the appropriate or expected change in
the contrast color. We have, then, similar evidence that the action
of brightness on color takes place posterior to the level at which in-
duction takes place. In brief, it is shown in this study: (1) that
when the color of the stimulus is inhibited by the addition of a
brightness excitation, the intensity of the after-excitation, judged in
terms of the duration of the after-image, is not affected by this in-
hibition; (2) that when the tone of the color aroused by a given
stimulus is changed by the addition of a brightness excitation, the
color of the after-image does not undergo a complementary change ;
(3) that when the saturation of the inducing color is inhibited by the
addition of a brightness excitation, the saturation of the contrast
color is not affected by the change; (4) that when the tone or quality
of the inducing color is modified by adding a brightness excitation,
the tone of the contrast color is not determined in the complementary
direction.
The technique for the control of the brightness conditions, which
is a most important feature of the work, can not be gone into in this
brief report. It will be sufficient to say that, in case of the after-
image experiments, for example, the brightness excitation had to be
added to the stimulus color in such a fashion that it did not itself
give an after-image ; for if it had, this brightness after-image would
in turn have acted upon the colored after-image, and we should not
have gotten as colored after-image the direct sensation response to
the negative color excitation. But by the proper control of the
brightness conditions throughout the experiments, it was possible to
isolate or shell out, so to speak, in the form of the colored after-image,
the sensation response to the negative color process in the retina, and
thus have a means of testing directly whether or not the positive
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 297
process was inhibited by the addition of the brightness excitation.
A similar control of brightness conditions was exercised in the con-
trast experiments, with the results mentioned in (3) and (4) above.
C. E. FEBREE,
M. G. RAND.
BBYN MAWB COLLEGE.
SOCIETIES
THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF
PHILOSOPHY
Fourth International Congress of Philosophy was held at
Bologna, April 6-11, in accordance with the general program
previously published. The absence of several men who were ex-
pected to take a prominent part in the work of the Congress, how-
ever, made it necessary to modify the program very considerably.
Indeed, the news which met the delegates on their first arrival at
Bologna, that Windelband, Riehl, Ostwald, Poincare, Lalande, Stout,
and others on the program were all to be absent, seemed at first to
render doubtful the success of the Congress. The committee of ar-
rangements, however, were fortunately able to fill the places thus left
vacant, and to present a well-balanced and interesting program
which was carried through with much enthusiasm. The registration
of members amounted to more than three hundred. Italy had natu-
rally the largest representation, both in members present and in
speakers. In addition to the distinguished president, Professor
Enriques, Tocco, Peano, Croce, Valli, Chiapelli, Padoa, Gemelli de
Sarlo, and others took a prominent part in the proceedings of the
Congress. Among the French representatives were Boutroux, Berg-
son, Leon, de Roberty, Rey, Durkheim, Parodi, and Langevin.
Kiilpe, Driesch, Deussen, Nelson, Elsenhaus, de Keyserling, Deyoff,
Itelson, and others spoke for Germany, while Belgium, Switzerland,
Poland, Russia, and nearly all the countries of continental Europe
were represented. The only papers presented in English were by
Dr. Schiller, of Oxford, on ''Error"; Miss E. C. Jones, of Cam-
bridge, on "A New Law of Thought and Its Implications" ; Dr. E. S.
Russell, of London, on "Vitalism"; Miss Mary Mills Patrick, of Con-
stantinople, on " ^Enesidemus " ; Dr. Sheffer, of Harvard University,
presenting in French a paper entitled, "La classe des 'primitives'
de 1'algebre de la logique." The representatives from America \\viv
Professor Fullerton, of Columbia (who was called upon to preside at
several of the sessions), Dr. Sheffer, and the writer of this note.
The Congress was held under the high patronage of the King of
298
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Italy, who sent his cousin, the Duke of Abruzzi, as his representative
to convey a message of welcome to the delegates assembled in the
main hall of the old university building on April 6. An address of
welcome was also presented on behalf of the city by the Prefect of
Bologna. On behalf of the delegates Professor Kulpe, of Bonn, re-
sponded with fitting words of thanks to the King and to the city for
the courtesies shown to the Congress, and at the same session the
president of the Congress, Professor Enriques, presented his address
on "The Problem of Reality," in which he defined the respective
spheres of science, philosophy, and religion.
One session of each day was devoted to a general conference, in
which two or three addresses were given on topics of general interest,
which were in some cases followed by discussion ; and one session w r as
given up to simultaneous meetings of various sections, where shorter
papers were read and discussed. These sections were arranged
under the following headings: General Philosophy and Meta-
physics; History of Philosophy; Logic and Theory of the Sci-
ences; Ethics; Philosophy of Religion; Legal and Social Phi-
losophy; Esthetics; Psychology. In general, the plans for these
meetings had been carefully made ; but a good deal of confusion re-
sulted from the mysterious and unexplained absences of many who
had announced their intention of taking part in the program. In
some sections only one or two speakers appeared out of a list of five
or six. The papers actually read, however, were representative of
the various departments of philosophical interest, and in many cases
were vigorously discussed, though, as a rule, papers presented in
English and German were not generally understood. It seems im-
possible at this time to give any analysis of the content of the papers
presented to the Congress, or to form any opinion as to what views
are likely to prove especially suggestive and fruitful for the future
development of philosophy. For such conclusions it will be neces-
sary to wait for the publication of the official proceedings of the
Congress. The sections best attended, and in which the greatest in-
terest was perhaps manifested, were those on general philosophy, and
on logic and methodology of the sciences; while a large number of
papers dealt with the relations of science and philosophy, and with
an analysis of certain fundamental conceptions common to both
science and philosophy.
The reception given to the delegates was most cordial, and the
hospitality of the university and the city of Bologna most generous.
In addition to private entertainments there was an informal recep-
tion given by the university on the evening of April 5, a reception
and dinner offered by the city, an excursion to Ravenna, where the
visitors were entertained by the government of that city. The
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 299
museums, galleries, and other public institutions of Bologna were
also thrown open to the visitors.
An invitation was presented from President Butler of Columbia
University to hold the Fifth International Congress, in 1915, in New
York City. This invitation, presented by Professor Fullerton,
aroused much interest, and its acceptance was favored by a consider-
able number of the delegates present. In presenting the greetings of
the American Philosophical Association, the writer took occasion to
second the invitation of Columbia University in behalf of that Asso-
ciation and of American philosophical scholars as a whole. The
objections of distance and expense, urged by certain representatives
of France and Italy, led finally to the decision to accept the invita-
tion of the University of London to hold the next International
Congress in that city. Lord Roseberry, as Chancellor of the Univer-
sity of London, was named honorary president, and Professor Ber-
nard Bosanquet president of the Fifth Congress, to be held in 1915.
While this decision was accepted heartily by all, it is evident that
there is a very genuine and general interest among European
scholars in the philosophical work now being done in America, and
that there is a strong disposition on the part of many members of the
Congress to accept the invitation at an early date to cross the ocean
for an International Congress of Philosophy.
J. E. CREIGHTON.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Biddies of the Sphinx: A Study in the Philosophy of Humanism. F. C.
S. SCHILLER. New and Revised Edition. New York : The Macmillan
Co. 1910.
No less than politics, philosophy is confirming the recent epigram:
" Our old men are radicals, and our young men conservatives." Of the
numerous contemporary illustrations of this in the field of metaphysics,
none is more striking, and assuredly none more entertaining, than Mr.
Schiller's new " Riddles of the Sphinx," which is at once more and less
than the original edition of nineteen years ago ; less in that it has suffered
" a little toning down " as the preface assures us and more in that
many annotations have been woven in. But the Sphinx changes not, nor
do her riddles and their answers. " The central doctrines " of Mr. Schil-
ler's volume " are essentially unchanged, and may be taken to attest the
stability of the author's personality." This confession is true. The book
is the old book, and Mr. Schiller's personality is stable be it said to the
confusion of those who have sneeringly described him as a nighty radical,
fresh as May dew and no less evanescent. His philosophy reveals a mind
respectful of the past and unshakable in its faith that the great questions
were correctly put and answered centuries ago. This compliment will not
300 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
be withdrawn in case Mr. Schiller pronounces it an abominable misunder-
standing of his writings which the reviewer fears he may do, inasmuch
as his preface declares that humanism " has rendered more or less out of
date every earlier work in metaphysics, in much the same way as the rise
of evolutionism rendered out of date every pre-Darwinian book on
biology."
The genuine conservative never dreams that the questions his an-
cestors raised may have been altogether products of local and transient
circumstances. Pragmatists, of course, not only dream this, but adduce
some pretty convincing fulfilments of it ; pragmatists are radicals, though,
and Mr. Schiller wisely calls himself by another name. For he is strug-
gling to reconcile (O blessed word!) philosophy, science, and religion.
" Should we not cherish the hope of a final reconciliation of these three
speculative activities, of such a harmony of all the elements of thought
as is worthy of their common parentage (which, he says, is animism!),
and as will enable all in the end to subserve in unison to the attainment
of the perfect life? . . . May not the true religion be but the emotional
aspect of the true philosophy ? " Twentieth-century people might suggest
that religion is the hysterical aspect of befuddled philosophy, and that to
" reconcile " its yearnings and visions with spectral analysis and amphi-
mixis is about as profitable a pastime as reconciling hallucinations with
normal, socially corrected testimony. Far be such impiety from the true
ancestor-worshipper !
The thorough conservative is, to the core, intellectualistic so very
intellectualistic that he suspects it not. He believes his feelings and con-
duct are absolutely shaped, colored, and directed by reason; what he
thinks out concerning the drift and the nature of things in general in
brief, his conclusions about God, freedom, and immortality will in-
evitably make life endurable or unendurable, worth living or fit only to
be quenched. And, furthermore, he believes that, if " the fundamental
perversity or irrationality of all things " can be shown, he is plunged
into pessimism, which is " the utter negation of life." This is the precise
and much-repeated opinion of Mr. Schiller. It is the exact opposite of
pragmatism, you will observe ; for Mr. Schiller believes there is a " mean-
ing " to life as a whole, whereas pragmatists most explicitly limit " mean-
ing " to a type of relation within the cognitive situation. " It is futile,"
says Mr. Schiller, " to bid us confine ourselves to this present world of
phenomena, and to assure us that we have no interest to raise the question
as to the nature of God and of our own future. . . . The sphere of positive
science is not self-supporting, self-sufficing, self-explaining." And else-
where : " The ideal of true humanism, and the ideal also of true science,
would be realized when all our explanations made use of no principles
which were not self-evident to human minds, self-explanatory to human
feelings." Is this not the very essence of intellectualism ? Can any other
philosophy or philosophical method so exalt self-evident principles? Can
any other maintain that, just because a concept is perfectly clear to us,
we must interpret the universe through it? Surely, if Descartes suffered
from vicious intellectualism, our humanist groans on the same bed with
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 301
him. It matters not what idea each thinker happens to think the clearest
be it the number series of Pythagoras, or the " Cogito " of Descartes,
or the " Ego " of Mr. Schiller the resulting philosophy is perverse intel-
lectualism if everything in the world is either reduced to that idea or else
so interpreted through it that whatever proves unintelligible in terms of it
is pronounced unreal.
The eminently respectable antiquity of humanism and its intellectual-
istic root appear undisguised, first, in those ideas which seem self-evident
to it, and secondly, in the problems which it ranks as most important.
As to Mr. Schiller's self-evident first principles, they are professedly even
more ancient than those generally favored by intellectualists ; they are of
the kind which " clings to the analogy of human agency." To anthro-
pomorphism must philosophy hark back, Mr. Schiller believes; and why?
Because " anthropomorphic means partaking of the nature of man, and
what human reasoning can fail to render the peculiarities of the human
reason ? " We now may observe what strikes the author as self-evident :
first, there is a knower and a known; and, secondly, like knows like, as
Empedocles said. Many latter-day sinners find quite as much obscurity
in these axioms as in Descartes's inference from " cogito " to " sum," or
the pre-Socratic dichotomy, " being " and " not-being," or the doctrine
that one is the perfect number, or the forbidding of beans to philosophers.
They will likewise shrink from the axiom, " esse = percipi" implied un-
mistakably in Mr. Schiller's entire discussion of " The Metaphysics of
Evolution " where, at the end of his criticism of Sir William Crookes's
hypothesis of elementary substance, Mr. Schiller says : " The protyle . . .
is in reality a synonym for NOTHING; for it is devoid of all the charac-
teristics of sensible reality. It is not tangible . . . nor audible . . . nor
visible. ... In short, it has no qualities that could render it in any way
perceptible." So whatever lacks sense qualities is non-existent. Little
novelty here! Rather the same old story which teachers of elementary
logic use in their exercises on fallacies!
One might point out the conservative intellectualism of Book I.,
wherein, after showing that pessimism is the philosopher's most important
problem, the humanist solves it to the glory of God and man. Pessimism
is the view that the world is either perverse or irrational, thinks Mr.
Schiller, and if the world is either, life is " negated," which, I suppose,
means that it is somehow hampered, rendered nugatory. Pessimism
preaches " the hideous and unalterable sordidness of life "; and few would
care to survive to feel it long. Back of such an interpretation lies the
extreme intellectualistic presupposition that a theory about the cosmic
drift must regulate our practical attitudes, feelings, and conduct from
moment to moment. If the world isn't engineered so as to guarantee
unlimited bliss for all hands, your knowledge of this must logically per-
vade your dinner, the evening at the theater, and to-morrow's boat ride;
must, in short, throw its lights or its shadows across each hour. The
obvious retort that springs to modern lips is that, as a matter of psycho-
logical fact, these lights and shadows do not fall upon men's paths as the
logic of the case demands; Epicurus, Lucretius, and Professor Santayana
302 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
are not the rare exceptions, they are rather the shining examples of the
normal man's invincible indifference in practical life to the intellectual-
ist's demand that we allow metaphysics to sour our breakfast porridge and
paralyze the nerves which give us a good time. What may be truth of
the cosmos through all the reaches of time is not, as a matter of fact, true
of little spots in it at some brief moments; and men, who live and move
only in little spots and only at brief moments, always have reacted and
always will react only to these intimate near tracts of time and space.
Pessimism is not a practical problem for anybody save an impractical
person. This fact is highly conducive to useful optimism.
The reviewer, in failing to discuss the questions raised by " The
Riddle of the Sphinx," has proved unfair to its author; and he regrets
that he is capable of nothing better than such injustice. But he is too
strongly convinced that wayfarers should pay no attention to Sphinxes
and their riddles. All Sphinxes are of the same breed as the Sphinx of
Thebes, which used to ask : " What animal goes on four legs in the morn-
ing, on two at midday, and on three in the evening ? " and sent those
who answered wrongly to jump off a high cliff. Modern man, absorbed in
making the world a more comfortable tavern, refuses to waste a minute
over such riddles, much less to take his wrong answers so tragically.
WALTER B. PITKIN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Geschichte und Kulturgeschichte. WALTER GOETZ. Archiv filr Kultur-
geschichte, March, 1910, pp. 4-19.
Beginning with the eighth volume, the Archiv filr Kulturgeschichte
is published by B. G. Teubner under the general editorship of Dr. George
Steinhausen. At the same time with this significant advance in its ma-
terial equipment, the review is undergoing a corresponding change in
character. More distinctly than hitherto it is to be a repository for work
done in the broad field of the history of culture. The editors believe this
to be not merely the summation of the results of specialized study of the
history of religion, art, morality, industry, etc., but a distinct form of
research which takes up these particular results and elicits from their
synthesis valuable generalizations. The European civilization of the
middle age and of modern times, in particular that of Germany, will be
kept in the foreground.
Professor Goetz's article is designed to present further discussion of
the aims of the Archiv. The author begins by stating that certain views
that were advocated a decade ago in Germany are now almost wholly
abandoned; viz., the biological analogy of history; the dominance as-
signed to the social-psychological factors, and the " comparative method."
The younger generation is engaged in an extension of the historical field
to which Lamprecht gave the name " history of civilization," or " history
of culture" (Kulturgeschichte). Negatively, the new discipline must be
distinguished from the old. That which was formerly called Kultur-
geschichte has been taken over by Volkskunde, since the latter came into
existence. Whatever falls within this field should no longer be desig-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 303
nated by the more special name. It must be admitted, indeed, that the
definition of Kulturgeschichte is still somewhat unsettled. Bernheim re-
jects the equation of it with universal history as too vague, and defines it
as " the history of the development of the forms and processes of social
life, and of the instruments and results (intellectual and material) of the
non-political activity of man." But this raises the question whether po-
litical life and the life of culture are separate, whether the state is to be
considered as standing apart. As it is, however, the term is fairly intel-
ligible. If, e. g., a lecture on the history of medieval culture is an-
nounced, students at once understand it to indicate a discussion compre-
hending the political, the economic, and the intellectual life of the Middle
Age an essay in the general or total history of the time.
The more important question is whether the historian should consider
it his function to cultivate history in this comprehensive sense. That
political history is not the whole of history its stoutest advocates would
admit; however highly you estimate the history of the state, there re-
mains a whole range of significant activities which are just as truly his-
torical material. Though political historians assert that the political life
is the important thing in the progress of events and that in limitation to
that field lies the hope of attaining the scientific ideal, yet the question
remains open, Whose is the comprehensive field of all describable human
activities ?
In a time of gathering and arranging new material, delimitation was
necessary. But how many brilliant works have owed their existence to a
transgression of these narrow bounds, the particular problem in each in-
stance necessitating deviation from the old methods. No history of the
Reformation was ever written without borrowing much from theology;
none of the French Revolution without some consideration of philosophy.
A study of the great nineteenth-century histories reveals that their au-
thors have branched out in many directions according to individual in-
clinations and aptitudes. Ranke himself went out of his strict domain
to write on " Italian Poetry." It is necessary that new and larger aims
should be set up. Scholarship obeys the law of outgrown ideals. Were
there no such restatement of ideals, historical scholarship would result in
an intolerable sum of repetitions. It can preserve its function as a
teacher of the nation only so long as it takes account of all the significant
activities in national development.
After all, is the broadening of the problem of historical scholarship so
impossible? Archeology has never been so circumscribed. Classical
philology and Egyptology have always regarded the whole of ancient cul-
ture as their province. Mommsen thought he could give no adequate
account of Roman history without including industry, religion, literature,
art. Eduard Meyer's " History of Antiquity " is history of culture in our
sense. What was possible for antiquity is possible also for medieval and
modern times. Future teachers will be little benefited by accounts of
coronations and political squabbles. They should be enabled to present a
view of the entire range of medieval life, for instance. The historian of a
civilization must use the results of special researches, but always with a
304
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
view to ascertaining their mutual relations, and to ultimate generali-
zation.
A new method is required by the new ideals; but this, argues Goetz,
will have to be based upon the historico-critical method. The assumption
of " laws of history " and belief in the exactitude of the " comparative
method" exclude inductive investigation in the attempt to make history
an exact science. Not that the search for analogies is valueless ; we need
discussion of these as our sociological and ethnographic knowledge in-
creases. But their value is limited and subordinate. Finally, the his-
tory of civilization needs representation in the university faculties quite
as much as world-history. And these claims, it is maintained, are not
new or radical ; they are merely a description of present-day tendencies in
historical thought.
C. W. DOXSEE.
Sioux CITY, IOWA.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. January, 1911.
Practise Effects in Free Association (pp. 1-13): F. L. WELLS. - Practise
decreases the free association time, with an accompanying differentiation
and particularization of the responses. The free associations tend to
become more superficial. The emotive value of free association experi-
ments is decreased by practise. A Preliminary Experimental Study of
the Conscious Concomitants of Understanding (pp. 14-64-) : HIKOZO
KAKISE. - The type of imagery depends upon the way a word is given to
the subject. The frequency of memory images is conditioned only by
the rate of the reaction. The usual association tests do not indicate the
mental content, but the Ausfrage method is better for such purposes. The
feeling of concept is either a feeling of familiarity or of content. The
Psychopathology of Apraxia (pp. 65-85) : ISADOR H. CORIAT. - A general
discussion followed by a report on two cases. The chief difficulty of the
patients was the inability to transfer a subjective choice into an objective
reaction. The disturbing lesion was probably located at the angle of the
third, left frontal convolution of the Sylvian fissure. The disorders could
be partially corrected through visual impressions. Some Physical Factors
Affecting Reaction Time with a Description of a New Reaction Key
(pp. 86-93) : FRANK ANGELL. - A preliminary survey of the influence of
the key on reaction time. The increase in the resistance of the key tends
to lengthen reactions and decrease the distance of the movement. Pre-
cision of Measurements Applied to Psychometric Functions (pp. 94-98) :
F. H. SAFFORD. - A discussion of three recent articles on psychometric
functions by Dr. F. M. Urban from the standpoint of physical measure-
ments. The Psychology of Drowsiness (pp. 99-111) : H. L. HOLLING-
WORTH. - An introspective and analytical study of peculiar states of low-
ered consciousness. Some foreign element often substitutes itself for
other datum and takes its place in the composition of the hallucination.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 305
In these states there is present a fluid kind of association on a sensory
basis bringing about peculiar combinations. Intelligent inhibitions are
absent. The details of the drowsy consciousness fade more quickly than
in the normal state. Minor Studies from the Psychological Laboratory
of Vassar College. An Effect of Fatigue on the Judgments of the Af-
fective Value of Colors (pp. 112-114) : ETHEL L. NORRIS, ALICE G. Twiss,
and M. F. WASHBURN. A Note on the Affective Values of Colors (pp.
114-115) : M. F. WASHBURN. The Discrimination of Articulate Sounds
by Raccoons (pp. 116-119) : W. T. SHEPHERD. - The animals gave re-
sponses that seemed very characteristic of discrimination, yet the author
hesitates in giving this as a final conclusion. Boole Reviews: Dr. Franz
Nikolaus Finck, Die Haupttypen des Sprauchbaus: ALEXANDER F. CHAM-
BERLAIN. Amy E. Tanner, Studies in Spiritism: JOSEPH JASTROW. C. L.
Herrick, The Metaphysics of a Naturalist; Philosophical and Psycholog-
ical Fragments: W. S. FOSTER. Paul Meunier et Rene Masselon, Les
reves et leur interpretation: THEODATE L. SMITH. Alfred Binet, L'annee
psychologique. H. E. Cushman, A Beginner's History of Philosophy.
Robert Gaupp, Psychologie des Kindes. Stanley Le Fevre Krebs, Trick
Methods of Eusapia Palladino. Wolfgang Weichardt, Ue~ber Ermiid-
ungstoffe. H. E. Wingfield, An Introduction to Hypnotism, Experimental
and Therapeutic. Anne M. Nicholson, The Concept Standard. E. B.
Titchener, A Text-booh of Psychology. Joseph Jastrow, The Qualities of
Men. A. Schoppa, Die Phantasie nach ihrem Wesen und ihrer Bedeutung
fur das Geistesleben. G. Haberlandt, Die Sinnesorgane der Pflanzen.
F. G. Benedict and Thorne M. Carpenter, The Metabolism and Energy
Transformations of Healthy Man During Rest. E. J. G. Stumpf, Der
Traum und seine Deutung, nebst erklarten Traumbeispielen. Mary
Whiton Calkins, A First Booh in Psychology. Paul Kariskha, Straight
Goods in Philosophy. E. L. Thorndike, Educational Psychology. James
H. Snowden, The World a Spiritual System. William Brown, The Use
of the Theory of Correlation in Psychology: F. M. URBAN. Heinrich
Ernst Ziegler, Der Begriff des InstinTctes, einst und jetzt; eine Studie
iiber die Geschichte und die Grundlagen der Tierpsychologie : J. W. BAIRD.
G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind. G. M. Whipple, Manual
of Mental and Physical Tests. Max Talmey, Psyche. Count E. M.
Cesaresco, The Psychology and Training of the Horse. J. Hourly Void,
Ueber den Traum. Theodore De Laguna and Grace Andrus De Laguna,
Dogmatism and Evolution: Studies in Modern Philosophy. Hudson
Maxim, The Science of Poetry and the Philosophy of Language. Fred-
erick G. Bonser, The Reasoning Ability of Children. L. Forbes Winslow,
The Suggestive Power of Hypnotism. M. Pelletier, Les lois morbides de
I'association des idees. William A. White, Bulletin No. 2, Government
Hospital for the Insane.
ARCHIV FUR SYSTEMATISCHE PHILOSOPHIE. XVI. Band,
Heft 4. November, 1910. Ueber die Grenzen der naturwissenschaft-
lichen und der historischen Methode (pp. 431-452) : C. FRIES. - Unity has
been the goal of human knowledge and unification the all-pervading
306 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
method. The theory of conservation of matter and energy reigns su-
preme not only in the inorganic but also in the organic world, mental life
included. Thus viewed, there can be no essential distinction between
physical, biological, and historical method. Rickert is wrong simply
because he fails to analyze thoroughly the concepts law, history, etc.
Nature is but one ; hence also science is but one. Ueber Bedeutung und
Wesen der Elementarbegrife (pp. 453^97) : L. GABRILOVITSCH. - Colors,
sounds, direction, etc., these ultimate indefmables forming the raw material
of concepts, are elementary concepts. Now, qualities (in the cognitive
process) are relations, and as such they occur in real contents, which
latter, by the very fact of their being so or so qualified, form spheres of
experience. Obviously, experience as a whole is the prius of these
spheres, whence the opposition content-form is no more: the spheres in
their mutual relations exhibit the formal. Zur Systematik der Wissen-
schaften (pp. 498-520) : E. BARTHEL. - The domains not conquered by the
natural sciences and still retained by philosophy are: epistemology, logic,
metaphysics, ethics, and esthetics. Now, epistemology as a propaedeutic
science is hardly of any use to philosophy; logic enjoys autonomy; meta-
physics has been tottering all along, and with the advent of the teleologic
method its abolition is almost an accomplished fact. Thus, only ethics
and esthetics remain the legitimate possession of philosophy. The follow-
ing is a logical basis for a system of the sciences: (a) epistemology (the
possibility of knowledge); (Z>) logic and mathematics; (c) natural sci-
ences (the study of objects as such) ; ( d) philosophy (the science of
values). Die EntwicJclung und Ausbreitung des cesthetischen Lebens
durch die Kunst (pp. 521-531) : R. M.-FREIENFELS. - While teaching to
regard objects in themselves, apart from their practical use, art creates
" esthetic distance." Furthermore, by a sort of suggestion art prepares
a direct esthetic attitude toward objects. Finally, by transforming the
objects art discovers new esthetic viewpoints. Die Klassen des Seienden
(pp. 532-535) : T. KEHR. - In terms of duration being is infinite or finite.
In terms of qualification, since what is is something, being is material or
immaterial. Schematically, thus:
iC immaterial : Vacancy = Space.
IntransientJ material . the Filler r= Substance.
I
. , J immaterial: Orders and Forms (Space-sections).
1 material: Unified substance-manif olds = Compound objects.
Die theoretischen und praktischen Folgen des Determinismus (pp. 536-
544) : G. WENDEL. - Theoretically, determinism renders possible philo-
sophic monism, guards against the mystifying hypothesis of psycho-
physical parallelisms, and stimulates the generalization of the law of
conservation of energy. Practically, determinism, regarding, as it does,
human acts as determined by motives, makes it possible to develop char-
acter, bars fatalism, and brightens the prospects of human progress.
Moreover, it is all compatible with an idealistic standpoint. Die neuesten
Erscheinungen.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 307
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. December, 1910. Les travaux de
I'ecole de Wurzburg (pp. 553-580) : N. KOSTYLEFF. - This is a school of
introspection, and its success would appear unfavorable to the objective
conception of thought (cf. first article) were it not for the fact that it
ends in a purely metaphysical synthesis. Le role de I'individu dans la
formation de la morale (pp. 581-599) : LAHY. - An endeavor to define the
real value of the individual whom modern sociology has seemed to re-
duce to a mere executor of rules socially established. Critique des
methodes de I'esthetique (pp. 600-624) : CH. LALO. - Traditional esthetics,
when mystical, repels the idea of method; otherwise, it falls under the
conditions of general logic, and has to define its problems and solve them
as any other science. Its method is then not separable from its solutions.
Revue generale. Les revues allemandes de psychologic en 1909:
FOUCAULT. Analyses et comptes rendus. James, The Meaning of
Truth: L. DAURIAC. De Wulf, Histoire de la philosophic en Belgique:
G. DWELSCHAUVERS. P. Neve, La philosophic de Taine: J. SECOND. F.
Jodl et F. P. Fulci, L'etica del Positivismo : M. SOLOVINE. Dr. O. Lempp,
Das Problem der Theodicee in der Philosophic und Literatur der 18.
Jahrhunderts bis auf Kant und Schiller: J. SECOND. A. Matagrin, La
psychologie sociale de Gabriel Tarde: L. DAURIAC. L. Schiemann, Gobi-
neau's Rassenwerk: DR. S. JANKELEVITCH. Notices bibliographiques.
Amendola, Giovanni. La Volonta e il Bene. Rome: Libreria Editrice
Romana. 1911. Pp. 62.
Bernard, Henry M. Some Neglected Factors in Evolution : An Essay in
Constructive Biology. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
1911. Pp. xxi + 489. $3.00.
Bohn, G. La nouvelle psychologie animale. Paris: Alcan. 1911. Pp.
200. 2 fr. 50.
Boutroux, Emile. William James. Paris: Librarie Armand Colin.
1911. Pp. 143. 3 fr.
Scott, Walter Dill. Influencing Men in Business: The Psychology of
Argument and Suggestion. New York: The Ronald Press Company.
1911. Pp. 168. $1.00.
Wallin, J. E. Wallace. Spelling Efficiency in Relation to Age, Grade,
and Sex, and the Question of Transfer : An Experimental and Critical
Study of the Function of Method in the Teaching of Spelling.
(Educational Psychology Monographs.) Baltimore: Warwick & York,
Inc. 1911. Pp. viii + 91.
Whipple, G. M. Manual of Mental and Physical Tests: a book of direc-
tions compiled with special reference to the experimental study of
school children in the laboratory or classroom. Baltimore: Warwick
and York. 1910. Pp. xix -f 534.
Whitehead, Alfred North, and Russell, Bertrand. Principia Mathematica.
Vol.1. Cambridge: University Press. 1910. Pp. xv -f 666. $8.00.
308
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
HARVARD UNIVERSITY has recently acquired from Dr. Arnold Genthe,
of San Francisco, some very important manuscripts of Hegel which were
thought to have been lost. They contain: (1) mathematical notes, dated
September 23, 1800 ; (2) fragmentary drafts of the " Propaedeutik "
and the " Encyclopaedic," dated October 11, 1811 ; (3) reports about
Esser's " System der Logik," Calker's " Denklehre oder Logik und Dia-
lektik," and about the paintings of Kuegelgen; (4) drafts of letters:
(a) to Goethe, of February 24, 1821 (two different sketches), (fr) to
Goethe, of August 2, 1821, (c) to Goethe, of September 15, 1822 (these
Goethe letters have been published by Dr. Arnold Genthe in the Goethe-
jahrbucli of 1895), (d) to the Prussian ministry of state concerning raise
of salary, (e) to Freiherr von Altenstein and to Prince Karl August von
Hardenberg accompanying the " Philosophic des Rechts," (/) to the min-
ister of the interior, Freiherr von Schuckmann, concerning the release of
Victor Cousin, who was arrested in Berlin in November, 1824, and, (<?) to
Cousin; (5) aphorisms most of them not printed in Rosenkranz's " Leben
Hegels " (1844); (6) university reports: (a) draft of Hegel's address on
the occasion of his retirement as rector at the University of Berlin,
(fc) draft of a letter to the Prussian ministry concerning renovation of
the university, in which Hegel pleads for a university chapel, (c) draft
of a report concerning Dr. F. E. Beneke, whose habilitation at the Uni-
versity of Berlin Hegel sought to prevent; (7) lecture notes; (8) report
about final examinations (Abiturienthenaufsaetze) at the Brandenburg
gymnasium, which Hegel had to read as member of the examination com-
mittee; (9) excerpts from various books, newspapers, etc. These manu-
scripts are deposited in the Philosophical Library in Emerson Hall, and
are accessible to students who may wish to examine them.
THE Home University Library of Modern Knowledge, a series of new
books, by eminent authorities, at a moderate price (75 cents a volume),
and specially written for the layman and student, will be inaugurated this
month by the publication, over the imprint of Messrs. Henry Holt and
Company, of the first ten volumes. The editors are Professor Gilbert
Murray, of Oxford University; Herbert Fisher, of Oxford University;
Professor J. Arthur Thomson, of the University of Aberdeen; and Pro-
fessor William T. Brewster, of Columbia University. Among the first
ten volumes, which are to be ready this month, are the following : " The
Socialist Movement," by J. Ramsay MacDonald ; " Liberalism," by Pro-
fessor L. T. Hobhouse; "Crime and Insanity," by Dr. C. A. Mercier;
and " Evolution," by Professor J. Arthur Thomson and Professor Arthur
Geddes.
BRUCE PAYNE, Ph.D. (Columbia, 1905), professor of educational psy-
chology in the University of Virginia, has been appointed president of
the George Peabody College for Teachers at Nashville. The old Peabody
College has been disbanded and President Payne will have a free field in
constructing the new one, which is to have new grounds, buildings and
faculty, and one million and a half additional endowment.
VI
VOL. VIII. No. 12 JUNE 8, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE ASYMMETRY OF THE IMAGINATION 1
IT appears that human minds, at least some of them, are blessed
with a variety of lights. There is the light of ocular perception,
commonly objectified, and usually identified with solar radiance or
with that of electricity or that of a burning tallow candle. There is
the light of the imagination in which, with or without the eyes being
closed, one may behold things that may or may not correspond to
things previously beheld in perceptional light and that, following
the psychological nomenclature of the ancient atomists, are often
unhappily called "images," as if they were given-off masks or copies
of objects dwelling and revealed in the light of perception. If the
metaphor may be allowed, the rays of imagination's light are not al-
ways straight. They may bend, curve, and converge so as to present
a view of something around the corner, or of an aspect turned away
from the beholder as the opposite phase of a sphere. Every one may
know that in the light of imagination things are disclosed whose per-
ceptional correspondents have not been seen and may not exist.
Indeed, the geometrician finds his occupation to consist largely in the
beholding and contemplation of configurations whose conceptual
correspondents may have been previously indicated by analysis as
distinguished from spatial intuition, or which may, after their own
manner, have just "dawned upon his imagination," without their
ever ha vim: been clad in ether-reflecting garb or touched by a solar
ray. Then there is the light of thought the light of analysis, whose
obje, ;>. like number, for example, do not inhabit space very differ-
ent from the other two kinds of light, illuminating the way where the
li-jiii of perception fails, penetrating infinitely beyond the utmost
hes of the light of imagination, knowing no bounds save the bar-
riers and limitations of logic; the beautiful, pray, ubiquitous light it
i which one beholds, suspended in their nakedness and purity, the
intellectual structures known as theory, woven of concepts and re-
1 before the tenth annual meeting of the American Philosophical
MI at Princeton, December 28, 1910.
309
310 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
lationships the ganglia and netted neural fibers of being witness-
ing to the rationality of the human spirit and serving it as types
and standards for the criticism and estimate of worlds. That there
is a yet higher and finer kind of light, a light peculiar to the higher
emotions, a radiance and glory of things not revealed in the lights of
ocular perception or imagination or thought I own to having some-
thing more than a mild suspicion that there is such a radiance and
glory, but I shall not pursue the inquiry in this connection. Of the
varieties of light mentioned, it is that of imagination and that of
thought, or rather it is the powers or faculties, imagination and
thought, which reveal those lights and the things that dwell therein,
it is these faculties that I wish to speak of here.
Some years ago, when lecturing on a hypercomplex of geometric
elements in space of fourfold dimensionality in points, I was struck
by a strange phenomenon in the field of the imagination. The hyper-
complex call it H was represented by an equation, as F = 0. Now
four-space is exactly as rich in lines as it is in planes, containing a
sixfold infinity of elements of either kind. The ten variables in F
were connected by just enough identities to leave the variables equiv-
alent to six independents, and thus to render them available as line
coordinates or as plane coordinates in four-space. Accordingly, as
the equation, F = Q, imposed one additional condition on the vari-
ables, the H represented by the equation was a configuration com-
posed of a fivefold infinitude of lines, if the variables were regarded
as line coordinates, or of a fivefold infinitude of planes if the variables
were regarded as plane coordinates: a rather numerous array of
elements when taken absolutely, but meager enough in comparison
with the total ensemble of lines or planes contained in four-space.
The question was, supposing H to be composed of lines, how were the
lines distributed or disposed throughout four-space? What sort of
configuration was this H? What did it look like? What was the
character of its make-up and constitution ? And, supposing H to be
composed of planes, the same question was put concerning them.
How were the planes distributed? How disposed and related? In
a word, H being composed of lines or of planes, what were the prop-
erties of H? To answer, it was necessary to dissect H, to cut it, so to
speak, with simpler configurations, and to examine the traces or
intersections ; that is, to examine the configurations composed of the
elements common to H and the cutting configurations. If H as line
configuration were cut by certain line configurations C ly C 2 , , the
intersections were certain other line configurations y t , y 2 , . If H
as plane configuration were cut by plane configurations (7', C", ,
the intersections were certain other plane configurations y', y", .
When 1? <7 2 , were respectively the same logically, i. e., in thought,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 311
as C", C", , then y 19 y 2 , were for thought, i. e., logically, the same
respectively as y', y", . In this fact there was nothing to surprise,
it was evident a priori, for H as line configuration and H as plane
configuration are, by virtue of their identical algebraic definition,
F = 0, one and the same in logical make-up, in conceptual constitu-
tion, in their character as thought structures. The surprise came
when it was observed and this is the unexpected phenomenon al-
luded to above that, albeit the y-configurations are one-to-one
logically identical with the y '-configurations, the former do not
disclose themselves in the light of imagination equally with their
correspondents among the latter. A given y-configuration may dis-
close itself wholly, partially, or not at all without the same being
true, or true in the same measure, of the corresponding y'-configura-
tion. So that, whilst thought pursued a straightforward course in
the domain under consideration, imagination was constrained by its
own limitations to a zigzag course. Whilst thought spread its char-
acteristic radiance equally everywhere throughout the fourfold do-
main, the brighter light of the imagination shone but here, there, and
yonder, in patches and spots, like the patines of golden light that of
a clear summer day one may see on leaf and ground and tree-trunk
in the depths of a thick forest.
The phenomenon ought, it seemed, to be of interest to students
of psychology. Its bearings upon other matters may or may not be
important. Time, if the matter be followed up, may determine that.
The immediate task is to bring the phenomenon into clearer view, to
display it. if possible, in a field less remote and less difficult of access
than that in which it was first observed, and thus to render it ob-
servable and unmistakable to such as may not be prepared to pursue
far the ways of geometric interpretation. This task can be per-
formed as follows by the help of considerations demanding but a very
slight knowledge of algebraic methods applied to the study of space.
It will be observed that the procedure exemplifies the possibility of
employ i n ir analytic geometry as an instrument for investigating some
aspects of the nature and behavior of the human mind. I have no
doubt the time will come when mathematical methods will be recog-
nized as an indispensable part of the proper equipment of the philos-
opher and the psychologist, and when, accordingly, in our colleges
and universities there will be regularly offered mathematical courses
specially designed for such students. That the applications of math-
cm re destined to be confined to fields now conventionally de-
scribed as the fields of natural science is a belief having its ground
in a rather prosaic infidelity respecting the similitudes that penetrate
ii n<l ally all the forms of spiritual activity.
In the title of this paper imagination is described as asymmetric.
312 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
On the other hand, it will be contended that thought, at least in the
domain under consideration, is symmetric. What precisely is the
meaning of these adjectives as thus employed? The question admits
of. a perfectly clear answer, as follows : Consider the expression
/i / /V /ii/y 1 b_ 1 / /y* L_ 4/ 1* /-- 1
11 ^22 tvovC/o wfttAsTi \ J-
Denote it by the symbol E(u, x). Observe that the u's enter the
expression just as the x's enter it, it being quite indifferent, owing
to the law of commutation here assumed, whether a given u comes
before its x or after it. E(u, x) is, on this account, said to be sym-
metric as to the u's and the x's. Next consider the equation,
E(UJ x) = 0. It, too, for the same reason, is symmetric in the same
respect. The x's may be taken to be the coordinates of a conceptual
point in a conceptual space S n of n dimensions. Then the equation,
imposing one condition on the variability of the x 's, will represent or
define in S n an (n l)-fold infinitude of points constituting in S n
a conceptual space $ n _i of n - - 1 dimensions. It is plain that to two
different sets of values of the u's there will correspond two distinct
spaces of the type $ n _ . Hence in S n the u's may be taken to be the
coordinates of the element S n -i just as the x's were taken to be the
coordinates of the point. The two conceptual interpretations, one
of the x's and one of the u's, are naturally described as symmetric
interpretations. Note carefully that, if the u's be held fast and the
x's be allowed to vary subject to the condition, E(u, x) = 0, this
equation represents some S n _^ as an ensemble of the points contained
in it; and that, if the x's be held fast and the u's be allowed to vary
subject to the condition, E(u, x) = 0, the equation represents a point
as an ensemble of the spaces S n ^ containing it. Naturally these two
interpretations, one for the u's constant and the x's variable, the
other for the x's constant and the u's variable, of one and the same
symmetric equation, E(u, x) = or E(x, u) =0, are to be them-
selves characterized as symmetric. The same is true of the following
pairs of interpretations. If E. L (u, x) =0 be a definite space S' n -i,
and E 2 (u, x) = represent another definite space $" n _i, then the
equation, E^(u, x) + )JZ 2 (u, x) = 0, as A varies, will represent, one
after another, the single infinitude of spaces $ n _i that have in com-
mon the intersection, an S n _ 2 , of $Vi and S" n -i m , whilst, if the first
two equations be interpreted to represent two points P' and P" ', the
third will, as A varies, represent, one after another, the single infini-
tude of points on the line determined by P' and P". Once more,
according as E^(u, x) = 0, E 2 (u, x) = 0, and E 3 (u, a?) =0 be con-
strued to represent three independent spaces $' n _i, $'Vi, and $'" n _i
or three independent points P', P", and P" f , the equation, E +
= 0, will, as A and ju vary, represent, one after another,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 313
either the twofold infinitude of spaces S n -i having in common the
intersection, an $ n _ 3 , of S', S", and S'", or the twofold infinitude of
points in the plane determined by P', P" , and P'". And so on and
so on. Let not the reader falter if as yet he fail to see the outcome,
for this will presently be clear.
Let it be noted and borne in mind that the foregoing pairs of
symmetric interpretations are conceptual interpretations, interpreta-
tions by, in, and for thought thought-interpretations, as they may
be conveniently called. Denote the two of an arbitrary pair of them
by T(u) and T(x), according as the u's or the x's are constant. Now
imagination attempts in its way to make interpretations that corre-
spond to I do not say copy those made by thought. In other
words, imagination seeks to behold in its peculiar kind of light ob-
jects that correspond to or match the objects beheld by thought in its
own kind of light. And in this function imagination succeeds per-
fectly if n be not too large, and never completely fails, however large
be the value of n. Denote the imagination interpretations corre-
sponding to T(u) and T(x) by I(u) and /(#), respectively. Now
suppose that 71 = 2; then S n is a plane. Then, if T(u) is the inter-
pretation of E(u, x) =0, T(u) is the concept of a range of points,
the ensemble of the points of a line, and I(u) is the corresponding ob-
ject in imagination's light, namely, the so-called "image" or "pic-
ture" of a range of points; whilst T(x) is the concept of a pencil of
lines, the totality of lines (of the plane) through a point, and I(x) is
the "image" of a pencil. Still keeping n2, if T(u) is the interpre-
tation of the equation, E^u, x) -{-\E 2 (u, x) =0, then T(u) is the
concept: a variable range of a pencil (of ranges) determined by the
ranges S f and S", and I(u) is the corresponding thing beheld by the
imagination; whilst T(x) is the concept: a variable point of a range
determined by the points P' and P" , and I(x) is the corresponding
object in the field of imagination.
In order to gain all needed facility in the matter, let us pursue
the parallelism in the case that n = 3. It will be observed that here,
just as when n 2, the objects presented to imagination perfectly
match their correspondents presented to thought, though an object
of the one set is as radically different from its correlative in the
other as the definition or concept of a type of harmony is different
from the harmony itself to a deaf Beethoven. As n is now 3, S n is
ordinary space. If T(u) and T(x) be the thought interpretations
of the equation, E(u, x) = 0, then the former is the concept of a
plane of points, the latter is the concept of a point (or bundle or
sheaf) of planes, the totality of planes having a point in common;
whilst I(u) and I(x) are respectively imagination's correlatives of
the two concepts. If T(u) and T(x) are interpretations of the
314 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
equation, E^(u t x) + ^z( u > x ) 0> then the former is the conce
of a variable plane of the axal pencil (of planes) determined by the
planes 8 r and $", i. e., the total ensemble of planes having a range
of points in common, and T(x) is the symmetric of the other, namely,
the concept of a variable point of the range (of points) determined
by the points P' and P", the total ensemble of points common to a
pencil of planes; whilst I(u) and l(x) are the things representing
those concepts in imagination. Finally, denoting by the T's the
conceptual interpretations of the equation,
EI(U, x) + \E 2 (u, x) ;+ p<E 3 (u, x) = 0,
the E's being supposed independent, then T(u) is the concept of a
variable plane of the bundle (of planes) determined by the three
planes S', S", S" f , and T(x) is the concept of a variable point of the
plane (of points) determined by the three points P', P", P'".
One more step, and we shall have reached the goal. Before
taking it, it is essential to note the following matters.
A. As n increases more and more beyond the value 3, neither
T(u) nor T(x) fails in any degree whatever, but both I(u) and I(x)
fail in part, though not completely.
B. For every value of n, T(u) and T(x) are symmetric inter-
pretations; and so, too, are I(u) and I(x), though these two are in-
complete for n equal to or greater than 4.
C. From the fact that the interpretations T(u) and T(x) are
symmetric, does it follow that the faculty, thought, which produces
them is symmetric or functions symmetrically? No, for there are
degrees of symmetry, so that of a pair of symmetric thought inter-
pretations the one might be, as an interpretation, less complete than
the other, in which case the faculty, thought, producing them would
have to be said to function asymmetrically. Is, then, thought asym-
metric? No, it is symmetric. Why? Because the T(u) and T(x)
of any pair of symmetric interpretations are equally, being abso-
lutely, complete. Is the faculty imagination symmetric? No, it is
asymmetric. "Why ? Is it because for some values of n the interpre-
tations, I(u) and I(x) 9 although symmetric, are incomplete? No,
imagination is said to be asymmetric or to function asymmetrically
because, for higher values of n, the symmetric interpretations, I(u)
and I(x), are, as we shall presently see, unequally incomplete, fail-
ing, that is, in respect to completeness as interpretations, in unequal
measures.
To show this inequality and therewith to establish the thesis of
this paper, it suffices to take n equal to 4. S n is now $ 4 . The T(u)
of the equation, E(u,x) = 0, is the concept of a space, S a , of points,
and T(x) is the concept of a threefold infinitude, a hypersheaf, of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 315
such spaces call them lineoids the total ensemble, then, of lineoids
that, in four-space, have one and but one point in common. Now a
lineoid of points and a point (or hypersheaf ) of lineoids are logically
or analytically exactly alike, any system of postulates serving as
basis for the geometry of either of them serves equally well for the
other, and either of the concepts gives an absolutely perfect and
complete interpretation of the equation in question. But now con-
sider imagination's correspondents of T(u) and T(x), namely I(u)
and I(x). The former should be an ''image" of a lineoid. Now a
lineoid, or an S 3 , being naught but an ordinary space, such as that in
which we reside, is fairly well, though not completely, disclosed in
the light and realm of imagination. I(x), on the other hand, should
be the "image" of a hypersheaf of lineoids, a threefold infinitude of
lineoids enveloping a single point. But this "image" and here is
the crux of the matter imagination fails to produce with a degree
of completeness even remotely approximating that of I(u). Here,
then, in the case of I(u) and I(x) we have a perfectly clear and un-
mistakable example of asymmetry in the functioning of imagination.
And the region we are operating in abounds in similar examples,
many of them being even more striking in character. For another
example, let T(u) and T(x) refer to the equation, E^(u t x) +
\E s (u,x) = 0. Then T(u) is the concept: a variable lineoid of a
pencil of lineoids, single infinitude of lineoids, determined by the
lineoids 8' and S" ; T(x) is the concept of a variable point (vertex
of a hypersheaf of lineoids) of the point range determined by the
points P' and P". Here again the thought interpretations are per-
fect and complete. As to the corresponding "images," I(u) and
I(x), no one can fail to see that in respect of completeness or incom-
pleteness as matches for T(u) and T(x), the I's are widely asunder.
A yet more illuminating example is that wherein T(u) is the concept
of a variable lineoid of the hyperpencil of a twofold infinitude of
lineoids enveloping a line of $ 4 , where the corresponding T(x) is the
concept of a variable point of a plane, and where I(u) and I(x) are
to be the corresponding objects in the light of imagination. It is
needless, however, further to multiply examples from four-space,
much less from spaces of higher dimensionality. The case is clear.
In respect to spatial interpretation the power or faculty of thought
is symmetric and that of imagination is asymmetric. The former, as
n increases, looks about in spaces of ever increasing dimensionality
like a binocular being with its twofold vision unimpaired, its light
is spread abroad equally everywhere ; whilst the eyes of imagination
not only fail as n mounts higher and higher, but fail in unequal
measure. Its light is but partial and fragmentary, scattered and
316 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
suspended here, there, and yonder, like shining clouds in a sky filled
and illuminated by a milder and gentler radiance.
CASSIUS J. KEYSER.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
THE THEISTIC READJUSTMENT OF IDEALISM
ONCE the " cardinal principle of idealism" has been accepted as
the fundamental doctrine of our philosophy, there are, roughly
speaking, four probable views as to the constitution of the universe.
First, thinkers may be divided into monists or absolutists and plural-
ists in respect of their attitude toward the reality of individual selves.
And, secondly, as regards their belief in the reality or illusory na-
ture of time, each of these may be classified as dynamic or static,
respectively. The majority of historical systems, in their ontological
aspects, may then be roughly arranged as belonging to one or other
of those four groups, although the epistemological groundwork
and historic setting will vary widely in different cases. Similarly the
questions of the temporal and eternal, and of the one and the many,
have been the leading causce belli of historic philosophy. Both prob-
lems were familiar to Plato, the doctrine of ideas, as developed in the
earlier dialogues, representing an attempted solution of both in the
light of a single systematic principle.
Now these problems again reappeared when the early apologists
of the Christian church turned to Greek philosophy in the search for
a rational confirmation of the dogmas of their faith. Those dogmas
had sprung from a Hebraic and instinctive source, and the simple
conviction of the nearness, the omnipresence, of God, which, as
Renan has shown, formed the content of primitive Christianity, now
came under the influence of the speculative tendencies of the Hellenic
mind. Accordingly, various new readjustments of speculative phi-
losophy occurred, always conditioned by the reality of a divine being
and an order of things other than the kingdom of this world. These
readjustments, however, always took place in terms of the funda-
mental questions we mentioned above, and the dogma of the Trinity
is an example of the result.
Such was the intellectual atmosphere prevalent throughout the
Middle Ages, after which the revival of classical culture and the rise
of the natural and mathematical sciences attracted attention once
more to the temporal and dynamic, and opened afresh the contro-
versy as to where finality might be found. From that time onward
the fundamental problems of philosophy, from a strictly metaphys-
ical point of view, have remained the same, though their solution
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 317
may be frequently changing in terms of the more general intellectual
environment. 1
With the culmination of the scientific awakening in the philos-
ophy of evolution, it seemed for the moment as if the whole ideal-
istic attitude with its peculiar difficulties had been doomed, and it
became the latest task of philosophy, particularly in its religious
affiliations, to save itself from this new interpretation of the world.
There seemed to be no disputing the facts of evolution within the
scientific sphere, but their significance for philosophy was a matter
of much debate. The evolutionary attitude, if we look at the matter
historically, conflicted with the whole previous idealistic and relig-
ious character of philosophic thought, which had developed from
Greek and Hebrew origins.
Fresh solutions accordingly arose, attempting to assimilate these
new generalizations of science, and other combinations of the funda-
mental dogmas of historic philosophy took shape. There occurred,
in effect, a readjustment within the idealistic camp a fresh mobili-
zation of its forces, by which it might at once retain its contact with
the past and yet ward off destruction in the present. The seeming
reality of a fluctuating temporal world had been thrust upon us by
the evolutionary interpretation of phenomena, and yet the epistemo-
logical groundwork of idealism derived from Kant gave us a world
of noumenal selves, and the demands of the religious consciousness
would not permit us to lose faith in the traditional theistic tenets of
Christianity.
The idealistic readjustment to which I refer this newer syste-
matic solution, whose adherents form a somewhat influential party in
the intellectual chaos of to-day is the philosophy of theism, best
represented, at least so far as our own country is concerned, by the
standpoint of personal idealism, notably that of Professor Howison.
Perhaps personal idealism and its close relatives are the only dis-
tinctly theistic systems in the field to-day, so general is the sway of
absolutism in the idealistic camp. And so thoroughly dogmatic are
its adherents that it is fortunately less difficult than in the case of
certain other writers to mistake the basis upon which it stands with
respect to the prime questions of philosophy we mentioned above.
As answer thereto, this philosophy gives us two pluralisms, one
static and one dynamic, and in addition a wholly static deity or final
cause of a veritably Aristotelian stamp. We have, in one system, a
world of noumenal selves, a pluralistic but phenomenal world de-
veloping in time toward a noumenal goal by a process "we have in
1 Might not the most rabid humanist admit flint it is not the problems of
technical philosophy, but only the methods of their solution, which change with
new conditions political and social of active life?
318 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
these days learned to call the process of evolution," and finally an
unchanging personal God, the moveless One by whom all things are
moved. I wish to say here a few words upon what appears to me to be
the untenability of such a position as the fundamental tenets of this
system involve, and to suggest that this particular type of meta-
physical readjustment is not that which is capable of retaining the
traditional theistic convictions of the religious consciousness in the
presence of hostile philosophies.
In the first place, for the explanation of change in time, no such
bifurcation of the world as this system proposes seems to be re-
quired. If there is a changing world, however ' ' conditionally real, ' '
why should we suppose there is any other 1 For if, as I understand
Professor Howison at all events to maintain, time is infinite and the
evolutionary process without end, then, since the noumenal state is
never reached, it might, so far as human experience is concerned,
never exist at all. It is, as the pragmatist would say, a conception
of no cash value in experience. If, however, the temporal process
has a goal to be attained, then we face the enigmas as to how the
phenomena can be changing to a state of changelessness, and how a
state of existence can be left behind which is itself the condition of
the possibility of its being so left. With Schopenhauer, we might
cry, "Ah, pity we did not begin sooner, for we should be already
there ! " If, finally, the changeless the ' ' essential thought correla-
tion of minds ' ' is the real, and about the temporal there lingers some
suspicion of unreality, then we fall into fresh difficulties, with which
we deal below, while the problem of the relation of the two is also no
nearer solution than before.
"Strive as one may," writes Professor Howison, 2 "there is no
escape from Kant's implication that not even evolution can produce
time in our consciousness. . . . There is for the evolutionist no
escaping from Kant's clutches, except he maintain either that suc-
cession can exist without time, or else that time is per se itself a
thing, instead of a relating principle for things. If he takes the
former alternative ... he will have to tell what, in that case, succes-
sion intelligibly is. If he takes the latter, he will recede into anti-
quated metaphysics, which talks about existence per se, out of all
relation to minds, and which, at any rate in respect to the nature of
time, received its quietus in Kant's 'Transcendental Esthetic.'
Such is the irony of history that it remained for an immediate
follower of the author of these lines to embrace the former alterna-
tive in attempting to justify the conception of a "pure succession"
or "timeless change." 3 But if, with the radical empiricists, declin-
2 "The Limits of Evolution," second edition, New York, 1904, p. 20.
3 H. A. Overstreet, ' ' Change and the Changeless, ' ' Philosophical Review,
Vol. XXIII., No. 1, p. 1.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 319
ing to distinguish between a thing and the relating principle for
things, we assume that time comes, as James says, "in drops," and
embodies relations as given in each pulsation of thought as far back
in the flux of experience as we may choose to go, do we thereby
"recede into antiquated metaphysics, which talks about existence
per se, out of all relation to minds"? Only, I should suppose, upon
the gratuitous assumption that there must exist a distinction between
mind as in or identical with the process and mind as above it
between, that is, the temporal and eternal selves. That some such
distinction is made by Professor Howison seems evident from his
speaking of evolution as producing time in our consciousness, if by
"produce" he means "originate," and the alternative assumption
that evolution is time in our consciousness seems at least equally
admissible. Clearly, however, the whole question is as to the reality
of that noumenal mind, and to produce that mysterious entity as the
chief weapon in an argument which is intended to assure us that no
other supposition save that of its existence can be deemed acceptable,
is surely a reprehensible, if not uncommon, form of reasoning.
Similarly, Mr. Bradley writes, 4 "If you take time as a relation
between units without duration, then the whole time has no duration,
and is not time at all. But, if you give duration to the whole time,
then at once the units themselves are found to possess it, and they
thus cease to be units." No doubt, but would the universe be much
worse off if they did cease to be units of such a remarkable character
as that, units, I mean, of no duration? You can not generate a
line by compressing points, but who, except Mr. Bradley, is under the
obligation of constructing our flowing universe from elements which
simply will not flow ? May we not say with James 5 that ' ' everything
which happens to us brings its own duration and extension, and both
are vaguely surrounded by a marginal 'more' that runs into the
duration and extension of the next thing that comes ' ' ?
However, the question of time and eternity for its own sake is
not that with which we are mainly here concerned. Of the "Obso-
lescence of the Eternal ' ' an abler pen has written recently. Waiving,
therefore, the difficulties arising from this source, let us grant the
hypothesis of noumena as ends or standards of evolution in phe-
nomena, and ask if these be compatible with traditional theistic theol-
ogy, and if the latter find here a justifiable defense. Then, since the
consummated differentiation of persons sub specie cetenritatis is
sufficient to give us a world of ultimate perfection and timeless self-
activity, the combination in one system of an attractive deity, an
"impersonated ideal," and a world of mutually determining "per-
4 " Appearance and Keality," second edition, London, etc., 1908, p. 37.
5 "Pragmatism," New York, 1909, p. 177.
320 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sons other than God" seems to supply more entities than are
required to account for evolution in phenomena.
To begin with, the conception of grades of perfection, necessitated
by the differentiated and most perfect deity, is hard to grasp, and
leads to further complications beyond its intrinsic ambiguity. If,
by reason of my original definition of myself as a member of the
eternal ' ' City of God, ' ' the utmost achievement of the phenomenal I
is the attainment of perfection inferior to God's, then either the
evolutionary process would appear to be still incomplete, or else
my noumenal self, representing the greatest perfection by me attain-
able, would be a sufficient guide upon my phenomenal path, without
the supposition of a more (most?) perfect final cause. To allege, at
this point, that the variety of our graded noumenal perfections
implies the complete standard of perfection is but to restate the diffi-
culty. A criterion unachievable would surely be unknown, or, if
knowable, would leave an irrational incompleteness in the consum-
mated, but relatively imperfect, noumenal selves. Grades of perfec-
tion granted, such a standard might be as logically necessary with
reference to noumena as are the latter with reference to the evolu-
tionary selves; but that very necessity, since the standard is in
other respects self-contradictory, is sufficient to show that grades in
noumena are impossible. A universe where the necessary is irra-
tional, where the ideal is, for the many selves, unreal since un-
achievable, is not that which any idealistic pluralism could uphold.
" Their common aim of fulfilling their one rational ideal" would
be a chimera indeed.
Not grades, but varying types of perfection, it may now be said,
are what are posited of persons as noumenal. We thus have a differ-
entiated plurality of goals, without the contradictory implication of
less and more, and where the whole personality of every individual is
absorbed within his unique type of self -activity. God must then be
conceived as either one such type or as the unity of all such types in
one activity. 6 In the former case, his role as final cause, as an
attracting criterion, must surely disappear. This is indeed the
"finite and pathological God" of Schiller, whom the personal idealist
especially eschews, or James's "experiencer of widest actual conscious
span. ' '
But if God be conceived as the totally active, that is, as the
unity of all such types, then we either predicate of such unity a per-
8 Professor Howison at one time speaks of God as the ' ' fulfilled type of
every mind," and again of his tl being included in the circle" of timeless
selves. Perhaps the distinction we here make has not, therefore, occurred to
Professor Howison, but whichever alternative may be adopted, the sequel will
attempt to show that the conception of types of perfection is no more theistic
than that of its grades.
re
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 321
fection not embraced in any single type, and return once more to
grades of perfection; or otherwise destroy the role of differentiated
types of activity as descriptive or explanatory, respectively, of the
world of noumenal reality and of the world of imperfection and
change. Like Koyce's ''eternal now," such a unity of types finds
psychological verification, as, for instance, in the mind of any
dramatist, and it might be said to act as a clearing-house, so to
speak, for spirits seeing all activities in God, the self-activity of each
being only possible as defined in terms of the activities of all. This
is, in fact, what has happened to personal idealism at the hands of
Professor Overstreet, who has used for such types of self-activity
the term ' ' cosmocentric self. ' '
But one does not see that such a position is theistic at all ; being
essentially that of McTaggart, whose interpretation of Hegel is
atheistic, as he himself rightly avows. For in becoming the bare fact
of an organic unity a mere safeguard against a chaos of isolated
monads the deity has really vanished altogether, so far as his inde-
pendent personality is concerned. 7 It is not easy to see how it
should be necessary (or even possible) for me to have my unique func-
tion or type of perfect self -activity reflected in a being whose nature
is embracive of all types, before it can be appreciated by other indi-
viduals. For if the absolute unity of types is self-active, then in
appreciating his activity alone we ipso facto appreciate the activities
of all. Others may then be dispensed with or themselves become
passive throughout, and there remains only a solipsistic deity whose
very attempt at self-differentiation would be incomprehensible. But
if, on the other hand, the unity of types is a passive reflection of our
activities, then again we must either dispense with him or deny self-
activity, even timeless, as the nature of the real. Besides, if such a
unity of types were possible, why should ' ' persons other than God ' '
be restricted to a single variety? If Shylock became endowed with
self-activity as an ultimate type of personality, he would cease to be
the product of Shakespeare's mind, and would not require Shakes-
peare's synthetic grasp of the whole drama which forms that epoch
of his life in order to appreciate his daughter's lack of gratitude.
Contrariwise, if Shakespeare 's mind views its creations as differentia-
tions of itself, then they cease to have self-activity or to be in any
wise ultimately real. Possibly this last conception is tenable, and
it is perhaps the type of monism of Royce, but it certainly does not
leave room for a world of free personalities, noumenal or otherwise,
T Dr. McTaggart 's ' ' Further Determination of the Absolute ' ' reads more
like its ' ' Final Annihilation, ' ' nor can one see upon what grounds he continues
to speak of The Absolute.
322 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
from which, as data, we set out. Even if some kind of deity be
secured, the world of selves has surely disappeared.
In short, if we are to maintain the hypothesis of a static plural-
ism as the ground of change in time supposing this itself were pos-
sible we can not at the same time entertain belief in a personal God.
The system attempting this endeavors to accomplish too much at one
stroke, nor does it appear possible that theism can justifiably find its
champions in that school. Whether it be that the old beliefs are
slipping from us, I do not know, but I contend that their defense
must take other shape than this, and that the readjustment of ideal-
ism here discussed is not that which will synthesize the old and new.
REGINALD B. COOKE.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
DISCUSSION
IS CONSCIOUSNESS "A TYPE OF BEHAVIOR"?
PROFESSOR SINGER'S article entitled "Mind as an Ob-
servable Object" in this JOURNAL for March 30 provokes
reflection on the function of paradox. That function, surely, is to
rouse thought, not to conclude it; to give us intellectual impulse,
not intellectual satisfaction ; to launch our minds, not to bring them
to the landing-place. It is a function of importance. But to be con-
tent with our paradox is to forget the journey's end.
Professor Singer tells us that ''consciousness is not something
inferred from behavior, it is behavior. Or, more accurately, our
belief in consciousness is an expectation of probable behavior based
on an observation of actual behavior, a belief to be affirmed or
refuted by more observation, as any other belief in a fact is to be
tried out." I will not offer a summary of his argument, but will
suppose that the reader has taken the opportunity to acquaint him-
self with so clever and (but for the essential disappointment) so
charming an article. The essential disappointment springs from
this: that Mr. Singer rouses us and does not in the least degree
appease or satisfy us. He launches us and leaves us at sea.
The reasons why we say we find something in the world of facts
which we call consciousness and which distinguishes itself from a
behaving body he really does not consider. These reasons are after
all simple. Let us try as nearly as may be to take Mr. Singer 's point
of view. Let us try to state the reasons without the terms of per-
sonality, self, etc. For example, at a single moment a certain num-
ber of objects, or more or less distinct aspects of objects, are in a
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 323
peculiar sense together, while those objects and other objects are not
in this sense together. One looks across the room, and at a single
moment of one's looking certain portions of the wall, the rug, the
table, the sofa, are conjoined. They are, as the phrase is, "in one
field of consciousness. ' ' Meanwhile the rug and the window behind
me are not in this sense conjoined. Of course the easiest way of
putting this is to say that I am seeing the first-mentioned combina-
tion, and I am not seeing the window behind me. But it is quite
easy to avoid making these references to self and its * * seeing " : it is
quite easy to put it in terms of the "objective" facts themselves.
These facts have a way of being together, some of them, while others
are not in this sense together.
What this relation turns out at last to be ; whether it will involve
reference to a third thing, a separate existence called mind, which
"turns its search-light" upon certain objects; whether it may be
simply a superadded tie between things themselves, which keep at
the same time all their physical qualities undisturbed thereby;
whether or no it means that when the same object is at once in many
differing groups (that is, when many people are looking at it) there
must be as many copies of it as there are ' ' groups ' ' : these are queries
that must not be permitted to distract us from the irreducible mini-
mum of our thesis. Groups there are, and breaches between them
there are. Consciousness there is, and oblivion there is. "Con-
sciousness" here is not behavior; it is, according to usage, either the
"field" itself or the relation of conjunction between the components
of the field.
Clearly this state of being together depends on the relation of the
facts to the body of what we call the observer. It depends on that
relation, but of course it is not that relation. The relation of those
objects to the body of the observer is something that physical science
is prepared to discuss in full. But the relation of being together or
not being together in the sense just stated that is a term of thought
with which physical science never has any concern. It is a term of
thought that does not appear in physical science. We can discuss
all the relations of "observable objects," organisms and others, and
so long as we are discussing them as observable objects, not as actu-
ally observed objects, we have simply no use for this term of thought.
Even discussing them as actually observed objects, if by "actually
observed" we mean standing in certain relations to the retinas or
other sense-organs of a neighboring body, we have no use for the
conception. It is only when observedness is taken in a different
sense, that is, precisely in the sense above described, and from the
point of view of the observer, that it brings into thought the fact of
objects being together or not being together in this peculiar manner.
324 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
It is these pools of conjoint phenomenality that Mr. Singer com-
pletely ignores. I do not mean that he fails to explain their exist-
ence. This is not a question of explanation or cause. I mean that
he fails to recognize their existence. This is a question, not of
accounting for consciousness, but of observing its real character in
the world. If mind is an observable object we must not allow its
most essential characteristics to escape us.
It may indeed be truly said that this relation is not at first
brought into an observer's thought. Whenever I perceive, it is by
the nature of the case the objects that are together that appear before
me for being together and appearing before me are one. It is only
when I am forced to contrast the relation of the objects conjoined to
each other with the opposed relation between objects not conjoined
that I begin to see what conjunction is.
Suppose now that I observe an observer; I look at the body of
some one who is looking at objects before him. Unless his eyes look
and his brain acts, the group of objects in front does not "appear"
to him. Does his brain in some wise generate or physically parallel
a picture of the objects? Is it in that picture that his vision con-
sists? If so, is it possible to describe this mental picture as a "type
of behavior ' ' of cerebral molecules ? These questions or the like are
what some would put to Mr. Singer. I do not put them. I wish to
avoid dubitable assumption and the dread and endless serpent-coils
of metaphysical controversy. I ask him only to recognize the fact
called "a field of consciousness" (excluding and including) which
is not a topographical division of things or a physical segregation
at all.
Of course there are other questions one might ask. One might
turn to those phenomena in consciousness which are not com-
monly called objects. In what sense is the sting of another's pain
an observable mode of behavior of his organism? How can "our
belief" that a friend is now suffering pangs of grief be identical with
' ' an expectation of probable behavior" ? On this question of content,
as on the other question of isolation, Mr. Singer gives us no per-
ceptible light. He not only does not prove his paradox, he takes no
steps to prove it. His trumpet sounds the charge so lustily, how-
ever, that if the night is sufficiently dark the enemy may surrender
under the impression that he is overwhelmed.
In the face of what is so purely a night-attack, all that we want
is more illumination. Mr. Singer 's previous work is our surety that
he will have abundant answer ready for such queries. I do not know
whether I shall be so fortunate as to elicit his explanations, which I
desire for the sake of my own insight into an intricate problem. In
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 325
any case, by way of defining ray difficulties more fully, I will touch
on some of his incidental remarks.
It is so far from self-evident that each man 'B mental state is his own indis-
putable possession that no one hesitates to confess at times that his neighbor
has read him better than he has read himself. ... No one finds fault with
Thackeray for intimating that the old Major is a better judge of Pendennis'a
feeling for the Fotheringay than is Pendennis himself.
This is not a question of knowing our feelings, but of knowing
how our feelings will develop or continue. To have a feeling and
to be acquainted with it are the same thing. If a man does not know
whether he is in love, it means that he does not know whether what
he actually feels is or is not a sign of a continued disposition to feel
and to act such as goes under that name.
It is quite as likely that, under certain conditions, I do not know what red
is, as that, under other conditions, I do not know what love is.
This is not a question whether I am acquainted with my own
sensation, but whether I am acquainted with the social name for my
sensation.
You will ask me: What aspect of the behavior of certain objects leads us
to call them conscious? I answer, I do not know, and expect never surely to
know. Had I been asked: What aspect of the behavior of certain objects leads
us to call them alive? I must have returned the same answer. . . . But though
I don't know what life means, nor what consciousness means, I feel that I
know how we may go to work to find out these things, if once we see that neither
stands for an eject forever veiled and hidden in the land beyond experience.
Once more, the question what leads me to call a man conscious,
and the question what consciousness means is Mr. Singer assuming
that they are the same question ? Are the nature of a thing and the
tokens by which I infer its presence the same? As to the land
beyond experience that is, my own present experience is there no
such land ? What of my own past experience ? What of those past
experiences which I feel sure I had but can not now recall ? If it is
not my own present experience which is meant, but experience in
general, then the "ejective" experience of another lies within the
land of experience and not beyond it.
Men had courage to say, "Heat is not something inferred from the heated
behavior of a body, it is that behavior. A hot body differs from a cold body
only in the way its parts move. M The mystery had vanished.
Mr. singer is not here carrying on his main thought, but refer-
ring to what he regards as an analogous problem. But his passing
words give us pause. Is the perceived quality of heat as indi-
vidual a concrete fact as the perceived color red nothing but the
way certain particles move? If not if the perceived quality of
heat is not this, but objective "heat" as meant by Mr. Singer is this,
326
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
then the perceived heat is not the behavior of the body called hot.
In that case perhaps the perceived heat is something in our con-
sciousness. Then, by the theory, it is nothing but the way our own
body moves, or the way certain particles of it move. But how can
perceived heat or red color be identical with the change of place of
particles of any body whatsoever? They can not; any more than
what we mean by perceived heat can be red color, or than what we
mean by red color can be perceived heat.
The truth is that Mr. Singer and some of the vigorous and enter-
prising new realists, to whose thought his own seems allied, play
with our best hopes and dash them in a somewhat unfeeling manner.
A more pregnant and momentous proposition in philosophy than
this, that consciousness can be resolved into the behavior of organ-
isms, it would be hard to produce. Of such stuff is great discovery
composed. For such a stride forward in metaphysic, such a stride
of arrival and of escape from perplexity, all open minds are looking.
We give our best heed at once. How can consciousness be so re-
solved ? How can the old obstacles be surmounted ? Here, alas !
Mr. Singer and his school begin to talk of something else, such as the
assumptions of idealism (I am not arguing for idealism), or of
" English sensualism," or they mention that their philosophy will
come to our difficulties after a while. Perhaps they say that they
have not yet reached the category of consciousness, which is a late
and secondary product. In that case they can hardly have arrived
at the proposition that consciousness is behavior. Indeed, in some
of the programs, platforms, and preambles of the new realism we are
left to infer that the proper method is to come to conclusions, and
then brace ourselves to meet the problems whose solution alone could
warrant any conclusion on the subject. We are informed of the
conclusions of arguments that can hardly be said to have begun.
Is not philosophy heir to any of that spirit of cautious and plodding
verification for which the name of Darwin stands ?
If there is wide change in the tendency of philosophical opinion
in these years, it is not because circumspect reason has at length re-
jected old ideas. It is rather because philosophy has lain a long
while on one side and wants to turn over. Just when we are wishing
as citizens to put forth the hand of science to steer society and insti-
tutions in some degree and deliver them from the blind tides of wil-
fulness and custom, just then it is that we wake up to see the same
tides heaving in the sciences. What shall deliver the deliverer him-
self ? Nothing but a taste for real solutions which is the same as
intellectual scruple. Nothing but common sense untried which is
the same as pertinacity in logic. Nothing but looking about us before
we advance sweeping the horizon of our subject circumspection;
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 327
that last rule of Descartes 's method, followed as far as human vision
can, * ' to make enumerations so complete and reviews so general that
I might be assured that nothing was omitted. ' '
These fragmentary notes are not written with a destructive in-
tent as little as they are likely to have any destructive effect. I am
by no means sure that on this matter Mr. Singer has not in reserve
something indestructible. They are written to elicit, directly or
otherwise, the fuller thought which must lurk behind ; and to empha-
size the cardinal principle which we may one and all devoutly re-
peat to ourselves as we clutch our reason ; the principle laid down by
the old lady in " Middlemarch " or "Daniel Deronda": "We must
all make a little effort every day to keep sane and use words in the
same senses. '
DICKINSON S. MILLER.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
EEVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Notes on the Science of Picture Making. C. J. HOLMES. New York:
D. Appleton & Co. 1909. Pp. xxiii + 317.
The diffident title of this book does more credit to the modesty of its
author than justice to the significance of its contents. Mr. Holmes is the
successor of Ruskin. He holds the Slade professorship in fine arts at
Oxford, Ruskin's old chair, but fortunately there is no sign in the book
that he holds also Ruskin's outlook and Ruskin's idiosyncrasies. Writing
in an unusually lucid, easy style, he approaches his problem with an open-
ness of mind and a sanity of view as extraordinary as significant in the
curious anomalies of contemporary criticism of art. Keeping, with pro-
fessorial naivete, to one or two inept and even clumsy usages, as where he
says " infinity " when he means " suggestiveness," Professor Holmes
nevertheless manages to point out with absolute clearness the most obvi-
ous, and hence most unnoted, aspects of the role played in painting by
" design," " material," and " character." His exposition is preceded by a
notable introduction, the point of which is to assert the commonplace, and
hence to critics and the half-educated, the startling, fact that there is no
one, single, indivisible, absolute beauty of objects estheticians and philos-
ophers to the contrary notwithstanding. " In spite of all the mighty
names connected in one way or another with the criticism of the fine arts,
we have still no fixed standard for passing judgments on pictures already
existing ; much less such a system of training the intelligence as will save
us from making blunders as to future productions. ... In esthetics we
seem still to be as far from . . . unity as were men of science three cen-
turies ago." The comment is as kindly as it is just, for conceivably worse
things might have been said about esthetics it might have been accused
328 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of irrelevancy, artificiality, and gross stupidity, not merely of discord.
One must, of course, bear in mind that Professor Holmes means by " fixed
standard for passing judgments on pictures," a technological and profes-
sional standard, not a psychologic and evaluative one. The latter, as
yielded in the nature of the " esthetic experience," has been correctly
defined in its essentials since Plato. The mistake has lain in trying to
derive from it the nature of its conditions, i. e., the " causes " of con-
structive art; for the experience is derivable only from the conditions,
not the conditions from the experience.
The two fundamental requirements for excellence in painting Pro-
fessor Holmes holds to be " emotion " and technique. Mere technical
power tends to make a picture clever and empty; mere emotion will make
no picture whatever. Theories of painting, as against manual skill and
vigorous insight, are of secondary importance. They are in any event
contingent on the medium used and the subject-matter to be presented.
Pictures can not be made according to absolute rules; rules have to be
accommodated to pictures. Now the content of these pictures must not be
photographic, but " designed," invented, imagined ; not, however, irrele-
vantly, but in terms of nature. Nature is to be used, but not to be imi-
tated. As Whistler wrote in the " Ten O'clock," " To say that nature is
to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano."
The content of pictures, then, being abstracted from nature for the
purpose of portrayal with technical perfection and spiritual fervor, will
exhibit in those pictures at least four qualities " which all fine pictures in
some degree possess, of which mediocre pictures lack at least one, and of
which bad pictures lack at least three." These qualities are unity,
vitality, infinity and repose. Their presence depends upon pictorial
design, i. e., on emphasis of this or that " value," subject to pictorial con-
ditions determined by " symbol," place, spacing, recession, shadow, color,
material. " If unity may be said to give a painting coherent structure,
vitality to inspire it with the breath of life, infinity to redeem it from
shallowness, repose may be said to endow it with good manners."
This imposing array of terms, contrary to critical usage, really means
something, collectively and severally. I am not sure that in the first
instance they may not be reduced to two or at most to three, for certainly
there can be no repose in a picture without unity or coherence, without
an integration and balance of parts, and when a picture has such an
integrative repose it has unity. Nor does the difference between vitality
and infinity seem altogether irreducible. The " sense of life in a picture,"
or vitality, is hardly distinguishable from the " element of uncertanty or
evanescence in spacing, in tone, in color, or in line," i. e., infinity. For if
Professor Holmes means by infinity only delicacy and refinement, and by
vitality only vigor, these two qualities can not be present in one coherent
pictorial unit at the same time. If, however, " infinity " means just that
suggestiveness which is due to the cumulative effect of vigor and vitality
which subtlety of rhythm, coloration, etc., yield, the two are identical;
" vitality " being only a term for the more obvious aspects of the " in-
finite " variety. From this point of view, the qualities required in a
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 329
picture are unity and vitality, and these are permanent in so far as they
are pervasive. Then in the first case they give " repose," in the second
" infinity."
The materials to be used in the design which should possess these
qualities are denoted by the second set of terms. By " symbol " Professor
Holmes means " devices or signs used by the artist to convey his meaning,
or to transmute natural phenomena into terms of art " ; by plan, " the
surface disposition of the lines and masses in a picture " ; by spacing,
" the proportions masses bear to one another " ; by recession, " the ap-
parent nearness or remoteness of the objects contained in a picture."
Shadow, color, and material carry their ordinary significance. This classi-
fication is rather over-empirical, and is capable of reduction, but it has
the technological advantage of considering coincident aspects of a picture
separately. The rest of the chapters under the heading " Design " are
devoted to showing how each of these elements may best contribute to the
four necessary qualities of great painting. Space does not permit a
detailed review of this sane and interesting study. One can note here
only the rather haphazard treatment of the subject, and the omission of
any consideration of the synthetic effect of these pictorial elements. For
a picture conceivably painted with especial reference to each element, and
resulting in each case in a particular perfection, may yet be a bad picture.
A series of excellent details may make an abominable whole, as any
observer of modern painting knows.
From the study of design Professor Holmes passes to the study of
materials. By materials he means the physical content of the painter's
instruments of expression. These are distinguished as processes of draw-
ing, engraving, and painting. Drawing may be done in silverpoint, pen
and ink, pencil, chalk, pastel, charcoal, and with the brush. Silverpoint
will give delicacy of tone, etc.; pen and ink, spirit and sharpness; pencil
and chalk, precision of form and gradation of tone; pastel and charcoal,
which are modern favorites, will render excellently shadow, strength, and
light; while brush-work, which is in execution a process of painting, and
in results has the effect of drawing, renders best of all the quality of
swiftness.
Under " Processes of Engraving " are discussed the execution and
effects of wood-engraving, engraving on stone and on metal. Of the three
the first gives the effect of mezzotint; the second, favored by Whistler,
has since been commercialized; the third, according as the engraving is
done with a tool or with acid, renders a firm and austere line, the trivial
results of " stippling," the rich, extravagant individuality of " drypoint,"
the reproductive accuracy of " mezzotint," or the subtler effects of " etch-
ing " and the flat values of aquatint.
The discussion of the methods of painting is bound considerably to
interest both lay and professional readers. Professor Holmes distin-
guishes them as the " transparent method," the " mixed method," and the
" opaque method." By the " transparent method," " pigments are used
thinly and depend chiefly or entirely for their effect upon light reflected
from a luminous ground. The mixed method depends partly upon light
330 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
reflected from the ground, and partly upon light reflected from a solid
body of pigment," while " the opaque method depends entirely upon light
reflected from the solid body of pigment." The latter method is modern
and was introduced by impressionists ; the mixed method was universally
used from the early part of the sixteenth to the latter part of the seven-
teenth centuries; the transparent method was employed by the very early
Flemish masters, the pre-Raphaelites, and some moderns like Orchardson.
The elucidation of these methods is assisted with references to the work
of De Chauvannes, Watts, Teniers, Gainsborough, Millais, Eubens, etc.,
and it is put in such a way as to help the worst Philistine toward the
appreciation of painting.
The book concludes with a discussion of "the painter's aims and
ideals " and the refutation of " some popular fallacies." Professor Holmes
distinguishes four classes of paintings dramatic, lyrical, narrative, and
satirical. The first represents a crisis, the second a mood, the third is
descriptive, the fourth ridicules. " In practise the groups are usually
fused and blended, so that the great majority of easel pictures are not
typical of any one group, but should be described as hybrids." This con-
clusion is as objectionable as the classification. It is as if a naturalist
were to say that an animal which is not all legs, or all head, or all body
is to be described as a hybrid. As, according to our author, the painter's
ideals are defined by the classes his pictures fall under, the painter's mind
must also "be described as hybrid." In point of fact the organic unity
into which the contents of a good picture are welded justifies and defines
those contents; not they, the unity. It is extraordinary that Professor
Holmes should have failed to see this, just as it is extraordinary that he
should have failed to see the artificiality of his historic division of " art
periods " into savage, despotic, individual, and socialistic. So far as the
artist himself is concerned, art remains, as our author insists it must,
" individual " 4. e., springing from the vital impulse and technical per-
fection of the artist himself and directed upon whatever task he may have
in hand. This is suggested by the summing-up. " The great painter . . .
must be at once an individualist and a servant. An individualist because
it is unlikely that there is a tradition in which he can profitably allow his
personal talent and character to be submerged ... a servant, in that he
must fulfill certain decorative conditions, settled neither by himself, nor
usually by his rulers or patrons, but by the habits and customs of his age."
To this dual purpose art education has, in the just opinion of Pro-
fessor Holmes, failed to contribute anything. Artists begin their careers
by aiming for precision, reach its middle point by aiming for " greater
breadth of mass," and at its end lose " freedom of brushwork, and a dis-
regard for all minor details." It is right to base our current system on
this " generally recognized course of development," but results have been
very poor. Our author now analyzes the career of Raphael, Titian,
Turner, Rembrandt, etc., and concludes that artists are born into a tradi-
tion which they continue or, if not, which they create and develop to a
maturity that is their own and the tradition's. Their crisis is at the
middle of life, not at its beginning. The only salvation during the crisis
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 331
is continual experimentation. The growing painter will " only in early
manhood and middle life imperatively need some time of solitude in
which to think out the problems of his profession and it is just then that
the pleasures of the world are wont to be most importunate and most
acceptable." The future of painting will depend partly on this freedom
at middle age, mainly on the decrease in number of purchasable " treasures
of the past," on the framing of pictures, on the exercise of rigorous selec-
tion on the part of the artist, and on his power to deviate just enough
from accepted tradition to be fresh without being foreign. What is fun-
damentally demanded of him is that he shall not give way to popular
prejudice and sacrifice " decoration " to " significance " or vice versa. He
must be neither a carpet-weaver nor an illustrator; he must be an artist,
i. e., he must give his picture a decorative quality " fitting that picture
alone, arising naturally out of the particular thoughts and things with
which it deals, and incapable of being transferred wholesale and applied
to some other subject." And this, pictures can not be by being mere
decorations in spots or colored photographs. Neither " values " alone
nor mere " finish " determines excellence ; it is determined by the right
use of these as instruments of high emotion. A good picture is " personal
experience emphasized by emotion in terms of decoration."
H. M. KALLEN.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
The Harveian Oration on Experimental Psychology and Hypnotism.
GEORGE H. SAVAGE. London: Henry Frowde. 1909.
Dr. Savage's oration is of interest to American science, not because
the address makes a substantial contribution to our knowledge of experi-
mental psychology or of hypnotism, but because it may be regarded as an
index of the stage of development of British medicine.
About half of the oration Dr. Savage devotes to a sketch of Harvey's
life arid times. Seventeenth-century England contributed little intelli-
gence to medical science. The separation of the medical profession from
the enervating control of the church had only begun, with the result that
human ailments were still given a " spiritual " interpretation, and their
cure was still sought in charlatanism, legerdemain, and witchcraft.
Harvey, who was regarded as a crack-brained iconoclast because of his
independent methods of investigation and his original theories, and
who, notwithstanding that fact, displayed unceasing tolerance, was an
oasis of exemplary fertility in an arid desert of ignorance and supersti-
tion. Despite the lack of sympathy of his contemporaries, which at times
amounted to hostility, he concentrated his energies in the service of scien-
tific truth with unwavering industry and unusual singleness of purpose.
He had but one aim to know nature and but one principle to believe
all those conclusions, and only those, to which his reason led him.
Such open-mindedness Dr. Savage urges his professional brethren to
entertain toward experimental psychology and hypnotism. Too prevalent
is the feeling in the profession in Great Britain " that experimental psy-
chology is hardly likely to reward those who are devoting their lives to it
332 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
. . . and . . . that men of promise are wasting their energies on what will
be of little service either to psychology or to medicine." Too general he
finds the belief that hypnotism is some sort of "faith cure." Experi-
mental psychology is of importance because it " has shown us how to
measure definitely the reactions of the senses to their surroundings, and
at the same time it has shown us how readily some of the senses may be
deceived, leaving us with an open mind for things at present undefined " ;
and because only patient experimental research will reveal the compli-
cated variations of human personality.
Hypnotism, which Dr. Savage seems to regard as identical with psy-
chotherapy, he believes to be of general scientific interest and of particular
value to medicine. The objections that hypnotism is " mysterious " and
" dangerous " he dismisses as irrelevant, inasmuch as all treatment con-
tains an element of mystery for the patient, and as hypnotism has proved,
when used intelligently, to be of considerable therapeutic value. Many
facts concerning hypnotism have already been established. Physical sen-
sibility has been both suspended temporarily and heightened by its use,
and such mental functions as memory have been stimulated. It has been
useful in alleviating pain, in producing sleep, and in surgical operations.
It has done exceptionally good service in the treatment of mental
obsessions.
The aim of this oration to dispel the conservatism that befogs the
British medical mind is certainly commendable. The substance of the
address, however, is rather meager. In the section devoted to experi-
mental psychology no distinction is made between the abnormal and the
normal branches of the science. No mention is made of the many facts
established by the researches of Bernheim, Binet, Janet, Freud, Prince,
and Sidis in the one field, or of Wundt, James, Ebbinghaus, Lange,
Miinsterberg, and Titchener in the other. All that we find is a few
matter-of-fact statements about the privacy of one's mental states or the
fundamental unity of the sensations, which statements, in addition to
being commonplace, are so scant in content as to total only four out of
the forty-four pages that comprise the printed copy of the oration. The
section on hypnotism, though lengthier than the one on experimental
psychology, is largely historical or generally descriptive in nature. Dr.
Savage endeavors to emphasize the therapeutic importance of hypnotism
by citing actual results; but so embryonic is psychotherapy in England
that he is able to summon to his aid only such facts as are patent to the
average continental or American psychopathologist.
The condition of psychotherapy in Great Britain judged by this
oration is little short of deplorable. It is not that Dr. Savage is not
sincere and open-minded enough. The difficulty is with the rank and
file of the profession who are so conservative that a Harveian oration
must degenerate into a plea that scientific men should not reject new
truth simply because it is new! May his sincerity fertilize the sterile
soil upon which he has strewn rather unpromising seed!
M. J. WESSEL.
BROWN UNIVERSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 333
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
MIND. January, 1911. Reply to Mr. Joseph (pp. 1-14) : G. F.
STOUT. - From a brief reply to Mr. Joseph, Professor Stout advances to a
sketch in broad outline of his own general philosophical assumptions.
They include his view of the nature of knowledge, the psychology of
cognitive processes, and the psychological problems connected with the
perception of external objects as independent reals. The Philosophy of
Bergson (pp. 15--10) : J. SOLOMON. - A general survey of Bergson's philos-
ophy, giving an exposition of the contents of Bergson's three chief works,
viz., " Time and Free Will," " Matter and Memory," and " Creative
Evolution." The exposition is sympathetic, though in the main non-
critical. A New " Law of Thought " and its Implications (pp. 41-53) :
E. E. CONSTANCE JONES. - " My contention is that my Law of Identity in
Diversity first makes (theoretically) possible a satisfactory statement,
in 8 is P, S is not P form, of the Laws of Contradiction and Excluded
Middle. . . ." Motive (pp. 54-66) : J. L. STOCKS. - An examination of
different views of motive, its connection with reflection, will, intuition,
and feeling, with a view to determining its nature. It is concluded that
" motive is best defined by reference to end." Discussions (pp. 67-76) :
On the Distinction between Waking and Dreaming: J. A. J. DREWITT.
Reply to Mr. Russell's Explanations: F. H. BRADLEY. Critical Notes:
John McTaggart, Ellis McTaggart, A Commentary on Hegel's Logic:
BERNARD BOSANQUET. Hastings Berkeley, Mysticism in Modern Mathe-
matics: PHILIP E. B. JOURDAIN. Hugh S. R. Elliot, The Letters of John
Stuart Mill: CAMETH READ. A. E. Crawley, The Idea of a Soul: W.
McDouGALL. E. B. Titchener, Lectures on the Experimental Psychology
of the Thought-process: HENRY J. WATT. Dimitri Michaltschew, Philos-
ophische Studien: Beitrdge zur Kritik des Modernen Psychologismus:
G. E. MORE. Ralph Barton Perry, The Moral Economy: JAMES SETH.
Hermann Cohen, Kants Begrilndung der Ethik nel>st ihrer Anwendungen
auf Eecht, Religion, und Geschichte: A. D. LINDSAY. James Lindsay,
Studies in European Philosophy: H. RASHDALL. New Books. Philo-
sophical Periodicals' Notes.
RIVISTA DI FILOSOFIA. November-December, 1910. L'lndi-
viduo (pp. 541-557) : ROBERTO ARDIGO. - A study of individualism based
upon the dictum of Heraclitus, " one from all and all from one." The
result is in ontology materialistic atomism versus idealistic solipsism, and
in cosmology panpsychism versus Spencerian homogeneity. Conosci te
stesso (pp. 558-577) : B. VARISCO. - An historical review of the Socratic
" know thyself " from Plato to Fichte ; the actualist view of the ego is
taken as against the substantialist, the real self being considered an
empirical product and consciousness not a form but an organization of
experiences. II valore teoretico della logica (pp. 578-598) : ANNIBALE PAS-
TORE. - The value of logic is threefold : as empirical, it furnishes a prac-
tical exercise of reason; as scientific, it provides a formal guide to all
sciences and widens the bounds of their achievements ; as philosophical, it
334 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
discloses the logic of the universe, not in the Hegelian ontological sense,
but in the cosmological meaning of the essential rationality of the uni-
verse. Scienza e Filosofia (pp. 599-608) : ALDO MIELI. - Philosophy is not
an independent discipline, but should be confined to the summarizing of
the results of positive science, problems of cosmology and of consciousness
being unwarranted extensions beyond the bounds of logic or certainty.
I metodi critici di G. Gentile (pp. 609-611) : GIOVANNI MARCHESINI. - A
defense of E. Ardigo against the "nauseating" critical methods of G.
Gentile. Billiografia Filosofica Italiana (1908-1909) (pp. 612-628):
ALESSANDRO LEVI. Recensioni e Cenni. Notizie, including a eulogy and a
defense of William James against the strictures of the most youthful
Italian philosophers, who at first acclaimed him with enthusiasm. Atti
della Societd filosofica Italiana, with an account of the project for re-
printing Italian philosophers.
EEVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE. January, 1911.
Fragments de philosophie morale (pp. 1-29) : F. RAUH. - Some extracts
from a book the author is preparing. His conclusion springs from a
theory of " the plasticity of collective reality." Sur le principe d'induc-
tion mathematique (pp. 30-33) : VACCA. - The discoverer of this principle
is Francesco Maurolico, an Italian mathematician of the sixteenth cen-
tury. There are other mathematical axioms equivalent to it. Notes sur
la croissance et la differ enciation (pp. 34-63) : L. WEBER. - A study of the
results and methods of investigation in the new bio-mechanics. Vues sur
les problemes de la philosophie (pp. 64-99) : G. SOREL. - A study of new
movements in contemporary philosophy, and the contributions of certain
contemporary philosophers to them. Etudes critiques: L'histoire du
prolleme de la connaissance de M. E. Cassirer: MEYERSON. Questions pra-
tiques. Reflexions sur la notion et sur quelques fonctions de I'etat: H.
BOURGIN. Supplement.
Britan, Halbert Haiiis. The Philosophy of Music: A Comparative In-
vestigation into the Principles of Musical Esthetics. New York:
Longmans, Green, and Co. 1911. Pp. xiv -f- 252. $1.35.
James, William. Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an
Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.
1911. Pp. xii + 236. $1.25.
Read, Melbourne Stuart. An Introductory Psychology. New York:
Ginn and Company. 1911. Pp. viii + 305.
Swett, John. Public Education in California: Its Origin and Develop-
ment, with Personal Reminiscences of Half a Century. New York:
American Book Company. 1911. Pp. 324. $1.00.
Whittaker, E. T. A History of the Theories of Ether and Electricity
from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century.
London : Longmans, Green, and Co. ; Dublin : Hodges, Figgis, and Co.,
Ltd. 1910. Pp. xiv + 475. 12s. 6d.
Winch, W. H. When Should a Child Begin School? An Inquiry into
the Relation between the Age of Entry and School Progress. (Educa-
tional Psychology Monographs.) Baltimore: Warwick & York, Inc.
1911. Pp. 98.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 335
NOTES AND NEWS
AT the meeting of the Aristotelian Society on May 1, Dr. F. 0. S.
Schiller read a paper on " Error." In attempting to distinguish in
thought between truth and error, no help is obtainable from the existing
logics. For these either (1) take up an ideal or (2) a formal standpoint,
or (3) pass confusedly from one to the other; and from none of these
standpoints is the problem of error visible. Error is either included in
(formal) truth, or supposed to have been transcended. To discriminate
between truth and error a new logic is required, which does not begin by
depersonalizing judgment and abstracting from meaning. Such a logic
will note that an " error " is always relative to the context and circum-
stances of an assertion, and that these are always personal and partial.
Error, like truth, rests on a selection of the relevant, because without
relevance there is no meaning. But the difference between a true and a
false assertion is that the one furthers, and the other thwarts, a human
purpose in cognitive activity. It is, in short, a difference in value. But
neither valuation is absolute ; absolute solutions of cognitive problems are
both impracticable and scientifically unmeaning, which is why science is
infinitely progressive. It follows that what in knowing we are concerned
with is a number of cognitive states intermediate between absolute truth
and error, such as lies, errors, methodological fiction, methodological as-
sumptions, postulates, validated truths, axioms, and jokes. These should
all be discriminated, and it is particularly worthy of note that, as both in
the case of the " lie " and the " joke," the ostensible is not the real mean-
ing of the assertion, and the latter requires a recognition of the maker's
intention, any logic which depersonalizes its subject incapacitates itself
from distinguishing between falsity and lying and jest and earnest.
Hence intellectualism as such is incapable of understanding a joke.
Humanism, on the other hand, by making these distinctions, explains why
it has always refused to " convert simply " the doctrine, " All truths
work." Yet this conversion continues to be falsely attributed to it.
The Athenaeum.
PROFESSOR G. TSCHELPANOW, of the University of Moscow, has been
commissioned by the Russian Government to study the various psycholog-
ical laboratories in order to complete plans for the erection and equipment
of a psychological laboratory in Moscow, the money for which has been
contributed by a well-known local benefactor of science and art, $50,000
for the building and $10,000 for its equipment. At the Eighth Annual
Meeting of Experimental Psychologists held this spring at Cornell Uni-
versity, Professor Tschelpanow gave some account of the status of psy-
chology in Russia. Although an interest has been taken in it for twenty
years or more, its progress has been hampered by the uncertainty of
political conditions and by the affiliation of psychology with philology,
instead of with the natural sciences, as well as by the fact that Russian
universities, having only collegiate rank, do not provide opportunities for
research. Laboratories already exist at Odessa, at Kiew, and at Moscow.
336
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Of these the one at Odessa is the oldest and is known through the work
of N. Lange. Moscow is, however, the most favorable location for a mod-
ern laboratory, as the present one there was started four years ago with
more liberal provisions. It has now thirty students in experimental psy-
chology. Russian professors depend to a very large extent upon transla-
tions of American text-books, especially those of Sanford and Titchener.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND Co. have issued " Some Problems of Philosophy,
a Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy," by William James. The
first paragraph of the prefatory note by Henry James, Jr., is as follows:
" For several years before his death Professor William James cherished
the purpose of stating his views on certain problems of metaphysics in a
book addressed particularly to readers of philosophy. He began the actual
writing of this t introductory text-book for students in metaphysics,' as
he once called it, in March, 1909, and to complete it was at last his dearest
ambition. But illness, and other demands on his diminished strength,
continued to interfere, and what is now published is all that he had suc-
ceeded in writing when he died in August, 1910." Also the dedication:
" . . .he (Charles Renouvier) was one of the greatest of philosophic
characters, and but for the decisive impression made on me in the seven-
ties by his masterly advocacy of pluralism, I might never have got free
from the monistic superstition under which I had grown up. The present
volume, in short, might never have been written. This is why, feeling
endlessly thankful as I do, I dedicate this text-book to the great Renou-
vier's memory."
THE Yale University Press announces a volume of essays by the late
Professor Sumner. These essays must take the place of the work on
" The Science of Society " to which Professor Sumner had been devoting
himself for a number of years and to which his volume " Folkways " was
intended to be an introduction. The latter work has just been reprinted
by Ginn and Co. with important variations of text, with an introductory
note by Professor Albert G. Keeler, and with a portrait of Professor
Sumner.
PROFESSOR PAUL H. HANUS, head of the department of education at
Harvard University, has been chosen to take general charge of the in-
vestigation of the New York public school administration conducted by
the School Inquiry Committee.
JOSIAH ROYCE, professor of the history of philosophy at Harvard, will
be the university delegate at the celebration of the five hundredth anni-
versary of the University of St. Andrews.
DR. WILLIAM McDouGALL's new book, " Body and Mind," will be pub-
lished by Luce & Co. before the close of this season.
DR. SAVILLA A. ELKUS, of Columbia University, has been appointed
assistant in philosophy at Vassar College.
HENRY HOLT AND Co. are issuing " The Stability of Truth," by Presi-
dent David Starr Jordan.
Miss LILIEN J. MARTIN has been appointed professor of psychology at
Stanford University.
VOL. VIII. No. 13 JUNE 22, 1911
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE FACULTY DOCTRINE, CORRELATION, AND
EDUCATIONAL THEORY. 1 I
I. INTRODUCTION
AT a meeting- of teachers in London recently, a prominent edu-
cationist expressed some dismay at the growing influence of
psychology in education. For he said that he understood that psy-
chologists, nowadays, had deprived us of our faculties. Personally,
he felt that he could not do without his, and he thought that teachers
would find it very hard to discuss and apply educational theory if
they were no longer able to use such terms as memory, imagination,
reasoning, et id omne genus, without being open to the charge that
they were speaking of non-existent entities.
Let us at the very outset admit that "faculties" are explanations
and are not necessarily causes. A fact is explained when we are able
to join it up with similar facts in a common judgment. Such an ex-
planation is not ultimate probably no scientific explanations are
but it may have a pragmatic value; it may help us to handle the
multitudinous happenings of our real world more economically; it
may help us to draw conclusions of service for practise. We must
conceptualize if we are to draw conclusions which in any way pass
beyond the bare facts revealed by observation and experiment. Un-
rationalized perception leads nowhere. But, on the contrary, con-
ceptions, to be valuable, must be full of the possibilities of perceptual
content ; they must start from facts and point the way to new ones.
We must, I think, further admit that the conceptualizing of early
psychology was a process too easily carried out; and, in the first
break-up of its merely classificatory doctrines, it was inevitable that
the easy solutions of the past should be discountenanced and vigor-
ously denied. It was inevitable that the increasing knowledge of the
1 This paper was given in outline before the joint meeting of the Aristotelian
Society, the Mind Association, and the British Psychological Society in London,
1910.
337
338
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
extreme complexity of mind should lead to a disbelief in the few
simple unities which heretofore had largely done duty for accurate
psychologic thinking. The reaction was largely for good, and we owe
to it the development of latter-day scientific psychology.
Analysis is the keynote of modern work; but one can not draw
useful conclusions from merely analyzed contents, we needs must
put things together before we can use a science. It is therefore again
an inevitable necessity, and no mere accident of personality, which
induces the professors of experimental pedagogy to bind up, or try to
bind up, the disjecta membra of experimental psychology into useful
bundles. In carrying the bundles about they will assuredly lose a
stick here and there, and some of the sticks will get into the wrong
bundles; but the things simply can't be carried at all unless they are
bound up somehow, and if they are left grounded where they lie they
will be of no human service. It was, therefore, quite to be expected
that Professor Meumann, the head and front of the offending, should
be severely criticized by Professor Wundt for what he regards as the
reintroduction of the faculty doctrine in psychology.
I hold no brief for the defense of the faculty doctrine, and I am
against most of the educational inferences which have been drawn
from it. But to overstate the case against it will produce a violent
reaction when it is discovered that carefully conducted experiment
may lead to a justification of some form of it a form and a justifica-
tion which will not sanction the errors of medieval pedagogy, but will
give us hope that our mental training is not quite such an atomistic
affair as the extremists of the opposite school assert. It is perhaps a
little unwise, and I am not sure that it is not a little too early, to
attempt a mediated view we are not yet ripe for the synthesis of
these contradictions. In attempting such a task, one has merely the
doubtful consolation of knowing that one is likely to be criticized by
both parties, and alas ! one has no partisans.
II. THE FACULTY DOCTRINE AND EDUCATION
Probably no problem in educational psychology calls to-day more
urgently for continuous and exact treatment than the relation be-
tween the various mental powers of school children.
I have used the word " powers" because I wished to avoid de-
claring, or rather, insinuating, any opinion at present as to what is
known in psychology as the "faculty doctrine." Much more patient
experimental work remains to be done before we shall be entitled to
pronounce any confident opinion on all the problems for they form
a group rather than a single problem which are raised in the attack
and defense of this doctrine of the faculties.
This is not the place for any extended discussion of the various
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 339
psychological forms of the doctrine; indeed, some of the leading
theorists of to-day are apt to regard the discussion as closed. But
we can at once dismiss one aspect of the faculty theory, namely, that
which explained our memories and our imaginings by postulating as
causes a kind of separate mental organ or agency called the memory,
and another called the imagination. Our philosophy of explanation
has grown less naive than it was when such postulations satisfied us.
But there is another aspect of the faculty doctrine which can
not be dismissed in such a cursory way. According to that, a
man with a good memory is a man who can remember, though,
doubtless, with variations due to his greater or lesser interests
in particular subjects, pretty much and pretty well anything he
wants to; he can learn poetry, he can learn mathematical
formulae, he can learn dates in history, he can learn geography
he can remember both text and maps, and he can learn tunes
(some of the defenders of the doctrine would feel a little hesitation
on this count), and he can remember them all. If he is an imagina-
tive person he can produce from among the things he knows new
things which are psychologically original, that is, original from the
standpoint of psychology, the individual standpoint. He may have
learned stories, but he can write others which are in no sense mere
repetitions of what he has learned; he may have learned to draw
and remember the appearances of objects, but, as an imaginative
draughtsman, he passes beyond what he has seen and learned. In-
deed the ultra supporters of the faculty doctrine would maintain
that he would invent better if he had not learned or could not learn
to draw and remember actual objects. In mathematics such an one
will tend to invent his own formulae, in science he will frame his own
hypotheses, and in music will make tunes for himself: all of which,
bien entendu, need not be original except in the psychologic sense.
Now it is fairly obvious here that we are dealing not with a single
problem, but with a whole group of problems, and perhaps that con-
sideration may appear more clearly and usefully to the student of
educational psychology if I approach the questions from the educa-
tional side.
III. EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND MENTAL DISUNITY
Educational anti-facultists of to-day express themselves in ways
which assert or imply some or all of the following propositions :
1. That there is little positive correlation or connection between
the various memories and imaginations and reasonings which, as a
sort of general aggregate rather than as generalized functions, consti-
tute the memory, or the imagination, or the reason.
2. That there is a negative correlation between these faculties.
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Thus, persons who are endowed with good memories will tend to be
weak imaginatively and vice versa; and the cultivation or exercise
of one of these powers will affect the cultivation of the other ad-
versely. I use the double expression, cultivation or exercise, because
I do not for the moment wish to prejudge the question as to whether
the memory or the imagination can be trained, in the scholastic sense,
at all. Professor James, we may remember, denied altogether that
one could train the mere brute retentiveness which underlies all forms
of memory.
3. That, while admitting that particular memories and particu-
lar imaginations can be trained, it would be held that there is no
transfer of the results of training from one memory to another or
from one imagination to another. They are quite specialized func-
tionally and, further, they are specialized by content.
As this is a JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, the genesis of these views
may be worth a moment's consideration.
First of all, they are due to the backward pragmatic test of truth.
There is general dissatisfaction with the educational results of to-day
which is felt by all or almost all educationists. It is held, therefore,
that the views on which these results are based can not be true, for
our educational practises have proved unsuccessful. Hence, there-
fore, the contrary doctrines are supposed to be the true ones.
Secondly, there is an increasing recognition on the part of educa-
tionists that psychology has something vital to say about the mental
basis of education. They know that the leading English-speaking
theorists of to-day have, with little exception, decided against the
faculty doctrine; and they take that decision to mean (as it does not
necessarily) that the above propositions are direct consequences of
its overthrow. And, apart from this, the growth of experimental
methods has tended to make the merely educational mind, and, shall
we say, some psychological minds, conclude straightway that not only
is the old causal unity the synthetic unity of apperception dis-
solved into uncorrelated and separate faculties, but that even these
faculties are also broken up into quite unrelated parts.
Memory itself, which had a long run as a separate homogeneous
function, is dissolved into visual memories, auditory memories, artic-
ulatory memories, memories of motor sensations, and so on.
And from the fact that a person may be good at one and rela-
tively weak in another mnemonic form, it has been concluded that
there is nothing left at all homogeneous enough to be called the
memory. There is less difficulty with the imagination; we have
always spoken of an imaginative person, but we have not usually
been so clear as we have been in the case of memory that an imagina-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 341
tive person was good all round at all sorts of imaginings. The
' ' image ' ' doctrine of imagination currently accepted would tend
to further accentuate belief in the separate nature of the functional
operations commonly held together in a loose concept with the help
of the word imagination. For how, it would be argued, should a
training of visual images help us to form auditory ones ? and so on.
Issuing from all this logically, though genetically, I believe, only
appealing to it for support, is the enormous trend in favor of prac-
tical education, the decline of the classics, and some others of those
movements one knows as modernism in education. For, if these prop-
ositions be true, we can educate a child in particular functions
only : if we want him to grow up with powers of imagination we must
make most, if not all, of our school exercises of an imaginative kind :
memorizing will be obstructive or at best nugatory, and reasoning
will not help us. Or if we want him to learn from the work of others
to become adapted to his environment, to frame his inner relations
in accordance with outer ones, we must set him to observe and
remember ; imagination with such ideals being reduced in name and
fact to phantasm or fancy. Indeed, the educationist often goes
further, as logically he ought to do, on these premises. Not only is
the cultivation of the separate faculties, e. g., memory and imagina-
tion, believed to take place without interpretation and even with
adverse influences one on the other, but the separate memories and
the separate imaginations must, if we require to improve them, be
cultivated in the form in which they are hereafter to be exercised ; for
there is little or no transfer of improvement gained in one particular
function to any other whatever, even to those which, according to the
older faculty psychology, were regarded as practically identical with
it, and were called by the same name. How can, one would say, the
memory for dates help the memory for chemical formulae, the
memory for pictures help the memory for tunes, or how should
practise in imagining interesting stories help a child to imagine new
designs in draughtsmanship? I admit the extreme difficulty in
answering these questions satisfactorily, even if experiment should
show that one function does help the other.
The general line of argument is further supported by well-known
facts drawn from adult psychology. Jones is a highly imaginative
person ; his reasoning we believe weak his conclusions do not agree
with our own; and he does not know the facts we appeal to; we
shrewdly suspect his memory to be faulty. Brown, on the other
hand, reasons beautifully ; but he never remembers facts and has no
imagination. Robinson is full of facts, but he is a stodgy person who
can not reason on them nor throw them into combinations different
from those in which they were originally experienced by him.
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And we do not wonder at these things ; for Jones is an artist, Brown
was educated in logic and metaphysics, and Robinson is the unfor-
tunate product of an encyclopedic curriculum punctuated plentifully
with examinations.
These are people who, if they were arranged in the order of their
proficiency in mental powers, would be placed very differently
according as we choose memory, imagination, or reasoning as the
basis of our differentiation. Robinson, for example, would stand 1st
for memory and nth for reasoning or imagination, at least so common
sense supposes.
Nor is it merely a common sense opinion unsupported by philos-
ophers and psychologists. We may remember Sir William Hamil-
ton's essay on the study of mathematics as an exercise of the mind,
and Herbert Spencer's appraisement of mathematicians balanced by
his estimation of the defective reasonings of men of science. They
are supposed to be exclusively devoted to particular types of reason-
ing and hence to be unable to reason in any other way. Their faculty
of reasoning is not only no faculty at all, but is divided against itself
in such a way that the cultivation of part of it militates against the
operation of the other part. I append the following quotation to
show that I have not strained the argument involved in Spencer's
essay.
This instancing of five men, occupied with mathematics and mathematical
physics, in whose minds the formula of Evolution raised no answering concep-
tion, may be thought to imply an undervaluation, if not even a reprobation, of
mathematics and physics as subjects of study. No inference could be more
erroneous. To guard against it, however, let me point out that while exclusive
devotion to the exact sciences produces certain defects of thought, exclusive
devotion to the inexact sciences produces defects of thought of an opposite kind.
These last present phenomena under such complex forms, with interdependencies
so involved, that necessities of relation can not in most cases be said to exist;
and the many causes simultaneously in operation so obscure the action of any
one, as in large measure to exclude the idea of definite causation. Among plants
a few fundamental relations may be fairly alleged, as between the monocotyle-
donous germination and the endogenous mode of growth, or between the dico-
tyledonous germination and the exogenous mode of growth. But relations among
multitudinous combined traits, such as kind of fructification and possession of
thorns, or hard-shelled nuts and shapes of leaves, can not be shown to have any
causal characters. So with animals. Though it is a trait of creatures having
mammae to have seven cervical vertebrae, yet for this correlation of structures no
necessity can be alleged; as is proved by the fact that though at one time the
connection was supposed to be universal, there have of late years been discovered
mammals having eight vertebras in the neck. Hence, those who exclusively study
animals and plants, being perpetually impressed by connections of facts which
are either fortuitous or for which no reason can be assigned, are not daily habitu-
ated to the perception of causal relations, and such generalizations as they can
establish come to be regarded as empirical. A purely inductive habit is encour-
aged and a deductive habit discouraged. The resulting mental tendencies operate
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 343
in other regions of thought, so that everywhere necessity of relation is doubted,
and the idea of inevitable consequence meets with no acceptance. Many times
in a distinguished biologist I have observed the effect thus described. Present
him with a great accumulation of evidence supporting a certain conclusion, and
this conclusion, coming before him under the form of an induction, he would
entertain and seem ready to accept. After a time point out that this conclusion
might be reached deductively from known necessary truths, and immediately his
scepticism was aroused. Forgetting the inductive basis originally assigned, the
deductive proof excited such repugnance as tended to make him reject what he
before admitted. The habit of mind encouraged by dealing exclusively with
empirical generalizations produced an abnormal distrust of all others.
As I intend, finally, to deny the validity of educational arguments
drawn from such evidence, I ought to say at once that such a method
is inevitable at a certain stage in educational theory, and that it is
the first and obvious way of attack may be shown by listening to any
conversation among scientific men when they are " off " their own
particular line. Bearing in mind the evils as well as the good which
we believe to be derived from each study in its highly specialized
form, we have forthwith agreed that a modicum of the same studies
will, in youths and children, produce similar effects, though propor-
tionately smaller, of course. Hence we ought to teach that, and
should not teach this, and so on. A first-rate mathematician is said
to be weak in adding up sums; hence accuracy is not necessary for
school children, they can become great mathematicians without it. A
great literary man had a poor memory, and was not always sure of
his spelling ; so that good spelling need not be insisted on in school,
even for subsequent success in literature. A great scientist used
few books, he owed his knowledge to first-hand perception without
guidance from others. Now perception is a separate faculty, called
by pedagogues the faculty of observation ; hence we must, in order
to produce scientists, confine the youthful mind to nature study of
a direct kind. These arguments are everywhere current among
educationists either explicitly or implicitly. Shall we cease to argue
thus ? By no means ; we must and ought to argue from the cases we
know. But we ought to know more cases. We must admit that
such persons exist; but before drawing conclusions from their psy-
chology to ordinary educational practise, we must ask, Are they
normal adults?
Can we best find psychological direction in the study of abnormal
cases, whether they be found amongst men of genius or in lunatic
asylums? It is known to be extremely dangerous to make general
inferences from the extreme ends of any psychological scale; some
of our best attested correlations give way at the edges. Even in so
simple a matter as the relation between temperature and volume of
water, we should be deceived if we trusted to a kind of rule-of-three
344 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
conclusion. For we find by experience that there is a peculiar break
at 4 Centigrade : after continuously shrinking with falling tem-
perature, the liquid at this point begins to expand. The relation-
ships between our various mental powers are, doubtless, at least as
complex as that between the temperature and volume of water.
Indeed, we need not argue by analogy that they are so. It is well
known among those who work much in the correlation of mental
functions that, towards the limits of the series, the correlations may
be even reversed, and mathematicians caution us against attaching
too much importance to the cases on the edges of series ; it is, in fact,
a complaint against the world-known Pearson formula of correlation
that it allows too much weight to the extremities of the series
correlated.
It is obvious that, until we have established correlations and con-
nections all along the scale, which are generally true, we can draw no
valuable conclusions for practise of any kind. This work is, fortu-
nately, in process of being done. Our every-day outlook is always
towards limiting cases, because these are striking and noticeable.
That they were also misleading we scarcely began to suspect before
experimental psychology began its investigations on adult pro-
fessors and students who were accessible to laboratories.
But may we then draw inferences which shall be valuable in
ordinary pedagogy ? No, not even then ; for children are not adults ;
they are not even miniature editions of adults. They differ in ways
which are vital for educational theory and practise. If the above
line of argument is sound, it conducts us directly to observations on
normal children as the only way of obtaining real guidance for
pedagogy.
IV. EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND MENTAL UNITY
But pedagogy, like more established sciences, and especially like
those which oscillate between a normative and normal condition, is
by no means a solid body of consistent doctrine.
The views of the school to which I have hitherto referred all
tended in the direction of reducing our belief in the unity of mind :
its members disbelieve in the faculty doctrine because they do not
believe that the processes referred to generically as those of one
faculty are, as a matter of fact, in direct positive correlation and
connection with each other; they accept the faculty doctrine in so
far as they maintain that the improvement due to the exercise of one
faculty is not transferred to work undertaken by another. In so far
as the faculty doctrine is a doctrine of separation, they subscribe to it ;
in so far as it is a doctrine of unity and combination, they deny it.
But the doctrine is attacked, not only because it is considered to
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 345
regard the mind as too much of a unity, it is attacked by another
school because it ascribes too little unity to the mind. This school
holds that the various mental powers are of course highly correlated,
so highly that it is absurd to talk of disparate powers or faculties at
all ; the work of finding correlations between mental powers seems to
them a irapepyov. I merely mention en passant those who believe that
mental life can be quite adequately pictured as the synthesizing
activity of a unitary soul or subject, since this view is not active to-
day as a basis of psychological investigation, however stoutly it may
hold its own in the metaphysical field. There is probably a truth
underlying the view which few psychologists of sensation have yet
allowed for, namely, the necessary and inevitable participation of the
subject or reagent or agent, as I should prefer to call it, in every fact
of knowledge.
But this participation can be shown only by doing, and by doing
definite and conceivable things. These activities are many and multi-
form, it is said, and rightly so. But it is further implied that they
may all be summed up in a few fundamental categories, to wit, dis-
crimination, comparison, association. These, bien entendu, are not
new faculties, they are elementary processes or principles of proc-
esses which can be, and are, employed in the operation of the various
so-called faculties, perception, memory, imagination, reasoning, etc.,
and, moreover, can be, and are, employed in various fields of knowl-
edge. If well employed in an imaginative field, they will result in
fertile imagination ; in a mnemonic field, they will result in accurate
and permanent memory. Consequently, if we set the same individual
various tasks involving processes of memory or imagination, he will,
as compared with other people (my reader will remember the fertile
methods of correlation by rank) tend to do about equally well in
these different tasks. Why ? Not because his memory and imagina-
tion are the same thing exactly, but merely because he applies, or may
apply, his discriminative, comparative, and associative powers
equally in all these cases.
So that the labors of experimental inquiry are undertaken in
vain, the correlation found must be high. If one points to the well-
known cases, above cited, of Jones, Brown, and Robinson, one is
fairly answered that the doctrine does not require that each person
shall, as a fact, be equally strong in memory, imagination, etc., but
only on condition that he had applied his powers of discrimination,
comparison, etc., equally; that is, had given equal attention to
mnemonic and imaginative subjects. Logically, one sees that imper-
fections would tend to be thrown on the attention, and a perusal of
experimental work tends to show that this has, in some cases, actually
occurred.
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Opponents urge that the power to attend to any one set of mental
processes, at least continuously, must depend upon large native en-
dowment for that particular function. The education of the atten-
tion is ruled out as the only factor of difference, since the power to
attend to different processes differs initially, that is, before a process
of training has come in. It is a difficult position, since we have no
exact methods of separating the attention factor in the result from
the factor due to the natural endowment for the work in question.
For example, one boy does arithmetic well with little attention;
another may attend carefully, and fail. "Yes, we know that, " we
may answer, "but we can get over that difficulty by comparing the
work of the same boy only with his own work of the same kind and
difficulty done at different times. The difference will give an indica-
tion of the waxing and waning of attention. " " No, " it is answered,
"the power to perform the process varies, quite apart from the atten-
tion given to it ; it waxes and wanes from various causes other than
the failure of attention, from lack of nutrition, from practise, from
fatigue, and so on." Extremists go further, and imply that atten-
tion to any process is simply an indication of the ripeness and
fulness, so to speak, of the organs or other parts, neurological or
otherwise, which are physiologically involved. There is much to be
said for this view, were we considering spontaneous attention merely ;
but common experience uses the term attention to denote those cases
in which, notwithstanding our known weakness, our felt fatigue, we
force ourselves to attend, as the phrase goes ; and we believe that we
can thereby raise the results of work which is issuing from a rather
used-up power. Of course, it is not pretended that attention can
increase the work from an organ quite fatigued; indeed, it seems to
me that, theoretically, we might define fatigue as indicated by a f all-
ing-off in the power to perform some process which additional
activity of attention could not prevent. Practically, with the excep-
tion of those who believe they are measuring differences in the power
of attention by means of experiments which actually measure work
done, w r hat actually happens among good experimenters is something
like this : Every precaution is taken to secure all the possible attention
of which each subject is capable on every occasion on which the tests
are made. We say frankly when we are dissatisfied with the atten-
tiveness of an observer we often are when his results are jerky so
we speak out so as not to mislead our readers and, incidentally per-
haps, to preserve the conclusiveness of our own results. So that the
theoretical test I propose is one already implicit in good practise.
I have ventured apparently off the track, but the discussion is neces-
sary to justify procedure in which tests are made of mental functions,
for otherwise it might be alleged that one is measuring merely
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 347
different states of attentiveness of the same subject, and nothing else.
Much of the above argument seems abstract and metaphysical,
and some would think it absurd to suppose that practical or even
theoretical pedagogy has been much influenced by considerations of
the unity of mind. To instance Herbart would only be to mention
a case in which the same man's pedagogy and metaphysics
were far asunder. For whilst he postulated a unitary soul or subject,
he gave most admirable instructions pedagogically as to the way in
which to produce a unified mind which, ex hypothesi, he started
from as an original possession. But there is a school of education-
ists who do believe in unity; they assert that the results of the fac-
ulty doctrine are pernicious, and that, a fortiori, the views of those
who think that the faculty doctrine itself implies too much coherence
in mental life are more pernicious.
The training of the faculties a faqon de parler beloved of peda-
gogy is for them a myth. The whole mind hangs together. (Some
of us wish it would hang together for the space of one article; our
own minds, do I mean? Yes, and those of our readers?) Practise in
any mental function means for them improvement all round, if it
means improvement at all. Consequently, all pedagogical exhorta-
tion which recommended this or that particular study as specially
suitable for improving some particular mental power, e. g., that to
train a boy's reasoning powers (the faculty doctrine calls it the
reason) we must teach him arithmetic, or demonstrative geometry,
or grammar, is thereby at once placed out of court.
If the whole mind is the unity which these thinkers profess
it to be, mental pabulum is useful for its general effect rather
than for its special value in training special powers. The apostles
of the training theory are easily ridiculed when, in answer to the
charge, for example, that the public school boy never really learns
to know Latin or Greek, they point out the magnificent effects which
these studies have as mental discipline. Les extremes se touchent.
The believers in the complete unity or in the extreme disunity of
mental functions meet on common ground. The matter of education
becomes everything, the method nothing. If we can not develop
mental powers and transfer the effect from one subject of
instruction to another, we must aim obviously, as far as we can,
at giving instruction in the very knowledge, and practise in the
very activities, which the adult will probably want to know and
do; we shall not teach him Latin verse to improve his taste for
the Knulish poets; we shall not teach him Euclid (pardon; demon-
strative geometry, I mean) to help him to reason about the affairs
of his business life; he must, in very truth, begin his life work young,
and it is futile to suppose that, by any artificial arrangement of
348
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
knowledge specially prepared for school purposes, we can give a
pupil a special dose of memory training, reasoning power, or fertil-
ity of imagination. All the training really possible or necessary
will come incidentally in the acquisition of knowledge which is valu-
able for its informatory and not for its disciplinary effect. Peda-
gogical method may still be valuable, but it will be a method of pres-
entation merely, not a method which puts practise and training
before the acquisition of fact.
W. H. WINCH.
DULWICH, ENGLAND.
EHYTHM AND THE SPECIOUS PRESENT 1
\ SATISFACTOEY working hypothesis for the study of rhythm-
^LA_ perception has not yet been formulated, although several
writers have come very close to the statement of the theory which
seems to me adequate. That there is need of a new hypothesis is
evident to any one who takes the trouble to go over the experimental
literature dating from Bolton's paper. 2 The impression which one
gets from this literature is that the psychologists are well aware that
rhythm-perception presents a big problem, but are at sea as to the
steps to be taken towards the solution thereof. An interesting light
is thrown on this situation by the case of a German writer who is
much quoted on the subject of rhythm-perception, and whose article
of over a hundred pages was presumably preliminary to an account
of extensive experiments of his own. The * ' Fortsetzung folgt"
which concludes his second instalment remains an unkept promise,
and there are certain things which indicate that he was unable to
handle the experimental problems, that the undertaking was too
much for him.
Introspective work has convinced me that the perception of a
rhythmic grouping or series is conditioned by a periodic change in
the specious present. When a series of stimulations (auditory, for
example) runs off without any decided rhythm or grouping, the
specious present maintains an approximately fixed length, or, at
least, the variations in its length have no functional relation to the
series of stimulations in question. Sensations appear serially,
remain for a greater or less time in " present" consciousness, and
fade out one by one. When the sensations begin to group rhyth-
1 Presented, in part, at the Chattanooga meeting of the Southern Society
for Philosophy and Psychology, December 28, 1910.
2 "Khythm," American Journal of Psychology, 1894, Vol. VI., pp. 145-238.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 349
mically, either through the introduction of objective differences in
intensity, duration, intervening period, or complexity, or through
the factors which we for convenience designate as "subjective,"
the relation of the series to the specious present at once becomes
definite.
If the sensations group by fours, forming what is called in the
preferable terminology a "four-rhythm," the first member of each
group, as it is roused, stands alone alone, at least, in so far as the
other members of the series are concerned. If the preceding sensa-
tions, belonging in other groups, are present at all, they are memory
images: but it is highly probable that they are not present to con-
sciousness even in that form. When the second sensation is aroused,
the first is still present, not as a memory image, but as a sensation;
present, that is, in the same way in which it was present when it
first entered. The first, second, and third sensations are retained
in the specious present until the fourth has arrived, and the four
constituting the group are therefore actually sensed together. Imme-
diately thereafter, the slate is cleared, as it were, for the next group.
The specious present shrinks to such an extent that the sensations
which a moment before were included in it are forced out.
There are numerous mechanical processes which might be used to
illustrate this periodic elongation and contraction of the specious
present. The action of a rosined violin bow on the string is such a
process. However steadily the bow is drawn, the string is period-
ically drawn aside to the limit determined by the tension of the
string and the friction, from which point it snaps back to begin the
movement anew.
This specious present may be considered as being fixed at the
"front" end, and as being stretched steadily backwards with the
passing of time, until at the extreme point of stretch it contains
that part of the time stream to which a group of the sensations cor-
responds; then it is released and snaps up to its original position,
before the first member of the next group enters it.
The periodic change in the specious present is not essentially
connected with variations in the degree of attention. Attention may
be best at the beginning of the group, or at the end, or at some inter-
mediate position, without affecting the essential features of the
grouping. 3 The whole process may receive a high degree of atten-
tion, or a very low degree. But the specious present changes occur,
or there is no rhythm. The attention-wave theory of rhythm-per-
ception has no greater agreement with the facts than is to be found
The experiments of Arps and Klemm, Psychologische Studien, 1908, Vol.
IV., pp. 505-529, in theory bear on this point, but are too crude to furnish
any data.
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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in its ascribing the grouping to some sort of periodicity in conscious-
ness itself, rather than in the content !
The attention-wave theory is usually modified by a supple-
mentary explanation in terms of synthetic activity of the mind. 4
For introspection, this is completely out of the question. The
rhythm group is an immediate sensory fact, and depends on no
higher synthesizing activity than does the fusion of two tonal
elements.
We have no very reliable determinations of the series condi-
tions which influence or determine the rhythmic groupings. Bolton
thought that the most satisfactory duration for groups of twos,
threes, fours, sixes, and eights was slightly over one second. An
examination of his tables shows us that he has no evidence for this
claim. He had no systematic procedure which would enable him to
find what rates a subject would really prefer for a given group
form, and, moreover, his results are obtained by averaging together
a few determinations on several different subjects; a procedure which
produces the most unreliable results. For example, the average
rate of the three-groups for seven subjects was found to be 460
sigma, although only one of the subjects actually heard three-groups
at the rates near that value.
For the influence of intensity-accents we have various agreements
and disagreements of experimental results. It is certain that under
proper conditions the accents may be heard at any position in the
group ; the group formed, that is, with the accented member occupy-
ing any position. What the * ' proper conditions ' ' are, is a question ;
undoubtedly, the point at which the subject begins to hear the series
is one of the influential factors, but the fact that subjective accents
may be placed on practically any member of a group complicates the
situation.
Several attempts have been made to show that there is a motor
basis for rhythmic perception, but they can not be said to have had
very important results. There is no doubt that periodic movement
assists the formation of rhythmic groups in the content, but this fact
has little bearing on the motor theories. The facts seem to be that
all sorts of sensations lend themselves to serial grouping, and that
if two series are practically coincident, they are grouped as one
series. Hence, a series of auditory, visual, or tactual sensations
which does not group easily alone, will group if combined with a
strongly accented muscular series.
Stetson 5 has built up an ingenious but purely artificial motor
theory of rhythm, based on the so-called "ballistic" movement:
* See Bolton, op. tit., p. 220.
5 Psychological Eeview, 1905, Vol. XII., pp. 250-270, 293-350.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 351
a movement due to the alternate contractions of antagonistic mus-
cular systems, the contraction of the first system serving as the
stimulus for the contraction of the second, which checks the move-
ment and returns the member to the original position. No other
type of muscular action, according to Stetson, can serve as a basis
for rhythm. As a matter of fact, rhythms beaten by lifting the
hand or foot, letting the member fall each time by gravity, are just
as "good" subjectively as rhythms beaten by "ballistic" movements.
The motor theories of rhythm-perception rest on no other bases
than the facts that motor expression of certain sorts is good rhythmic
material, and that periodic stimulation usually produces muscular
activity. No one has been able to show that the motor factor is
indispensable, and the introspective evidence is clearly on the other
side. With the utmost possible relaxation of the entire body, good
rhythmic grouping of an auditory series can be obtained. The
grouping is easier and more definite with objective accent, but can
be obtained when there is no objective accent, and no discoverable
motor rhythm. The subject must, of course, lie flat on his back in
this experiment. With perfect relaxation the grouping, if it occurs,
is devoid of subjective accent, a fact which inclines us to the belief
that subjective accent is essentially a motor affair.
W^hile there is no absolute need of accent in a rhythmic series,
accent makes the establishment of the groups easier, i. e., it assists in
the maintaining of a regular periodicity in the specious present.
Naturally, the strongest accent comes at the beginning of the group,
because the first member of the group has to be carried farthest, but
the accent may occur in other positions, as we well know.
It is probably true that for the majority of persons, and in the
majority of cases, the accents are preferred on the first members of
the groups. This we might infer from the accent system which has
developed in music. Another fact, which is suificiently well estab-
lished, and which also we would all probably be willing to admit
without much proof, is that a long interval or pause introduced
periodically in a series of sounds tends to throw the sounds into
groups limited by these pauses. We must remember, however, that
there are subjects who present consistent exceptions to this rule,
and that any subject is apt to depart from the rule if some factor
suggests another form of grouping. It is not highly probable that
a quantitative method of research on rhythm perception can be
established on the general validity of any such rule. 6
Accent has a definite effect on the time-relations in a rhythmic
6 See, however, Woodrow, "A Quantitative Study of Rhythm," Archives of
Psychology, 1909, No. 14, and "The Role of Pitch in Rhythm," Psychological
Eeview, 1911, Vol. XVIII., pp. 54-77.
352
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
series, but this effect is really of no importance for the explanation
of the grouping. The general fact is that a small time-interval
limited by two dissimilar sensations seems longer than the same
objective interval under conditions practically the same except for
the limiting sensations being similar. This was brought out very
forcibly by the results of Meumann's experiments on time-percep-
tion, 7 although Meumann himself did not notice it, and supposed
that there was no uniform result to his experiments. He, however,
was expecting to find a specific effect of a weak sound or a strong
sound on the interval following it, or preceding it, as frequently
occurs in rhythmic series, and did not notice the effect of intensity-
difference. In a rhythmic series, the effect of the accent is to
lengthen the interval preceding it, or following it, according to
which is compared with the other intervals. 8 This effect comes out
in groupings of three or more; with two-groups we can not get at
it definitely, for obvious reasons.
The general effect of stimulus difference on the estimation of
small time-intervals has been brought out in a number of investiga-
tions, 9 but it has no bearing on the rhythm problems.
When the groups are small and the rate rapid, the contraction of
the specious present does not occur at the end of every group, but
at the end of every second, third, or even every fourth group. In
this case there is a complex grouping ; the unit groups are perceived
as elements in a larger group, and accent is practically indispensable,
for it is only by accent of some sort that the small groups can be
set off from one another in the large group. Theoretically, a differ-
ential spacing should accomplish the same result, as, for example,
when three-groups are given with relatively short intervals between
the members of the group, and relatively long intervals between the
groups. But practically, subjective accent enters in every such case,
even when there is no objective accent.
With simple grouping, i. e., where the periodic change of the
specious present corresponds to the single groups, a longer interval
between groups is more favorable to the contraction phase of the
process ; and hence the occurrence of a longer interval every second,
third, or fourth interval may determine the grouping in twos, threes,
or fours, if other conditions are not too strongly in favor of some
other grouping. Here again we find there is no absolute need of
7 ' ' Beitrage zur Psychologie des Zeitsinnes, ' ' II., Philosophische Studien,
1894, Vol. IX., pp. 289-297.
8 See Woodrow, Archives of Psychology, No. 14, pp. 8-9.
9 See Schumann, Zeitschrift fur Psychologic, 1893, Vol. IV., p. 67 ; Dunlap,
Harvard Psychological Studies, 1903, Vol. L, p. 116; Miner, Psychological
Review Monographs, 1903, Vol. V., pp. 68, 78-79.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 353
this relation ; the slate may be cleared in the shortest intervals of the
series, if other conditions favor this sort of grouping.
The early members of a group are not present to consciousness
as memory images when the last member occurs. It is experiment-
ally easy to hold a memory image of a sound in consciousness until
the sound is given again if the sequence is fairly slow but at the
moment when the new sound occurs, the memory of the old disap-
pears. It is practically impossible to have a sound-sensation and
also simultaneously the memory-image of a sound of approximately
the same quality. Moreover, the memory image held in the way
described requires an appreciable time to arise, and is very decidedly
not the sort of thing which is held in the rhythm series.
The physiological schematization of a sensation "present" to
consciousness after its physiological process has practically disap-
peared is not easy. Nor can we simplify matters by assuming con-
tinuation of the brain processes. In that case the discreteness of the
sensations would be lost. We must in any event construct our brain
physiology to fit the psychological facts, and not vice versa. The
specious present is a function of consciousness and not of the brain
states. In the actual present moment the mathematical present
the particular content of consciousness and the particular brain
state may synchronize perfectly ; we have, so far as I know, no evi-
dence either for or against this assumption. But in the mathemat-
ical past, while the content may be speciously still "present," the
brain state, which was never content of consciousness, is simply
"past."
The function of the specious present in other matters than group-
ing of content factors may be very important. In comparison-
judgments, for example, it is undoubtedly a matter of consequence
if the compared contents are both held in the same present, or occupy
different presents. The historic work on time perception, although
it has not given us any very reliable data, suggests the idea that the
varying relations of time-interval to specious present had a large
share in determining the judgments.
The emotional effect of various degrees of extension or shortening
of the normal present if there is a normal present offer a very
attractive field for investigation. It does seem that a musical unit
requiring a rather long or a rather short specious present for its
apprehension produces a specific effect, or rather that in the emo-
tional effects of compositions based on such units there are factors
which depend on this feature. The difference between the music
having a perceptual unit and the music having no such unit no
unit which may be apprehended in a specious present is striking,
and the average man requires considerable training in the hearing
354
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of music of the latter kind before he will admit that it is music at all.
Among those who came near the statement of the above theory
of rhythmic perception, I may mention the following. McDougal
says: "The whole group of elements constituting the rhythmic unit
is present to consciousness as a single experience ; the first of its
elements has never fallen out of consciousness before the final mem-
ber appears, and the awareness of intensive differences and temporal
segregation is as immediate a fact of sensory apprehension as is the
perception of the musical qualities of the sounds themselves." 10
Yet in spite of this statement, McDougal went on to construct a
motor theory of rhythm which directly contradicted it. Bolton
says: "Does it not, then, seem reasonable, that during each wave
or pulse of attention only one undivided state of consciousness can
arise?" "The object of the state may be very complex, but it
stands as a unit in consciousness. ' ?11 Then he reverts to his attempt
to interpret Wundt, and explains rhythm as a product of the "uni-
fying activity of the mind," which attempts to "conceive a series
of sounds in a simpler form. ' ' 12
It is worthy of remark that Wundt, in the discussion of the
span of consciousness with rhythmic impressions, 13 distinctly avoids
bringing into the consideration the periodicity of consciousness or
attention of which he makes much in other places. He does sche-
matize the impressions as present simultaneously, but apparently
figures them as fading out of consciousness in the same order as that
in which they enter, not attempting to establish any connection
between the rhythmic grouping and the simultaneous presentation.
Again, he says, ' ' Diese Entwicklung des rhythmischen Bewusstseins
durchaus zusammenfallt mit der Entwicklung des Zeitbewusstseins
selbst, so das unter alien Umstanden der im Bewusstsein unmittelbar
noch als ein einheitliches Ganzes aufgefasste Takt auch den Umfang
einer noch unmittelbar, also simultan im Bewusstsein gegebenen Zeit-
vorstellung bezeichnet ; ' ' 14 avoiding, it seems, the simplest explana-
tion of rhythm, in order to correlate it with time.
The chief recommendation which can be found for any theory in
psychology is in its being a fertile source of experimental inquiries.
That the theory I am advancing is very fertile will be demonstrated
before long. KNIGHT DUNLAP.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
structure of Simple Bhythm Forms, ' ' Harvard Psychological
Studies, Vol. I., p. 322. Compare with the first sentence in the first paragraph
on page 219.
11 Op. tit., p. 155.
12 Op, tit., p. 220.
13 1 1 Physiologische Psychologic, ' ' fifth edition, Vol. III., pp. 353-356.
14 Op. tit., Vol. III., p. 33.
355
MECHANISM AND VITALISM
HE recent work 1 of Driesch propounding a vitalistic theory has
been the object of much discussion. While appreciation of
the detailed analysis of those phenomena which are claimed to be
peculiarly vitalistic has generally been expressed, criticism has been
directed upon the fundamental contention and the argument upon
which it is based. This contention 
