THE JOUBNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AKD SCIENTIFIC METHODS
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THE JOURNAL OP PHILOSOPHY
3
PSYCHOLOGY
AND
SCIENTIFIC METHODS
EDITED BY
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBREDGE
AND
WENDELL T. BUSH
VOLUME X
JANUABY-DECEMBEB, 1913
/'
:*"
NEW YORK
THE SCIENCE PRESS
1913
3
I
1L
V.IO
PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
LANCASTER. PA.
VOL. X. No. 1. JA.NUARY 2, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
THE DECEPTION OF THE SENSES
IN current controversies it is often assumed that the deception of
the senses affords an experimentum crucis to test the validity
of different theories of knowledge. This assumption appears to me
to be unwarranted, and I offer, therefore, the following comments
in support and illustration of this contention. The first section ex-
presses in general form what I have to say. The other sections are
little more than restatements and are added in the interest of varied
illustrations rather than as sections in a progressive argument. Alto-
gether they constitute a defense of two positions: (1) that the decep-
tion of the senses is significant not for cognition, but for action ; and
(2) that speculative theories of knowledge are, and are from the na-
ture of the case, independent of any empirical evidence to be derived
from the fact that the senses deceive. 1
If the deception of the senses is taken to be a fact, then we must
obviously keep that fact genuine and unequivocal throughout our
inquiry. We can not profitably admit the fact, use it as evidence
for a theory of knowledge, and then use this theory to discredit the
fact or to alter the character which it had as evidence. For we have
not used the deception of the senses as a supposed fact which a re-
1 1 am aware that arguments are drawn from other facts of perception,
such as dreams, hallucinations, after-images, etc., to reinforce the evidence
which the deception of the senses is supposed to afford. These facts have not
been overlooked, but they are not here considered. I have found nothing in
them as yet which modifies in any important way the position here taken. I wish
to remark also that the abnormal is often given weight altogether dispropor-
tionate to our knowledge of it. The things we know less about should not set a
standard for construing the things about which we know more. When we have
discovered, for instance, why we dream any specific dream, with as much clear-
ness and certainty as now marks our discovery of why the straight stick appears
bent, then we can use dreams as unambiguously in evidence for such positions
as they may support.
5
6 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ductio ad absurdum might overthrow ; we have used it as an eviden-
tial fact which loses its evidential character the moment it is dis-
credited or altered. In other words, if a theory of knowledge is to be
proved or disproved by the deception of the senses, that theory can
not determine the nature or character of the facts of that deception.
Yet there are arguments offered to our consideration which appear
like attempts to disprove one theory of knowledge and to prove a
contrary theory by appealing to the deception of the senses, and
then, on the basis of the theory thus proven, apparently proceed to
explain that the deception is not genuine, that it is only a quasi de-
ception, that the difficulties connected with it consequently vanish.
Such arguments are not convincing. If the deception of the senses
is to be an evidential fact, it must be a genuine fact and genuine in
the same way, both in the theory which it disproves and in the theory
which it proves.
A common illustration may be used to put this consideration in
concrete form. If my eyes deceive me because I see as bent a stick
which is really straight, I may conclude that I do not see the stick as
it really is ; but I ought not to go on and say that the stick as it really
is is, strictly, neither straight nor bent, that, as it really is, it is
something quite different. If I see as bent a stick which is really
straight, I must conclude that I do not see the stick as it really is,
if I mean ~by "really," "straight"; for, assuredly, if I see it bent, I
do not see it straight. I may also hold that the stick as it really is
is, strictly, neither straight nor bent, but my reason for so holding
can not possibly be the fact that I see as bent a stick which is really
straight. It must be a totally different reason. In general terms,
once more, I can not pass from an empirical distinction which is
taken to be precisely what it appears to be to a speculative distinction
which is totally different. I can not use one distinction between ap-
pearance and reality as evidence of or in illustration of a totally dif-
ferent distinction between appearance and reality. If the stick is
really neither straight nor bent, then its appearance as bent is not the
appearance of a stick which is really straight.
Consequently it seems evident, if the deception of the senses is
to have any evidential force, that the senses must deceive us in the
way and in the respect they do deceive us. If I hold, for instance,
that my senses deceive me because through them things appear to
me to be distorted, then that is the way in which they do deceive me.
But if this is so, then the things must be the undistorted originals
which appear through my senses to be distorted. Otherwise it means
nothing to say that they appear to me to be distorted. Thus if my
eyes deceive me because through them a straight stick appears bent,
then it must be a straight stick which so appears. Otherwise what
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 7
would it mean to say that I see a straight stick bent ? If the stick is
not straight how could my vision of it be a distorted vision ? It seems
clear, therefore, that, if the senses deceive me, the things in respect
to which they deceive me must be themselves of the character in re-
gard to which I am deceived. The distinction between appearance
and reality, therefore, in so far as it is defined in terms of the de-
ception of the senses, implies that the character of appearance and
the character of reality are comparable and commensurable in the
same terms.
In what, however, does the deception of the senses consist? It
evidently does not consist in any distortion of reality if by that we
mean that reality appears to us in ways in which it ought not to ap-
pear. The way in which things appear to us is the natural result
of discoverable conditions. Eeasons are found for it and these rea-
sons exclude the possibility of another way of appearing. We can
not say, therefore, that the senses deceive us because they represent
to us things in a way in which they ought not to represent them.
That is, there is no deception in the way things appear to us, in the
appearances. The appearances deceive us, not by being what they
should not be, but by leading us to do what we should not do, to
think that reality is what it is not or to use things as if they were
not what they are.
Since the senses do not of themselves reveal to us why things ap-
pear to us as they do, and since things appear different under dif-
ferent conditions, it is natural that we should be led into error so
long as we are ignorant of the reasons why things so appear. But it
is evident that we should not be led into error if we did not react to
things as they appear to us. There is thus no cognitive character
whatever in the appearance of things to us, and consequently no
cognitive adequacy or inadequacy in what we see, hear, touch, smell,
or taste. The senses are then not deceitful, although we may be de-
ceived by them just as we may be deceived by the absolute candor of
a statement. Not only are the senses not deceitful, but they would
be so if by their means things did not appear to us as they do, pro-
vided, of course, that the conditions under which things appear re-
main unchanged. Naturally we can not entertain the supposition
here implied, because we are so well assured that if things appeared
to us different from what they now do, the conditions of their ap-
pearance would be different from what they now are. Yet we may
imagine into what hopeless confusion of action we should be plunged
if things always appeared the same while the conditions of their ap-
pearance constantly changed.
It seems evident, therefore, that the appearances of things are in
no sense cognitive, but that cognition arises only as we react to these
8 TSE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
appearances. The deception of the senses is significant, then, not for
cognition, but for action. To see a straight stick bent is not to see
erroneously. Such a sight could never lead us into error if we
never reacted to it as if we were seeing a bent stick. A fisherman 's
spear does not err, for the fish does not appear to it. The fisherman
may err, not because the fish appears to him, but because he does not
allow for the water. Thus it is the reacting to appearances which
leads to knowledge, and furthermore, this reacting must be of a
specific kind. It must be what we call conscious reacting and this
type of reacting has never been successfully reduced to the fact of
appearance itself.
These considerations seem to me to be quite sufficient to warrant
the conclusion that the deception of the senses is a trivial matter in
any theory of knowledge. But the distinction between appearance
and reality may not be a trivial matter in the theories of knowledge
which I have called speculative. If I read these theories aright, I
discover that they do not begin with the distinction between appear-
ance and reality, but conclude with it. They do not appeal to
straight sticks which look bent as evidence. It is only by inadvert-
ence that they seem to rely on such facts of experience, and they fre-
quently profess to discard such reliance altogether. Their procedure
is quite different. They ask you to consider not what you mean
when you say that a stick which is really straight looks bent, for
they are, I take it, quite willing to admit that you mean then some-
thing for action and not for cognition but they ask what you mean
when you say that a stick or any other supposedly isolable fact of
experience is real. In other words they ask, What is it to be real?
And they insist that no fact of experience can measure up to the
standard set by the answer to that question. They then conclude
that the facts of experience are appearance and not reality.
Such speculative theories exist. It is their procedure, standing
as it does in such marked contrast to experimental procedure, that
makes them impressive and challenges attention. They do not claim
that the facts of experience are not strictly reality, on the ground
that the senses deceive, because the deception of the senses is itself a
fact of experience, to be characterized as appearance as much as any
other fact. They ask of it as of all others, Can it be consistently con-
strued in terms of what it is to be real ? And they answer, No. If
such is their procedure then it is evident that the other position I
urge in this paper is sound, namely, that speculative theories of
knowledge are, and are from the nature of the case, independent of
any empirical evidence to be derived from the fact that the senses de-
ceive. 2
1 The difficulty I find with these theories lies, as I have pointed out else-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 9
II
There is an argument which runs somewhat as follows : If the
senses deceive us, then we do not perceive things as they are ; we per-
ceive something else, their appearances, representations or images of
them; now, since the things can not be the representations, nor the
representations the things, there are two regions of existence, things
and representations, reality and appearance, which, from the nature
of the case, can not be bridged by perception ; we need, therefore, a
theory of knowledge which will give us some insight into this dis-
tinction between appearance and reality, and show how knowledge
is possible in view of it.
But what is the initial antithesis between appearance and real-
ity ? Is it between a bent stick and a straight stick, the former being
appearance and the latter reality? If so, what is there to make
clearer and what demand is there here for a theory of knowledge?
If we want to know why the stick is straight, is not the answer be-
cause it conforms to the definition of a straight stick, is what a
straight stick is, and does what a straight stick does even to appear-
ing sometimes bent? If we want to know why it appears bent and
not straight, is not the answer water? Is not the case now disposed
of? It is water which makes the straight stick appear bent, but not
the eyes. The senses deceive us because, not revealing the causes why
things appear as they do, we are led astray. The moment we dis-
cover that it is water which makes the stick appear bent, we can
allow for the refraction and be satisfied. But this is not a matter of
epistemology, but of action, of stimulus and response. If, however,
the antithesis between appearance and reality is not the initial an-
tithesis between the bent stick and the straight stick generalized, but
a totally different antithesis, we must be told what it is. And clearly,
whatever it is, it can have nothing to do with the deception of the
senses, for no specific case of that deception falls under it.
But, it may be asked, how can we escape the conclusion that we
perceive not things, but only their appearances ? The problem is not
how may the conclusion be escaped, but whether it has any meaning
for a theory of knowledge. It is too generally taken for granted that
we know what it means that there are things and there are appear-
ances of them, that the things and their appearances are different,
and that this is a knowledge or a representative difference. It is too
uncritically assumed that the bent stick is the means of knowing the
straight stick, or that the former is a representation of the latter.
Now there seems to be no evidence for this assumption. Seeing
the stick bent is not a means of knowing that it is straight, nor is the
where, not in the consistency of their procedure, but in their credibility. See
" The Problem of Consciousness" in the Garman Commemorative Volume.
10 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
stick seen bent a representation of the straight stick. It is not the
first, evidently, for it is absurd to say that we know a stick is straight
by seeing it bent, that we know that reality is reality by perceiving
that it is appearance. It is not the second, evidently, for the bent
stick does not represent the straight stick cognitively, is not a substi-
tute for it, is not something different from it, is not a picture of it.
If there is representation in the case it is of the fact that a stick which
looks bent in one set of conditions may look straight in another set.
One has only to thrust his walking-stick into the water to be as-
sured that what he now sees is not a picture, a copy, "idea," or
representation of his stick, because he knows he is looking at his stick
and not a picture of it. Consequently we again approach the conclu-
sion that the deception of the senses has nothing to do with a theory
of knowledge, since it has nothing to do with knowledge or represen-
tation. Consequently, also, we are under no obligation to escape the
conclusion that we perceive not things, but only their appearances,
and under no obligation to subscribe to it. The difficulties attending
the attempt to escape or to subscribe are artificial difficulties. They
are not real difficulties, but only apparent ones.
It has already been pointed out that the senses deceive us, not be-
cause of any defect in the senses or in the appearances of things to
us, but because of a defect in action. Briefly the stick seen bent may
lead us to act as if it were seen straight. In no intelligible sense can
we claim that the stick ought to be seen straight if our senses are
not to deceive us. How, we may ask, ought a straight stick in the
water to appear if it is really a straight stick? Ought it to appear
straight or bent ? If it appeared straight, it is clear enough that our
senses would then deceive us by letting the stick appear as it ought
not to appear. But that is not the way in which they deceive us.
They let things appear as they ought to appear and that fact is no
small item in our happiness. Again; if we never acted, if we did
nothing in response to the appearance of things to us, we should
never be deceived by our senses. It is evident, therefore, that we are
deceived not because the appearances of things are not cognitively or
representatively adequate, there being no cognition or representa-
tion involved but because the appearance of things to us is not alone
sufficient to enable us to react effectively. If it were, not only would
the senses never deceive us, but we should have no use for conscious-
ness or knowledge.
Ill
Yet it may be urged again that in spite of all that has been said
we have, none the less, appearances or images on our hands and these
are not the things which appear or of which we have images. "It is
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 11
evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the
intervention of the ideas it has of them. ' ' Any one who denies this
is refuted by the evidence of the deception of the senses. Thus that
deception does imply an epistemology. To overlook the implication
is to assume a theory of knowledge without making the assumption
explicit.
This seems to be only a restatement of positions already con-
sidered ; and what has been already said applies to it. Let us admit
that there are any number of appearances or images or ideas, the evi-
dence goes to show that they are not cognitive or cognitively repre-
sentative. They are stimuli to thinking and doing to action and
it is not in having them, but in reacting to them, that knowledge
comes into play. They are not the means by which we know, they are
items with which our knowing deals. Our knowledge, so far as they
are concerned, consists, not of them, but of propositions about them.
The appearance of a straight stick bent in the water is not knowledge
at all. Knowledge exists only when we are able to say that the
straight stick appears bent because of the water. We should, doubt-
less, not say this if we did not see the stick bent, but only because the
fact for which we are seeking a cause would not then be an object of
our inquiry. Moreover, we make the inquiry because we are radically
convinced that appearances are what they ought to be, and that, con-
sequently, if we err, the cause of our erring is not due to any defect
in them, but to our own ignorance.
It may be urged, however, that such considerations are inade-
quate and really avoid the issue. They may be adequate so long as
we don't make the distinction itself between appearance and reality
an object of inquiry. We may admit, that is, that appearance is not
knowledge and has as a stimulus to action no cognitive significance.
But we can, notwithstanding, ask, what is the reality which appears ?
The moment we ask that question we come upon a case of knowledge
for which the distinction between appearance and reality is crucial.
Indeed we come only then upon a theory of knowledge in the strict
and philosophical senses. A theory of knowledge in the philosophical
sense is something different from a theory of knowledge in a logical,
scientific, or pragmatic sense.
If this is so, we have certainly made an important advance in our
analysis of problems. It is a step forward to recognize that a philo-
sophical theory of knowledge is something quite different from a log-
ical, scientific, or pragmatic theory. It is a step out of ambiguity
into clearness. There are those who would say that, while this may
be so, it is a step not worth while, for it is a step in the direction of
frivolity and visionary speculation. But what they say can have
force only if philosophy turns out to be frivolous and visionary. Cer-
12 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tainly philosophy ought not to be discredited at the start. We may
leave the question of its value untouched and still insist that the de-
ception of the senses has no bearing upon a theory of knowledge
which is professedly not empirical. In such a theory we are dealing
with a unique kind of knowledge which we may call theoretical or
speculative, but which is not the kind of knowledge with which ac-
tion, science, and affairs are concerned. It is difficult to see, there-
fore, how the deception of the senses, which is a matter of action,
science, and affairs, can have any bearing upon a philosophical
theory of knowledge as it has just now been defined.
In other words, our contention now takes this shape: Granted
that the distinction between appearance and reality, as just that dis-
tinction and no other, is a distinction which now raises the problem
of the knowledge of reality as reality in distinction from the knowl-
edge of appearance as appearance, granted this, we may still insist
that the distinction as thus construed is not, whatever else it may be,
the distinction between appearance and reality involved in the de-
ception of the senses. It is another and a different distinction, and,
at present, we need not be at all concerned with just what it is. In
support of this contention all that has been already said might be re-
peated. In what follows, it is repeated, but in a different form in
the interest of clearness and reinforcement.
IV
It is a variation on the theme of the deception of the senses to
point out the fact that the same thing may appear in contradictory
fashion to different observers at the same time and to the same ob-
server at different times. This fact may raise the question, What then
is the thing? 3 It can not very well be all of its contradictory ap-
pearances combined and it can not very well be any one of them ex-
clusively. When we take them one by one, each has as much right to
be the thing as any other. This is so undeniably true that writers
who suspect that it is denied are filled with amazement.
But to what is its truth relevant? As simply true all by itself
there is little in it to stimulate thought. The truth must be put into
a context in order to move on. If, for instance, some one now goes on
to say: Since the truth is as you have admitted, then "things" have
no originally objective existence as set over against us; they are not
ready-made things-in-themselves which affect us and with which we
deal ; they are objective in the Kantian sense, let us say ; they are the
3 1 do not think it does raise the question legitimately, because if we do not
know what ' ' the same thing is ' ' which ' ' appears different, ' ' we can not iden-
tify the fact we are investigating. Our question is not, What is the thing, but
why does it appear different.
13
objective of their varied appearances. Here certainly we have a
theory of knowledge. Now we may readily admit that what such a
theory says about the objectivity of things that they are not things-
in-themselves is true, but we can not admit that the reason for its
truth is the reason that has been here assigned, namely, that a thing
can not be all of its appearances combined or any one of them ex-
clusively. It will be the different reason and more in accord with
the Kantian philosophy that appearance has nothing to do with
knowledge. We should claim with him that the theory of knowledge
is not an empirical theory based on observing the variations and se-
quences of phenomena.
To appeal to experience is to invite experience to declare itself on
the matter appealed to, and here experience declares emphatically
that while a thing can not be all of its appearances combined or any
one of them exclusively simply because it never is it is every one
of them in every instance which can be defined. Was it not ad-
mitted that the same thing appears different to different observers at
the same time, and to the same observers at different times ? Was it
not admitted that this is a plain fact of experience ? Was it not also
admitted that to identify the thing with all of its appearances at
once or with any one of them exclusively is a plain impossibility?
But now can these admissions have any force if the thing is not al-
ways what it appears to be when and to whatever observer? If a
straight stick which appears bent is not a straight stick which ap-
pears bent, what is it?
But some one may say, You have passed from "appears" to "is"
without any warrant whatever; you can not affirm and you have
admitted that you can not that the stick which appears bent is bent.
In reply we urge again that the transition from "appears" to "is"
in cases like this is not a cognitive transition. But we may again
vary the reply. Some sticks appear bent which are bent. Some ap-
pear bent which are not bent. In the first case we may say that the
sticks are what they appear to be, but in the second we may not say
this. But why? Because it is false. But it is false not because
there is any error in the appearance, for the sticks appear precisely
as they must appear, if the conditions of their appearance are genu-
inely what we take them to be and if they are straight. Otherwise
there is no meaning in saying that straight sticks appear bent. The
difference between our two cases is, therefore, a difference which does
not imply any error in the appearance or any ambiguity in the real-
ity. The difference is of a totally different sort. In other words if
we leave out action thinking or doing we have no distinction be-
tween appearance and reality in these cases and we must reduce our
second case to a simple tautology : a straight stick appearing bent is
14 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
precisely a straight stick appearing bent or a straight stick in the
water is precisely a straight stick in the water and the stick is thus
precisely what it appears to be. To just such tautologies, knowledge,
when it is attained, reduces the distinction (for action) 'between ap-
pearance and reality.
V
In conclusion I wish to point out an assumption which is often
made in discussions about appearance and reality, and which, to my
mind, is the principal thing which may lead some readers to think
that what I have said is not only unconvincing, but irrelevant. I
shall approach it by using a specific instance, not the stick this time,
which I abandon with regret, but the circle. 4
A circle appears different to different observers differently situ-
ated. It may appear, to use a common mode of expressing it, as any
one of a series of appearances varying from a line through ellipses
of varying diameters until the circle appears again as a line. These
appearances may be graphically pictured to any desired number.
Now let us suppose that ten observers are given in different situa-
tions, then it is evident that the circle will appear ten times conform-
ably to the ten situations. But over and above this evident fact it is
assumed that there will then be ten different shapes which are ex-
istentially separate and distinct from one another, and of which each is
existentially separate and distinct from the circle itself. That is, if
the circle appears to one observer as a flat ellipse, then it is assumed
that the appearance is itself a flat ellipse. 8 "What these shapes are in
their essence, where put them, what to do with them when they are
put there, how explain their relations and connections with one
another and with the circle here are problems to tax all our ingenu-
ity, and problems on which no experiment or no fact of experience
can throw any light. To affirm that if a circle appears elliptical, then
its elliptical appearance is an ellipse, is not to state a fact, it is to
make an assumption which condenses whole volumes of speculative
philosophy and psychology into a single sentence.
4 1 have stuck to the stick because it is handy. It should be evident, how-
ever, that other current examples would have done just as well; the whistle, the
sound of which must be heard later than its puff of steam is seen, the vanished
star which must still appear in the sky, etc. The star had peculiar claims for its
use instead of the stick, because some writers seem to have overlooked the fact
that it would be very difficult for a vanished star to appear as a vanished star.
8 Perhaps I ought to have stuck to the stick and said that it is assumed, if a
straight stick appears bent, that the appearance is itself a bent stick! Let me
add also that, following the illustration of the text, we have now two geometrical
figures instead of one. Yet it is to be observed that the properties of the second
figure, although it is an ellipse, are demonstrably the same as the properties of
the first figure, although it is a circle.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 15
It is not my intention to discuss here the merits of this assump-
tion, but rather to call renewed attention to it. I have stated it
crudely because more refined statements of it tend, in my opinion, to
obscure rather than clarify it. We gain nothing by calling these
shapes "images," "mental processes," "sensations," "ideas," etc.
We undoubtedly affirm that things appear in various ways and, so
affirming, call attention to an interesting and analyzable fact. But
to convert this fact into an assumption of an order of existences
which are "mental" or "psychical" and which, none the less, have
qualities, intensities, space and time characters, and also laws of sue-
c^3sion and coherence, is to make an assumption which is not self-
evident, but which demands the most careful scrutiny and the most
unequivocal evidence.
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
TWO things a first course in ethics should do for college students.
It should give a fairly adequate survey of the field of ethical
discussion, and present a fairly consistent program of procedure
when face to face with actual ethical problems. The former is his-
torical, the latter constructive.
With my own students, juniors and seniors who have usually had
no previous training in philosophy, I obtain the first result by means
of an epitomized history of philosophy, lasting nine or ten weeks,
three hours a week. Naturally, I select only the more important
thinkers, and with each stress the ethical contribution, although the
systems in their main features are also considered.
Among the Greeks, I choose Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics,
and the Epicureans, and give in brief form their respective world-
views and attitudes toward ethical problems. The Greco-Roman
period I treat rather sketchily, but point out, as clearly as possible,
the amalgamation of Greek and Jewish thought, the somewhat later
amalgamation of Greek and Christian thought, and add a brief pres-
entation of Neoplatonism. But two or three lectures are then needed
to transport the students to the period of modern philosophy, where
I select Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz sometimes, Hobbes, the British
Moralists (but only with reference to their treatment of conscience),
Kant, Fichte, and Hegel briefly, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert
Spencer.
1 Bead at the annual meeting of the Western Philosophical Association at
Chicago, April 5, 1912.
16 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The reference work throughout this part of the course is confined
in the main to the sources. Jowett 's ' ' Plato, ' ' Welldon 's ' ' Aristotle 's
Ethics," Bakewell's "Selections," and Rand's "The Classical Moral-
ists" and "Modern Classical Philosophers" furnish material enough.
Only when I have finished discussing a period and feel that the stu-
dents have obtained some knowledge of the sources do I suggest the
use of handbooks of philosophy and of various expository and critical
works. To know the leading men themselves at first hand is of more
value than to become saturated with the interpretations of less vigor-
ous thinkers.
In consequence of such a study which, of course, for some pur-
poses would be all too brief, students have certain things fairly well in
mind. They know how the term "philosophy" has been used, in a
general way what "metaphysics" means, the relation which has ob-
tained in the systems of the greatest thinkers between ethics and psy-
chology, and between ethics and the political and social sciences ; they
know, too, how man has been regarded by these writers, and how such
interpretations of man have colored ethical theorizing. They also
know what rationalism and hedonism have meant in both the ancient
and modern worlds, the relation of a man's thought to the age in
which he lived, and the incorporation of earlier thought into the
later systems. They know, further, the historical relation of Chris-
tianity to the course of philosophical thought, and appreciate some-
what the increasing complexity of life and theory with the accumu-
lating centuries. They also know, and this I regard as very impor-
tant, the opposition between idealism and Democriteanism in the
ancient world, the almost complete neglect of Democritus for more
than a thousand years, and then the introduction of the Democritan
world-view into modern Europe about the year 1600, which became
the general metaphysical background for the developing sciences,
and at the same time the opponent of that idealism with which Chris-
tian thought and culture had been allied since the early centuries.
Not to have this in mind is to get oneself lost in a miasmatic intel-
lectual fog-bank where anything may or may not be true.
If we take up now the constructive phase of the problem, my so-
lution consists in as complete a treatment as possible of a half dozen
main topics, viz., The Method of Ethics, The Field of Ethics, Dif-
ferent Planes of Ethical Living, The Criteria of Moral Progress, The
Ethical Ideal, and The Realization of the Ideal. The discussion of
these topics in their larger aspects is arranged in chapters with
rather full bibliography, mimeographed, and placed in the hands of
the students. I generally have thirteen or fourteen weeks, three
hours a week, for this part of the work.
In considering the method of ethics, I dwell on the fact that in
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 17
the past many methods have been used to reach truth, and that the
results have been exceedingly varied. In striking contrast is the
scientific method which has been applied in numerous fields with val-
uable results. The implication that the same method will be equally
valuable when applied to ethics is very strong.
This leads to the consideration of a general world-view. The
historical study has shown, under my manipulation at any rate, that
the great systems of thought have been correlated more or less closely
with the ages in which they took shape. They are consequently re-
garded as comparatively discrete units. Of course, the later systems
show traces of the earlier ones, as indicated above, but each was an
attempt to give a fairly consistent world-view upon the basis of what
was known, or regarded as most valuable, at the time. Taking this
as my cue, I suggest to my classes that the general evolutionary view
is an attempt in recent years to present a fairly satisfactory world-
view upon the basis of what we know to-day, or think we know, as the
result of long-continued scientific investigations. Evolutionary
theory, it is true, is not very stable. For the sake of definiteness,
however, I deem it advisable to make a selection. As between the
necessary development of the Absolute given by Hegel and the cosmic
view of Spencer, I choose the latter, which in form is hypothetical
and in harmony at least with the spirit of scientific research.
This general scientific attitude involves, among other things, the
scientific view of man, which I frankly accept. I see no good reason
why we should not make an independent study of man to-day, and
make that basal in our interpretation of men's relations to one
another, than that Plato or Aristotle should have made such a study
in their day. But such an attitude is far-reaching. It is said that
Spencer was the first to suggest an evolution of the soul parallel with
the evolution of the physical self. 2 If one accepts this, and it seems
to go along with the general theory of evolution, then one is on the
opposite side of the fence from Plato and Aristotle and those who
have been especially influenced by their views. This cuts wide and
deep, and is too little appreciated.
In connection with the field of ethics, I discuss the relation of
ethics to the other fields of thought, especially psychology, sociology,
and religion. The relation to psychology raises the question of the
kind of psychology, and the answer that I find is "experimental
psychology." That is, of course, recent, and there is much as yet
undetermined. But the relation of ethics as a variable, dependent
upon scientific psychology, itself a variable, is, to my mind, prefer-
able to any static relation.
'Spencer, "Principles of Psychology," Vol. I., Pt. II., Chap. II. Villa,
* ( Contemporary Psychology," page 38.
18 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
To sociology, ethics sustains a vital relation, and through sociol-
ogy to most of the other sciences. The real question is, What differ-
entiates ethics from sociology? Most of my students have had no
training in that field. I begin ab ovo. I point out that the desire
for food and the relation between the sexes are the fundamental hu-
man impulses. Not a little selfishness is apparent in connection with
both, but there is considerable evidence that altruism has a congenial
soil in the latter. I then explain Giddings's 3 generalizations about
the social population, the social mind, the social organization, and
the social welfare. Ethics belongs in this last group. We can not, of
course, say that all that is social is ethical, but we may say that all
that is ethical is social. The altruistic motive differentiates. The
test, by and large, is social welfare, one's own bound up with that of
the group.
The relation of ethics to religion is provided for under the head
of sociology, but because of the historically close connection between
the two, I give my classes an extended discussion of this topic, and
advocate the view that religion depends upon ethics, as maintained
by Hoffding. 4 The former conserves values, while the latter creates
them. Very naturally, not all of the students accept this view with
avidity.
Under the head of the different planes of ethical living, I discuss
the opposition between the individual consciousness and the social
consciousness. For the sake of definiteness and concreteness, I sug-
gest an analysis of some town of four or five thousand people, using
the topics "Social Population," "Social Organization," etc., as
given above, and another familiar grouping of human activities into
economic, political, moral and religious, and cultural. I generally
go into the matter in detail, and find that my analysis tallies with
that which the students make mentally of their own home towns. If a
band of robbers should visit such a town, crack the bank safe and
kill the night watchman, the social consciousness of practically the
entire group would condemn the acts. If, however, a member of one
of the churches which frowns upon dancing should attend a dancing
party, that religious social consciousness would condemn, while
another consciousness within the same community would approve.
The individual, too, would exhibit an opposed consciousness to the
group to which he belonged. The illustration is simple, but pre-
sents the essential phases of the topic.
Now in such a community, an individual might live wholly in
harmony with the prevailing social consciousness, and be ethical to
the extent that the group had appropriated valuable elements from
* Giddings, ' ' Inductive Sociology. ' '
4 Hoffding, "The Philosophy of Eeligion," pages 322-385.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 19
the past. This would be similar to the normal behavior of any spe-
cies of animals. Another individual by reason of travel, a college
course, or other varied experiences, might attempt to work out some
scheme of life for himself, but fail. Ultimately he makes the social
consciousness his standard. He is on a somewhat higher plane than
the first individual because he tried to rationalize his conduct. To
try and fail is better than never to have tried. Outwardly his be-r
havior is the same as that of the other individual. A third individ-
ual insists upon introducing into his own life some element which
proves of value. He is imitated by the group and ultimately hailed
as an ethical pioneer. This type I regard as higher than the others,
but it is one which is liable to many perversions. There is risk in-
volved, but it is the risk that bold, vigorous spirits do not shrink
from.
In this connection I usually define ethics, somewhat loosely, as
"The life of a man as he seeks to realize some ideal." The whole
matter resolves itself into a struggle among ideals with the survival
of the fittest.
Turning now to the problem of moral progress, I find it closely
connected with the problem of social progress. Here I may apply no
absolute criteria. I do emphasize, however, complexity and social
control. In biology, complexity 5 of structure is the test of what is
higher. Our modern civilization, therefore, may be regarded as
higher than early savagery and barbarism, and perhaps than all
other civilizations. Social control, also, suggests advance, just as the
control of the adult is so interpreted when compared with the child.
Giddings says, 6 "Race maintenance and evolution with diminishing
cost of individual life, with increasing freedom, power, and happi-
ness of the individual person ... is progress." With such social
progress, moral progress has been intimately concerned. Practically
every step in social advance has involved opposition between the in-
dividual consciousness and the social consciousness. I may not say
that all who have opposed themselves to the group have been moral
heroes, but I can say that very many real ethical pioneers have been
of this sort. Oftentimes there has been a retrograde movement advo-
cated by the opponent of the social consciousness, and not infre-
quently such opponents have not been good guessers in regard to
what would be for the welfare of the group, but the progress itself
is traceable to such variation within the group.
The ethical ideal itself, the next topic, I regard as a fusion of the
best elements selected from our own past experiences and the ex-
8 Minot, ' ' Age, Growth, and Death, ' ' page 154.
* Giddings, article on Sociology in ' ' Lectures in Science, Philosophy, and
Art," Columbia University Press, 1908.
20 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
periences of the race so far as history reveals them. In so far as
the environment of two individuals is the same, will their ideals be
approximately the same. Approximately the same temperament
would also be a necessary factor. This seems to reduce the matter to
a hopeless pluralism, but with the general extension of a high type
of culture, some advance seems likely. Then, too, in so far as we
may include in our ideal to-day any element cherished by barbarian
or savage, will our ideal be theirs. Kindness to nearest kin seems to
characterize very primitive people. We could hardly omit such an
element from our ideal. To that extent, at least, does the savage
have a stake in our ethical claim. The barbarian shows kindness
even to strangers. To that extent the barbarian, too, shares our
ideal, for we could hardly disregard hospitality. The same is true
all along the line. Our ideal may be regarded as in part the ideal of
all people, remote in time or place, in proportion as they might find
in our ideal elements which they themselves approve.
Still further, in attempting to make the content of the ideal ex-
plicit, I view it both physically and psychically. Emphasizing as I
do the relation of ethics to psychology, really physiological psychol-
ogy, I could not fail to insist upon the ethical aspect of maintaining
a good physical self. Problems of hygiene, both individual and so-
cial, race suicide, and all kindred matters find a place here. On the
psychic side, I go back to Aristotle's list of ethical virtues, of which
we would be apt to include the larger part in our ideal to-day. I
also turn to the Hebrew and Jewish teaching, and suggest the incor-
poration of not a little that we find there, but in each case, whether
Hebrew or Greek, the test is social welfare on the whole and in the
long run. The matter is not absolutely fixed. One generation, or
one age, may approve and find valuable what another does not. The
question is, How much of such teaching do we find valuable in this
twentieth century, when we survey the world laterally and longi-
tudinally, so to speak ? That is, when we take a cross-sectional view
of human society to-day, and when we view it throughout its entire
history, how much of the teaching of the Greek philosophers and
Hebrew prophets can we use advantageously? Social welfare is the
test. I also suggest to the students that they individually may well
phrase the whole matter as Hegel did, "Be a person and respect
others as persons."
In this same connection, too, I discuss the four typical human
ideals formulated by Giddings, 7 viz., "The Forceful Man, The Con-
vivial Man, The Austere Man, and The Rationally Conscientious
Man, ' ' the last being a kind of resultant of what is best in the other
T Giddings, ''Inductive Sociology," pages 82-83.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 21
three, and suggest that this presents the ethical ideal in a very serv-
iceable form.
The last main topic that I attempt to treat is the realization of
the ideal, and I consider it with reference to both an ideal and the
actual environment. The former I can discuss only vaguely, as is
usually true when we deal with what pertains to the future.
Spencer's ethical state on beyond " Industrialism " 8 comes nearest
in my estimation to what we may mean by an ideal environment.
The actual environment, both physical and social, I consider more at
length, and suggest that the nearest possible approximation to the
ideal, as sketched, in the midst of actual conditions, not neglecting of
course to improve such conditions wherever possible, is the truest
interpretation of that ideal itself. The ideal always outruns indi-
vidual achievement, but if we take its true measure, and estimate
properly the rational element which it must contain, real failure with
consequent pessimism need not come.
In conclusion, I may say that I regard college students as the
variable element in the community. They are in college as the re-
sult of selection. The community rightfully looks to them for lead-
ership. They need to appreciate both the social consciousness and
the individual consciousness, and to realize, too, that they them-
selves constitute a distinct group, somewhat as the Stoics regarded
themselves on the side of their cosmopolitanism. The emphasis on
different groups, which I have only touched here and there in this
paper, but which I regard as fundamental, is important for college
men and women that they may take their own proper measure. At
the same time, they need to realize that they are a part of the larger
group, and that their contribution to its welfare will come through
their close affiliation with the group, but not complete submergence
in it. Their true attitude is not to worship "the god of things as
they are," but to struggle for things as they may be.
GREGORY D. WALCOTT.
HAMLINE UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Handbook of the History of Philosophy. Vol. I. DR. ALBERT STOCKL.
Translated by REV. T. A. FINLAY. New York: Longmans, Green and
Company. Pp. 450.
Although this book belongs to an earlier generation of productions,
both in its German and English versions, it is not well known. Its reissue,
therefore, must be evidence that the publishers believe it to be a work of
8 Spencer, "The Principles of Ethics," Pt. I., Chap. XV.; "The Principles
of Sociology," Pt. V., Chaps. XVII.-XVIIL, Pt. VIII., Chap. XXIV. Hoff-
ding, "History of Modern Philosophy," Vol. II., page 481.
22 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
permanent value. Like all written histories, the histories of philosophy
are of two kinds: those that survive the eliminating process of time; and
those, yet untested, that are the interpretations of the philosophy of the
past which each generation is impelled to make for itself. Although this
" History of Philosophy " has not been submitted to the test of the larger
public, as Ueberweg's, Erdmann's, Schwegler's, Zeller's and other German
works have been, yet the publisher has tested it and he is always a dis-
criminating and valuable factor in the permanent survival of his own
books.
With some qualifications, which will be subsequently noted, the reader
will applaud the wisdom of the publisher. The book is encyclopedic in
character and includes all the ramifications of European philosophy down
to the period of the Renaissance; and these are introduced by some read-
able summaries of the philosophies of the East. The value of this encyclo-
pedic character of the work is minimized, however, by the lack both of a
table of contents and an index. Furthermore, the bibliography cited nat-
urally does not include any work of later date than 1868 (since the book
was published in 1870). Evidently the translator thought that a citation
of more recent works would be an anachronism in this reissue. Yet Mr.
Finlay would have had many good precedents, if he had introduced ref-
erences to later writers, for the author follows Ueberweg and quotes from
him very largely: and the translator would have done well to follow the
translators of Ueberweg and to have included references to all the more
recent works.
Yet a good text is its own best table of contents and this is the case
with Dr. Stockl's book. To this end the translator has largely contributed
by his admirable translation. The organized marshaling of the material
and the systematic arrangement of the text is a striking feature of the
book. Of course a novice can not find in this book what he seeks ; but all
the material is easily accessible to the student of philosophy. The author
calls his book a " handbook " and to make it such he has abridged his own.
larger work and made use of Hitter, Nixner, Zeller, Usehold, Erdmann,
and especially Ueberweg. From the point of view of the reader it is diffi-
cult to see how so formidable a book of four hundred and fifty closely
printed pages which covers only one half the history of philosophy can be
used as a " handbook." But it must be confessed that in philosophy alone
among the sciences encyclopedic works have in the past been its only
" handbooks." Nevertheless while the book is rather formidable as a hand-
book there is scarcely a paragraph or page that is dull. And this is due
to the skillful arrangement of the material and to the easy flow of the clear
English sentences.
An old book reissued must meet modern demands. Does Dr. Stockl's
book altogether meet the demands of modern scholarship in its treatment
of many important questions about the ancient philosophers ? Can a book
of forty years ago be reissued and not be rewritten ? In the main in this
instance we may find justification; but in very many important respects
we may challenge the wisdom of it.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 23
In the first place, did Dr. Stockl write a history of philosophy that is
the history of the evolution of doctrines? It would indeed have been
unique in his generation of philosophers if he had done so. Like all the
histories of philosophy of that time, this book is more a chronological
catalogue of doctrines than the treatment of the organic evolution of
thought. It is like TJeberweg's " History of Philosophy," which is its
model like a gallery of portraits of men, whose relationship seems to con-
sist only in their being side by side in the same room. And, furthermore,
the point of view of the author would naturally, but not necessarily, pre-
clude him from writing an evolution of doctrines. Dr. Stockl wrote as a
Eoman Catholic for Roman Catholic students. In his time the history
of philosophy used mainly in Catholic institutions was Schwegler's little
book, which omits all treatment of the scholastic philosophy. Since then
the Roman Catholic scholars have not been idle and such books as Turner's
" History of Philosophy " and De Wulf 's larger work have done the middle
ages justice as a period of acute thinking. The Protestant student, too,
gladly finds in such books supplements to other histories.
And yet however much the exposition of medieval doctrine may com-
plete the history of philosophy, the Roman Catholic writers seem unable
to write an evolutionary history of philosophy in which the facts of his-
tory are evaluated as moments in the process. To assess historical doc-
trine by religious or any standard other than the purely historical is
not to produce a history of philosophy. When the author says " the sys-
tem of Erigena may bear the imprint of genius, but it is not Christian " ;
when he says, " What the ancients had longingly sought for was now
granted to men by the mercy of God " ; when he says, " Anarchy has in-
vaded the mind whenever and wherever Revelation is discarded " he takes
the point of view that makes it impossible to develop an organic history
of doctrine. The natural effect upon any reader whether he be Catholic
or non-Catholic will be the opposite of what the writer intends: the
reader will mentally discount all evaluations he finds in the book.
In the second place, does this book meet the demands of modern schol-
arship in regard to the many special questions in the history of philos-
ophy ? This is not to be expected. If the reader knows what to expect, he
will merely not read such topics, but will turn to the excellent expositions
that constitute the main body of the book. The question about the his-
torical setting of pre-Socratic Greek cosmologists is not discussed. Of
course Bury's theory that the cosmologists saved Greece from the myster-
ies will not be found here. The importance of Democritus and his
place beside Plato and Aristotle was not known by scholars of the genera-
tion of Dr. Stockl. In this book the so-called Pythagorean doctrine is
attributed correctly to the later disciples, but the Pythagoreans are not
properly placed with the later cosmologists. In regard to Plato the usual
conventional German interpretation of Plato's " two-world " theory is
given although too much space is allowed for the discussion of Plato's
physical theories. Since Dr. Stockl had before him only the theories of
Schleiermacher, Hermann, and Munk, the reader gets none of the modern
24 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
theories about the development of Plato's dialogues such as that of
Windleband and that of the advocates of the " stylometric test." Then
there is much confusion about the Epicurean doctrine of happiness, and
we wish the author had not written "the contrast between this teaching
and Stoicism both in method of argument and ultimate conclusion need
hardly be pointed out."
There are faults and omissions in the book. They are incidental to the
epoch in which the author wrote and to the point of view of the religious
body to which he was attached. As the reader proceeds from the Hellenic
Roman to the medieval period, he finds a wealth of material upon which
the author has drawn for his elaborate expositions not only of the phi-
losophy of the Christian schoolmen, but for those of the contemporary
Arabian and Jewish scholars.
HERBERT E. CUSHMAN.
GRENOBLE, FRANCE.
Annales de VInstitut Superieur de Philosophic. Tome I. Annee 1912.
Louvain : Institut Superieur de Philosophie. Pp. 708.
The kingdom of Belgium, " small in extent, but great by its industry
and commerce," as Foncin put it many years ago, is great also by its in-
tellectual development.
Well known is the importance of the University of Louvain in the
history of Neo-Scholasticism. The lovers of medieval thought, after
learning the elementary course of scholastic philosophy published by the
university, after perusing the admirable series of masterpieces known as
the " Cours de Philosophie," have now enjoyed for nearly twenty years
the pure stream of scholastic doctrine which flows from the pages of the
Revue Neo-scolastique. And this mountain of philosophical production
has been but the prelude of the riches which were to follow, the treasures
of erudition contained in innumerable monographs on medieval and mod-
ern thought; and, a few months since, the undertaking of a translation
with commentary of the philosophical works of Aristotle which, from the
volume already published (the first book of the metaphysics), promises to
be the best ever written in any language. And, as if such monuments of
erudition were not enough to satisfy the love of knowledge of the Louvain
professors, we are now offered a large volume of more than seven hun-
dred pages in quarto entitled "Annales de 1'Institut Superieur de Phi-
losophie."
This volume consists of a series of studies which, taken together, may
well be considered as a mirror of the mentality of the philosophical world
at the present day. Nothing is forgotten of what now interests us: Psy-
chology, sociology, cosmology, Greek philosophy, scholastic philosophy,
pragmatism, Bergsonianism, all find in the volume admirable exponents.
Most of the authors of this first volume of the "Annales" were al-
ready known to us : Lottin, Balthasar, Mansion, through the pages of the
Revue Neo-scolastique; others through separate works which had al-
ready attracted universal attention. The celebrated psychologist, A,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 25
Michotte, whose work entitled " Le choix volontaire et ses antecedents
immediats," published two years ago, placed him in the first rank among
experimentalists, now offers us three separate monographs, the first of
which, entitled " Contribution a 1'etude de la memoire logique," heads the
rolume and is devoted to the systematic analysis of the factors which
come into play in the memorization of groups of words, bound with one
another by logical relations. He also establishes a parallel between log-
ical and purely mechanical memory with regard to their respective
mechanism and results.
Michotte's psychological work is followed by Lottin's monograph on
the Belgian sociologist Quetelet. Having studied Laplace's " Traite de
Mecanique celeste," Quetelet, as the author shows, conceived the noble
ambition of founding an analogous science for the phenomena concerning
man.
In " La Notion de Nature dans la physique aristotelicienne," A. Man-
sion carefully analyzes the various definitions which Aristotle gives of the
concept of nature, so important in the peripatetic philosophy. He shows
us the applications which Aristotle makes of this concept, and the various
ways in which nature exercises its influence in the universe.
In an article entitled " La Methode en theodicee," N. Balthasar makes
a thorough study of St. Anselm's famous ontological argument. After
showing its genesis, the various interpretations to which it gave rise, and
its fate in the various epochs of the history of philosophy, he portrays side
by side the respective methods of Anselm and Thomas Aquinas in natural
theology; idealistic the former, realistic the latter.
Pragmatism occupies a large place in the volume. Besides an article
entitled " Le Pragmatisme et la Philosophic de Bergson," by P. Neve, it
is against the pragmatic conception of the universe, and especially the
views of Mr. Ed. Le Roy, that J. Lemaire directs the pages of his study
on the foundation of cosmology (Les bases de la Cosmologie). As for
Mr. Neve, he gives a clear and lucid exposition of Bergson's philosophy,
against which he defends the position of intellectualism. In Mr. Neve's
opinion, Bergson's philosophy is not only pure pragmatism, but the de-
finitive form of pragmatism, the form which will live and pass to history.
This, by the way, is one of the few statements of the volume about the
truth of which some American readers will perhaps feel suspicious. For,
although Bergson's philosophy resembles pragmatism in some of its as-
sertions, it seems to be at bottom not only different from our American
pragmatism, but its very opposite. Whereas pragmatists assert that a
thing is true when it works and turn their eyes towards the practical as-
pect of things, Bergson gives us a philosophy which, he assures us, will
be absolutely useless from a practical point of view.
Let us not forget the longest and, at the same time, one of the most
important articles of the " Annales " : the essay on Belgian criminology
(La Criminalite beige) by C. Jacquart. The author, starting from the
most accurate statistical records, puts before our eyes, as it were, the
pathology of his country. No study can be more fruitful. For just as
26 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the exact knowledge of the pathological conditions of an organism is es-
sential for the cure of a disease, so the accurate understanding of the
influence of the social conditions on the production of crime is necessary
to the legislator who wishes to bring about the true moral progress of a
country.
Louis PERKIER.
NEW YORK CITY.
The Nervous System: An Elementary Handbook of the Anatomy and
Physiology of the Nervous System. JAMES DUNLOP LICKLET, M.D.
New York: Longmans, Green, and Company. 1912. Pp. 130.
There is a strong trend just now toward the separation of psycholog-
ical instruction from its necessary accompaniments of physics and physiol-
ogy. Within the past year or two, a number of text-books have appeared
which do not regale us with those old familiar pictures of the cerebrum
and excerpts from Ramon y Cajal that aforetime lured the callow. The
conviction has grown that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well,
and that a psychologist can not hope to tuck into his elementary treatise
an orderly and adequate presentation of all necessary collateral informa-
tion. This he should therefore leave to the proper specialists.
Already we find the latter accepting this sane view. Dr. Lickley does
so, and most successfully. His volume is shaped wholly to the purposes of
the student in psychology. It omits a vast deal of over-technical and
highly specialized and debatable material that would only confuse the be-
ginner. On the other hand, it has avoided the sin of false simplicity
which taints the usual digressions of the old-style psychological text-book.
Indeed, if Dr. Lickley errs at all, he errs a degree on the side of technical-
ity. His little book is altogether admirable and ought to hasten the ex-
cision of sketchy, unauthoritative physiological gossip from psychology
text-books.
WALTER B. PITKIN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. July, 1912.
The Many-Sidedness of Moral Education (pp. 383-399) : SOPHIE BRYANT.
- Moral education included, (1) the transformation of impulse into steady
purpose; (2) the evolution of altruism along with egoism; (3) the train-
ing to dutifulness and voluntary submission to the social will. Competi-
tion, Natural and Industrial (pp. 399-419) : IRA WOODS HOWERTH. - Com-
petition, in the natural order, is a necessary incentive to action. Indus-
trially, its necessity diminishes with advancing intelligence. The Rights
of Man (pp. 419^137) : A. K. ROGERS. - As a tool, the concept of rights
does not rest upon a universal rule, but upon the fact that it is a useful
instrument in securing what we desire. The Ethical Basis of Calvinism
(pp. 437449) : W. A. Ross. - Calvinism expresses the spirit of enterprise,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 27
of individual liberty, and of Stoicism. The Present Altitude (pp. 449-
461) : F. CARREL. - Civilization has not advanced as far as we might
expect in four thousand years. Book Reviews. Henri Bergson, L'Evolu-
tion Creatrice: MARY HUSBAND. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution:
A. E. TAYLOR. B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value:
J. S. MACKENZIE. Nathaniel Schmidt, The Messages of the Ports: C. H.
JOY. Thomas C. Hall, History of Ethics Within Organized Christianity:
E. G. HOLLANDS. G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des
Rechts: J. E. MCTAGGART. Gino Dallari, II Nuovo Contrattualismo
nella Filosofia Sociale e Giuridica: J. WHITTAKER. Robert C. Brooks,
Corruption in American Politics and Life: J. H. TUFTS. Charles Zueblin,
Democracy and the Overman: G. S. PATTON. F. Muller-Lyer, Der Sinn
des Lebens und die Wissenschaft : W. J. ROBERTS. J. H. Harley, The
New Social Democracy: W. J. ROBERTS. Achille Loria, Contemporary
Social Problems: W. J. ROBERTS. B. Seebohm Tree, Unemployment:
a Social Study: O. P. ECKHARD. F. J. Gould, Youth's Nolle Task: M.
LIGHTFOOT EASTWOOD. J. S. Knowlson, England's Need in Education:
M. LIGHTFOOT EASTWOOD. Margaret McMillan, The Child and the State:
M. LIGHTFOOT EASTWOOD. William Boyd, The Educational Theory of
Jean Jacques Rousseau: RICHARD SMITH. A Correction, The Editors.
Christiansen, Broder. Vom Selbstbewusstsein. Berlin: B. Behr's Ver-
lag. 1912. Pp. 87. M. 2.40.
Rashdall, Hastings. The Metaphysic of Mr. F. H. Bradley. From the
Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. V. London : Henry Froude.
1912. Pp. 27. Is. 6d.
Schmied-Kowarzik, Walther. Umrik einer Neuen Analytischen Psy-
chologic. Leipzig : Johann Ambrosius Barth. 1912. Pp. vi + 318.
M. 7.
NOTES AND NEWS
LETTER FROM PROFESSOR COHEN
To THE EDITORS OF THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SCIEN-
TIFIC METHODS:
In Professor Lovejoy's careful review of Professor Perry's book 1 there
occurs a statement which is so important for present-day discussion, and
yet so readily settled on its own merits, that it seems to me well worthy
of separate attention. It is the following:
(1) " The relativity of secondary qualities is taken by science as an
evidence of their subjectivity, (2) because otherwise you would appar-
ently be compelled, self-contradictorily, to assert of one and the same
object that it ' really ' and in itself is at the same moment long and short,
square and oblong, hot and cold, red and gray, and so on."
'This JOURNAL, Volume IX., page 675.
28 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
I have inserted the numbers because I wish to separate the statement
of fact from the reason assigned for it, and to challenge both.
(1) Is there a science which actually treats secondary qualities as
subjective? It is true that certain philosophic mechanists like Galileo
or Descartes have so expressed themselves, but surely the science of optics
does not use the category of subjectivity to explain why the same object
does appear long and short, square and oblong, etc. The straight stick,
for instance, appears bent when partly immersed in water, not because
of the nature of consciousness, but because of the mathematical proper-
ties of light rays. So physiologic psychology explains the fact that the
same object appears both hot and cold, not by the nature of consciousness,
but by the differences in the physical or physiologic sensorium.
(2) The assumption that the same object can not " really and in
itself " " at the same moment " be " long and short," etc., seems to me a
most unwarranted assumption. The same line may and does " really and
in itself," at the same moment, subtend an angle of 45 from one point,
and 23 from another without involving any self-contradiction no more,
at least, than Professor Lovejoy when he has his face to the north and his
back to the south.
I call attention to these two points because the prevalent impression
that consciousness is necessary in order to explain the facts of illusion
seems to me to rest on demonstrably false logic. Indeed to resort to
consciousness as an explanation of the fact of error or hallucination, is
precisely the same kind of a procedure as to invoke the faculty of mem-
ory to explain the fact that some of us forget things so readily. Memory
and consciousness are both very important facts; but the former will not
explain to us why some things are forgotten rather than remembered, and
the latter will not explain why some beliefs or judgments are false rather
than true.
Respectfully yours,
MORRIS R. COHEN.
COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK,
December 9, 1912.
ACCORDING to previous announcement the American Philosophical
Association met at Columbia University on December 26 to 28. The
President of the University received the members of the Association at
the presidential residence on Thursday evening. The annual smoker was
held in the Graduates' Room in the Hall of Philosophy on Friday evening.
The final session was held at the College of the City of New York, where
the members were entertained at luncheon by the College. Officers for
the ensuing year were elected as follows: president, Professor E. B. Mc-
Gilvary, of the University of Wisconsin; vice-president, Professor H. A.
Overstreet, of the College of the City of New York; secretary, Professor
E. G. Spaulding, of Princeton University ; new members of the Executive
Committee, Professor J. E. Creighton, of Cornell University, and Pro-
fessor Mary W. Calkins, of Wellesley College.
VOL. X. No. 2. JANUARY 16, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD::
ON SOME NOVELTIES OF THE NEW REALISM
IN a paper published last year 1 and again in the course of the
discussion of "The Relation of Consciousness to Object in
Sense Perception," at the recent Cambridge meeting of the Amer-
ican Philosophical Association, the present writer expressed the
hope that some qualified representative of the "new realism" would
some day explain more fully how that theory proposes to deal with
what has long and notoriously been its greatest difficulty, viz., the
reconciliation of the " epistemological monism" which it professes
with the facts of perceptual and other error. This hope has now
been in large measure gratified, thanks to Professor McGilvary,
whose paper, read only in brief summary at the Cambridge meeting,
has since appeared in full. 2 It can not, of course, be assumed that
all who are of the same household of faith would adopt precisely
the same mode of apologetic or accept Professor McGilvary's ac-
count of the metaphysical status of hallucinatory objects and
illusory qualities. 3 That the difficulty in question is, at least, not a
factitious one, or an easy one for a realistic epistemological monist
to deal with, is fairly plainly shown by the diversity of the ways in
which adherents of that doctrine may now, at last, be observed to
be wrestling with it. But the impartial spectator of these involved
struggles can, for the present, judge fairly of their success only by
carefully examining the issue of each one separately. Since Pro-
fessor McGilvary has been good enough to reply directly to some of
the points raised in my former article, I shall here deal chiefly, but
not exclusively, with the suggestions contained in that part of his
paper. But it is worth while to begin by reminding the reader of
the general nature and significance of the matter under discussion.
I. First, then, a word of explicit statement in regard to the mean-
1 This JOURNAL, Vol. VIII., page 589.
* The Philosophical Review, Vol. XXI., page 152.
*At the time of writing, I have not seen the announced volume of essays
by the authors of the "Program and Platform of Six Realists."
29
30 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ing of epistemological monism when conjoined with realism. I
understand the ground and the implication of that combination to
be the theory that "consciousness," or at least cognition, is a
"purely external relation among objects"; the theory, in other
words, that the nature of consciousness is such that it can not deter-
mine the existence, or add to or alter the qualities, of any of its
so-called objects, but can only give to existences entirely independent
of it a sort of "togetherness" or relatedness, or, in Professor Perry's
phrase, "aggregation." It is the point should be noted implicit
in an epistemological monism based upon the relational theory of
consciousness that no cognized object whatever owes to its being ' ' in
the consciousness-relation" any of the characteristics which it is
there found to have, or any of its other relations; if it were at the
moment "outside of" that relation, it would just as truly "exist,"
and would exist with precisely the same characteristics. If the
doctrine of the externality of the consciousness-relation is not meant
as a universal proposition, it can not serve the purposes of the new
realism. If some things or qualities do exist only in and by means
of consciousness, it becomes an open problem how many are of this
sort; and one could not argue from the nature of consciousness to
the impossibility that perceived objects should exist only in con-
sciousness, or should possess there "subjective" qualities different
from those which, in their independent natures, they actually pos-
sess. But such argument from the nature of consciousness to both
a realistic and an epistemologically monistic conclusion is distinctive
of the "new" realism; it is, indeed, as I have lately contended,*
the one novel and distinguishing argument of the school. When its
lid is removed, however, it proves to be a Pandora's box, containing
as its implications many startling subsidiary novelties.
Such a doctrine is confronted with certain familiar facts of
experience, which have long since made common sense, and most of
our physical science, reject the supposition that what is in con-
sciousness is always and in all significant respects unaffected by
that circumstance, that what things seem they also are. ' ' Conscious-
nesses" are, as our realists do not deny, many; they belong to dif-
ferent percipient organisms. And in the several consciousnesses of
what both common sense and the new realism call a single object,
that object usually appears with a large amount of diversity and
incongruity superimposed upon its assumed identity. Its color, its
size, its temperature, and the like, are, in the consciousness "cen-
tered" by its relation to organism A, not what they are for the
consciousness which has organism B for its center; these qualities
4 This JOURNAL, op. tit.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 31
are often not only, in the several perceptions, diverse, but also incom-
patible with one another. Common sense has therefore concluded
that, if there is to be any such thing as the same object for different
percipients, that object must be one which is qualitatively diverse
from some, perhaps from all, of the contents of the several con-
sciousnesses. It becomes necessary, as Mr. Kussell 5 expresses it,
to assume that, "if there are to be public neutral objects, which can
in some sense be known to many different persons," these objects
are not identical with "the private and particular sense-data which
appear to various people." The commonest of experiences, then,
has constrained common sense to deny that all the content of con-
sciousness is independent of and external to particular conscious-
nesses, and has led it to conceive that existents are of two sorts:
(1) those belonging to the one, coherent world of objective or inde-
pendent reality, in which objects can never have two contradictory
qualities at once; (2) those belonging only to one or more of the
many "private and particular" worlds of "subjective appearances,"
each of which appearances likewise conforms to the rule of the non-
contradictoriness of actually presented qualities inter se, but may
to an indefinite degree contradict the presentations in other sub-
jective worlds or the realities of the objective world.
Such is the simplest and most obvious of the considerations which
have long since led mankind for the most part to regard "being in
consciousness" as the only sort of being which some existents possess,
and consequently to think of consciousness as much more than an
"external relation" in other words, to find a consistent epistem-
ological monism irreconcilable with the realism to which most men
have continued in some fashion to adhere. There are, however,
many other analogous considerations. One of the more striking
sort is the case of hallucinations, which was especially emphasized
in my previous paper; here we have what is regarded as an iden-
tical space presented to one percipient as occupied by an object of
a specified sort, and simultaneously presented to all other percipients
as vacant of perceptible objects, or as quite otherwise occupied.
Human reflection has dealt with these cases, and again, with dreams,
by assigning the discrepant appearances to different "minds" and
eliminating them thereby from the supposed common and public
world of genuine objects; Heraclitus merely gave vivid expression
to the universal explanation of these discrepancies when he said that
in dream ' ' every man turns aside into a world of his own. ' ' Besides,
again, these disagreements between the perceptions of different per-
5 The best criticism, though it is wholly an implicit criticism, upon realistic
epistemological monism, known to me, is to be found in the second and third
chapters of Mr. Eussell's little book entitled "The Problems of Philosophy."
32 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
sons, there are the temporal differences, which common sense has
always recognized, between the date of a thought or perception and
the possible dates of its objects. To most men to nearly all men,
until the new realism began to flourish nothing has seemed more
evident than that many things appear in consciousness neither as
they are nor where they are nor when they are; and that conse-
quently it is only by regarding much of the content of consciousness
as subsisting solely in and for consciousness, that any marginal
region of purely objective and independent being can be believed in
at all. In this large, but seemingly inevitable admission of com-
mon sense, idealism has found its foothold.
II. All these are elementary commonplaces. What, now, is Pro-
fessor McGilvary's way of dealing with these commonplace objections
to realistic epistemological monism? Before discussing them, I must
confess to some uncertainty whether he is an epistemological monist.
In general, his paper reads like an elucidation and defense of that
theory; and the relation of most of his reasoning to this general
purpose is admirably clear. Yet at certain important points his
language appears to me to be that of an "old," or dualistic, rather
than of a "new," realist. There are even moments when his doc-
trine seems to present the amiable and familiar lineaments of
idealism.
The part of the position that is clear relates to the distinction
between "material" and "immaterial" objects, and to the unity of
space qua space. The realism proposed, we are told, "does not try
to classify the facts under the traditional rubrics 'real' and 'ap-
parent,' mutually opposed and exclusive. It does classify them
under two very different rubrics, 'material' and 'immaterial.' '
A material object is one which is space-occupying and also space-
monopolizing, *'. e., impenetrable by other objects of its own class;
an immaterial object is one which, though it may be space-occupy-
ing, is not space-monopolizing, but is ready to share the same
portion of extension with other objects. That the existence of
"objects" of the latter class is conceivable without contradiction,
is the principal contention in Professor McGilvary's criticism of the
argument against the new realism which I (and others before me)
had endeavored to draw from the facts of illusion and perceptual
error. One sort of object may [visually] be in exactly the same
space in which quite another object has its [tactual] existence; the
image that I see in the hand-mirror "is seen to be just where," if I
reach my hand behind the mirror, "the wall is felt to be. Each is
in space, in the same space, and in the same place in that space."
And the principal advantage which philosophy derives from this
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 33
introduction of the notion of "immaterial objects" seems, in Pro-
fessor McGilvary's opinion, to be that it obviates that sort of multi-
plication of spaces which appears to be involved in the account of
the facts summarized above. While the usual theory "has many
other difficulties," the only one which is actually pointed out is
(if my enumeration is not incomplete) that the theory "forces you
to recognize two spaces where only one is actually experienced";
whereas Professor McGilvary's way of putting the facts leaves only
one space in question, though it crowds two objects into the same
portion of that space. So much I can understand. My uncertain-
ties as to the meaning of the position taken begin when, in the first
place, I try to find out what has become of "the traditional rubrics
'real' and 'unreal,' " and how the two new rubrics stand related
to these. If the committee's definition of real objects ("such
objects as are true parts of the material world") a definition which
I can myself not regard as very luminous is adopted by Professor
McGilvary, "immaterial objects" would thereby be designated as
' ' unreal, ' ' but only in the tautological sense that they are not truly
"material," within Professor McGilvary's meaning of that term.
There is, however, a sense of the word "real" in which the question
whether, e. g., these so-called immaterial objects are real or unreal
leads to no such barren tautology ; this is the sense which Professor
McGilvary seems to prefer to express by the term ' ' physical. ' ' The
ether, for example, is called "a 'physical' object, because if it does
exist it shares with material objects the common characteristic of
not having to be a term of a consciousness-relation. It may, in
other words, exist 'outside of consciousness'; it succeeds very well in
keeping outside all the time (sic)." But the ether, though a phys-
ical, is, in the sense defined, an immaterial, object, since "its con-
tinuity involves its sharing with material objects and immaterial
objects such portions of space as they occupy." Some "immaterial
objects," then, exist independently of the consciousness-relation,
are "physical"; so much is clear. But is it not almost as clearly
implied that there is a class of non-physical objects, things that can
be thought about and even actually given in perception, which we
need not declare to be existent in any other degree or other sense
or other time? For example, whether the ether "exists," says
Professor McGilvary, is "problematical." But of course it is not
problematical that the ether has been thought about and defined,
and so far brought into consciousness, though never into the mode
of consciousness called sense-perception. Make, then, the supposi-
tion, of which the admissibility is not denied, that the ether does not
"exist"; in that case, our universe of discourse would include at
34 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
least one object of the second class, i. e., a non-physical or non-
existent object, having no being outside of, or independent of, the
consciousness-relation.
Now, if the scheme of a universe which Professor MeGilvary so
interestingly sketches is to be understood to include any object of
the second class, it is not a monistic scheme in the epistemological
sense. It does not, in other words, maintain that the "relation" in
question is so purely external and otiose, so incapable of being the
condition or ground or exclusive context of the being of anything
else, that an object's being perceived or imagined or conceived can
make no difference at all in the object, beyond lending it an obscure
sort of "togetherness" with other objects. And the suspicion that
Professor MeGilvary is not really a whole-hearted epistemological
monist is somewhat confirmed by the fact that he does not leave this
togetherness entirely without further definition. It is, one learns, in
the first place, ' ' a relation which has a unique center of reference ' ' ;
and this center, presumably, is not itself a relation. What, then, is
it? It is not, at any rate one is told simply a spatial center,
though it involves a spatial ordering of objects about the body.
"The spatial and temporal centers of experience are not merely
spatial and temporal centers; they are spatial and temporal centers
of a complex which has a distinctive character given to it by the
fact that it is a conscious relational complex. ... In short, the center
of experience is a conscious center." "Consciousness is ... a rela-
tion which relates in just the specific way that brings about the
things that we call our experiences." 6 Thus it turns out that "con-
sciousness" is not only the name of a certain kind of grouping or
"aggregation" of objects; it is also the name of that to which they
are related, or of an attribute thereof; and through this marriage
of an object and a "conscious center" there are, it would seem,
generated things in some respects different from both, which are to
be called "experiences." What a conscious center, or its distin-
guishing attribute, is, Professor MeGilvary does not tell us, nor
does he explain the nature of ' ' experiences. ' ' But it is at least clear
that, while this may be a "realistic Weltanschauung," it is not alto-
gether unequivocally a monistic epistemology. A consciousness
which is so much and can do so much as all this, can hardly be that
wholly "external" and relational and irrelevant thing which, for
the purposes of the new realism, it is essential that it should be.
If, accordingly, Professor MeGilvary actually means that our
"experiences" include objects which, apart from their presence in
consciousness, do not "exist," then cadit qucestio. . He and I, and
6 Op. cit., pages 165, 166.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 35
other critics of nee-realism, are entirely at one upon the essential
issue. The whole point of the argument from hallucinations is that
in those phenomena we find "instances in which the meaning of an
object's 'being in consciousness' can not be expressed in terms con-
gruous with the relational theory" 7 by which is meant, of course,
the theory that consciousness is nothing but an external or non-con-
stitutive relation. And the reason why such instances have been
held to be incongruous with the theory is that they show that some
objects are not independent of consciousness, but exist only as ap-
pearances in consciousness. If, then, this last be admitted even
though for different reasons the essential objection to the external-
relation doctrine stands. "A genuine realist," as I have elsewhere
put that objection, "can escape dualism only at the cost of denying
that there can be at any given cross-section of time both appearance
and reality." But, to judge from Professor McGilvary's references
to objects that are thought about but do not "exist," he does not
deny this. He therefore does not escape dualism.
III. Yet for the most part he certainly writes as one desirous of
escaping it, and willing, in order to do so, to defend the paradoxical
implications of realistic epistemological monism. In his plainest
utterances upon the subject, he appears to reject the notion of the
many private and particular worlds of different minds, and of the
two modes of existence, and to declare that, while there are, indeed,
in a sense, "many worlds," neither the worlds as such, nor their
diversities of content, depend upon or exist solely in minds or a
relation to any mind. There is one real space ' ' in which are located
material and immaterial objects." The immaterial objects (e. g.,
of a hallucination) are just as truly there or perhaps one should
say, just as truly would be there as if no hallucinatory conscious-
ness had chanced at the moment to twine about them irrelevant
festoons of external relationship. Unless Professor McGilvary
means to support precisely this consistently monistic view in its
fulness, it is not clear to me why he should have thought it worth
while to argue as he has done against my objection that, when real-
istic epistemological monism is thus made consistent, it involves the
paradoxical assertion that two extended objects may simultaneously
occupy the same real space. His mode of reply is to admit that this
assertion is involved in the theory, but to deny that the assertion is
self-contradictory or even contrary to the witness of experience.
His defense, then, of this apparent paradox implies at least a pro-
visional adoption of the doctrine by which the paradox is generated.
T Professor McGilvary has himself quite fairly quoted this sentence as a
summary of the main contention in my former paper.
36 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
It is, indeed, clear throughout the part of his article which is more
especially addressed to the argument from hallucinations and the
like, that Professor McGilvary feels that even in non-veridical per-
ception the perceiving must be held to be non-constitutive of the
object, and the object be credited with some ineffable plus of inde-
pendent being over and above its being in consciousness.
I call this plus ineffable because it is manifestly impossible for
the new realist to assign any concrete meaning to the object's
"transcendence of consciousness," in those cases in which the con-
sciousness is what we call hallucinatory. It is equally manifest that
he can, in the nature of the case, offer no evidence of this indefinable
transcendence. The most familiar sense of the proposition that A
exists independently of its relation to B is the temporal sense: A
exists at times when it is not in that relation. But it is evidently
not in this sense that independence is asserted in these instances;
the hallucinatory object, says Professor McGilvary, "was not before
it was perceived, although its causes were; it ceases when it ceases
to be perceived." Is it, then, meant that the hallucinatory object
had at the moment other sensible qualities than it was perceived to
have that there was more of it than entered into the consciousness-
relation? This would be a highly gratuitous assertion, destitute of
any empirical or other imaginable evidence; and one can therefore
hardly suppose that the neo-realist intends to maintain it. Does he
mean, then, that these false objects are parts of the dynamic system
of nature, that they must, for example, be reckoned with by the
physicist who would compute the forces acting at the point where
the objects appear to be ? Clearly not this, either. But if none of
these senses be meant, the asserted independence of the hallucinatory
object remains a thing mystical and unutterable, as well as eternally
unverifiable.
Professor McGilvary, it is true, intimates, though he does not
quite express, a fourth sense, in which he apparently believes that
the independence of such an object can be significantly maintained.
The object, namely, is in space ; and the space that it is in is the one,
universal, real space in which, in exactly the same sense, all other
objects "physical" and non-physical, "material" and "imma-
terial" are. But obviously, even though the space were existent
independently of consciousness, the object's being and qualities
would not thereby be shown to be independent of consciousness ; nor
could we derive from the admission of the independence of a per-
manent space any definite meaning for the notion of the independ-
ence or consciousness-transcendence of the object's transitory exist-
ence and attributes. It seems, none the less, to be because of a
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 37
belief that if room can be found in real space for the hallucinatory
object its independence can in some sense be maintained, that Pro-
fessor McGilvary has been led to affirm the possibility of the ' ' occu-
pancy" of one portion of space by many objects provided only,
that all but one of those objects bear the label "immaterial."
The proof offered of the possibility of this multiple space-occu-
pancy consists, as has already been mentioned, in the instance of the
image of the face in the hand-mirror : here, we are told, ' ' the image
is seen to be just where the wall is felt to be. Each is in space, in
the same space, and in the same place in that space." Upon this
proof I shall be obliged to comment with a brevity which may per-
haps not be wholly consistent with clarity, (a) It is obvious that,
so far as actually sensible objects are concerned, the possibility of
the joint occupancy of the same space holds only for "objects" or
qualities apprehended by different senses. It is not a fact of experi-
ence that two tactual objects can be found occupying simultaneously
the same space; nor yet that two visual qualities can, by a single
percipient, be so found. One does not feel both the wall and the
face in the same portion of space ; one does not see both the wall and
the face there, at the same instant. (&) That qualities of the sorts
perceived through different senses may be presented as existing in
the same place at once is a fact notorious to common sense, and
never denied by the present critic of the new realism. The wall has
color, and it has hardness and coldness; and by ordinary thought
all three qualities are habitually localized in the same place. Nor is
there anything in this which affronts "that ancient prejudice of
common sense," to which I have formerly referred viz., the preju-
dice "against admitting that a body can both be and not be in a
given space in a given instant." For qualities of one sense, de-
tached from other qualities, are not what the terms "bodies" or even
"objects" are commonly understood to mean, (c) Professor Mc-
Gilvary 's case of the hand-mirror differs from these ordinary cases
only in that the visual qualities there given are conjoined with
tactual qualities of which they are not usually the index. But this
peculiarity of the special instance is not essential to the argument.
The fact that face-color and wall-hardness in this case appear as
locally coincident proves no more about the possibility of multiple
space-occupancy than does the simple fact that wall-color and wall-
hardness are usually presented as locally coincident, (d) Does
Professor McGilvary, however, hold that two qualities of the same
order e. g., two colors can objectively, "physically," irrespective
of any relations to percipients, be actual attributes at a single
moment of the same portion of the same object? Apparently not.
38 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
I infer this, at least, from his remarks upon color-blindness. If he
felt no difficulty in the supposition that, say, a given bit of this
paper is at this moment objectively both white and black, his natural
view about color-blindness would be that the object itself is of
the color seen by the color-blind person and also of that seen by the
person of what is called normal vision. But this paradox of rigorous
epistemological monism of the realistic sort he refuses to embrace.
He resorts, instead, to a principle which, I can not but think, is a
good deal over-strained by neo-realists just now; the principle,
namely, of the "selective action" of the "consciousness-relation."
It is not that the object really has two positive and opposite color-
qualities, like black and white ; it is merely that it has various visual
qualities of different orders, only a few of which are selected by
the consciousness-relation in the case of the color-blind, while with
the normal that relation is more widely inclusive. In itself, this
suggestion seems to me a good example of the psychologist's fallacy;
but I am not here concerned with that point. All that I now wish
to deduce from the passage is that whatever be true of other neo-
realists Professor McGilvary at least does not maintain that a
single spatial object may have as its real (i. e., its independent and
non-relative) attributes, two different visual qualities of the same
order, such as greenness and redness, or two different tactual quali-
ties, such as hotness and coldness, (e) We do, however, find, both
in hallucinations and in more normal experiences, cases in which
what passes (with common belief and with Professor McGilvary)
for one portion of space is simultaneously perceived, by different
percipients, as having positive and opposed color-qualities, or tactual
qualities. The delirious patient may actually behold a green ser-
pent or a purple cow where his attendants behold a brown bottle or
a white pillow. I do not see how the principle of selective abstrac-
tion can aid the new realist to explain facts of this sort. If it does
not, he is compelled either to conceive of the same portion of exten-
sion as at once actually green and actually brown, or actually purple
and actually white, or actually hot and actually cold in the strict
sense of those qualities or else he must abandon the heroic enter-
prise of seeking room in one real space and in one independent
world of objective reality for all the contents of all the simultaneous
perceptions of all percipients.
IV. Passing from the difficulties which the new realism encounters
in dealing with the spatial localization of unreal objects, let us now
consider the kindred, but even more fundamental, difficulty which it
has in dealing with the temporal dating of any objects. This diffi-
culty is introduced by Professor McGilvary in the form of the ques-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 39
tion: "How can we now perceive a star which for aught we know
may have been extinct for a thousand years?" This question con-
stitutes a vexatious problem for the new realism, for a reason which
has already been indicated. Holding fast to epistemological monism,
that philosophy declares that the thing perceived "in consciousness"
and the thing independently existing (i. e., the thing which would
be there, with identical qualities, even if it did not then happen to
fall within the purely external consciousness-relation) are one and
the same thing. But here is a case in which a certain object the
star exists as a percept at a time when it does not exist in the space
to which its actual extension is assigned by our scientific knowledge.
How, then, can a thing which exists now be said to be " numerically
identical with" a thing which has been for thousands of years non-
existent? It is only in the picturesquely great magnitude of the
time-difference that the example of the star differs from any ordi-
nary case of visual perception; what psychologists call the "lag" in
the transmission of stimulations constitutes, I suppose, a universal,
though a far briefer, time-difference between percept and thing-
perceived.
Ordinary realism, of course, has no trouble with these cases ; for
in such matters ordinary realism is dualistie, and is thereby in a
position to solve the problem by the use of the results of the sciences
of physics and physiology. "That which," it says, "now exists in
my consciousness, is not a star existent millions of miles away; it is
merely a complex of secondary (and therefore subjective) qualities,
which has been caused by a long series of antecedent phenomena,
among which must probably be reckoned ether-undulations which a
thousand years ago radiated from a certain distant star now ex-
tinct. ' ' But the new realism can not thus, for the description of the
facts under consideration, employ the language of common sense and
common science. It can not, in consistency with its monistic epis-
temology of perception, say that what is now perceived is merely a
present subjective existent caused ~by the action of previous objective
existents; and it can not say that the present star, if it is to be
objectively localized at all, has its real location in the retina, or
perhaps somewhere in the brain-cortex. For what the doctrine as-
serts is the perfect objectivity and "transcendence," not of the
causes of our perceptions, but of the things and relations and quali-
ties actually perceived. It must therefore have its own way of
dealing with the apparently undisputed fact that no sensible object
exists precisely as it is perceived and where it is perceived at the
particular moment when it is perceived ; and that in some instances
this discrepancy is enormous.
40 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Two principal ways of dealing with this fact appear to be pro-
posed by Professor McGilvary. The first makes use once more of
the consideration that the consciousness-relation, for the new realist,
though it is not constitutive, may at least be consistently held to be
selective. When an object enters that relation, it does not neces-
sarily enter wholly, with all its other relations and qualities; unlike
the Admiral in "Pinafore," it does not always bring on board with
it all of its sisters and its cousins and its aunts. Why, then, asks
Professor McGilvary, may we not suppose that, among the other
relations sometimes left at home by an object when it enters con-
sciousness, may be its time-relations? Supposing this, we should
merely say of the now-perceived-but-not-now-existent-star that its
date of real existence happens to be one of the relations "which are
not taken into the union constituted by consciousness" i. e., by the
present moment's consciousness. Thus "the relational view of con-
sciousness seems to enable us to deal with our specific problem in a
very simple way. ' '
But this way, alas ! proves to be much too simple. As Professor
McGilvary appears eventually to recognize, it gains its simplicity
entirely by ignoring the essential fact in the case ; namely, that the
star-as-percept does not enter consciousness merely lacking a date
or temporal locus. It enters consciousness with an entirely definite
temporal locus, and one which is confessedly different, by the differ-
ence of a millennium, from that of the "real" star. "Talk away
as much as we please, experience does present us with the star as
contemporary with the body." Professor McGilvary thus seems to
have called attention to this first proposed way out of the difficulty
only for the purpose of pointing out that it leads nowhither.
We must therefore turn to the other avenue of escape, which is
evidently regarded as a more hopeful one. It is entered through a
distinction between contemporaneity and simultaneity. Two things
are, by the definitions offered, contemporaneous when their existence
falls "within the same durational unit," however long that unit
may be, and whatever be their respective positions in that duration ;
by a judicious choice of one's durational unit, therefore, Plato and
Dr. McCosh can be called contemporaries, or Thales and M. Bergson.
Simultaneity is defined only in figurative language, but appears to
mean what it is ordinarily understood as meaning, viz., identity not
only with respect to an arbitrarily chosen "durational unit," but
also with respect to position within any such unit in short, literal
synchronousness. Now, applying this distinction to our problem,
Professor McGilvary suggests "that experience gives us the star as
contemporary; in our confusion resulting from lack of analysis, we
mistake this contemporaneity for simultaneity."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 41
That the confusion and lack of analysis in this matter lie in the
quarter to which they are here imputed, I can not feel quite sure.
"Contemporary" the "real" star and the percept assuredly are;
for in the sense defined, all things are contemporary (unless we
should except the point is not made clear those that are simul-
taneous!) if, as in this case, you do not specify your durational
unit. Contemporaneity uberhaupt is "longitudinal synchronous-
ness," it is belonging to the same temporal unit, no matter what;
and the only temporal unit which is not factitious and arbitrary is
time as a whole. It would, then, be a strange confusion indeed, if any
one should mistake this kind of contemporaneity for simultaneity;
it would amount to an inability to distinguish the idea of "some
time or other" from the idea of a particular and specified time.
While, therefore, experience undeniably gives us the star and the
perception as in some sense "contemporaneous," the fact is of no
significance. It means no more than that the two both belong to the
temporal order. And it does not in the least alleviate the neo-
realist's difficulty. For he still, it is to be supposed, admits that
there is a distinction between simultaneity and non-simultaneity;
that the relation of simultaneity, or that of non-simultaneity, is a
real and a significant relation; and that the star-as-percept, while
it is simultaneous with my other perceptions or bodily affections of
the moment, is not simultaneous with the presence of the star in the
portion of space to which astronomy assigns its "real" spatial
existence. So long as these admissions are made, the consequence
holds that the star which I now perceive is not, in all of its actually
given qualities and relations, identical with the star which became
extinct a thousand years ago. Its date is not the date of the "objec-
tive" being of the star-referred-to in a determinate and distant
space; it is the date of its being perceived. That its esse is its
percipi is not shown by the conceded facts ; what is, however, shown
by them is that its nunc esse is its nunc percipi.
All, then, that Professor McGilvary has achieved by his second
proposed way of dealing with the temporal difficulty in the new
realism, is this: Confronted by the objection that a specified set of
temporal relations those of simultaneity and non-simultaneity
are not identical for the supposed real object and the percept, he
calls our attention to the fact that there is another sort of temporal
relation that of inclusion within the same durational unit with
respect to which the object and the perception can rightly be called
identical. The reply is obviously without relevancy to the objection
raised ; while the distinction upon which it insists, so far from being
one unfamiliar or blurred to common sense, is one employed con-
42 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
stantly and with entire precision by all human intelligences even
by those of the dissenters from neo-realism. It is not, however,
usually expressed by such terms as Professor McGilvary has chosen
to adopt.
It ought to be added that, besides this second, and equally unsuc-
cessful, suggestion of an escape from the time-difficulty of neo-
realism, some brief hints are given of a third. On account of their
brevity, I am not at all sure that I understand them. But they
appear to consist in "maintaining the date-transcendence of con-
sciousness." "Consciousness," it is remarked, "enjoys a limited
transcendence of the date which is central to consciousness ; but this
transcendence radiates from the present, and is commensurate with
the durational span of its objects." These suggestions can, no
doubt, be better discussed after they have been amplified, as their
author will perhaps hereafter find opportunity to amplify them.
Taking them as they stand, they have the air of implying that con-
sciousness has no date of its own, but borrows its time-relations
wholly from those of the objects in it. Such a view, however, would
appear to be in conflict with the unexceptionable remark, upon the
same page, that when I perceive the star of a thousand years ago,
"it is now and not then that I perceive"; and one is obliged to con-
clude that it can not be this view that Professor McGilvary has
intended to convey. Whatever be his precise meaning, his language
upon the point seems at any rate to manifest a tendency to either a
confusion or a deliberate identification of two essentially distinct
time-aspects of a perception or any bit of cognitive consciousness
namely, (a) the time of the perceiving or judging, the relative place
of the experience in the ordered succession of experiences, and (h)
the time referred-to, the relative place of the things or events thought
about. It is only with respect to the latter that there is any sense
in speaking of a " date-transcendence of consciousness. ' ' Conscious-
ness refers to dates which lie beyond its own temporal limits ; in plain
words, we can think about past and future, and can even, as in the
case of the star, have percepts of things which are past. But when
I think of my grandfather's time, I do not think in my grandfather's
time ; when I read an historical novel, however absorbing, I do not,
save in an obviously figurative and rhetorical sense, live in the
period in which its action takes place. Eternalistic idealists, deniers
of the reality of time, have, no doubt, sometimes made specious use
of this figurative sense, and thereby contrived to becloud the dis-
tinction between the dates that I think about and the dates when I
do the thinking. But that particular sort of play upon words, at
least, is no fit occupation for a realist; if he begins to fall into it,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 43
he will soon find himself committed to an idealistic view about time,
and so outside of the realistic position altogether. With respect to
temporalism, I have liked to believe, the heart of the new realist is
in the right place. But temporalism becomes impossible if one fails
to maintain that the past qua past is irrevocable, and distinguished
from the present by an essential and irreducible difference; and
that what are commonly called the moments of experience the
moments, in neo-realistic phrase, when the consciousness-relation
actually subsists between any given objects are definite moments
of real time, whose time-character and real locus are in no wise
affected by the time-loci of the objects brought into that relation,
or referred to by means of it. I hope, therefore, that when Pro-
fessor McGilvary hereafter speaks of "the date-transcendence of
consciousness," he will make it plain that he really asserts no more
than that the dates of existence of objects given in, or "meant" by,
perceptual or other consciousness may be different from the date of
existence of the consciousness. But when his meaning is reduced
to this, there will be found to inhere in the phrase ' ' date-transcend-
ence of consciousness" no magic capable of exorcising from neo-
realism the difficulty about the time-relations of objects. It will still
remain clear that the time when the consciousness of a given object
exists is often not identical with any time in which, in any further
sense, the object can, by a realist, be supposed to exist. But this
can only mean that what exists in consciousness at the former time
is not the supposed object an-sich, but merely a "subjective presenta-
tion," in which one element is a "pointing" or reference to a time
other than the existential time of the presentation. Once more, then,
the clear implications of conceded facts appear to render a realistic
epistemological monism inadmissible.
ARTHUR 0. LOVEJOY.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
REALISM AND SUBJECTIVISM
TDEALISTS have so generally united in insisting upon a few im-
portant theses that their real and radical differences have been
somewhat neglected. Perhaps there is something in the idealistic
temper itself which leads to emphasis upon agreements. Since all
views have their bit of meaning in the life of history, the idealist has
been fonder of including than of controverting them. Hence, who-
ever holds to the non-existence of any alogical real, to the priority of
epistemology, and the precedence of "truths of appreciation" over
44 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
"truths of description," has been regarded as fundamentally right-
minded and trusted to approximate the logical corollaries one's
own of these principles. But whatever other result the present ac-
tive criticism may have, it seems bound to break in upon the ideal-
istic love feast. Nothing is more distressing than to be looked upon
as discredited when it is one's neighbor, or the remains of one's an-
cestors, to whom this honor is due. One dislikes to hear of "ideal-
ism," when it is a subjectivistic epistemology which is under dis-
cussion, provided, of course, one's own view has no "taint of sub-
jectivism."
That the attack of the six realists has been upon a sub-
jectivistic theory of knowledge, we have their assurance. That all
idealists are thereby called upon to feel aggrieved, may or may not
be the case. Almost every idealism holds as important certain con-
siderations about the predicament of the knower. But they need not
be those which Professor Perry has exhibited in his paper on "The
Egocentric Predicament," 1 or the similar ones which figure in the
introduction to "The New Realism." 2
The idealist is there represented as arguing that all reals must be
known, or that knowing is constitutive of reality, because no real can
ever be discovered out of relation to a knower. The writer, for one,
admits the invalidity of any such argument. It would prove if it
proved anything altogether too much. For "known" here means
"completely and explicitly possessed as content of consciousness,"
the identity of the object with present experience. At least it is this
meaning which the realist seems to have in mind. The identification
of reality with that which is present to some one 's experience, or with
the sum total of present experiences, carries sinister implications.
For the whole problem of knowledge, as idealism sees it, turns upon
the fact that the knowing experience means or intends something be-
yond itself, something which just now it is not. Otherwise, the ex-
perience might have any affective or esthetic value which it hap-
pened to possess, but it would not be knowledge. It is characteristic
of knowing, as a human activity, that its meaning is not satisfied by
the self-evident presence of its own experience or content of con-
sciousness. Hence the part played in idealistic theory by "immedi-
acy and mediation," and the recognition of the "inevitably frag-
mentary character of human knowing." Thus the history of ideal-
istic epistemology in the last century might be summed up as the
history of the recipe for getting out of the egocentric predicament.
The recognition that nothing can be known except present content
1 This JOURNAL, Vol. VIII., pages 5 ff . See also ' ' Present Philosophical
Tendencies, ' ' pages 128 ff .
2 Pages 11-12.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 45
of consciousness would be fatal to the idealist's program, for it would
dismiss his problem without a hope of solution. The subjeetivist's
dogma that to be is to be perceived, or otherwise given in conscious-
ness is as distressing to idealism as to realism.
To be sure, the idealist often makes use of the conception of
an ideal or limiting case of knowledge the toilless knowledge of an
absolute mind for which knowing would mean just that detailed
and explicit identity of thought and object which subjectivism main-
tains for knowing in general. But the idealistic theory of knowledge
can get on very comfortably without hypothecating the existence of
such a case of knowing, provided only its validity as an ideal be al-
lowed. 3 As an event among other events, no such case of knowing
can occur anywhere at any time. The epistemological interest in the
absolute is the interest in the validity of an ideal. Idealism must ex-
plicitly deny that the total reality is identical with the experience
of any finite knower. Hence it is, in general, more accurate to rep-
resent idealism as maintaining the essentially knowdble character
of reality than to take it as holding that all reals are known.
The knower 's predicament is, then, this: all that ever is and ever
can be explicitly possessed by a mind which attempts to know will
be a present experience ; while the sure possession of this experience
can never satisfy the interests of knowledge. To glorify the imme-
diate data of consciousness with the adjective "independent" will
not help the situation in the least. The present content is there; it
is experienced; its "cash value" is already ours. If one has bitten
an apple, one is certain of the taste in one's mouth. It matters not
whether it be an independent taste or no. What knowledge requires
is that a "credit" attach to the taste. It must be significant of the
quality of the apple or of another taste; it must intend something
which it is not. What knowledge signifies is its meaning ; and mean-
ing always reaches beyond the present experience. The problem of
the validity of this meaning is the problem of knowledge, as ideal-
ism since Kant conceives it.
The idealistic interest in the egocentric predicament is to point
this problem, and to call attention to the fact that unless it is solved
by proving some necessary relation of reality to our ways of know-
ing, we have only the alternatives of skepticism or various unproved
and unprovable dogmas which can neither refute one another nor
establish a constructive case.
We may state the problem in realistic terms. "Realism does not
deny that when a enters into a relation, such as knowledge, of which
it is independent, a now acquires that relation, and is accordingly
* Some idealists would disagree with this statement. But the following
sentence would, I think, satisfy all but the out-and-out subjectivists.
46 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
different by 50 much; but denies only that this added relation is
necessary to a as already constituted. Thus when a is known, it is
a itself, as constituted without knowledge, which is independent of
that circumstance. The new complex known-a is of course dependent
on knowledge as one of its parts. " 4 To restate the egocentric pre-
dicament: All the a's and x'& which anybody can ever hope to know
will be known-a's and known-x's, and as such dependent on knowl-
edge, while it is the a 's and x 's as constituted without knowledge that
are independent. The known-a's and known-x's will differ from
these independently real a's and x's "by so much," that is, by as
much as they are affected by entering into relation to a knower.
All this is trivial enough until we remember that it is exactly the
fundamental tenet of all skepticism, and the bete noire of every dog-
matism. The critical question is : By how much does known-a differ
from a ?
To avoid misunderstanding, one possible objection based on this
difference may be ruled out as negligible. Known-a differs from a
as a relative from an absolute term, or as a unqualified from a mod-
ified by "known." Known-a is a complex or one end of a relation,
while a may be simple and unrelated. This difference is something
like that between "truth" and "unpleasant truth," or that between
#-which-is-greater-than-2/ and z-which-is-less-than-z. The logical
realism of Plato was troubled to make clear how the greater could be
also less. Similarly, it might trouble the new realism to make clear
how independent a can be identical with an a which is known, when
known-a is not independent. The difficulty is to explain identity in
difference when relations are external; to explain how known-a is
still the same a and yet different by being related. But any objec-
tion which turned upon this difficulty which strict logical realism has
with identities, would be likely to seem rather thin. Such logical
puzzles suggest a solvitur ambulando. It is considerations of a quite
different nature which have proved historically important for
idealism.
It seems useless to deny that knowing is, in some sense or other,
a kind of acting. That knowing is acting would seem to argue some
effect in that upon which the activity is directed. Hence known-a
seems likely to differ from real a by so much as the knower 's activity
affects it when it enters the knowledge relation. This will hold true
whether the knower is an organism which functions in definite ways
of its own, a nervous arc, or merely an unbiologized mind.
Knowing might be a transforming activity of a nervous receptor,
so that real a 's might be apprehended as upside-down a 's or real sub-
stances known as complexes of colors and pitches and other " quali-
4 Perry, Ealph B., "The New Bealism," page 118.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 47
ties, ' ' while the independent substances were not even imaginable. The
divergence of real a and known-a might be as great as that between
immaterial essences and space-filling bodies. The possibilities for
persuasive dogmatism here are wide.
Or knowing might be, not a transforming, but only a selecting
activity. In that event, known-a might differ from real a as a con-
tinuously flowing whole from a cinematograph picture of it, or as a
valuable collection from a junk heap, or an ordered array from a
chaos. Knowing might be selecting so as to satisfy certain practical
interests. Our Euclidean space might be just such a prejudiced se-
lection from an n-dimensional or undimensional reality. And so on,
for the other characters of our world as we know it. If knowing is
such an activity, dominated by interests, all the reality we can ever
hope to know will be relative to those interests. If knowing is acting
according to certain principles, then the world of our possible knowl-
edge will reflect the legislation of those principles.
To revert to the predicament in which the knower finds himself ;
he seems to be confined to the experience of such realities as are, by
their nature, capable of entering the knowledge relation if knowing
is passive, or which are transformed or selected according to certain
principles if knowing is a way of acting. If knowledge transforms
or interestedly selects, or if some reals are by nature unfitted to the
knowledge relation, then known reality will so far fail to indicate
the character of reality as it exists independently of knowledge. That
independent reality is neither transformed nor otherwise misrepre-
sented by known-a's, the knower can not, from the nature of his
predicament, ever know; while the seemingly active character of
knowing lends color to the supposition that "knowledge" misrep-
resents the independently real.
The assertion even that there is such an independent reality must
remain a sheer assumption. The realist may point out the fallacy
of arguing from the fact that all known reals are known. And the
subjectivist may retort that if there be any unknown real, it is an
identical proposition that nobody knows it. That reality is not trans-
formed when brought into the knowledge relation, is a similar as-
sumption. The proof of it would require the impossible comparison
of known-a with unknown-a. That an independent reality has this
or that character must remain an unwarranted assertion, when all
the a's which can be known will be known-a j s.
When the number and variety of activistic theories of knowledge
is remembered, it seems a hardy dogmatism which opposes to them
all the necessarily unproved thesis that the real is independent of
knowledge ; and then adds that this independent reality is already so
finely divided that no analysis can ever be carried so far as to violate
48 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
its nature; but that all the relations and all the organization which
mind can "legitimately" think are also already there; in particular,
that these independent reals maintain all the logical relations; and,
finally, that any of these reals or any complex of them may enter
into the knowledge relation a notable case of a relation not already
there without being transformed. Such a happy conjunction of
miracles reminds one of Leibniz's preestablished harmony. But this
latter-day best-of-all-possible-worlds appeals to no sufficient reason.
Whoever takes the principles of knowledge to be legislative for
whatever can properly be called real, and holds reality to be so far
dependent on knowledge, will be assured if he makes out his case
that known-a's and real a's are not of essentially different character,
and that knowledge is objectively valid. But the person who recog-
nizes his egocentric predicament and at the same time insists that
reality is independent of knowledge and its conditions, is confined
within the circle of his experience, whose relation to reality beyond
he can not know. Hence, from the idealistic point of view a sub-
jectivist is not one who takes reality to be essentially relative to
knowledge, but one who takes it to be independent. Subjectivism
and dogmatism are twins.
If reality is independent, while the knower can not jump out of
the circle of his own experience, then we have the alternatives of
skepticism for the critically minded or any one of a presumably
infinite number of dogmatisms. None of these will be able to prove
that reality is independent of knowledge, because such a proof would
require the discovery of not-known reals and their comparison with
those known. And none of these dogmatisms will be able to prove
that independent reality has the character attributed to it, because
the only reals which are, beyond doubt, independent, can not be in-
vestigated. Thus whatever is constructive in such a theory, will
necessarily remain indemonstrable. The utmost that can be proved
is that some other theorist's argument, e. g., the subjectivist's argu-
ment from the egocentric predicament, does not prove his case.
The subjectivist's view, as a dogma, can not be proven false; it can
only be proven not proved. And every dogmatism can perform this
service for every other.
If the foregoing is correct, it is no accident that the realistic doc-
trine is largely negative. Eather, it is inevitably the case that every
such view should contain two parts; the more important consisting
of proofs that the proofs not the views of other theories are un-
sound; the other portion made up of unproven assertions about an
independent reality. It is a psychological defect that flesh is heir to,
that we are sometimes led to believe a doctrine because arguments
for an opposing theory are invalid. The realist surely means to take
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 49
no advantage of us in this respect. If realists have disproved certain
arguments for the dependence of reality upon knowledge, they have
not thereby established the independence of reality. If the realist be
right, and idealism essentially subjectivistic, it must, to be sure, re-
nounce its claim to a critical foundation. But it would still remain
a consistent dogma, and as good as any other.
If it is taken to be the case that realism has undermined the
idealist's proofs that the logical relations hold among reals because
reality is relative to a legislative reason, still the idealistic conten-
tion is as probable as any. The realist can not disprove the assertion.
He can never catch a reality out of relation to human reason, in order
to discover if it still maintains its conformity to logical principles.
That the logical relations are found among things does not make
realism any more probable. For if to be real means to conform to
certain categorical modes of thinking, then it will be an identical
proposition which asserts that these principles state the relations of
real things. The realist can only set up his own counter assertion
and return to the business of demolishing the opponent's proofs.
Thus we might conceivably be presented with dogmatic idealism and
dogmatic realism as equally consistent and equally unproved doc-
trines; and the choice between them might, then, turn upon prag-
matic considerations of workability or temperamental preferences.
If the realist can advance no direct proof that reality not only
may be, but is independent of knowledge, that the independently
real not only might not be, but is not altered when it enters the
knowledge relation, that reality not only may be, but is so finely
divided that analysis can never misrepresent it, and so on for his
other contentions, then his arguments must necessarily be confined
to the refutation of the proofs of other theories. In that event his
case can prosper only if he turns philosophy into a Donnybrook
Fair and hits every non-realistic head that shows. Even so, he will
not prove his case, but only establish its possible truth, the impossi-
bility of proving the opposite. If this is the utmost that can be hoped
from a philosophic theory, it is well that we should recognize it, and
pay our respects to Hume. C. I. LEWIS.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
DISCUSSION
THE ANTILOGISM AN EMENDATION
WHEN I wrote my paper on logic 1 in which I strongly urge the
use of the symmetrical forms of speech and of reasoning,
"no a is 6," "some a is &," "is-inconsistent-with," etc., I adopted
1 ' ' Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns Hopkins University. ' '
50 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the plan, occasionally, as an abbreviation, of writing simply the sym-
bol for "is excluded from," instead of ' ' is-excluded-f rom every-
thing." This can be safely done, because the other special term of
logic, "nothing," or "the non-existent," does not occur with this
copula. But I do not now approve of this device, and I write for the
antilogism (inconsistent triad)
instead of the form quoted by Dr. Karl Schmidt, 2 in which the sign
co, meaning "existent things" or "possible states of things" is
omitted. For example, take this imaginary case of rebuttal (or in-
consistency) : " No priests are saints. " " But some priests are martyrs,
and there are no martyrs who are not saints." With this but it is
affirmed (correctly) that these three statements can not all be true
at once that their conjunction is-excluded-f rom "all possible states
of things," or from oo. In terms of a, &, and c, 3 one may construct
this: "Nothing that's acid is blue." "But some cold things are blue,
and nothing that is cold is non-acid." This antilogism is quite as
intuitively evident as the syllogism, although it contains four terms
and two negative propositions. All the fifteen valid modes of syllog-
ism can be immediately put into this form, and the rule for validity
is self-evident. 4
To take another example: That no human beings are immortal
and no angels are mortal precludes any angels being human. Here
the copula of the compound statement occurs farther within, and no
existence-term is necessary :
(h \/ i m}(a\/m^)\/(a\/h}.
The formula says: "precludes that any angels (some angels) are
human, ' ' but rhetoric has a strong penchant for turning the verb of
a subordinate proposition into a verbal noun.
CHRISTINE LADD-FRANKLIN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
EEVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism. The Gifford Lectures de-
livered in the University of St. Andrews in the Years 1907-10. JAMES
WARD. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Cambridge, England : Uni-
versity Press. 1911.
" These lectures are intended to serve as a sequel to the course deliv-
ered in the "University of Aberdeen some ten years previously. If at that
* This JOURNAL, Vol. IX., page 668.
1 See Philosophical Review, Vol. XXI., page 651.
* Philosophical Eeview, XXI., page 648.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 51
time I had foreseen that I should presently be favoured with the oppor-
tunity to lecture on the Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism I might
well have entitled the earlier lectures the Realm of Nature or Natural-
ism and Agnosticism. There my endeavour was to establish the priority
of the idealistic, or as it seems clearer to say the spiritualistic stand-
point; and here I have tried to ascertain what we can know, or reason-
ably believe, concerning the constitution of the world, interpreted through-
out and strictly in terms of Mind. At the outset, this world immediately
confronts us not as one Mind, nor even as the manifestation of one, but
as an objective whole in which we discern many minds in mutual inter-
action. It is from this pluralistic standpoint that our experience has in
fact developed, and it is here that we acquire the ideas that eventually
lead us beyond it. For pluralism, though empirically warranted, we find
defective and unsatisfactory; but the theism to which it points is only an
ideal an ideal however, that, as both theoretically and practically ra-
tional, may claim our faith though it transcend our knowledge. Such is
the meagre outline of the present lectures" (pp. v-vi).
The reviewer will not attempt to fill out this outline for the reader by
citation of passages where the author's views are presented in fuller de-
tail. While it is not always well to begin at the end of a book, it would
perhaps not be bad advice in this case to recommend that the last chapter
be read first. In that chapter the author summarizes the main course of
his inquiry and states as positively as may be the results that he seems
to himself to have attained, and finally he glances at some topics for
further reflection. A preliminary reading of that chapter will serve to
give a general idea of the goal to which the author is leading through
what at the time may seem devious paths of subtle argument.
These arguments it is manifestly impossible to present here. Whether
they are valid or no is not the fundamental question. There is a more
fundamental question, and that is whether all this argument may not be
vitiated, so far as it leads to the ultimate conclusion, by reason of the fact
that it presupposes the establishment of " the priority of the idealistic or
the spiritualistic standpoint." If " Naturalism and Agnosticism " has
made good its fundamental contention that naturalism is ultimately un-
tenable, then we may well inquire what sort of spiritualism we shall
adopt. If it has not, then we may feel that such an inquiry is premature.
In other words the present work has all the value and (may one add?)
only the value of a sequel. To the idealist, therefore, the thorough dis-
cussions in the volume are sure to appear of great importance. To those
who are not idealists the book will appeal as presenting an interesting
variant of a mistaken or at least a doubtful theory. But whatever may
be the judgment we finally pass upon this type of spiritualism, it is a dis-
tinct gain to philosophical thought to have before us a spiritualism that is
less dogmatic than the idealism of Royce. Royce endeavors to prove that
his philosophy is the necessary view of the world. Ward recognizes that
his spiritualism is largely a matter of faith. Royce knows that there is an
Absolute Experience in which all the evils of life are eternally transmuted
into good. Ward believes but his expression of belief makes it seem more
52 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
like hope that there is a growing harmony of free interacting agents,
and that good and more good will be the outcome, obtained through the
guidance and support of a "finite God." God's finiteness, however, does
not for him imply God's imperfection. A finite God means " all that God
can mean, if God implies the world and is not God without it: it means
a living God with a living world, not a potter God with a world of illusory
clay, not an inconceivable abstraction that is only infinite and absolute "
(p. 444). God's finiteness is his self-determination in creating free spirits,
whose freedom sets limits to Himself. Ward's spiritualism is thus a form
of idealism that will undoubtedly find welcome where Eoyce's absolutism
may seem oppressive and tyrannic and even anti-moral.
One reason why "Naturalism and Agnosticism" seems to have failed
to prove naturalism untenable may perhaps be referred to here, inasmuch
as the fallacious argument is restated in the volume now before us. " As
naturalism claims to approximate to a complete formulation of this phe-
nomenal order, so spiritualism may claim to approximate to an interpre-
tation of the underlying reality; but it will have this advantage, that
while it may be possible, setting out from mind, to account for mechan-
ism, it is impossible, setting out from mechanism, to account for mind "
(p. 18). This impossibility is hastily taken for granted; the haste is
shown in the assumption that naturalism can not appropriate to its own
uses the conception of epigenesis. If " the so-called evolution of the
world is really epigenesis, creative synthesis," which " implies continual
new beginnings " (p. 270), why may not a first appearance of mind be one
of these new beginnings in a natural world? If in a world of free inter-
acting agents there may be a heterogony of ends, why may there not be in
a naturally evolving world a heterogony of effects? The answer presum-
ably would be that the only causality naturalism can recognize is mechan-
istic causality. But what is mechanistic causality? If it be the kind of
causality that has figured largely in the history of naturalism, according
to which the material can beget only the material, the natural emergence
of the spiritual from the material would be inconceivable. But why
should the naturalistic conception of causality be so restricted? If spirit-
ualism does not cease to be spiritualism in spite of the great transforma-
tion it has undergone from Leibnitz to Ward, why may not naturalism be
equally transformed and yet remain naturalism? These questions are not
asked with a view to leading up to an answer on the spot. They are
merely intended to suggest that possibly old-fashioned naturalism and
new-fashioned spiritualism do not preempt the field to the exclusion of a
new-fashioned naturalism.
Before closing this brief review, its writer wishes to question whether
Professor Ward's severe strictures upon Professor Howison's views are
deserved. Professor Howison is, as we all know, well equal to the task of
defending himself; but there are some attacks that imply misconceptions
so far-reaching that defense would involve a full restatement of the views
assailed. Whether such a restatement seems called for now in this case,
Professor Howison alone can decide. The reviewer however feels that a
personal loyalty makes it incumbent on him to caution the reader against
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 53
hastily accepting Professor Ward's interpretation of Professor Howison's
position. He is convinced that only a thorough-going misconception can
account for the tone of the polemic contained in the second Supplemen-
tary Note (p. 455). EVANDER BRADLEY McGiLVARY.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.
English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy. JAMES SETH. New
York: E. P. Button and Co. 1912. Pp. 372.
" The aim of this volume is to trace the chief stages in the develop-
ment of English philosophy, through a study of its leading representa-
tives in their relation to one another and to the general movement of
English philosophical thought." One might infer from this that the
work was merely a selection from a larger history of philosophy, but, as
a fact, two features of its plan serve to distinguish it. First, there is a
consistent attempt to emphasize the dominant characters of English
thought as they reappear in successive thinkers the " experiential "
strain, the interest in the problem of knowledge, above all, the subordina-
tion of the speculative to the practical motive. In this picture of a
nation thinking lies the chief interest of the book. Secondly, Professor
Seth has preserved the unity of the composition by dwelling upon the
outstanding figures and refusing to crowd the canvas with minor char-
acters. The method adopted has been to introduce each chapter by
summarizing the logical connection of the doctrines of the individual
school or philosopher with the results of preceding reflection and then to
provide, largely by dexterous quotation, a somewhat detailed, yet con-
densed account of those doctrines. These introductions, it may be said,
are admirable pieces of work and one would willingly have had more of
them at the expense of some of the detail. The author's assignment of
his space may indicate the distribution of his attention. In a total of
372 pages Bacon has 35, Hobbes 22, the Cambridge Platonists 12, Locke
28, Berkeley 25, Hume 37, the Moralists 38, while the nineteenth century
has 117, of which idealism receives 48. It is obvious that criticism of
such a work as this must confine itself to matters of selection and ar-
rangement. It may be said that the main purpose of the author has been
achieved. One is left with a vivid impression of the English spirit as
revealed unmistakably in its philosophy. But the impression is as un-
lovely as it is vivid. For the development of thought here outlined is
indicative less of the growth of a system of ideas than of an unconquer-
able insularity of mind, an insularity in which, when one considers such
an expanse, unbroken save by Berkeley, of the practical, the prosaic, and
the pedestrian, one finds nothing to admire. No palliative phrases,
" rugged independence " and the like, can conceal the native lack of
imagination.
A doubt remains as to the success of the undertaking to regard
" English Philosophy as a form of English Literature." Presumably the
requirement of the series was a hard one. It is difficult to know how one
should treat the work of Herbert Spencer or of Mr. Bradley, for example,
as literature. Still something more might have been done in this direc-
54 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tion than a few scattered and perfunctory remarks on style. Surely it is
not fantastic, for instance, to see a close connection between the eight-
eenth century poet's love of the conventional epithet, of the formal, the
pseudo-classic and the eighteenth century philosopher's decent acquies-
cence in the limitations of his knowledge. For Hume the ideal is " a
correct judgment which avoiding all distant and high enquiries, con-
fines itself to common life and to such subjects as fall under daily prac-
tice and experience; leaving the more sublime topics to the embellish-
ment of poets and orators " precisely because we can know so little of that
world beyond us. When Pope turns nature into a formal garden, may
we not see at work a similar dread of " enthusiasm " before the unknown ?
There may be no evidence in support of such a suggestion, but considera-
tions of this kind might serve to bring philosophy and literature into a
closer relationship than the present volume establishes.
One further comment may be added. The method of exposition by
copious quotation from the original sources, although it inspires confi-
dence, creates a feeling of discomfort, as of crumbs in the bed. The
quality of smoothness is wholly absent. Where the discussion enters
into details this feeling tends to magnify our estimate of their mass,
whereas, except in the case of the chapters on Bacon and John Stuart
Mill, we need just the opposite: namely, some simple whole view of the
individual thinker. C. A. BENNETT.
YALE UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
EEVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE. July, 1912.
Pourquoi I'espace a trois dimensions (pp. 483-504) : H. POINCARE. -
Analysis situs in relation to the determination by experience of our space
as three dimensional. Ch. Secretan, sa vie et son ceuvre (pp. 505-515) :
M. MILLIOUD. - The only metaphysician that romanticism has produced in
France; his thought was living because it was lived, and an exact idea of
his philosophy can not be had apart from his biography. Les idees cos-
mogoniques modernes (pp. 516-537) : E. BELOT. - A treatment of cosmo-
gonic theories as to their progress toward truth and a discussion of the
possibility of finding a criterion of value, the application of which would
be a condition of progress. Etudes critiques. La philosophic des mathe-
matiques de MM. Russell and Whitehead: H. DUFUMIER. La philosophic
de Georg Simmel (ler article) : A. MAMELET. Questions pratiques.
L 'education sexuelle: M. DJUVARA. Supplement.
REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE. July, 1912. Nervose et Mysticisme.
Sainte Terese releve-t-elle de la pathologie (first article) (pp. 5-32) : A.
Hue. - Orthodox mystic phenomena are not to be explained as morbid
psychological states. An examination of the modifications of the sensuous
experience of the mystics shows that their goal, inspiration, method, and
results are different from those of fanatics. Mystic exaggerations are not
caused by sensuous mechanism, and do not show disorganization, but har-
mony of psychic forces. L'univocite scotiste (first article) (pp. 3344) :
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 55
S. BELMOND. - The being of God is shared by his creatures only by analogy.
Duns Scotus is not in essential disagreement with Thomas. The views of
Petazzi are attacked. Revue critique d'histoire de la philosophic antique.
II. L'orphisme et la question Hippocratique (first article) (pp. 45-72) :
A. DIES. - A review of the recent literature on the influence of orphic
and scientific ideas upon pre-Socratic philosophy. Joel exaggerates the
orphic influence. Authorities date the orphic hymns variously, from the
second century B.C. to the fifth A.D. Littie is the basis for the earlier work
on the Hippocratic texts. Les invalides moraux (pp. 73-84) : R. VAN
DER ELST. - The scholastic view that morality and intelligence are not
separable functions is correct. Moral weakness is accompanied by intel-
lectual disorder and must be treated by intellectual repair. Les elements
constitutifs de nos sensations. Leurs rapports (pp. 85-94) : F. CHOVET. -
The affective and representative elements are inseparable in our sensa-
tions and perceptions. The quality of resistance assures us of the reality
of external objects. Analyses et comptes rendus. F. C. S. SCHILLER,
Formal logic a scientific and social problem; E. N. HENDERSON, A text-
book on the principles of education; M. VAUTHIER, Essais de philosophic
sociale; A. DE POULPIQUET, L'objet integral de I'apologetique; B. ALLO,
La paix dans la verite; T. WEHRLE, La methode d'immanence; TH.
CREMER, Le probleme religieux dans la philosophie de I'action. Notes
bibliographique. Recension des revues et chronique.
Brehaut, Ernest. An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages : Isidore of Seville.
New York : Columbia University Press. 1912. Pp. 274.
Culler, Arthur Jerome. Interference and Adaptability. Archives of
Psychology, Number 24. New York: The Science Press. 1912. Pp.
v + 80.
De La Vaissiere, J. Philosophia Naturalis. 2 Vols. Paris: Gabriel
Beauchesne. 1912. Pp. xix 4-343 and xix + 399.
De La Vaissiere, J. Elements de Psychologie Experimental. Paris:
Gabriel Beauchesne. 1912. Pp. xiv ~f- 381.
De Meissner, Sophie Radford. There are No Dead. Boston: Sherman,
French, and Company. 1912. Pp. 116. $1.00.
Jeanniere, R. Criteriologia vel Critica Cognitionis Certae. Paris:
Gabriel Beauchesne. 1912. Pp. xvi + 616.
Loveday, T., and Green, J. A. An Introduction to Psychology. Oxford:
Clarendon Press. 1912. Pp. iv + 272. 3s. 6d.
Smith, Benjamin. Ecce Deus: Studies of Primitive Christianity. Chi-
cago : Open Court Publishing Company. 1912. Pp. xxiv + 352. $2.25.
Stewart, Herbert Leslie. Questions of the Day in Philosophy and Psy-
chology. New York: Longmans, Green, and Company. 1912. Pp.
ix + 284. $3.00.
Stokes, Ella Harrison. The Conception of a Kingdom of Ends in Augus-
tine, Aquinas, and Leibniz. Chicago: University Press. 1912. ^ Pp.
iv + 129. $.75.
Whetham, William Cecil Dampier, and Catherine Durning. Science and
the Human Mind. New York: Longmans, Green, and Company.
1912. Pp. xi + 304. $1.60.
56 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
THE twenty-first annual meeting of the American Psychological As-
sociation was held under the presidency of Professor Thorndike at the
Western Reserve University in Cleveland, December 30 to January 1.
The attendance was above the average. The program of papers was very
full, and included sessions devoted to experimental, comparative, educa-
tional, and applied psychology, as well as general psychology. A pleasant
innovation was a dinner, shared by seventy of those in attendance, immedi-
ately preceding the presidential address on Tuesday evening. The follow-
ing officers were elected : Professor Howard C. Warren, of Princeton Uni-
versity, President; Professor J. W. Baird, of Clark University, and Pro-
fessor Madison Bentley, of the University of Illinois, members of the
Council to serve three years ; and Professor Shepherd Ivory Franz, mem-
ber of the Council for one year to fill a vacancy. Professor W. V. Bing-
ham, of Dartmouth College, continues as Secretary.
PROFESSOR HENRI BERGSON, of the College de France, will lecture at
Columbia University during the first three weeks in February. He will
deliver six public lectures in French, on the general topic " Spiritualite
et Liberte," on February 3, 4, 10, 11, 17, and 18. He will also give six
lectures in English, designed primarily for the students and instructors
of the department of philosophy at Columbia University, on the after-
noons of February 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, and 21. The general subject of these
lectures will be " The Method of Philosophy : Outline of a Theory of
Knowledge." In addition to his engagements at Columbia, Professor
Bergson will lecture at Princeton and at Harvard.
DR. C. E. FERREE, associate professor of experimental psychology at
Bryn Mawr College, has been appointed director of the psychological lab-
oratory. A separate building has been granted him by the college to be
used exclusively as a graduate laboratory of experimental psychology.
This building will be fitted up for research work alone, and will, when
finished, consist of eight rooms. One or more optics rooms will be provided,
furnished with sky-lights, diffusion sashes, etc., for the control of illumi-
nation, and with concrete piers running to the ground to give a vibration-
less support for delicate apparatus. The regular services of a mechanician
will be available for this laboratory.
PROFESSOR R. J. KELLOGG, of James Millikan University, has begun to
issue in periodical form numbers of Studies in Linguistic Psychology.
Two numbers have already appeared. The subscription price is $1.25 per
volume of four numbers of 64 pages each, and orders may be sent to Messrs.
G. E. Stechert and Company, 151 West 25th Street, New York City, or to
Professor Kellogg at Decatur, Illinois.
THE following appointments have recently been made in the depart-
ment of philosophy at Harvard University for the year 1913-14 : Professor
R. F. Alfred Hoernle and Hon. Bertrand Russell as lecturers, Professor
Hoernle to give regular courses during the first half year and Mr. Russell
during the second half year, and Dr. B. H. G. Fuller as instructor.
VOL. X. No. 3. JANUARY 30, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
WE have had, within the past few years, much discussion of per-
ception and its object. The problem has betrayed itself as a
parting of the ways as significant for what the solution accorded it
may result in and not merely as in itself furnishing material for
the exercise of intellectual curiosity. The realists, recently grown
very bold, have urged their doctrine, or the somewhat differing va-
rieties of their doctrine, with earnestness and insistence. The ideal-
ists, not wholly united, as is quite natural, have, nevertheless, made
something like common cause, and have defended themselves with
energy. The pragmatists, though they may call themselves realists,
do not seem to have been precisely in either camp. Where so many
clever men, of different standpoints, consent to give their attention
to the one problem, and where they work, not in isolation, but stim-
ulated by dispute, and conscious of the points of agreement or of dif-
ference that characterize them, it would be strange if the various
facets of the problem under discussion were not presented to us with
a good deal of clearness. And if there is a pronounced flaw in any
facet, it seems unlikely that we should be allowed to be inattentive
to it.
So many have written, and many have written so well, that the
difficulty of presenting the problem in any distinctly new aspect
must make itself acutely felt. Has not every facet already been in-
spected ? Has not the importance of each been insisted upon ? Then
why waste effort in trying to bring before the reading public a new
one?
Fortunately, such is not my task. I am concerned rather to do
something which has, I think, attracted less careful attention than
57
58 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the exhibition of the significance of individual aspects of the prob-
lem. I am concerned to inquire whether, if we take into considera-
tion all the aspects, trying to do justice to each, and to avoid exag-
gerating the importance of each, our problem may not become less
an apple of discord, and more a problem whose reasonable solution
need not leave any of us wholly discontented and humiliated by the
consciousness of unredeemed error.
My way of approach to this task lays itself open to the charge of
bringing philosophy down into the market-place, where we do not
usually look for philosophy. What I have to say in my justification
I shall say a little later. Here I shall begin at once with what I shall
call the common sense doctrine of percept and object. I wish to call
attention to its many-sidedness, and to point out that the elements in
it do not appear, on the surface, at least, to be wholly in accord with
one another. This lack of harmony between the articles of his creed
does not seem to distress the plain man. It does not embarrass him
in his dealings with things. It may cause acute distress to the phi-
losopher who agrees with him heartily upon the one point, but can
not see how he can conscientiously give assent, at the same time, to
another.
I hope I may be permitted to include under the common sense
doctrine opinions formulated, half-formulated, and ready to be
formulated. This is rather loose, to be sure, but common sense is, in
a sense, a loose and vague term. If a man can act, but remains abso-
lutely blind to what he is doing when he acts, we can not say that he
has any doctrine at all. We can hardly affirm that men generally
are in this state. Most of them appear to be dimly aware, at least,
of what they are doing when they are dealing with the things about
them. Some, even of the unlearned, have rather definite opinions
they have arrived at something like a formulation, even though it be
not couched in very general terms. And a man's mind may hold in
solution opinions which will not take the form of a precipitate unless
some definite question be asked and he be pressed for an answer.
But, if the asking of the question at once results in the precipi-
tate; if the man under interrogation claims something as his opin-
ion; if he insists that he has always known the truth in question
does it seem just that we should dwell much upon the fact that he
has not before been led to formulate his belief in a general way ? The
fact that he does not speak as a philosopher, and that he may be
unaware of the mutual consistency or inconsistency of his statements,
as well as of the consequences which may be deduced from his admis-
sions, speaks rather for the spontaneity and impartiality with which
he attempts to describe what seems given in his experience.
I do not mean to speak dogmatically touching the articles of the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 69
common sense doctrine. What I put forward is offered for criti-
cism. It is not the expression of a fixed conviction which I am un-
willing to modify in the face of evidence. Such as it is, let us look
at it critically.
I. Does not the plain man hold that percept and object may vary
independently; that the former may cease to exist while the latter
continues to exist; that the two may have different times of being;
that to each must be assigned its own place in the system of things ;
that the percept may be relatively simple while the object is very
complex ?
If he holds all this, does he, or may he, also hold that when per-
cepts are given in experience, objects are given in experience? Does
not his doctrine exclude all talk of the numerical identity of percept
and object?
That the plain man does take the positions indicated above ap-
pears undeniable, when we remain in the region of the concrete, and
apply ourselves to simple illustrations. Thus,
1. Does he not accept the commonplace fact that walking around
a table and looking at it will result in a whole series of different per-
cepts, while the table perceived remains unchanged?
2. Is he not aware that the percept may cease to be that he may
close his eyes while the object, the table, continues to exist?
3. Does he not know that an occurrence may be perceived after it
has ceased to exist? that he may hear a sound long after the blow
has been struck ? that he may see a star which no longer shines ?
4. Does not the plain man, if interrogated, refer the percept to
"the mind," and the mind to the body? Where does he put the
table perceived?
5. Does any man who exercises ordinary common sense ever sup-
pose that he perceives the whole of a table at once, inside and out-
side, back and front ? or does he recognize that the table is something
far richer and more complex than any percept of it ?
It seems, then, that common sense accepts percept and object as
two, making no effort to get on without either ; and it appears as clear
that it treats these two in distinctly different ways. Nor does it
seem indicated that it regards these two as given in experience "side
by side." Men do not normally see double. Does common sense,
then, implicitly deny that the object is immediately given in experi-
ence? Or does it implicitly deny the percept? On the surface, it
does not appear willing to do either.
II. May we not say that common sense tacitly accepts the fact
that we can know things only as they appear to us? And is not this
a virtual denial that objects perceived are independent things?
What plain man is ignorant of the significance of the senses and
60 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
brain in our knowing of things? "We find it natural that eyes
should reveal colors, ears sounds, and finger-tips something differ-
ent. Who does not know that, where a given sense is lacking, objects
can not be perceived under the guise appropriate to that sense.
And certainly no plain man living ever attempts to know objects
as unknown as "out of the cognitive relation," whatever that may
mean. I apologize for the use of the technical expression in discus-
sing anything so little technical as common sense. I mean only to
indicate that, whatever the conditions of our knowing may be, ob-
jects known appear to be accepted by men generally as none the
worse for their being known, and as quite capable of satisfying all
the theoretical and practical purposes with which investigations are
undertaken.
Does it follow that common sense regards the object given in ex-
perience as a something dependent upon our own constitution?
Would it be willing to maintain that we can know things only as they
appear to us, and that they appear to us as they do because we are
what we are ? May we contrast with such a knowledge of things the
knowing of things independently, and regard the latter as a conceiv-
able, if unattainable, extension of knowledge?
III. He who dwells exclusively upon what has been said so far,
might easily be led to maintain that common sense accepts, tacitly,
at least, that percepts are not the same as their objects, but are
numerically distinct; that we know objects only through percepts;
that the latter are dependent upon our constitution, and must take
their color from us; and that, consequently, we may not say that
objects independent of us are directly given in experience. This
seems to make common sense subjectivistic.
But, surely, he who feels impelled to maintain that this is the
common sense doctrine must recognize the necessity of further main-
taining that it is accepted only tacitly and unconsciously by the plain
man to whom he attributes it. For, stated boldly and explicitly, it
appears to arouse opposition and irritation. The plain man is driven
to protest, somewhat as did Thomas Reid. And even if no active
protest is elicited from him, in the cases where he is let alone and is
not rendered anxious about the possible consequences of his admis-
sions and assumptions, do we not find him making other assumptions
quite different in their suggestions from those indicated above?
Thus, does he not maintain that, in perceiving, he is always ex-
periencing objects, not copies, not images, not representatives of any
sort, but the objects themselves ? Are not these the objects that may
remain unchanged, although the percepts vary? that may continue
to exist when the percepts go out of being ? Is not this an assertion
of the independence of the object given in experience?
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 61
The plain man is, to be sure, quite ready to admit that, under
given circumstances, he may enjoy a poor view of the object. But
what is his remedy for this ? Is it not to obtain a better view ? And
it is a view of the object that he seems to want. The fact that it is a
view of the object never seems to trouble him, or to rob him of the ob-
ject itself. Suppose we tell him that, in perceiving, he can never,
under any conceivable circumstances, get anything but "views," and
that such views are never the object, and may all be quite unlike it.
Will he be inclined to cast about for some other method of getting at
the object, or will he simply disregard our insinuations and go on
doing what he did before ?
It seems too much to expect him to admit that he has never known
objects. He has always known that he has experienced them under
a variety of aspects, but this does not appear to have prevented him
from finding out a great deal about them. He has distinguished be-
tween delusive appearances of objects and, as he expresses it, ob-
jects as they really are. He has seen the man of science deal with
things as he does, but more systematically and thoroughly, and he
has not found him embarrassed by the fact that observation results
in views of things. Objects have been described as though they were
given in experience. No embarrassment has resulted from this treat-
ment of them. They have been described, they are described, in a
multitude of scientific books, and no mention has been made of the
fact that the books in question are dealing only with "views." They
seem to be describing objects, and it seems to be assumed that the
objects have been observed, experienced by some one.
May we expect the plain man to recognize the situation as a
' ' predicament ' ' ? What sort of a predicament is it that occasions no
one any inconvenience, and never prevents any one from doing any-
thing that he wants to do? And, to recur to a point touched upon
a little above, can we expect the plain man to feel that he is put in a
"predicament" by the fact that he can not experience things except
as he experiences them, or describe them except as they are revealed
to him ? Is he compelled to undertake this peculiar task, if he would
describe things as they are? Is it properly a task to be performed
either by the plain man or the man of science? Neither appears to
have the slightest desire to undertake it, nor does either appear to
consider his account of objects incomplete merely because he has not
supplemented his account of objects as known by an account of them
as he does not and can not know them.
The plain man, then, whatever else he believes, seems to believe
that, not percepts merely, but objects, are given in his experience
the objects which he distinguishes from percepts, which may remain
unchanged though percepts vary, which may continue to exist when
62 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
percepts of them drop out of being. Shall we put this down as a
part of the common sense doctrine?
IV. Again, admitting all that has been said about the plain
man's consciousness of the part played by the sense-organs and the
nervous system in the perception of objects, could we induce him to
acquiesce in the statement that a man, in knowing an object, creates
it wholly or partially? Would he even be willing to admit that the
object is changed in becoming known ?
Thus, we all know that the experience which a man has of the
contents of a given room must be different from the experience of
the same objects enjoyed by a dog, and very different from the ex-
perience of an insect. Is it proper to say that a man, in knowing a
shelf of books, makes it over, creates the object of his percept?
Would the average man not read in philosophy be ignorant of the
fact that things may seem different to different creatures? Would
he be impelled by his knowledge to assert that each creature makes
its own "things" or objects, when he is confronted by something as
concrete and definite as a shelf of books ?
A shelf of books can undoubtedly be made. It can easily be
changed in a variety of ways. But can a man be said to make it,
when he does nothing but open his eyes upon it? Can he be said to
change it, when he allows his glance to pass over it, first from left to
right, then from right to left ? Common sense recognizes, does it not,
that desire and purpose have much to do with the nature and order
of our percepts ? Is any man ignorant that the experiences we have
are often determined by what we desire to look for and what we re-
solve to do ? But does the fact that we vary the nature and order of
our percepts necessarily mean that we are changing the objects we
perceive ? I see six dots on a bit of paper before me. I can think of
them as 2 -(- 2 -|- 2, or I can treat them as 3 -f- 3. When I pass from
the one operation to the other, does anything happen to the dots?
Are there less or more of them? are their actual relations to each
other changed? One may read a book with the deliberate intent of
correcting typographical errors, or one may read it with a view to
comprehending and criticizing the doctrine it embodies. Does com-
mon sense hold that the typographical errors made manifest in the
one reading become nonexistent in the second ? Or does it hold that
they all remain unaltered unless they are changed in some quite dif-
ferent way?
Does this not indicate that common sense recognizes that the ob-
ject is independent of the percept, and is revealed in experience as
thus independent? that the nature of the object and the changes
which take place in it are open to observation and need not be con-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 63
founded with the nature of the percept at any given time, or with
merely perceptual changes?
Let me summarize very briefly :
1. Does not common sense deny the numerical identity of per-
cept and object, and recognize that they may vary independently?
2. Does it not, in tacitly accepting the significance for percep-
tion of brain and sense organs, implicitly hold that we can know
things only as they seem to us?
3. Does it not repudiate the doctrine that we are shut up to
mental representatives of things, and hold with a good deal of tena-
city to the opinion that the ''things themselves" are immediately
given in perception?
4. Does it not insist that we can gain by observation the distinc-
tion between changes in our percepts and changes in their objects?
Is this not a recognition of the independence of objects as given in
experience ?
Suppose that all these questions are answered in the affirmative.
I should like to ask: (1) Are the answers unequivocal? (2) Are
they mutually consistent? (3) Do they seem to be justified by fact,
or is common sense plainly in error?
I have no disposition to treat the plain man as an oracle. But
he may be regarded as material to be turned to account by the crit-
ical. In some fields his opinion is quite valueless ; in others it is not.
The distinction between percept and object is drawn first in our
dealings with the familiar things of our every-day experience. We
have not had to wait, before making it, for information which was
brought us only with the progress of science. In the days of Thales,
and long before them, men were compelled to deal with objects.
What would have happened to them if they had been unable, in
practise, to distinguish between percept and object, and to know
when a given change in their experience indicated a change in this
or that object, and when it did not?
It may be objected that the plain man has a right to use common
distinctions which he finds in experience, but that he should eschew
formulation. What right has he to a doctrine ?
I answer: It is far from evident that he does his work in com-
plete blindness. I am myself inclined to regard him as a witness by
no means to be despised. Our ultimate appeal should be to com-
mon experience, and not to common sense, which, it must be ad-
mitted, implies something like a formulation of what may be re-
vealed in common experience. But the disputes of philosophers make
it evident that experience is an elusive thing. In helping us to a
critical view of it, even this first vintage, this rough formulation,
furnished by the opinions of plain men, may not be without its uses.
64 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
We can not assume men to be wholly blind to the distinctions that
they are compelled to draw every day, and some of which they can
only draw correctly after giving much thought and pains to the
matter. It remains for the philosopher to sift their statements, to
weigh the justice of each, and to look into this question of their
mutual consistency. I shall turn to the philosopher in the next
paper.
GEORGE STUART FULLERTON.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
STUDIES IN THE STRUCTURE OF SYSTEMS
4. THE GENERATING PROBLEM 1
THE fight for postulates and against axioms is a fight for free-
dom in mathematics and science. It is this aspect which thus
far has been dominant in our discussion. Unlimited possibilities
are therewith opened up; by surrendering the idea of "self-evi-
dence" as a necessary requirement which the starting-point of "de-
duction" must satisfy, mathematicians have not only deepened their
insight into the real relations between the propositions of a system,
not only perfected their initial sets, not only increased the rigor of
their deductions: the real logical requirements which a deductive
system should satisfy to be acceptable have come to -light; 2 for only
if many accounts are possible can there be selection.
So far as the actual work in mathematics is concerned, nothing
further, it would seem, need be added to what has already been said
on this point. But for a theoretical account of the deductive system
form it is insufficient merely to speak of "postulates" and the
"postulate method." This theoretical insufficiency will become
apparent whenever the method is applied to fields that have not
already been worked over frequently; and it evinces itself in cer-
tain puzzling questions which sometimes trouble even the mathe-
matician. That we can, to a degree not yet determined, but appar-
ently unlimited, interchange theorems and postulates, i. e., that the
distinction between postulates and theorems is not inherent, not
absolute, but relative to the order in a particular system, all this
must be maintained. But, if the postulates appear as merely as-
1 Some of the material of this paper was presented to the American Philo-
sophical Association at its meeting at Yale University, in January, 1910. In the
present paper I limit myself to a consideration of the ' ' generating problem ' '
in a deductive system.
2 Cf. my paper, ' ' Critique of Cognition and its Principles, ' ' this JOURNAL,
Vol. VI., page 281.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 65
sumed, are they, therefore, purely arbitrary? And if they have no
warrant of their own, how can a deduction from them add anything
to the validity of a proposition ? What is the real function of these
postulates?
Some at least of these questions demand an answer in a study of
the structure of systems ; we shall revert to them in the examination
of the nature of proof in a deductive system. The difficulty for
which the present paper shall try to find a remedy may be stated
somewhat as follows. When we establish a set of postulates for
"Euclidean plane geometry" we can not use propositions of
"algebra." But if postulates are merely "assumed," why can we
not assume anything whatever and develop a system? Of course,
the concept of "truth" enters here, and in so far our question must
be answered in "critique of cognition"; but quite apart from the
question of "truth," we require a principle which will determine
that certain propositions, true or otherwise, can not by any possi-
bility be amongst the particular set of postulates. And if we speak
of postulates merely as propositions from which the system starts,
this question is left open. We need a principle which will demarcate
the field in which the "postulates" are assumed.
It is easy to see how so important a question could have been
disregarded in the work of mathematicians. They were never try-
ing to establish a set of postulates as such, but a set of postulates of
"algebra," or "geometry," etc. The field was understood as being
already well determined, and the set of postulates determined in
reference to it. But what did determine the field?
Such questions lead us to conceive the deductive system form in
a new way. Thus far we have had in mind propositions in relation
to other propositions, forming a system in their relationship. But
now we come to conceive of propositions as related, not merely to
other propositions, such as the postulates, but to a distinct class of
logical entities which may be called " problems." We conceive every
proposition, and every system of propositions, as definitely related
to a "problem" of which it is the "solution." And this relation
of a proposition to its problem is essential not only for the logical
meaning and bearing of the proposition, and not only for the deter-
mination and limitation of its "truth," but also for a complete
account of the structure of a system. It is this structural aspect
of the concept of ' ' problem, ' ' restricted to deductive systems, which
shall occupy us for the present.
By "problem" I do not mean a mere "question," not an expres-
sion of "ignorance," or "wonder," or "desire to know." All these
are expressions for subject-relations. They indicate problems which
66 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
we meet, or set ourselves. The term "problem" shall here desig-
nate a logical entity distinct from the subject-relation into which
it may enter to me or to you. I may "set" myself a problem, I may
"acknowledge" a problem, and thus enter into subject-relation to it;
however vital this relation may be for me or for the problem, what
a problem is is distinct from my relation to it.
This comes out clearly when we treat so-called "impossible"
problems. A problem may be "impossible" for me in that I can
not find a solution for it. But this psychological impossibility
does not constitute a logical impossibility, even if it is extended so as
to include all (present, past, or future) human beings; mere exten-
sion of a "psychological" relation does not make it "logical."
Numerous problems in mathematics are still (psychologically)
"impossible," though in the case of many we can prove that they
are "logically" possible. That, on the other hand, a logically
"impossible" problem may be psychologically possible the French
Academy experiences every year many times when new, and new
"solutions" of such problems as the "quadrature of the circle"
are presented to it by hopeful aspirants to immortality. That these
"solutions" are "logically" incorrect deprives them apparently
little of their "psychological" correctness, clearness, evidence, cer-
tainty.
But if we do not define ' ' problems ' ' in terms of our ' ' ignorance, ' '
how shall we define this logical entity to which a proposition is said
to be related? I shall attempt to answer this question in terms of
relation, and my procedure will be an analysis of what is meant by
"problem" in mathematics. It may, however, be well to state that
this "analysis" is, at bottom, a "construction": it is the construction
of a solution to a particular problem, namely, what a problem is;
and this solution is to be submitted, so far as its truth is concerned,
to the criteria of critique of cognition.
Problems are "felt" in various degrees of clearness, and as such
may control our actions, be it in the practical concerns of every-day
life, be it in purely theoretical considerations. The mathematician,
working through a particular field of his science, may "feel" that
something is wrong, may "perceive" that a certain proof makes tacit
assumptions, and this "feeling, ".this "perceiving" may direct him
to search for the assumption, to correct the error. But problems are
amenable to logical investigation only when they have been stated,
however imperfectly. At all events, we shall deal here with problems
only in so far as they are stated ; and our question is : how are state-
ments which represent problems distinct from those which represent
solutions ?
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 67
If I state the problem : what is the shortest distance between two
points in the Euclidean plane ? I answer : the straight line. "What
have I done? The "what" merely fills a blank; but it indicates the
locus of a concept, namely, straight line. I might have put the
problem in the form : ' ' x is the shortest distance between two points, ' '
if I had made the agreement that the letter x shall indicate the locus
of a concept. The form of a "question" is therefore merely a
grammatical device; and our ready understanding of this device
covers up an essential feature of the problem-statement, namely,
that it is in itself incomplete: it does not "propose" anything, it
does not "assert" anything; it requires another statement for its
completion. But it states a relation between concepts by which
another concept is determined.
This can be analyzed still further, and another example may be
more serviceable : Which is the larger of two chords in a circle ? The
definite relation, namely, between the sizes of two chords in a circle ;
x is the one nearer the center. This statement of the problem is very
imperfect ; what it is meant to bring out is this : the problem states a
definite relation, namely, between the sizes of two chords in a circle ;
but whilst the statement: chord a is larger than chord b would be
complete in itself, *'. e., a proposition, the addition of the x, which
transforms this proposition into a problem, leaves the whole state-
ment incomplete ; it becomes a proposition again only after the solu-
tion is added ; and this is done by introducing a new relation, namely,
"distance from the center," and asserting that these two relations
"size of chord" and "distance from center" belong together. The
problem is this demand for the establishment of a relation between
an initial relation and a new relation "determined" by it. And
this seems to be essentially the logical character of any problem.
Instead of speaking of an initial relation it would be more
correct to speak of a system of (one or more) initial relations
which the problem states. For even in the example given we
have not only the relation "a is greater than b," but also
"a and b are chords in a circle," i. e., straight lines in definite
relation to a circle. These relations are explicitly stated or indi-
cated ; others are merely implied. Thus it is implied that the stated
relations obtain in a "Euclidean plane," which expression is itself
merely an indication of relations explicitly stated in the "postu-
lates." And it is impossible to disregard these implied relations
without completely changing the problem. The importance of these
implied relations makes it imperative that somewhere they ought to
be explicitly stated and that the reference to them be unequivocal.
The logical tendency of the whole work in modern mathematics, and
68 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the inspiration of so-called mathematical logic, is to make explicit
the implicit assumptions. This is at bottom what is meant by the
slogan, opposition to intuition.
Let us designate the system of relations explicitly or implicitly
stated in a problem by R P , and the relations introduced by the solu-
tion R s , then we may write
i. e., R s is a function of R P . We shall have to examine this func-
tional relation between R s and R P in a later paper; here it is impor-
tant to state at least one of its properties: it is not necessarily a
one-one relation, i. e., given a system R P , a system R s is not neces-
sarily uniquely determined, even if the problem is "well deter-
mined." I call a problem "well determined" if of every system
of relations it is determined whether it is a solution of the problem
or not. Well-determined problems are, then, of two classes, which
may be called (1) uniquely determining problems, or problems with
uniform solutions, and (2) multiply determining problems, or prob-
lems with multiform solutions. In the first case, one and only one
solution belongs to the problem; in the second, the problem has two
or more solutions. And the important question arises: provided a
problem is well determined, can it always be transformed into a
uniquely determining problem? And what requirements must a
uniquely determining problem satisfy?
The recognition that there are problems with multiform solutions
is of very great importance, particularly as the naive mind, owing
to a lack of fertility, is inclined to believe that any problem pre-
sented, if it is well determined, must be uniquely determining ; and,
when one solution is found, holds this to be the only possible solution.
The strength of our conviction of the truth of a solution is often
inversely proportional to our ability to find other, differing solutions.
This was true until recently of such problems as the establishment
of a set of postulates of geometry, of algebra, or of principles of
mechanics ; and nothing seems more startling in the outcome of the
work of intrepid mathematicians than the conviction that most prob-
lems of a fundamental nature are multiply determining.
Many problems are multiply determining only improperly; they
can be transformed into problems with uniform solutions by slight
modifications in the statement of the problem. But even in the case
of proper multiply determining problems, a transformation of the
problem into a uniquely determining problem is often possible and
desirable. This can be done by the addition of limiting conditions,
by a restriction of the range of the variables, etc. It is not possible,
neither is it necessary, to enter here into a general discussion of the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 69
methods by which this transformation can be effected. But it is
important to state that all our problems have multiform solutions,
or fall short even of the property of being well determined, unless
the following two conditions are satisfied: (1) that the type of the
solution is determined; (2) that the critical ideal of the type is
defined. The ' ' type " of a system of propositions, stating the logical
properties of a system of logical entities, refers to the form as dis-
tinguished from the logical content. Thus the same content can be
stated in distinct forms, such as "mere enumeration," or "deductive
system form, ' ' etc. ; it is these classes of forms which I here call
' ' types ' ' ; and the solution of a problem may be required to be of the
type of the deductive system form, or of the type of mere enumera-
tion, etc. When a problem is stated in mathematics, the type is
usually understood to be that of the deductive system form; but
when a problem is stated in physics, the type would be doubtful, as
differing types are in use there, were it not that the type required is
ordinarily sufficiently indicated by the natural surroundings of our
problems. Yet it may always be called a structural fault of a prob-
lem if the required type of the solution is left to these suggestions
and implications.
From the type is to be distinguished the critical ideal. The type
is merely the logical form ; the critical ideal is the standard by which
the logical value of a system is determined. It is necessary that the
critical ideal of each type be defined. It is possible that this critical
ideal is the same for different types, though it is not necessary that
this should be so. For the type of the deductive system form, the
critical ideal is now emerging, owing to the persistent work at the
logical foundations of mathematics, and in my paper on "Critique
of Cognition" I have exhibited a set of criteria defining this ideal.
Different solutions of this problem are possible and must be judged
by their own test, i. e., they must be "self -critical." It may be
possible to include in our set defining the critical ideal of the deduc-
tive system form criteria (such as "simplicity"), so that the number
of possible solutions is reduced ; and it may even be possible to trans-
form the problem by this procedure into a uniquely determining
problem. These remarks concerning the effect of the critical ideal
on the solution of the particular problem of critique of cognition
may serve to indicate the general effect of the definition of the crit-
ical ideal of a type on the solution of problems belonging to that type.
We conceived that underlying each proposition is a problem to
which it belongs and of which it is the solution; and we saw that
this "belonging" is not necessarily a one-one correspondence, in the
sense that, given a problem, there may exist more than one solution.
70 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The inverse of this is also true: given a proposition, it may be the
solution of more than one problem. Whilst nothing prevents our
starting from a proposition and seeking the problem, or problems, of
which it is a possible solution, it is more important, and in better
harmony with the historical development of science as well as with
human nature, to start with the problem as the primary, and pro-
ceed from it to the propositions which are its solution. We intro-
duce therewith a directional element whose importance will become
apparent in later papers. From this point of view we consider a
proposition as being a response, so to speak, to a problem ; as living its
logical life merely in so far as it is a solution; as being "generated"
by a problem; and problems, on account of this call for definite
propositions as their solutions, may be said to generate these proposi-
tions. The term "generating" would then merely express the log-
ical demand for a solution, which we found to be one of the charac-
teristics of the idea "problem." However, it seems convenient to
restrict the use of the term "generating" problem somewhat arbi-
trarily, so as to avoid a mere pleonasm. In the sense specified above,
all problems are "generating problems"; I shall, however, apply the
term merely to a particular class of problems, which, as "generating
problems" shall be distinguished from the rest, which I shall call
"special problems." Let me elucidate what I mean by this dis-
tinction.
Problems cohere; they may be grouped and classified, in so far
as their systems of initial relations contain common parts. The
initial relations of a problem may be conceived as conditions which
make the solution of the problem possible; for, as the solution will
change if we change the initial relations, we can say that the pos-
sibility of the solution is conditioned by these initial relations. If,
therefore, several problems contain, amongst their initial relations, a
group which is common to all, they form a system whose possibility
is conditioned by this common group of relations. This group may
itself be conceived as a system of initial relations of a new problem ;
and we say then that the several problems are special problems of
the more general problem.
In order to state this more clearly it will be convenient to intro-
duce here the idea of "realm of a problem." We arrive at it as
follows. A logical realm is determined by a condition (or system of
conditions) ; and vice versa, to every condition (or system of condi-
tions), belongs a realm in which the condition is "satisfied" (pro-
vided we include the "zero realm" for inconsistent conditions).
Now, any proposition is here considered as the solution of a problem,
and the initial relations of the problem as conditions; they deter-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 71
mine a realm in which the initial relations "hold" (i. e., in which
the conditions are "satisfied") ; in this realm, then, the proposition
is a solution of the problem; and if the problem is properly stated,
the validity of its solution is restricted to the realm of the problem.
If now the realm of a problem P' is part of the realm of problem P,
we will say that P' lies within the realm of P, that it belongs to the
realm of P, that it is a special problem within the realm of P, or
simply a special problem of P. If, in addition, the solution of P
forms a system in the ordinary sense of the word (such as geometry,
mechanics, etc.) we shall call P a generating problem. P is the
problem which is conceived as ' ' generating ' ' the system ; the system
is a possible solution of its generating problem P; the "theorems"
of the system are possible solutions of special problems within the
realm of the generating problem of the system.
Systems are thus taken out of their self-contained isolation ; they
are not an arbitrary collection of propositions, which, like rocks in a
cyclopic wall, form a system by mere conglomeration. Systems are
possible solutions of generating problems, and it is the problem
which furnishes the organic connection between the various proposi-
tions of the system.
It follows from our definition of a generating problem that its
distinction from a special problem is not inherent, not absolute.
That lies already in the accidental character of what is usually
called a "system." Geometry forms a "system"; its problem is
therefore called a "generating problem"; but we may also call the
generating problem of geometry a special problem within the realm
of the generating problem of mathematics. It is quite conceivable
that there are special problems which can never be generating prob-
lems, and generating problems which can never become special prob-
lems; but ordinarily the distinction between special problems and
generating problems is merely relative.
Let us apply some of the foregoing remarks to a special case.
Suppose the generating problem of mechanics to be given in the
form : " to deduce from the properties of material systems which are
independent of time, their phenomena which occur in time and their
properties which depend on time." 3 We are not concerned here
with the question whether this correctly states the generating prob-
lem of mechanics, or not. But in this statement are contained
important points which in certain respects anticipate the solution:
(1) it conceives mechanics as dealing with "material systems";
(2) the initial relations of this particular system of mechanics are
"their properties independent of time" (=^4.) ; (3) the required
1 H. Hertz, ' ' Principien der Mechanik. ' '
72 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
relations which are to be deduced represent "their properties which
depend on time" and "their phenomena which occur in time"
(=*).
But this means: (1) This statement of the generating problem
of mechanics determines the realm of mechanics: it is restricted to
"material systems"; any problem regarding the properties of
material systems will form a special problem in the realm of this
generating problem and therefore demand a solution which can be
"deduced" from the initial set; and none but these. (2) It estab-
lishes a criterion for the distinction between the "fundamental"
and the "derived" propositions; this lies in their relation to "time."
(3) It determines the type of the solution: B is to be "deduced"
from A ; the solution shall therefore be in the deductive system form.
The critical ideal is not stated in the generating problem, and
need not be ; it assumes that the critical ideal of the type has already
been defined. Toward the solution of this urgent problem Hertz
himself made an important contribution. 4
What the "principles" (=A) are in detail is not stated in the
generating problem and need not be stated in the problem itself;
neither does it state which "fundamental concepts" will be neces-
sary, excepting that ' ' time, " " material system, ' ' etc., will either be
among them or definable in terms of them.
In a similar way any statement of a generating problem antici-
pates certain aspects of its solution. But which aspects are antici-
pated can not be stated in general, not even for a special system
such as mechanics ; for its generating problem can be stated in many
different and still essentially equivalent ways.
The preceding discussion of the meaning and implications of the
concept "problem" has anticipated some of the functions of this
concept. I shall, in what follows, discuss these mainly so far as
they pertain to generating problems, though, after what has been
said regarding the relativity of the distinction between generating
problems and special problems, what applies to generating problems
applies with certain natural modifications to special problems also.
Generating problems are the logical origin of systems. Socrates
urged the methodological importance of "questions," using the
TI COTI as the instrument for obtaining definitions; Plato recognized
the Ttuyta^eiv as the starting-point of all philosophizing; modern
philosophers emphasize the "purpose" which directs our thinking:
they all have in mind the subject-relation to which the logical entity
"problem" more or less closely corresponds. Not so easily recog-
nizable but deeply permeating his whole system is the role of the
4 Einleitung to his "Meehanik. "
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 73
"problem" in Kant's philosophy. Some aspects of it, such as the
designation of the ''object" as an " x," I shall discuss at some other
opportunity; but the problem-character of the "ideas" will come
readily to mind; their "regulative" use, as distinct from the "con-
stitutive" use, of the "categories" is a very characteristic function
of problems. At closer inspection it will be seen that even the
"transcendental method" should lead to the generating problem.
In Kant's system its fulcrum is the existence of mathematics and
Newton's mechanics. If they had indeed the property of "self-
evidence" and consequent "undeniability" which then they were
believed to possess, Kant 's transcendental method would proceed with-
out inherent difficulties. But if different sets of postulates can be,
and have been, exhibited for mathematics as well as for mechanics,
we can not arrive at a system of categories and principles (" Grund-
satze") by asking: which are the necessary presuppositions of
' ' experience, ' ' unless we assert dogmatically that these categories
and principles remain invariant in the different selections of pos-
tulates; for which we have, at present at least, no warrant, and
which Kant did not and could not have had in mind when he pre-
sented his transcendental method. In the concept "problem"
Kant's method finds its real fulcrum; we do not start with the accom-
plished "fact" of Newton's mechanics to find its necessary presup-
positions, but with the problem of mechanics, of which Newton's
system is one of an indefinite number of possible solutions. Prob-
lems generate systems; and the "postulates" of a system are the
initial relations, are the conditions which make the solution of the
problem possible.
The generating problem is the selective principle which deter-
mines the kind of propositions which may be admitted to the set of
postulates, and excludes others as by no possibility admissible to
the set, in that they do not contribute to the possibility of a solution
of the generating problem. The postulates are, therefore, not
"arbitrary," or "mere conventions": they are necessary, namely,
for the solution of their generating problem. Other sets might be
chosen, but some must be chosen if a solution of the generating prob-
lem is to be accomplished. All possible sets of propositions are
therefore grouped into two classes with respect to a generating
problem: those that are possible initial relations of the given prob-
lem, and those that are not.
The generating problem determines what is "given" for the
particular system which is its solution. "Givenness" is never an
absolute property of certain propositions, concepts, attributes, rela-
tions, or what not. What is ' ' given ' ' in the realm of one generating
74 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
problem may be not-given in the realm of another. When I develop
a system of geometry from a set of postulates, the postulates are the
"given," the "theorems" are not-given; they are to be "found," or
' ' proved. ' ' But if I state the problem : " to determine a set of pos-
tulates from which Euclidean plane geometry may be deduced," the
system of propositions which compose what is called "Euclidean
plane geometry, " or a certain set of postulates which defines Euclid-
ean plane geometry, is the ' ' given ' ' ; the new set of postulates is the
required solution, i. e., not-given. It is a common prejudice of those
who have given little attention to these questions of structure, and
who ignore the role of the concept "problem," to take it that "sen-
sations" are the "given per se." This is incorrect. Sensations may
be the given, namely, in the realm of a certain generating problem ;
in others they are not.
The generating problem determines what is "essential." How
much confusion has resulted from the endeavor to establish certain
propositions, or qualities, as "essential per se"! Our whole system
of "virtues" has been obscured by this attempt. What is "essen-
tial " to a system is determined by its generating problem ; it is either
one of its "defining" properties (initial relations), or a "necessary
consequence" from these. But the "same" system (e. g., "man")
has very different "essential" properties, according to the particular
generating problem.
The generating problem determines the realm of the system.
This is perhaps its most striking function, though its full impor-
tance does not appear until we come to critique of cognition. I can
mention here only that the "truth" of a proposition does not attach
to the proposition as such, in isolation as it were, but only in so far
as it is part of a system, i. e., relative to a definite generating prob-
lem. And the "truth" of a proposition does not extend indefinitely
far, but only as far as the realm of the generating problem extends.
To put this into language familiar to students of the history of phi-
losophy : Kant's main undertaking in his "Critique of Pure Reason"
was to demonstrate that the "truth" of the principle of causality
does not prohibit the "truth" of the principle of freedom, in that
the realm of the principle of freedom lies wholly outside the realm
in which the principle of causality is valid. Causality is restricted
to "experience"; freedom lies outside of "experience." But "ex-
perience" designates here merely a generating problem, and what
Kant tried to establish is that the generating problem of "experi-
ence" is distinct from the generating problem of "ethics." The
term "things in themselves," the distinction between "ideas" and
"categories," between "regulative principles" and "constitutive
principles," are merely details of Kant's special solution of the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 75
problem of separating these two generating problems. Kant has
indeed sufficiently indicated the role of the concept "problem" in
his undertaking; but it is obscured by the psychological turn which
he gave his solution.
But if the ' ' truth " of a proposition is thus restricted to the realm
of its generating problem, the separation of generating problems be-
comes of the utmost importance; and my own tentative procedure
in the beginning finds here its structural justification. It may be
opportune to call attention here to a procedure in mathematics which
is in harmony with this requirement of the separation of generating
problems. It is usual, in mathematics, to state propositions with
conditions which definitely restrict their validity; i. e., mathema-
ticians take at first a rather narrow but well-defined realm (or, to
put it differently, they limit their generating problems) in which
propositions are established. Now it may happen that the validity
of a proposition extends beyond the realm of the generating prob-
lem in which it is proved; the mathematician will then proceed to
"extend" the realm by special methods; but in no case can the
validity of a proposition be taken for granted in the extended realm
until it has been established for the extended realm. This "method
of limitation and extension, " as it might be called, has proved of the
greatest power in mathematics ; without it the present rigor of mathe-
matics would have been unattainable ; and it is the main cause of the
orderly progress in the development of mathematics which struck
Kant so forcibly, the real "royal road" which he tried to find for
philosophy.
KARL SCHMIDT.
TUFTS COLLEGE.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Miinchener Philosophische Abhandlungen. Theodor Lipps zu seinem
Sechzigsten Geburtsiag gewidmet von friiheren Schulern. Leipzig:
Johann Ambrosius Earth. 1912. Pp. iv -f- 316.
The book consists of ten essays, no two of which are upon the same
subject. Philosophy, logic, epistemology, ethics, and psychology are
represented, and it is quite impossible to review the book as a whole. A
type of mind such as that of Lipps can not help influencing greatly many
pupils. This is clearly seen in some of the essays. Others of the papers
have followed the doctrines of Husserl. The book will, therefore, be of
special interest to those who wish to trace the range of the Lippsian influ-
ence, even if the merits of the essays did not warrant their being read.
With this in mind, the reviewer decided to present a summary of all the
76 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
essays, instead of a criticism of a few important points of the best of
them.
N eukantianismus und Hegelianismus. E. v. ASTER. This paper aims
to show certain similarities that exist between the development of Kant's
ideas, as found in the writings of Hegel, and as found in those of the
Neo-Kantians, especially in those of P. Natorp.
After a short account of the fundamental ideas of Kant, the paper
proceeds to show that Fichte and Hegel found Kant not sufficiently rad-
ical. He is inconsequent in his assumption of the " Ding an Sich." One
must not go beyond the process of knowledge for the object of knowledge.
Thought and being are identical. Thought is, therefore, a productive
and not a reflective function, and the categories become ideas (Ideen),
Furthermore, all concepts that are concerned with reality must be deduced
from the concept of knowledge itself in order to be objectively valid.
Kant's world is a finished system that must be analyzed into its parts.
Hegel's world progresses step by step, by deduction from the first concept,
that of " being," to a complete system. Kant's static system is changed
to a number of connected processes. Natorp also finds that Kant as-
sumes a something given before knowledge. The categories are deduced
from the forms of judgment. What about the forms of judgment them-
selves? And time and space? These must be finished concepts before
the synthesis of the pure experience, according to Kant's system. This
criticism of Natorp's is in line with that of Hegel's, v. Aster here re-
marks that Kant assumes perceptions, but not " objects," to be given be-
fore the act of knowing. For Natorp, being as such becomes an ideal con-
cept, a goal of the unfinishable process of knowing.
With Natorp as with Hegel, time and space lose their subjective char-
acters. They and the categories must be deduced. Not from facts, but
from the "Fieri" of thought itself, must the fundamental concepts be
produced ; the object of knowledge is the " one " which contains a mani-
fold, the " one " which is identical with itself, and which contains that
which differs from itself.
Natorp differs from Hegel principally in three points. First, the sum-
mit of Hegel's deduction is the absolute being. For this reason, Natorp
discards Hegel's philosophy as metaphysics, that is, a seeking of the
solution of the problem of knowledge outside of the identity of the method
itself. Secondly, Hegel includes ethics and esthetics in his dialectic proc-
esses. Natorp makes ethical values and esthetics coordinate with scien-
tific thought, and here he is nearer Kant. Thirdly, Hegel places history
at the head of the hierarchy of the sciences. Natorp, mathematics and
physics. This difference is reflected throughout the two systems, espe-
cially in the deduction of time and space. Hegel's deduction is from
space to time (history being the goal) ; Natorp's, from time to space.
Die Frage nach dem Grunde des sittlichen Sollens. A. BRUNSWIG.
The theme of this essay is summed up in the question, " Why must I act
morally ? " This may be divided into five separate questions. First, how
far is the moral action the ideal action (ideal) ? Secondly, what proof is
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 77
there that it is one's duty to act morally (real) ? Thirdly, what practical
reason is there for one to do one's duty (practical) ? Fourthly, what is
the ultimate cause from which this duty can be deduced? Fifthly, what
ultimate purpose has moral action?
That the moral action is the ideal action is deduced from the definition,
a priori and analytically. The answer to the second question may be
summed up thus. The spur of duty to moral action is not a psychological
fact, but a reality given us by experience and influencing our will. Its
nature the author can not further define in this place. The paper ends
here, there not being sufficient room for answers to the other questions.
Uber Wahrnehmung und Vorstellung. TH. CONRAD. When we speak
of imagination and perception, we do not view these processes separately,
isolated by so-called psychological analysis, but consider them rather in
relation to entire experience, and only compare the one with the other
in order to discover the essential characteristics of each. The author can
not agree that there is no essential, but merely a moral and relative dif-
ference, a difference of intensity, clearness, and constancy between the
two. He doubts if psychology ever would confuse imagination with per-
ception (the author is evidently unacquainted with Perky's work on this
subject), and insists further that evidence of the existence of borderland
experiences can not be used as an argument against specific differences.
Characteristic for the perception is that that which is perceived is
itself before one. The tower that I perceive is there in front of me. The
tower I imagine is, in a sense, before me, but is not itself there. Included
in this negative characteristic of imagination is the positive one that the
object is present. This is a seeming paradox. The statement means, how-
ever, that the object is not represented by a picture of itself, but that the
object itself is active in the image. This is not the same as the presence
of the object itself as characteristic of the perception. The image could
not exist without this presence of an object. In the case of feeling, for
example, although there is a relation to the object, the object is not an
integral part of the feeling. In perception, the object appears as a real-
ity independent in the sense that we can not acquire it and cause it to
disappear. We can say that in the perception not only is the object there,
but there is something itself there. On the other hand, there is not given
in a perception any direct evidence of the existence of the object, although
the perception differs from the imagination in that it can give informa-
tion of the existence of the object, while the imagination can give neither
positive nor negative data on this subject. Imagination is not coordinate
with perception. It has a secondary position in that there is no specific
aspect in which the object appears in imagination, but rather the object
appears in imagination in a perceptual aspect. In this respect imagina-
tion is dependent upon perception, that is, the object appears in imagina-
tion in that aspect in which it would appear in a possible perception.
This dependence of the imagination, namely, its representing its object
in an aspect borrowed from the perception, becomes a positive independ-
ent characteristic of the imagination. The dependence of imagination
78 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
on perception is not in the sense of a real relation in time, as empirical
psychology teaches. The author's deduction that the imagination repre-
sents the object in the perceptual aspect, because it is its nature thus to
represent the object, is a vicious circle. The paper is a strange confusion
of psychology and epistemology.
Zur Entwicldung der Raumanschauung bei Mensch und Tier. M.
ETTLINGER, Starting from the rule that our space perception has de-
veloped through experience, but that this development is a phylogenetic
and not an ontogenetic one, Ettlinger attempts to discover how far back
we can trace this development in the animal kingdom. He adopts, with
slight change, Hesse's six steps: first, vague perception of direction; sec-
ondly, perception of direction with distinct goal; thirdly, movement;
fourthly, distance; fifthly, form; sixthly, color. In the first group, he
places the earthworm, with its universal organ, that creeps out of its hole
when it is dark and in again when it is light. The second step demands
a specific organ of vision which admits light only from one direction.
Such a function is found in the flask-shaped cells. The third step re-
quires a number of eyes close together, so that the successive excitation
may be continuous. For perception of distance we find either two eyes,
one for near and one for far objects, or these two functions combined in
one eye. In the latter case, different parts of the retina may be at dif-
ferent distances from the lens or the distance may be varied between lens
and retina or, finally, the degree of refraction of the lens may change.
The fifth and sixth changes require more complicated organs and func-
tional development. Kinesthetic sensations, especially, play an important
role.
Now Ettlinger believes that the ontological development of vision
runs parallel to this. Reaction to light without perception of direction
appears in new-born children. Preyer noticed a perception of direction
at the eleventh day, ability to follow a moving light at the twenty-third
day. Distance vision development, according to Stearns, appeared at the
end of the first half-year with the help, not only of convergence and ac-
commodation, but also of kinesthetic sensations. Then follows form per-
ception as developed by kinesthetic sensations. From the total of these
phylogenetic and ontogenetic facts, it is seen that local sign can not be
reduced to fixation movements, in Lotze's sense, or to qualitative differ-
ences, as Wundt and Lipps would have it. For an explanation of local
sign, we must turn both to the experiences in the development of the race
and to the sensations of the individual, those of movements of the body
and head, of balance and of the other sense-organs especially concerned
with localization.
Asthetik und Kunstwissenschaft. A. FISCHER. This article contains
many interesting observations, some of which seem hardly related to the
general thesis which is as follows : An analysis of the relation of esthetics
to the science of art will be most helpful in defining the concepts of these
two disciplines. The science of art is engaged in the problems of the his-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 79
tory, theory, and methods of art. As to the first problem, it is generally
conceded to-day that esthetics is not the history of art. The historian
asks when, why, by whom, and for what purpose. These questions do not
concern esthetics. In regard to the theory of art, two questions may be
asked. First, is esthetics nothing but the science of the nature, origin,
cause, effect, and purpose of art? Secondly, are all questions of a com-
plete theory of art questions of esthetics? These questions Fischer
answers in the negative. One must remember that we have an esthetics
of nature. Nature does not fall under the products of art. In this con-
nection it is emphasized that esthetics is not a psychology of the feelings
aroused by an object, but that it has an independent meaning and that
it constantly seeks its own peculiar objectivity. This is indicated in the
fact that the traditional esthetics is called modifications of the beautiful.
On the other hand, the theory of art is interested in psychological, socio-
logical, and philosophical questions, all of which are foreign to esthetics.
Esthetics and theory of art agree in that they both treat of the nature of
art, namely, of the nature of the beautiful. It may seem, at first glance,
as if esthetics should thus be identified with the history of art, for it is
assumed by some that the beautiful may be discovered through the process
of induction, namely, by a comparison of all known works and a selection
of the common characteristics, and in calling that beautiful which is at
the present day considered a work of art. The beautiful, however, can
not be defined by such methods.
Finally, as to the problem of the method of art. This is to some ex-
tent a problem of esthetics also, but not the only problem. The two con-
cepts are thus seen to overlap, but they are not identical.
Das Bewubtsein von Oefuhlen. M. GEIGER. Geiger's paper is con-
cerned with the question as to whether feelings are represented in their
full strength in different ways. He considers unpleasant and pleasant
feelings, emotions, and the so-called sensation-feelings, experiences such
as doubt, displeasure, and, finally, envy, pride, etc. He thinks that differ-
ences in theories, such as between those of Meumann and Titchener, may
be overcome by careful study of the several functions involved. Char-
acteristic of all these feelings is that they are not objects (Gegenstande)
of consciousness. It does not follow that they may not be objects of at-
tention. The answer to the question whether feelings can be observed,
must be preceded by a description of the different functions of attention.
There are three different ways in which attention functions: first, it
grasps the object as a whole; secondly, it observes the qualities of the ob-
ject; thirdly, it analyzes the object in the light of these qualities.
It is only in the first manner that attention can be directed toward all
feelings. In the second manner, it includes all but emotions, but no sort
of feeling whatsoever can fall under attention in its third form. These
three distinctions in the functioning of attention are not clear, but they
suggest degrees of vividness rather than modes of functioning.
It is difficult to follow the author in his description of the different
attitudes. When one observes a landscape, one may be concentrated upon
the object before him or one may be lost in the mood aroused by the land-
80 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
scape. In the latter case, one's attention is directed toward the feeling, yet
one does not observe the feeling ("bin ich auf mein Gefuhl eingestellt,
ohne dock das Gefuhl zu beachten"). In another place we find that sor-
row as feeling is distinctly different from the somber atmosphere which
envelops the object. Again, he says that that which is attended to seems
to be signaled out from the rest of experience by a beam of consciousness
(Bewusstseinsstrahl).
There are three different attitudes towards feeling, an outer concen-
tration in which the feeling is experienced with the object and two forms
of inner concentration. In the one form, one is immersed in the feeling.
In the other, one recognizes his relation to the feeling, as, for example, in
a certain sentimental enjoyment of a poem. It is only in reference to the
first attitude that we can speak of observing a feeling. It is only here
that we have the play of the beam of consciousness. In the other two we
are simply conscious of the feelings being there without observing them,
so that here attention plays no role. This concept of attention is a more
restricted one than one would expect from the author after having read
his extremely minute description of the different aspects of feelings. It
is indeed a wonder that he, of all men, should have narrowed its sphere
of activity so decidedly.
Motive und Motivation. A. PFANDER. The author in his analysis of
the act of the will (will-act), which he carefully separates from that which
follows the act, gives us a description of the soul, its different parts and
its relation to the object, which reminds one more of a mystical philosophy
than of an empirical psychology. Indeed one often feels, in reading the
works of many of these pupils of Lipps's, that one has to do rather with
poets than scientists. It is difficult to conceive of a soul body as distinct
from a soul spirit or of a soul light which illuminates our perception.
And even the strongest advocates of imageless thought will hardly fol-
low Pf ander in his minute analysis of the will-act.
Striving is first defined, then will-act. Striving is both centrifugal,
that is, a motion from the soul center to the object and centripedal, from
the object to the soul. Besides these two relations, there is the striving
per se, which is blind as to its goal. The will- act is always central, thus
differing from this centrifugal relation of striving, and, as central, it is
not only subject and origin, but also author of the act. It is not phenom-
enally a process caused by something from without, but a fundamental
act of the ego center, nor is the will act a judgment. It is neither a posi-
tive nor a negative judgment upon being, value, or interest. The will-act
is a self-determining act, subject as well as object of the act. That will
differs from striving is shown by the fact that the will may be positively
directed toward an object that arouses a negative striving in the ego. An
example of an act of will may suffice to show the nature of this paper.
A man enters a room, perceives that it is cold, and leaves the room. The
cold acted centripedally upon the ego. The ego center not only attended
to and apperceived the cold, but also turned to it with a spiritual atten-
tion. The judgment of the cold was recognized and appreciated. To this
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 81
"ff*-f . ,J
' .1
was added a practical appreciation. Finally, the ego did not allow this
judgment to remain without, but permitted it to enter, embodied it within
itself, supported itself upon it. This supporting of the ego upon some-
thing is a peculiar spiritual act, a linking of logical cause and act, and
completes the action.
Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils. A. REINACH. In this clear and
comprehensive paper upon the negative judgment, Reinach begins with
the necessity of the separation of the conviction (Uberzeugung) from the
assertion (Behauptung) in a judgment. There can be different degrees of
conviction, that is, different degrees of certainty. On the other hand, we
can not speak of degrees of assertion. No assertion is possible without a
conviction, but the reverse is not necessarily true. As to the manner in
which these two forms are related to the object judged, the object may be
perceived or may merely be referred to. In the perception, we probably
must always have imagery, but we can have imageless content accom-
panying the imagery such as in the perception of a book which lies on
the table. "Die Ruckseite des Buches z. B. ist mir in Jceiner Weise
anschaulich gegeben, weder nehme ich sie wahr, noch pflege ich normaler
Weise aus der Erinnerung oder Phantasie anschauliche Reprdsentation
zu schopfen." Now conviction is aroused by perception. Assertion, on
the other hand, is related to the object by reference, which reference is
represented by imageless content.
Reinach then turns to a description of judgment-content (sachverhalt)
as distinguished from the object. It is the content that stands in relation
to logical cause and effect, that may be possible or not, and not the ob-
ject. Further, and this brings us to the main theme, we can have positive
and negative content. It is the contents that stand in contradictory op-
position to one another, not the objects, and it is the content that is judged
and asserted. Thus, we can have negative and positive content and these
contents may be merely recognized. This recognition is fundamentally
different from a conviction or assertion and consequently must be sepa-
rated sharply from a judgment, which is the name for the last-mentioned
act.
There can be a positive conviction of a positive or negative content.
This presupposes a positive self-evidence (evidenz). There can be a nega-
tive conviction of a positive or negative content. This presupposes a neg-
ative self-evidence. Positive self-evidence of a negative content presup-
poses a positive self-evidence of a positive content necessarily connected
with the negative content. Finally, the negative self-evidence of a posi-
tive or negative content presupposes a positive self -evidence of an opposite
positive content which, in the case of a negative self -evidence of a nega-
tive content, is in contradictory opposition.
Every assertion is dependent upon a conviction. This conviction must
always be positive.
Then follows an analysis of the meaning of the word " not " which
is preceded by a treatment of " and." Both " not " and " and " express
functions. The function is to bring together, irrespective of the objective
82 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
possibility of such a union. It is not an apperceptive union, and only
occurs in the sphere of reference, in which sphere objects are never per-
ceiv.ed. The function of the " not " is to negate the " is," thus forming a
negative content. These functions are not as such represented in conscious-
ness during conversation, but we can at any time bring them to con-
sciousness.
It is not the negative which is the essential of a negative judgment,
but rather the assertion, and the difference between the negative and posi-
tive judgment is solely that, in the one case, the evidence is directed
towards a negative, and, in the other, towards a positive content. In
answer to the question whether the negative is subjective or objective,
Reinach replies that positive and negative judgments depend upon con-
tents which may be positive or negative and which may or may not exist,
but when they do their existence is independent of consciousness.
Existenz als Gegenstandsbestimmtheit. O. SELZ. After describing
the classical arguments against existence (Daseiri) being included in the
characteristics of an object, the author says that there are three determi-
nations present in every phenomenon : first, existence ; secondly, the quali-
tative determination (Wiebestimmtheit) ; and thirdly, the characteristic
of being present (Gegebensein). The last determination means that the
phenomenon is a state of the ego and in that sense present. Every phe-
nomenon as such must have that characteristic. The qualitative determi-
nations are the qualities of the object, the concept, and thus are always
general. These two determinations do not, however, exhaust all of the
object as presented to consciousness. In some cases, we must add its ex-
istence. It is this characteristic which is found in all individual objects
and differentiates them from general objects. It is the principium indi-
viduationis. We can say that for this reason the Platonic idea can not
exist. As to the argument that time and place are the individualizing
conditions, one can answer that time and place presuppose an individual
object.
Further, this existence-determination can be obtained by the process of
abstraction just as the qualitative determination can. As all individual
objects are existing objects, the concept of an individual object must con-
tain the existence-determination. This existence can not be placed as
coordinate with possibility and necessity, as Kant stated, for we can have
a possibility or necessity of an existence. We can also say that in prod-
ucts of imagination such as Centaur, the existence-determination can be
imagined as well as the qualitative determination. It need not be, how-
ever. In case Centaur is judged as existing, the act is directed toward
the object itself as present. In the case of imagining existence, the act is
merely directed towards this determination of the object. The difference,
therefore, between judging and imagining existence is one of content and
not of act. Finally, the existence of transcendent things is an existence
in the same sense as the existence of phenomena. The manner of being,
however, is different.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 83
fiber die Bedeutung Freuds fur die Psychologic. E. VOIGTLANDER.
The author sketches briefly the theories of Freud, but adds little to the
rapidly increasing literature on the subject. She warns against losing
sight of the main principles in the criticism of minor details. Voigt-
lander thinks that Freud neglects the inherited characteristics as an ex-
planation of certain phenomena such as those commonly termed natural
antipathies.
HERBERT SIDNEY LANGFELD.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
Friedrich Paulsen's philosophischer Standpunlct, insbesondere sein Ver-
hdltniss zu Fechner und Schopenhauer. Abhandlungen zur Philos-
ophic und ihrer Geschichte. PAUL FRITSCH. Leipzig: Quelle und
Meyer. 1910. Pp. 43.
This little account of the late Friedrich Paulsen's philosophy is excel-
lent, the very best I know. Paulsen's method, his theory of knowledge, his
panpsychism and voluntarism, and his philosophy -of religion in its ethical
aspect are expounded with extraordinary clearness. The relations to
Schopenhauer and to Fechner, especially to the latter, are brought forth
admirably. Paulsen's system of philosophy this is the impression the
little booklet makes upon the reader is typical of the general attitude of
German philosophers at the end of the nineteenth century.
GUNTHER JACOBY.
GREIFSWALD UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
AECHIVES INTERNATIONALES DE NEUROLOGIE. August,
1912. La chirurgie des alienes (pp. 69-89) : W. BECHTEREW ET POUSSEPE.
- The operation of trephining has been performed in many cases of
psychosis and has given the best results in cases of local lesions. Les
Psychoses dans I'histoire (pp. 89-110) : A. CULLERRE. Reformers, regi-
cides, anarchists, revolutionists, represent different types of psychical dis-
orders. De I'Autonomie medicale dans les asiles d'alienes (pp. 110-116) :
A. M. -A project of reform in the medical administration of insane
asylums. Revue des societes. Analyses bibliographiques.
Babbitt, Irving. The Masters of French Criticism. Boston : Houghton
Mifflin Company. 1912. Pp. xii ~f- 427. $2.50.
Hart, Bernard. The Psychology of Insanity. New York: G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. 1912. Pp. ix -f- 176. $0.40.
Hildebrandt, Kurt. Platons Gastmahl. Leipzig: Verlag von Felix
Meiner. 1912. Pp. 128. M. 2.
Huxley, Julian S. The Individual in the Animal Kingdom. New York :
G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1912. Pp. xi + 167. $0.40.
84 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
NOTES AND NEWS
" AT a meeting of the Aristotelian Society on January 6, a paper was
read by Professor Frank Granger on ' Intuitional Thinking.' The return
to Reid's theory that we have a direct apprehension of external objects
involves the reconsideration of intuitional thinking generally. But the
theory of Reid is really to be traced back as far as Aristotle. Following
Aristotle, it is convenient to consider sensible intuition before we go on
to rational intuition. The union of different attributes in the perception
of the object of sense may be illustrated by the analogy of the stereoscope,
which combines two or more pictures into one. This analogy may also
help us to understand the fusion of some of the elements of a concept.
But the intuition of the real under the fixed form of the concept is
impossible because the fiction of an instantaneous present is necessary
for certain processes of conceptual thought. But no process of thought
can be reduced to a succession of instants. Hence we must hold that an
intuition of reality involves three aspects : backward looking, present, and
forward looking. But these three aspects are united in one " stereo-
scopic " picture of events. Thus there is no need to go beyond rational
intuition for our knowledge of reality as a continuous series of changes.
But inasmuch as we can only apprehend a few out of all the series of
events at the same time, the concept is necessary to fill out the serial
order of our intuitions. In this way it is possible to combine the vivid-
ness of intuition with the comprehensiveness of a systematic view of
things. Professor Dawes Hicks, Professor Brough, and Messrs. Benecke,
Shelton, and Worsley spoke in the discussion, and Professor Granger
replied." A thenceum.
PRIVAT DOCENT KARL BORNHAUSEN has undertaken the task of estab-
lishing a library of American theology in Marburg, Prussia. The enter-
prise is under the care of the Prussian Ministry of Public Worship and
Education which appropriates a fixed sum yearly for the running expenses.
Mr. Bornhausen's aim is to make accessible in one place the most impor-
tant periodicals, dealing with the American religious situation, and the
standard works of American writers on theology and religion from
Edwards to the present day. Particular attention will be paid at first
to collecting representative works on the philosophy and psychology of
religion and systematic theology. Donations of money, books, and
periodicals would be of great service to Mr. Bornhausen in carrying out
this important undertaking. The Smithsonian Institute will forward
free of charge packages addressed to Die Theologische Amerika-Biblio-
thek, Lie Karl Bornhausen, Marburg in Prussia, c/o The Smithsonian
Institute, Bureau of International Exchange, Washington, D. C.
DR. W. S. HUNTER, of the University of Chicago, has been appointed
instructor in psychology in the University of Texas. Dr. F. A. C. Perrier,
also of the University of Chicago, has been appointed to an instructor-
ship in psychology in the University of Pittsburgh.
VOL. X. No. 4.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD:
THE METHOD OF INTROSPECTION
JT is a rather curious fact that after several decades of modern
descriptive and explanatory psychologies, based in large measure
upon the method of introspection, this method should still be the
subject of controversy. The exponents of the method give to it inter-
pretations both diverse and seemingly incompatible, whereas the hos-
tile critic occasionally issues a blanket challenge against the method
and all its works. That almost all the important results of psychol-
ogy should be based upon a method which is unclear in its nature
and aim is an intolerable state of affairs. The criticism of intro-
spection is of long standing, but it seems to have accomplished little.
Indiscriminate attack is likely to find itself opposed by an equally
undiscriminating loyalty. What is needed, apparently, is neither
vindication nor condemnation, but interpretation.
The contention of the critic that introspection distorts its subject*
matter undeniably possesses a certain plausibility. When the psy-
chologist tells us about focus and margin, and about the kinesthetic
sensations, images and similar material with which he populates the
outlying areas, it is reasonably evident that his results are far more
than a record of what actually transpired in consciousness. The
person who finds such an account illuminating shows by that very
fact that he did not experience these things at all. If he had, the
account would lack the charm of novelty. One is tempted to say
that the psychologist tells him, not what he actually experienced, but
what he ought to have experienced and what he would have expe-
rienced if he had possessed the right degree of psychological interest
and training. It is the psychologist, not the layman, who in a case
of fright is capable of experiencing sensations in the scalp, chest, and
abdomen. The psychological account of the emotion, however val-
uable it may be, is not in any intelligible sense a reproduction of the
original experience.
Perhaps it is unnecessary to enlarge on this point. It would
seem to be reasonably clear that there is a vast difference between an
experience as it occurs and the description which is given of it by
85
86 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the psychologist. Just in so far as a description identifies and names
what was actually in a person's consciousness when he had the expe-
rience, it is not psychological at all, but simply a common-sense ac-
count. The person unfamiliar with analysis has no name for his
experience except that of ' ' fright ' ' ; and the vagueness to which the
psychologist objects is in one sense precisely the merit of the term.
What he experienced was just fright, not fright in the abstract, but
"this fright," which can not be further identified, as a whole or in
its details, with anything else, without transforming it into some-
thing different from itself.
It may be noted, further, that the situation is not essentially dif-
ferent if the fright is experienced by a psychologist who, owing to
the habits induced by long training, is aware, at the time that the
fright is experienced, of the sensations in the scalp and the other
parts of the body. An enumeration by him of these various sensa-
tions is no more psychological than the report of the layman, who
can testify to nothing but fright. There is no particular virtue, psy-
chological or otherwise, in experiencing bodily sensations. Psychol-
ogy begins when we take the experience, whatever its nature, and
proceed to do something with it. In the case of the layman 's fright,
the various sensations which are revealed as a result of our analysis
are genuine discoveries, not because they may be regarded as pre-
existent facts, but because they give us a clue to the bodily processes'
upon which the fright was dependent. But there is no theoretical rea-
son why the psychologist should not undertake to analyze the expe-
jrience which he had when he made this analysis, or his own peculiar
icxp^rience of fright. These experiences likewise have their condi-
tioning bodily processes, their obscure associative imagery, their feel-
ing of familiarity; in brief, they have that context and setting, on
the basis of which we make the distinction of focus and margin. If
the demand for analysis is legitimate in the one case, it is equally
legitimate in the other. That is, psychology begins properly at the
point where we connect what is in consciousness with facts of which
we were not conscious at the time.
According to this view, then, an experience is clear or obscure, has
a focus and margin only with reference to the uses to which it may
be put. That this is frequently overlooked in the discussion of intro-
spection is probably due in part to the unfortunate etymological con-
notations of the term. An experience in which we subsequently dis-
cover the presence of ' ' kinesthetic sensations ' ' is unclear in the
sense that its possible function or value as a clue to certain further
facts was not experienced at the time. The analysis of "mental
states" as such is as impossible as it is unmeaning. To say that the
kinesthetic sensations which are present in the later experience were
"marginally" present in the earlier experience is either to lapse
87
into mythology or to say that the substitution of the one for the
other is precisely the aim of our procedure and is made in the fur-
therance of a certain end.
As this last statement indicates, the fundamental difficulty with
introspectionism, according to its critics, is that it rests upon a false
conception of experience. It pieces out the experienced with the
unexperienced ; it explains the known in terms of the unknown. In
discriminating between focus and margin it postulates the presence
of a psychical something which in some way escapes discovery until
the introspecting psychologist arrives upon the scene ; and it appar-
ently disregards the fact that the experience in which the distinction
of focus and margin is made is merely an experience with a more
complex object, an object with its own unanalyzed margin, which
does not come to light until it in turn is converted into an object by
a subsequent experience. It ascribes to experience a distinction
which is not an experiential fact at the moment when it is supposed
to come into being, but is brought to light in subsequent reflection.
To construe experience as existing, at the moment of its occurrence,
in the form of focus and margin, the margin being the hunting-
ground of numberless elusive entities, is to read back into it all sorts
of facts which never existed until they were created by the psycholo-
gist in the course of his investigations.
It must be admitted, however, that this contention does not en-
tirely dispose of the introspectionist, even if he maintains that his
proper business is the analysis and description of "consciousness as
such." While it is doubtless true that to bring anything from the
"margin" into the "focus" involves some sort of change, the impli-
cation that we substitute something else in the place of the first
experience is too anarchistic to be entirely plausible. It appears to-
ignore the testimony of the numerous experiences in which we recog-
nize and identify experiential elements as having been obscurely
present at an earlier time. The discovery of these ' ' elements ' ' is, as
a matter of fact, very different from a mere succession of experiences,
and until this circumstance is satisfactorily accounted for, the attacks
upon introspection, while possibly admitting of no complete refuta-
tion, will necessarily fail to produce conviction.
It is evident, then, that in our theory of introspection there is
danger of passing from one extreme view to another. Introspection
is not a process of reconstituting an experience, in the sense of creat-
ing a duplicate or replica of the original event, but neither is it
reducible to a bare succession of different experiences. The intro-
spective analysis claims for its results an identity with the earlier
unanalyzed experience, and this claim is of fundamental importance.
To reject all identity is quite as erroneous as to insist that analysis
88 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
brings to light constituent elements, which were indeed present, but
which were somehow overlooked. To formulate a consistent theory
of introspection it is necessary to give to this identity due recogni-
tion and interpretation.
This identity, it may be noted, is not to be reduced to a mere
succession, but neither, on the other hand, can it be construed in
terms of identical elements or constituents. A succession gives us
no identity, but neither does a "reconstruction" which aims to re-
produce the original experience. Such a reconstruction, if success-
ful, would obviously defeat its own purpose. If it were possible to
reproduce the original experience in its entirety, we should be pre-
cisely where we were before, and the questions in which analysis has
its origin would remain unanswered. The analysis changes the expe-
rience, and the change is not, as is sometimes supposed, an inevitable
and deplorable incident of the process, but is its purpose or aim.
To minimize or apologize for the change is not to justify introspec-
tion, but to exemplify unconscious humor. The proper test for a
sound introspection is not the degree of change which it introduces,
but the kind. That is, the question concerning introspection must
be settled with reference to the end which introspection is to realize.
If we assume that introspection has to do with a special subject-
matter, i. e., with a "consciousness" or with "mental states," we are
bound to find in the end that introspection is merely another of the
numerous delusions which are permitted for a season to trouble the
minds of men. Of such a subject-matter it can not be denied that
its esse is percipi, and to analyze it is to borrow one of James's
illustrations like turning up the gas in order to see the darkness.
The fact that an advocate of introspection declares his disbelief
in the existence of mental states is unfortunately no guarantee that
he will not postulate them when he undertakes to explain what intro-
spection is to accomplish. If, however, we consistently avoid the
pitfall of mental states, we seem obliged to infer that introspection
is a certain type of inquiry, not into the constitution or structure of
non-existent entities, but into the causes or conditions of those occur-
rences which we call our experiences. From this standpoint the
kinesthetic sensations which the psychologist discovers are signifi-
cant, not as the discovery of antecedent psychical facts, but as indi-
cations of the bodily conditions upon which the earlier experience
was dependent. These kinesthetic sensations, together with such
facts as indirect vision and whatever else may belong to the "mar-
gin, ' ' are not obscure psychical existences whatever that may mean
but are a name for the peculiar qualitative character of the expe-
rience whereby we are enabled to get possession of the objective
factors or agencies in terms of which the experience is described.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 89
What a given experience is like, apart from this reference to condi-
tions, is not only beyond description, but is a matter of no possible
scientific importance or interest.
The supposition that one experience may differ from another in
"intrinsic" clearness, as one star differs from another in glory, re-
sults from the assumption that there is an absolute standard of what
is clear and distinct an assumption which in the last analysis leads
back to the doctrine of mental states. But clearness and obscureness
can be construed only with reference to some specific purpose or end.
Apart from such a reference the characterization has no meaning.
To say that the purpose is to know the experience "as it is" merely
evades the issue. If this means to say that our purpose is to dis-
cover certain existent, but unexperienced psychical existences or
qualities of psychical existences, it is more seemly to abstain from
argument. A dead theory is entitled to a certain measure of respect,
even if it does not know that it is dead. If, however, our purpose is
something else, it necessarily has to do with something to which the
present experience is related as means to end. Of these possible
ends the end that is properly sought by the psychologist is but one.
We are on psychological ground when the end in view is to ascertain
the causes or conditions upon which a given experience is dependent.
The experience may be legitimately analyzed into sensations, images,
emotional tone, etc., in so far as such an analysis gives us an insight
into the conditions which were operative at the time, and which
determined the actual character of the experience. Or we may say
that the legitimate purpose of the analysis is to furnish, not only a
new experience of the situation in which the earlier experience oc-
curred, but an experience of such a kind as to reveal the causes or
conditions which were then involved, but which did not constitute a
part of the experiential content. In every case we are dealing with
a process of adjustment, and the "description and explanation" of
the experience in question may accordingly be given partly in terms
of the environment and partly in terms of the adaptive organism.
While this view is, as I believe, a defensible interpretation of
what psychology seeks to accomplish, our presentation does not so
far differentiate introspection from other methods employed in psy-
chology. In the case of introspection, we have to do with a peculiar
kind of identity or continuity between the earlier and the later expe-
rience. When taken in relation to its successor, the earlier expe-
rience seems to foreshadow or symbolize, so to speak, what is bodied
forth in the experience which, when it arrives, is recognized as its
realization or fulfilment. In other words, our psychology is based
on introspection just in so far as the peculiar qualitative character
of the earlier experience (i. e., the "margin" or "fringe") presents
90 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
itself as the matrix of the later experience. The former experience,
as we now see, had a total character which can be described only
'through a process of reconstruction, a character which does not lend
itself to description, is not an object for knowledge, save in terms
of objects as presented in a more adequate experience. The latter,
however, is more adequate simply because it meets a demand or pur-
pose. And this indicates the nature of the identity which obtains
between the two experiences. It is an identity, not of "experience"
in the abstract, but of things our successive experiences of which
are unified or brought into relation through the end which the process
subserves. "This is what I then experienced," we say; and the
process is termed introspection because we are interested in the final
experience, not for its own sake, or as a means to a further end, but
as an explanation of the peculiarity or uniqueness of the preceding
experience. We did experience the thing in question, but in that
highly peculiar fashion which makes it possible to recognize and
identify it when at a subsequent moment we label it and assign to it
a more significant status in the realm of fact.
It is evident that our theory of introspection is but an expression
of our view as to the nature of experience. According to the view
here presented, the endeavor to read back the results of analysis not
only explains our experiences in terms of fictitious entities, but it
makes the whole process of explanation unintelligible. That any
experience should lead on or pass over into another becomes utterly
incredible if we permit ourselves to convert the character of process
or flux itself into something else. If the unique character of the
experience as a whole be first reduced to "margin," and the margin
in turn be resolved into an aggregate of bodily sensations and the
various etcetera of psychological ingenuity, all doubt, inquiry, and
identification are at an end. They melt away into components of a
wholly different nature, and instead of the ' ' drift, occasion, and con-
texture" of things, which is theirs by inalienable right as objects of
experience, we are left with a collection of abstractions which, in
spite of psychological refinement, are as remote from actual expe-
rience as the impressions and ideas of Hume. This fact, however, is
no reflection upon psychology, provided it be duly recognized, and
the character and function of these abstractions be properly under-
stood. Sensations are not experiences, but symbols. The qualitative
peculiarity of our experiences is not in any legitimate or even intel-
ligible sense a matter for investigation, except in terms of the further
experiences to which it leads or the function which it performs. As
we look back upon an experience we may with propriety interpret
it in terms of the facts to the discovery of which it furnishes the clue,
and formulate, as far as possible, the laws which govern the process
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 91
and the relationship of the various steps. But all this is subject to
the proviso that the character of experience is not to be metamor-
phosed into something else, is not to be identified with the results
which we obtain when the experiential situation becomes an object of
investigation and knowledge.
The temptation to mutilate experience in this way is not, of
course, peculiar to the psychologist, but has left evidences of itself
along the entire line of history. The question of introspection, in its
bearings on our conceptions of consciousness, truth, knowledge, ob-
jectivity, and in short all the fundamental questions of philosophy,
is fully as important for philosophy as for psychology. As concerns
psychology, the issue presented in this question will necessarily deter-
mine whether psychology is to revise its scale of values, shift its em-
phasis and direction of progress, and enter into relations of better
understanding and cooperation with philosophy, or accept as its
portion a distinct subject-matter and move in the direction of in-
creased isolation from human affairs and the remaining body of
scientific knowledge.
B. H. BODE.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.
SOCIETIES
THE TWELFTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN
PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
THE Twelfth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical As-
sociation was held on December 26, 27, and 28, in New York
City, where it was the guest of Columbia University and the College
of the City of New York. As had been the case with the two preced-
ing meetings, the liveliest interest centered in the debate, which this
year was upon the untechnical question of "Agreement in Philos-
ophy." The leaders of the debate were Dr. Schmidt and Professor
Pitkin, who maintained the possibility of agreement, and Professors
De Laguna and Kemp Smith, who supported the negative side of the
question. The discussion was prolonged throughout the morning
session of Friday by a large number of speakers from the floor, and
in the afternoon it was recommenced with three ten-minute papers
by Professor Hall, Miss Elkus, and Professor Tower, after which the
open debate continued until it had to be closed in medias res for lack
of further time.
Early in the debate it was evident that there was pretty general
agreement that agreement itself was at least desirable. Three of the
speakers, to be sure, emphasized the value of disagreement as well,
President Thilly in particular pointing out that the improved tone of
92 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
philosophical discussion in the last twenty years was due largely to
the fact that "the fundamental problems" were no longer consid-
ered settled, as they were in the prepragmatic and prerealistic days.
All, of course, were agreed that the suppression of individual opinion
in philsophy would be the utmost misfortune, and yet nearly all de-
sired agreement agreement upon the old questions, at least, if for no
other purpose than that they might go on and disagree about the new
ones. The desirability of agreement on our real problems is, in fact,
so obvious that Professor Woodbridge characterized the very raising
of the question of its obtainability as irresolute if not pessimistic.
To deny the possibility of solving the problems of philosophy would,
in his opinion, be equivalent to asserting that philosophy has no prob-
lems; for every real problem is there to be solved. This view was
challenged by Professor Creighton, who insisted that there may be
real problems which simply lead to new ones, and that it is incon-
ceivable that we could ever get things settled in such a way that they
would stay settled.
The more exact and fundamental discussion of the possibility of
agreement turned upon the question whether the problems of phi-
losophy could be isolated and attacked separately as are the prob-
lems of science. In support of the negative answer to this question
Professor Kemp Smith maintained that philosophy is different in
kind from science in that the latter deals only with existential prob-
lems, which may be isolated, whereas for philosophy the value aspect
must always be a factor in its answers; hence no problem is for it
isolable. The philosopher can not divorce any subject from its total
context, hence for him nothing can be definitely settled until every-
thing is settled. Somewhat the same view was maintained by Pro-
fessor De Laguna. The only tools by which we can attack any of our
problems must be themselves borrowed from other problems. But in
this general form the issue was in danger, as Professor Pitkin pointed
out, of being lost in the more abstract question of the nature of rela-
tions, of which it was in fact a part. This danger, he suggested,
might be avoided by keeping in mind the difference between inde-
pendence of existence and independence of variation. Doubtless
ultimately all problems are related and those of science no less than
those of philosophy ; but that is not inconsistent with a relative inde-
pendence sufficient to allow of practical and temporary isolation.
In fact, as Dr. Schmidt pointed out, the history of philosophy proves
that isolation of problems is not only possible but actual. The de-
velopment of philosophy since Plato has been by means of peeling off
one special problem after another, these developing into the special
sciences. Two problems may be regarded, for practical purposes, as
distinct from each other: when (1) they are not identical, and (2)
neither is a special problem of the other.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 93
The question whether the distinctively philosophical or construc-
tive problems can be isolated from the genetic problems of the history
of philosophy led the debate, during much of its course, into a side-
issue, which was, however, both interesting and valuable, namely,
the relation of the study of the history of philosophy to the more
constructive work of the philosopher. Professor De Laguna main-
tained that the genetic method was so essential as a means of analy-
sis that the problems of philosophy could not be attacked without
its aid. To which Professor Perry responded that the genetic study
of the subject-matter of philosophy was by no means identical with
the study of the opinions of various philosophers upon this matter.
The upholders of the possibility of agreement in general admitted
the value of the history of philosophy as one of many resources in
attacking philosophical problems, but insisted, in Dr. Schmidt's
words, that the generating problem of the history of philosophy is
distinct from the generating problem of constructive philosophy.
A question more relevant to the general subject was whether the
history of philosophy showed real progress toward agreement or only
increasing disagreement. In the opinion of Professor De Laguna the
latter is the case. The progress of philosophy comes not through the
solution of any of its fundamental problems, but through the substi-
tution of a new problem or more likely of two problems for an
old one. The process by which this is brought about is the uncover-
ing of the latent ambiguities of the old problem ; thus no real solution
is reached, but a deeper mystery. Instead of solving problems we
really "side-step" them. The one great problem of philosophy as
such is the gaining of a greater appreciation of our own ignorance.
Most of the speakers who referred to this subject, however, were more
hopeful. Thus Professor Hocking pointed out that there was a great
deal more latent agreement in every generation of philosophers than
they themselves were aware of, and a great deal more real progress
than they themselves could see. Apparent increase of divergence may
be compatible with real increase of agreement on the more funda-
mental issues. This, in fact, as Professor Dewey showed, is the ac-
tual condition in science. Doubtless there are more disagreements in
science to-day than ever before, but these disagreements are within
agreements. They have relatively fixed and definite limits. And we
have reason to hope that the same thing may be true and may be-
come increasingly true of philosophy. In the main the discussion
of the history of philosophy was hopeful, though perhaps it was not
made sufficiently explicit that even the seeming failures of philos-
ophy and its frequent "side-stepping" of problems were often stages
of real progress toward a deeper unanimity.
Possibly the most fruitful part of the debate consisted in the
94 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
practical turn given to the discussion by Professors Perry, Lovejoy,
Lord, and others. It was suggested that greater agreement of the
desirable kind might be attained if the members of the Association
would give up the philosopher 's traditional lonely individualism, and
make an effort to cooperate with each other, and especially try to
understand each other and to be understood. While all were of one
mind in this matter, the particular means of accomplishing the last-
mentioned aim proved to be the cause of further disagreement. For
the question of the value of a technical philosophical language or
" slang" was at once opened, and the pros and cons well exhibited.
On the whole, however, the general tone of the debate, especially as
it advanced, was decidedly hopeful, and the discussion promised to
be itself a useful step in the achievement of greater cooperation, if
not of greater agreement.
I have dwelt thus at length upon the debate because it aroused
more general interest among those present than did the papers, and
also because the latter will in due time be published, whereas the de-
bate must be preserved in the reporter's account or nowhere. The
papers themselves covered, as usual, a wide field in a scattering man-
ner. What unity they had was brought out by the careful and ad-
mirable arrangement given them. Professor Boodin's paper on "In-
dividual and Social Minds" and Professor Singer's on "Man and
Fellow Man" set going a discussion on the relation of the individ-
ual to society, from both the psychological and the epistemological
aspects. Kant came in for his accustomed amount of vilification and
defense, though the changing point of view concerning this idol of
our fathers was rather significantly exhibited by Professor Creigh-
ton's choice of ground on which to defend him. For it transpired
that Kant's "Copernican Revolution in Philosophy," though doubt-
less real, was on an entirely different question and of a quite differ-
ent nature from what Kant himself had supposed. Hegel too had
his defender in Miss Case, whose paper on "Hegel as an Observer
of Thought" was a fit introduction to the general debate on agree-
ment. Two excellent papers on social and ethical subjects were read
on Friday afternoon, namely, "Jurisprudence as a Philosophical
Discipline," by Professor Cohen, and "The Case System in the
Study of Ethics," by Professor Cox. It is interesting to note that
the two subjects which promised the warmest discussion (had time
permitted) were ethics and religion. Certainly no other papers
found such enthusiastic assailants as did that of Professor Cox, al-
ready referred to, and Professor Leuba's treatment of "The Rela-
tion of the Psychology of Religion to Theology. ' ' In both cases, un-
fortunately, lack of time prevented full consideration, but the zeal
with which the short discussions were pursued and the general in-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 95
terest manifested by all were tokens that the old-time questions of
religion and ethics had not been put so completely in the shade by
the newer questions of epistemology and logic as the programs of
our meetings would indicate.
Two papers not directly connected with any others were those
by Professor Starbuck on "Instinct, Intelligence, and Affection"
and Professor Keyser on "Some Mathematical Psychologic Ques-
tions." The former of these was the only treatment of a psycho-
logical subject in the whole meeting, and was for this reason espe-
cially grateful to many of the members who would like to be both
philosophers and psychologists, did not space at the Christmas season
prevent. It was a pity that the lateness of the hour did not permit
Professor Keyser to demonstrate fully that four-dimensional space
exists in every sense of the word in which three-dimensional space
may be said to exist. Such a thesis can hardly be proved within the
limits of a short paper. But it may be said, at any rate, that none of
those present doubted Professor Keyser 's ability amply to prove his
thesis if granted enough time and enough space.
Lack of space also prevents the reporter from dealing with Presi-
dent Thilly's admirable address on "Romanticism and Rationalism."
Without question it was one of the finest presidential addresses to
which the Association has ever listened ; but it must be read to be
appreciated. President Butler's words of welcome and the recep-
tion given by him to the Association at his home must be passed
over with a bare mention, as must also the smoker on Friday evening;
after President Thilly's address, and the final luncheon at the Col-
lege of the City of New York. These social gatherings, as is oftem
the case, were among the most profitable parts of the three-day meet-
ing ; but like many other good things, they can not be preserved iru
printer's ink.
JAMES BISSERT PRATT.
WILLIAMS COLLEGE.
THE TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERI-
CAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
rpHE Twenty-First Annual Meeting of the American Psycholog-
-*- ical Association was held at Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, Ohio, December 30 and 31 and January 1. Mr. Edward
L. Thorndike, of Teachers College, Columbia University, presided.
The attendance was large and the social features, largely due to the
efforts of Mr. and Mrs. H. Austin Aikins, of Western Reserve Uni-
versity, added greatly to the pleasure of the meeting. Women, both
as hearers and participants in the proceedings, figured more promi-
96 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
nently than at any previous meeting of the association. Eastern
institutions, on the whole, were not well represented; but the insti-
tutions of the Middle West (and notably the University of Chicago)
sent large and representative delegations^ The exhibition and dem-
onstration of psychological appliances were important features of
the meeting, and special prominence was given to apparatus for
purposes of mental tests, such as the Whipple, the Goddard, and the
Healy tests. Among apparatus manufacturers who made exhibits
were C. H. Stoetling, of Chicago, and Bausch & Lomb, of Rochester.
Mental tests occupied a commanding place on the program of the
Cleveland meeting. Seven papers dealt with the character and
results of different methods of testing children and adults. Mr.
Charles Scott Berry, of the University of Michigan, gave the results
of the retesting by the Binet tests of intelligence of eighty-two chil-
dren. Forty- two of the subjects were school children of Ann Arbor
and the rest were defectives from the Michigan school for feeble-
minded and epileptic. The children were first tested in October,
1911, and retested a year later. The results showed (1) a close
correlation with the results of the original tests; (2) an average gain
of the normal children, who tested above age in 1911, of twenty per
cent, as compared with those who tested below age, and (3) that the
average gain of the defectives below the age of fifteen was fifty per
cent, as compared with defectives above that age.
Mr. Henry H. Goddard, director of the research department of
the New Jersey Training School, gave an account of three annual
testings of normal and defective children by the Binet scale with
results that indicated very slight variation beyond the development
that such children would be likely to make during the year intervals.
Mrs. Helen Thompson Woolley, of Cincinnati, gave a report of a
series of tests administered to 800 fourteen-year-old children. Her
report gave one feature of a sociological study being made on Cin-
cinnati school children who leave school to begin work. Very gen-
erally public-school children were found superior in the tests to
parochial-school children. Miss Jane Weidensall, of the State
Reformatory at Bedford Hills, New York, made a report on psycho-
logical tests applied to criminal women. Slowness and variability of
reaction time were marked results of the tests.
Mr. Bird T. Baldwin, of Swarthmore College, gave an account
of the learning of delinquent adolescent negro and white girls as
shown by a substitution test. Eye defects, enlarged tonsils, and
bad teeth are common among delinquent girls. Negro girls are
slower than the whites in school work, they are more irregular in
progress, drop back sooner, are less neat and more inaccurate, and
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 97
their work is more influenced by moods and divided attention. Mr.
William Healy, of the Chicago Juvenile Psychopathic Institute, dis-
cussed the pictorial Ebbinghaus or completion test. He called atten-
tion to the danger of snapshot diagnosis for any given individual,
despite sharp correlation with general ability for a certain few tests,
and he thought more good tests were needed to aid diagnosis in
difficult cases. He thought the Ebbinghaus test of great value, but
its use was not possible because of language difficulties. A pictorial
completion test which he has devised is an open-air scene with chil-
dren's various activities depicted by an illustrator for juveniles.
This has been lithographed and mounted on scroll-saw wood. Ten
groups or activities are represented, and from each group activity is
cut a piece one inch square containing an object necessary to the
group activity. It is a real completion test and analogous in many
ways to the Ebbinghaus verbal method. The test has distinct worth
for mental diagnosis and offers another means for observing the mind
in action.
Mr. Will S. Monroe, of the State Normal School at Montclair,
New Jersey, reported sex differences on six hundred young children
tested in color and the Binet intelligence tests. In the color percep-
tion tests, girls of three years did 8 per cent, better than boys of the
same age ; they were 7 per cent, ahead of the boys at the age of four,
and 4 per cent, ahead at six. But at the age of five, the boys were
2 per cent, ahead of the girls. In the tests for the names of the six
standard colors, the girls were ahead of the boys at all ages. The
same children were given the Binet tests for the third, fourth, fifth,
and sixth years. In the third-year test the girls were ahead of the
boys in four out of the five tests; at the age of four the sex differ-
ences are very slight ; the boys did better than the girls in the fifth-
year tests, but in the sixth year, the girls were ahead of the boys in
five of the seven tests.
Miss Clara Schmitt, assistant in the department of Child Study
in Chicago, gave an account of the standardization of some of the
Healy tests for mental ability with 150 children in a private school.
The results of five tests indicated that children's ability to deal suc-
cessfully with the abstractions of representative material is devel-
oped somewhat earlier than their ability to deal in a planned way
with the functional necessities of concrete material.
Experimental psychology was given prominence at the second
session of the association. Miss Lillien J. Martin, of Stanford
University, presented two papers. The first dealt with a quantita-
tive investigation of the relation between the anschaulich and unan-
schaulich contents of consciousness. She pointed out that intro-
98 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
spections furnish additional proof, not alone for the existence of an
anschaulich memory, but of the fact that it actually gives rise to the
visual image which is so often supposed to be that to which the
memory is traceable. Miss Martin's second paper concerned the
function of a visual image in memory and imagination.
Miss Mabel R. Fernald, of the Chicago Teachers' College, gave
an account of the mental imagery of two blind university students,
one of whom had been almost blind from birth and completely so
since her seventh year, while the other has partial, though very
slight, vision a condition which has existed since her second year.
The main differences in their general training are, (1) though both
have to depend entirely upon touch and tactual symbols for their
present reading, one learned first by visual symbols and used these
slightly until her twelfth year, while the other never knew any but
the tactual symbols; (2) one has had a more extensive, though crude,
visual acquaintance with objects. Results of tests in verbal and
non-verbal imagery show that so far as these two subjects were con-
cerned a decided positive emphasis on tactual sensory experiences
during adult life was not effective in stimulating tactual imagery
for the subject who had to translate these into visual terms, while
the subject who had no such resource used tactual imagery with
readiness and success.
Mr. Joseph Peterson, of the University of Utah, discussed the
place of stimulation in the cochlea versus frequency as a direct
determiner of pitch. He believed that tones not due to vibrations
external to the ear are probably due to periodicities arising in the
liquids of the inner ear on the principle of superposition of vibra-
tions of the primary or original vibrations. Thus all tones experi-
enced seem to have a basis in physical vibrations arising in media
exterior to the organ of Corti. Mr. Felix Krueger, of the University
of Halle, followed with a paper on consonance and dissonance.
Other subjects presented on the program for experimental psy-
chology included studies in association and inhibition by Mr. John F.
Shepard, of the University of Michigan, color saturation by Mr. L.
R. Geissler, of the University of Georgia, and an interesting demon-
stration of a case in amnesia by Mr. H. Austin Aikins, of the
Western Reserve University.
Seven papers were presented at the section for comparative psy-
chology. Mr. S. Bent Russell, of St. Louis, presented a demonstra-
tion and design of an apparatus to stimulate the working of nervous
discharge. He maintained that a comparatively weak nervous chan-
nel may become relatively strong if it be provided with two sensory
endings, and provided outside occurrences shall cause the two end-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 99
ings to be excited in succession from time to time. In due course the
originally weak channel will prevail over the originally strong chan-
nel and will control the muscular response. Converging channels
account for inhibition, and diverging channels for association of
ideas. He pointed out that the importance of counter signals or
nervous impulses is brought about by certain movements. He ex-
plained a form of satisfaction which is the antithesis of inhibition
by the effect of counter signals upon channel development. The
apparatus which he described is a hydraulic regulating system. The
important parts are the transmitter, or triple slide valve with a
timing attachment, a measuring or balancing device governing the
hydraulic cylinder or motor, and a system of key rods connected so
that each key rod controls one or more transmitters, while each
transmitter is controlled by one or more key rods.
Miss Stella B. Vincent, of the University of Chicago, discussed
some sensory factors in reactions to the maze. The method used was
the opposite of that employed by Mr. John B. Watson, of Johns
Hopkins University, in his kinesthetic and organic sensations experi-
ments, namely, the addition instead of the subtraction stimuli. In
the one group of experiments the true path and the false were made
to differ so far as possible in brightness. In the other group an
olfactory trail was laid alternately in the true and false pathways.
The results showed a lessening of initial time and error and a
decrease of total errors. On the whole, however, the final speed and
accuracy was less than that found in the normal maze. The learn-
ing curves were very different. Her conclusions were that if animals
are given two contrasting sensory paths side by side, the one path
may prove more dominant and favor speed and accuracy in the early
trials prior to any effects of learning. After the problem is learned,
in the slow turning over to kinesthesis, when attention is freed, these
sensory factors may still retain their potency in times of momentary
distraction. The result is a less perfect automatism and a slower
speed.
Mr. C. A. McPheeters, of the University of Chicago, reported on
an experiment on the reactions of raccoons to a temporal series of
stimuli. The animals were taught to discriminate between two series
of color cards white-blue-red and red-red-red. Controls were
employed to discover if there were other factors than color influ-
encing the reactions of animals. His conclusion is that animals do
not react to colors, but to the position of the levers to which the
cards are attached. Other papers presented at the section for com-
parative psychology were delayed reactions in animals and children,
by Mr. Walter S. Hunter, of the University of Texas; brightness
100 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
vision in the English sparrow, by Miss Eupha Foley Tugman, of
New York City; the relative effects of maturation and use on the
development of instincts, by Mr. J. E. Shepard, of the University
of Michigan, and a comparative study of the intelligence of normal
and inbred white rats, by Mr. Gardner C. Basset, of Johns Hopkins
University.
The general program included the following papers: "The Psy-
chophysiological Effects of a Prolonged Fast," by Mr. Herbert Sid-
ney Langfeld, of Harvard University; "Structure versus Function
in Psychopathology, " by Mr. E. E. Southard, of the Massachusetts
Psychopathic Hospital; "Behavior as a Psychological Category,"
by Mr. James R. Angell, of the University of Chicago, and "Fam-
ilies of American Men of Science," by Mr. J. McKeen Cattell, of
Columbia University.
Mr. Langfeld gave an account of a lawyer of Malta who under-
went a thirty-one day fast at the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory at
Boston, the only form of nutrition being 750 c.c. of water daily. His
weight at the beginning of the fast was 60.6 kg. and after the fast
47.4 kg., the drop in metabolism being about 25 per cent. Tests
were made daily, beginning two days before and ending two days
after the fast, at 5 P.M. The results of the tests showed: (1) slight
improvement in rote memory for words; (2) in the tapping test, fall
midway with recovery to initial level, and fatigue midway with
initial spurt on the last few days; (3) in the strength test (the sub-
ject was left-handed) there was slight fall in the right hand, consid-
erable fall in the left, and more frequent initial spurts with the right
hand, especially during the last twenty days of the fast; (4) the
tactual space threshold test (with the esthesiometer on the under
side of the left forearm) showed very slight improvement; (5) there
was no change in the immediate memory for digits during the thirty-
one days; (6) there was slight decrease in association reaction time
to twenty words; (7) in the repetition of the same twenty words, the
errors throughout were negligible, with decrease in reaction time;
(8) in the test of one hundred A's and fifty each of other letters,
there was a decrease in time and the accuracy was high throughout
the fast; (9) there was decided improvement in visual acuity, and
(10) improvement in memory for ten words after 55. In general
Mr. Langfeld found improvement in the higher centers involving
discrimination, memory, and association as the fast advanced, but a
loss in muscular reaction.
There were two joint sessions with section L (education) of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science and one joint
session with section H (anthropology and psychology). Among the
papers given at section L were "The Need of a Dual Standard in
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 101
Testing Handwriting, ' ' by Mr. Frank N. Freeman, of the University
of Chicago; "Economical Learning," by Mr. W. L. Pyle, of the
University of Missouri; "Reliability of Accuracy and Speed in
Practise," by Mr. H. L. Smith and Mr. M. E. Haggerty, of Indiana
University; "Reliability and Distribution of Grades," by Mr. D.
Starch, of the University of Wisconsin, and "Standards of Mental
Efficiency, ' ' by Mr. W. L. Pyle, of the University of Missouri. Two
papers were presented at the joint meeting with section H: "The
Separate Origin of Magic and Religion," by Mr. J. H. Leuba, of
Bryn Mawr College, and "Magical and Religious Factors in the
Development of the Human Will," by Mr. Felix Krueger, of the
University of Halle-Wittenberg.
As a result of his studies in economical learning, Mr. Pyle for-
mulated the conclusion that on the whole thirty minutes proves to be
the best length of time for habit-formation. In a few cases he found
shorter periods slightly more advantageous, especially in the early
stages of habituation. He found daily practise better than prac-
tise on alternate days, although after the acquisition of considerable
skill practise on alternate days gives good returns. In his paper on
"Physical Growth and School Standing" Mr. Baldwin showed that
there is a positive correlation between physical development and
school standing, that is, the taller children are in advance of the
shorter ones in school marks and grades. He thought it of doubtful
value to permit children to undertake school work in a grade in
advance of their physiological age. An exhaustive study of speed
and accuracy of the school children of Bloomington, Indiana, under-
taken by H. L. Smith, the superintendent of the schools, and M. E.
Haggerty, of Indiana University, showed very important sex differ-
ences, the boys on the whole surpassing the girls in efficiency in work
in arithmetic.
The annual dinner of the American Psychological Association was
held in the hall of the Chamber of Commerce Tuesday evening,
December 31, at the conclusion of which President Thorndike gave
his annual address on ' ' Ideo-Motor Action. ' ' He called attention to
the fact that for a generation at least the theory of ideo-motor action
had been one of the stock laws of orthodox psychology ; and that in
spite of the contrary evidence of Kirkpatrick, Woodworth, Burnett,
and Thorndike, the doctrine that "an idea tends to produce the act
which it represents or resembles, or is an idea of, or has as its object"
is still generally held. He expressed the belief that a mental state
has no dynamic potency save that its psychological parallel will
evoke whatever response is bound to it or to some part of it by
inherited connections, or by the law of habit. He admitted a very
slight tendency for a mental state which is produced along with a
102 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
movement to reinstate the movement by reinstating that total pulse
of activity ; but be maintained that an idea has no power to produce
an act save the power of psychological connections born in man or
bred in him as the consequence of use, disuse, satisfaction, and
discomfort.
As retiring vice-president of section L of the American Asso-
ciation, Mr. Thorndike took the subject of mental tests and meas-
urements of correlation. He called attention to the fact that
experimentation with tests and the measurements of correlation have
modified greatly in recent years our notions of educational values.
Goodness of memory in the sense of a uniform power to hold all that
is acquired, closeness of concentration in the sense of a uniform
power to resist at will distractions of every variety, and other similar
general excellencies or defects are psychological myths. The meas-
urements of correlation of the last decade have shown that types of
attentiveness, imagery, intellect, or character as a whole simply do
not exist, or if they do exist in a limited measure, they are so com-
plicated by intermediate conditions as to be of no service to thought
or practise. The most important accomplishment of the study of
intellectual and moral diagnosis in our own day has been the estab-
lishment of principles of methods of testing educational systems.
There has also been a substantial beginning in accumulating facts
of symptomatology which are certain to be of use to education and
the other social arts.
Mr. George Trumbull Ladd, of Yale University, took as the sub-
ject of his address as retiring vice-president of Section H of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science "The Study
of Man," in which he pointed out the interrelations of psychology
and anthropology and their connecting cognate sciences.
In addition to the joint meeting with the American Psychological
Association, section L (education) held two other sessions at which
the following papers were presented: "A National University Based
on National Ideas," by Mr. H. K. Brush-Brown, of Washington;
"The Impossible College President," by Mr. William T. Foster, of
Reed College; "The Scientific Study of the College Student," by
Mr. C. W. Williams, of Oberlin College; "A Program of Educational
Eugenics," by Mr. Charles W. Hargitt, of Syracuse University;
"Nature versus Nurture in the Teaching of Arithmetic," by Mr. S.
A. Courtis, of the Detroit Home and Day School, and "Physical
Growth and School Standing, ' ' by Mr. Bird T. Baldwin, of Swarth-
more College.
At the business session of the American Psychological Association
it was decided to hold the next meeting at New Haven in connection
with the American Philosophical Association. The committee on
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 103
publications reported that no progress had been made, and was dis-
missed at its own request. James R. Angell, Edward L. Thorndike,
and James B. Watson were selected as the committee to recommend
new members. Howard C. Warren, of Princeton University, was
chosen president of the Association for the ensuing year. J. W.
Baird, Madison Bentley, and S. I. Franz are the new members of the
council, and Robert M. Ogden was selected as the representative of
the Association on the council of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science.
Twelve persons were elected to membership in the American Psy-
chological Association at the Cleveland meeting, as follows: Henry
Foster Adams, of the University of Michigan ; Charles Macfie Camp-
bell, of the Bloomingdale Hospital, White Plains, New York; Walter
Bradford Cannon, of the Harvard Medical School; Wallace Craig,
of the University of Chicago ; Ludwig Reinhold Geissler, of the Uni-
versity of Georgia ; William Healy, director of the Chicago Juvenile
Psychopathic Institute ; Thomas Verner Moore, of the Catholic Uni-
versity at Washington ; Jared Sparks Moore, of the Western Reserve
University; Rudolf Pintner, of the Toledo University; Albert T.
Poffenberger, of Columbia University ; B. R. Simpson, of the Brook-
lyn Training School for Teachers, and Clara Salem Town, director
of the laboratory of clinical psychology in the Illinois School for
Feeble-minded.
WILL S. MONROE.
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL,
MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of Western
Speculation. FRANCIS MACDONALD CORNFORD. New York and Lon-
don : Longmans, Green, and Company. 1912. Pp. xx -j- 276.
Mr. Cornf ord, favorably known by his suggestive book, " Thucydides
Mythistoricus," here presents a study of the origins of Greek philosophy.
It may be regarded as a companion piece to Miss Harrison's " Themis,"
to which he contributed many scattered suggestions and the chapter on
the origin of the Olympic games. Like Miss Harrison and, if one may
hazard a' conjecture, probably under her influence, he seeks the clew to
the tangled web of religion and philosophical speculation in the teach-
ings of the French school of sociology.
Mr. Cornford strings the early Greek philosophies on two threads of
tradition the scientific and the mystical. The former leads from Anaxi-
mander through Anaximenes, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, to Leucippus ;
the latter unites Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, and
Plato. It will be seen that Empedocles appears in both lists as com-
104 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
bining elements of both traditions; and the same must be said of other
early philosophers, if one accept the principle of classification here pro-
posed. The fundamental distinction lies in the supposed fact that the
scientific tradition .rests upon the basic conception of Moira, which signi-
fies a spatial distribution, whereas the mystical tradition grasps the
conception of Dike, which is a temporal process of adjustment.
The book is divided into six chapters with the following captions:
I. Destiny and Law; II. The Origin of Moira; III. Nature, God, and
Soul; IV. The Datum of Philosophy ; V. The Scientific Tradition; VI. The
Mystical Tradition. In chapter I. the concept of Moira in Greek religion
is well analyzed; and the nature of Styx, the great oath of the gods,
and the dispensation of Keason in Plato, are related to it. Chapter II.
investigates the origin of Moira, and discovers it in a collective repre-
sentation of a primitive social group projected into nature, because at a
totemistic stage it was continuous with human society. All classification
is based on tribal structure projected into nature. The four elements
thus reflect the segmentation of a primary homogeneous group into a
complex organization of the totemic type. Exogamy naturally exists in
such an organization, and marriage of opposites (typified by the sexes),
eventuating by the mediation of Eros in a l>irtli of individual things, is
the type of the cosmic process. Chapter III. traces the projection or
extrusion from the homogeneous continuum of the social group of the
three objectified entities, Nature, God, and Soul. This chapter is a
summary of the French sociological view of the origin of religion, with
suggestive illustrations drawn from Greek data. Chapter IV. regards
philosophy as the analysis of material present in religion, and as dealing
primarily with physis, considered as substance, Soul, divine. Chapters
V. and VI. discuss somewhat in detail the fundamental doctrines of the
leading philosophers of Greece down to and including Plato, relating
them to the principles laid down in the earlier, essentially introductory,
portions of the book.
It is hardly necessary to say that a work of this character, presenting
the outstanding data of early Greek philosophy in the light of a principle
not previously applied in extenso to their explanation, and freshly written
in a clear and engaging style, is bound to be interesting reading. It is
that and more; for undoubtedly our author's thesis contains more than a
germ of truth, and his contribution possesses a value independent of his
main contention. For all that, the present writer regards it as his duty
to deprecate this style of writing. We have already had too much
philosophy of history imposed on the history of philosophy. Usually it
has been of a more or less avowedly metaphysical or logical turn, and it
has invariably tended to vitiate the whole, especially by destroying the
healthy sense of historical perspective and by drawing attention away
from the living wealth of concrete detail to a few dead abstractions. The
anthropological and sociological speculations are distinctly preferable to
the metaphysical, if for no other reason, because their data are more
numerous and more concrete, and hence fewer degrees removed from
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 105
actual thinking. But to be made serviceable they require the comple-
ment of interpretation by psychology, individual and collective, and by
economic and industrial studies which shall take into account every aspect
of experience and rational practise. In other words, there is no royal
road to the comprehension of philosophy, religion, or anything else which
is the product of man's highly complex nature and experience. Ideally
the interpreter should have a complete inventory of the mental furniture
of the thinker. In the case of an author this would involve the complete
knowledge of his writings, of his reading, and other means of information,
including the current notions and practises, of whatever kind, of his
social environment. Practically of course this ideal is impossible of
realization, which is to say, that except in a supposititious perfectly homo-
geneous group, where the comprehension must be unconscious and quasi-
instinctive, and individuality does not exist, one individual can never
fully comprehend another. But nevertheless the principles of science
require that we approximate as nearly as possible to ideal conditions.
So the interpreter of Greek philosophy should approximately exhaust the
available sources for a knowledge of contemporary thought. When (and
then only) this shall have been done, will it be permissible, except as a
guiding principle, to have recourse to generalities derived from a condi-
tion of society practically as remote from the social environment of Plato
as that of the Intichiuma is from that of the English don. Science is a
conveniently elastic concept, and in her name the evolutionist has studied
the primal star-dust as well as the effect of salt solutions on the ova of
sea-urchins; but a practical and fruitful study of history will be vastly
more concerned about proximate principles than with the reduction of the
so-called elements.
To descend to particulars, Mr. Cornford's book is an interesting com-
pound of illuminating insight, arising from the application of general
principles to facts adequately defined, and of obfuscating observations
and disctissions due to the acceptance of alien and undigested opinions
which stand ill related to the facts. A few illustrations in point will
perhaps serve to make this clear. Thus when our author says that the
four elements were originally conceived as spatial compartments or prov-
inces, he is clearly in the right, no matter how or from whom he derived
this insight. It is a distinct gain to have this fact related to the Greek
conception of Moira; the gain derived from relating it to the four-fold
division of the camp of a totem-group is not so obvious. Now by common
consent the most distinctive contribution of Anaximander, whom Mr.
Cornford regards as the apxrfyeTrjs of the scientific line of tradition based
on the conception of Moira or spatial distribution, was held to be the
concept of an dpx 1 ?- I* is a matter of common knowledge that Aristotle
and the doxographic tradition interpreted apxrj as element (<rroixov);
but Mr. Cornford follows modern historians in taking apxy to mean
" beginning," and so the most distinctive tenet of the first apostle of the
scientific tradition belongs not to the dominion of Moira, the saint of his
school, but to Dike, the tutelary divinity of the temporal order, which
constitutes the mystical tradition! By the same token, Mr. Cornford
106 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
takes Anaximander's "Airupov to be a metaphysical ( !) <wis or con-
tinuum, a projection of the homogenous to tern -group. All this ill suits
the theory and the principle of classification. The writer, however,
believes that in his essay " On Anaximander," 1 he has shown to the
satisfaction of all candid scholars that apx*i an d onrupov, like o-Toi^eTov,
are to be interpreted spatially. This interpretation was reached not by
the study of the totemist camp nor even by reference to the Homeric and
Hesiodic Moira, but by a detailed investigation of the conceptions ap^i)
KOI TTT/yi/ and apx^ KCU pia in pre-Socratic thought. The comparison of
the political apx 7 ? or " provincia" with the cosmological apx^ was con *
sidered and dismissed, not because it was not interesting or suggestive,
but because no precise contact appeared to exist; such contact does exist
mediately through the concept TI/AI;, but it was not pressed because of
its remoteness. From the writer's review of Hirzel's " Themis, Dike und
Verwandtes," 2 Mr. Cornford might have derived some useful suggestions
for the study of Moira, as he should have studied with care Diels's
" Elementum."
Again, Mr. Cornford has much to say of physis, which he regards as
the datum of philosophy and as a concept projected from the continuous
homogeneous totem group. It is from this that the concepts Nature,
God, and Soul arise by differentiation and objectification. Physis, he
repeats after Burnet, is the primary substance, and the early Greek
philosophers habitually referred to their " primary substance " as <ims.
Obviously Mr. Cornford was not acquainted with the writer's " Ilept
4>wrews. A Study of the Conception of Nature among the Pre-Socratics "
(1910), in which this view was controverted; nor could he be expected to
know that Professor Burnet had meanwhile in a private communication
to the writer virtually retracted the statements in question. One can
not help wondering with what quizzical mien Professor Burnet might
read the bizarre exaggeration of his own former opinion here presented.
Such are the penalties of second-hand information. Our author is con-
stantly misled by his theory into making false points, as when (p. 253,
n. 1) he says: " <wris in Plato means the World of Ideas," referring to
the phrase ev ry <wm (" Kep.," 597 A, " Phaedo," 103 B, " Parm.," 132 ).
As a matter of fact the phrase denotes precisely what Lucretius (e. g.,
1, 270) means by in rebus, to wit, the world of objective existence or
nature, as two of the passages cited clearly show; if in the third the
words apply to " the World of Ideas," it is only per accidens, in that the
World of Ideas is regarded as the world of truly objective nature. Even
a superficial study of the word <wis must convince the scholar that it
was only in the course of a long development that it became charged with
the meanings which Mr. Cornford seems to regard it as trailing like
clouds of glory from its birth.
If the treatment of <ixris reveals an unfortunate union of blind devo-
tion to authority and a reckless speculation based on sociological theories,
1 Classical Philology, Vol. VII. (1912), pp. 212 ff.
*Amer. Journ. of Philology, Vol. XXIX. (1908), pp. 220 ff.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 107
Mr. Cornford's discussion of the soul is like unto it. Although he speaks
of the ctSwAoi/- soul and the 0u/u,os- soul, in regard to the really crucial
point, to wit, whether in a given case the thinker did use, or would have
used, the word i/^x 1 /* our author is consistently silent. Apparently he
knows next to nothing of the development of the term and the concept;
and yet it surely would be granted that until a reasonable knowledge of
these fundamental matters is had, it must be idle in an historical work
to say much about the subject. Nemesis follows on the heels of pre-
sumption. Mr. Cornford has made several really good points in his
book, and perhaps the best is his demonstration of the fundamental con-
sistency of Empedocles. Yet even in the moment of victory he is struck
down ; he is brought to his fall (p. 239 f .) by the report of Aristotle
(" De Anima," 404 ~b, 8 ff.) that according to Empedocles the soul
(.$ v Xn) contains all the elements. If one considers the passage it is
obvious that Aristotle's statement is only an inference from the fact
that, according to Empedocles, fire perceives fire, water, water, etc.; the
same fact leads Aristotle to assert that each element was a soul (fax 1 !)-
Surely, it requires little experience to suggest caution here touching the
inference to be drawn from such a passage. To Aristotle, of course, per-
ception and intellection are functions of if/vyr/; but would Empedocles
have expressed himself or even thought so? There is no case of i/^x 7 /
in Empedocles except in the purely religious sense; and furthermore, we
have a sufficient indication of what he would have said in fr. 110, 10
Diels, where in obvious connection with the words quoted by Aristotle
he says : Travra. yap laOi <J>p6vr)(riv x eiv Ka * vvfjuaTos cucrav. Consequently all
this had for Empedocles no obvious connection whatever with ifsvxy,
and hence there was no contradiction laboriously to explain away, as
Mr. Cornford bestirs himself to do. The Empedoclean i/'ux 1 / is a complete
analogon to his OTOIXOV, as others before Mr. Cornford have noted. 8
Apparently Mr. Cornford has been influenced by Aristotle's calling the
Empedoclean elements " souls " to do likewise ; they are not souls
(i/'vxeu)? though analogous to souls. By parity of reasoning one might
be led, as apparently Mr. Cornford was, to infer from the verse of
Empedocles above quoted that all things are " soul." The urgent need
of distinctions based upon careful historical study here becomes clear
enough. Anaxagoras spoke of the Novs, but so far as we know it never
occurred to him to call it ^vxn- The fact (if it be a fact) that Anaxi-
mander spoke of the "Airupov as aOdvarov, and as ruling (Kv/?epvav)
all things, does not make it Soul (^u^) an d the fact that fcwris in late
Orphic hymns is personified and receives worship does not show that
physis is Soul.
Mr. Cornford's study of the " mystical " tradition is much better than
the " scientific," probably because the factors to be correlated are more
clearly defined and the analogies more obvious; but here too he regards
the relation between the philosophical doctrines and the " religious "
beliefs as too immediate. That they are related is so obvious that even
* See the writer's "Die Bekehrung im klassischen Altertum, " etc., Zeit-
schrift fur Eeligionspsychologie, Bd. III., Heft 11 (1910), p. 4, n. 14.
108 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the ordinary perfunctory student of the history of thought has not been
able entirely to overlook the fact; to place primitive beliefs into imme-
diate juxtaposition with the Platonic ideas is, however, only to ignore or
to confess one's ignorance of the infinitely complex structure of civilized
society and thought that intervened and wrought itself into manifold
conventions of a substantive or normative character. By the time
philosophy arose the complexion and specific contents of the normative
forms had largely changed; not the primitive concepts germane to a
world conceived in terms of magic, but a highly complex and sophis-
ticated set of notions defined in relation to the arts and crafts of civilized
society furnish the raw material or the proximate principles for the con-
struction of a synthesis or serve as the corpus vile for analysis. Some of
these concepts the writer has sought to trace in his " Antecedents of
Greek Corpuscular Theories." * If Mr. Cornf ord will consider some of
the matters there discussed, he will see that, e. g., the influence of the
doctrine of metempsychosis on that of the atomic structure of matter is
far less direct than he appears to assume. Both are related to the con-
ception of semina certa, which has countless ramifications and develop-
ments. One of the latter, to wit, Aristotle's principle of causation by the
ofjuawfwv, might furnish the text for a long discourse, as it sums up the
whole body of common practise and discloses at the same time its own
roots in the rites of sympathetic magic. But when the concrete historical
setting is thus reconstructed it becomes clear that the distinction between
the " scientific " and the " mystical " tradition fades into relative insig-
nificance, having for its sole, but sufficient, basis the acknowledged fact
that a group of Greek philosophers were historically in intimate relation
to mystical sects and that, as one should expect of honest, energetic
thinkers, their thought in the spheres of religion and philosophy reveals
the operation of the same or similar normative concepts. That these
similar concepts had ultimately the same or a kindred origin is almost a
matter of course; the question for the historical student to raise and,
if possible, to answer, is whether and to what extent the individual
philosopher may have been conscious of their ultimate identity. The
uncertainties that cluster round the philosophy of the lonians and the
difficulty of immediately correlating their scientific concepts with those
of religion are obviously related to the curious phenomena of the divorce
of Homeric theology from the religion of the common Greek, especially
in Greece proper. We shall require much study of matters of detail,
rather than more sociological speculation, before we can hope to offer a
satisfactory solution of these vexed questions.
W. A. HEIDEL.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY.
The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism. FRAXZ CUMOXT. With an
Introductory Essay by Grant Showerman. Chicago : The Open Court
Publishing Company. 1911. Pp. xxv + 298.
This is a book to command attention. Since the publication of his
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. XXII. (1911), pp. Ill ft.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 109
" Monuments de Mithra," begun in 1894, Professor Cumont has consist-
ently maintained his leading place among all students of this subject.
And in no other field of history has there been more rapid and fruitful
progress. Hardly more than a dozen years ago almost nothing existed con-
cerning the great syncretistic movements of religion in the Roman empire.
Paganism was viewed generally athwart either the prejudices of the
Christian fathers or the sympathies of the humanists. No real under-
standing was possible until archeology supplied history with the sources
and anthropology with the key to their meaning. The scholarship of the
twentieth century is now using these, if not to reconstruct the ancient
world, at least to reconstruct the construction of it in vogue but a dozen
years ago. And in no field is this new humanism accomplishing more
important results than in the history of those obscure movements which
carried along the mysteries and cults of the Orient into the heart of the
Roman world. Of about 350 titles referred to in the notes appended to
this volume, at least 300 are to works or articles written since Cumont
himself published the first volume of his " Monuments de Mithra," and
almost 290 refer to publications of the twentieth century. This furnishes
a remarkable indication of the newness of the subject on the one hand
and of the vast cooperative effort now directed upon it. It also indicates
the value of such a survey as this, which opens the clogged perspective so
that any one may see it, and depicts the elusive phenomena with sure and
masterly hand. For Cumont is an historian of the higher type. He does
not merely present a series of problems solved, or posed, but fits the results
of scholarship into the general scheme of the social, intellectual, and
religious history of antiquity. If this clarification was partly due to the
fact that the matter in this volume was first given as lectures, let others
who deal with such subjects give lectures, too.
There are eight chapters treating of the foreign religions, first in their
own home and then in their migration and acceptance in the west. The
opening chapter on " Rome and the Orient " is especially striking, for it
involves a refutation of that popular fallacy in our text-books that the
Orient was to Rome what the " effete East " is to us. Cumont rapidly
points out, from ready, though ignored, evidence, how science, art, philos-
ophy, law, industry, civilization, in short, came to Rome from the east,
and how these cults of the great " religion of salvation " came as a part
of that larger heritage. His keen appreciation of the quite medieval
inadequacy of our sources for ancient history is cogently expressed, but
he remedies the defect so far as he can by going to Persia, Syria, Asia
Minor, and Egypt rather than to classical authors. Archeology has already
yielded us enough so that we may get a truer idea to-day of these wander-
ing cults than cultivated pagans were satisfied with in ancient Rome.
Yet there is one disadvantage in the progress of knowledge; it makes all
syntheses premature. Even since this book has appeared, Breasted has
largely recast our views of Egyptian religion. But this is merely what is
happening everywhere in history. All the historian can do is to reproduce
the only past that exists for him, that which exists in his present. This
Cumont has done, thoroughly, sanely, and with the gift of style.
110 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The notes and bibliographical apparatus, which are appended separate
from the text, furnish in themselves a remarkably full and helpful guide
to the literature on all questions treated in the body of the book. Need-
less to say, they are carefully selected and are as up to date as the text
itself. There is an index.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. J. T. SHOTWELL.
The Normal Child and Primary Education. ARNOLD L. GESELL and
BEATRICE CHANDLER GESELL. New York: Ginn and Company, 1912.
Pp. 340.
Too little is known of the characteristics and powers of the normal
child and of the best methods of developing them. Especially is this true
of the primary child, hence he is " far below his possibilities, and is ripe
for unguessed avenues of activity and attainment." Just fresh from the
home or the kindergarten, with many traits akin to the adolescent, he is
often subjected to the same rigidity of rule and inflexibility of program
that characterize the upper grammar grades. The subject-matter of most
importance for him is still, in the minds of many teachers, the three R's.
In contrast to this point of view the authors of this book hold up to us
the primary child as a little animal, governed largely by instinct and pos-
sessing such habits as have resulted in pleasure. Full of life, full of
activity demanding, questioning, investigating with desire and action
as the keynotes of his conduct.
The book is written in four parts : Part I. is an historical introduction,
tracing the development of the present point of view in education;
Part II. deals with the genetic background of the child, stressing
instincts; Part III. treats of the pedagogy of the various primary-school
subjects; Part IV. offers some brief suggestions as to the conservation
of child life. In the opinion of the reviewer much of Parts I. and II.
could be easily dispensed with, for although the topics treated form the
scientific basis for the method suggested, as presented, they are too tech-
nical and too loosely connected with the rest of the book to be of much
value to teachers. Part III., however, is very suggestive, rich in concrete
material, and alive with a very real interest in children. In it the authors
take the various primary-school subjects and by suggestion and criticism
show how they may satisfy the needs of the .developing child and also
lead to future social efficiency. Although the treatment of some of the
topics is plausibly idealistic, any teacher who reads Part III. of this
book will not only gain definite suggestions for work with school-room
subjects, but will be inspired with a truer appreciation of the active,
lovable child nature with which she has to deal.
NAOMI NORSWORTHY.
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE. August, 1912. L'Univocite scotiste
(second article) (pp. 113-127) : S. BELMONT. - The concept univocite as
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 111
developed by Duns Scotus is of theoretical importance and also of great
practical value. It makes possible our escape from agnosticism. Nervose
et Mysticisme. Sainte Tercse releve-t-elle de la pathologic? (second
article) (pp. 128-154) : A. Hue. - An examination of the Saint's powers of
memory, imagination, introspection, and judgment, and of her intellec-
tual activity and personality shows her to have been normal or better than
normal in them all. Her will power as little as her intellectual faculties
can be classed as pathological. She carried out a great reformatory enter-
prise against tremendous obstacles. Theorie des Emotions (pp. 155-178) :
E. PEILLAUBE. - Emotions are reactions which by encouraging or retarding
actions aid in the bodily and spiritual struggle for existence. While no
emotion is without expression, James is unfortunate in viewing the rela-
tion as a causal one with expression as the prior element. La nouvelle
organisation de I'enseignement philosophique a I'lnstitut catholique de
Paris. Sujets de dissertations philosophiques proposes aux examens du
baccalaureat (juillet 1912). Analyses et Comptes rendus. J. Lubac, La
valeur du spiritualisme : J. MARITAIN. R. Miiller-Freienfels, Psychologie
der Kunst: R. JEAUNIERE. R. P. Schwalm, Lemons de Philosophic sociale,
Tome II. Le Patronat et les Associations. La Societe politique; W.
Nernst, Traits de Chimie generale: J. BULLIOT. P. Sollier, Moral et
Moralite; R. Eucken, Le sens et la valeur de la vie, Konnen wir nock
christen seinf; Th. Flournoy, La Philosophic de William James; S. Gag-
nebin, La Philosophic de I'Intuition. Essai sur les idees de M. Edouard
Le Roy. Notes Bibliographique. Recension des Revues et Chronique.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. August, 1912. L'idealisme des valeurs
et la doctrine de Spir (pp. 113-139) : J. SECOND. - A constructive criticism
of Spir's vigorous dualism of the real and the illusory. Les conditions
"biologiques de la timidite (pp. 140-160) : L. DUPUIS. - The description,
etiology, and effect of the crisis on consciousness in the case of timidity
are adequately set forth in M. Hartenburg's " Les timides et la timidite."
The present article is devoted to the pathogenesis of the crisis. La realite
sociale (pp. 161-171) : W. M. KOZLOWSKI. - Social reality has its basis in
the social bond of psychic nature which is realized in individual conscious-
ness, but which surpasses them by its content and its duration. Varietes.
L'oeuvre philosophique de V. Brochard: L. ROBIN. Analyses et comptes
rendus. H. Berr, La synthese en histoire: DR. S. JANKELEVITCH. Turro,
Ursprung der ErJcenntnis: J. DAGNAN-BOUVERET. S. Gragnebin, La philo-
sophic de f intuition: A. JOUSSAIN. W. Vogel, La religion de I'evohition-
isme: A. JOUSSAIN. V. Lee and C. A. Thomson, Beauty and Ugliness: L.
ARREAT. Notices l)il>liographiques. Revue des periodiques.
Todd, John Welhoff. Reaction to Multiple Stimuli. Archives of Psy-
chology, Number 25. New York: The Science Press. 1912. Pp.
iii-J-65.
Vincent, Stella B. The Function of the Vibrissse in the Behavior of the
White Rat. Behavior Monographs. Vol. L, No. 5. New York:
Henry Holt and Company. Pp. 81.
112 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Watson, John. The Interpretation of Keligious Experience. The Gifford
Lectures for 1910-1912. 2 Vols. Glasgow: James Maclehose and
Sons. New York : The Macmillan Company. 1912. Pp. xiv + 375
andx-t-342. $6.00.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE New York Branch of the American Psychological Association
will hold its next meeting, in conjunction with the Section of Anthro-
pology and Psychology of the New York Academy of Sciences, on Mon-
day, February 24. The following papers will be read : " Psychology As
the Behaviorist Views It," Professor John B. Watson, of Johns Hopkins
University, non-resident lecturer in Columbia University ; " Illusions and
Hallucinations in Insanity," Mr. D. O. Lyon ; " A Note on the Retention
of Practise," Dr. F. Lyman Wells ; " Painting and the Learning Process,"
Mr. C. M. Sax; (1) "Methods of Orientation and Imaginary Maps" and
(2) " The Probable Explanation of Certain Flock Formations of Birds,"
Professor C. C. Trowbridge.
At the last meeting of the New York Branch on January 27, the
following papers were read : " The Natural Sciences as the Basis of the
Social Sciences," Professor A. G. Keller ; " Paleolithic Environment in
Europe," Professor George Grant MacCurdy ; " Race Characteristics vs.
Natural Environment in Commercial Success," Professor Bishop ; " Cli-
matic Influences in Human Activity," Professor Ellsworth Huntington;
" Culture and Environment," Dr. Clark Wissler ; " The Physiographic
Environment of the Machiganga Indians of Peru," Professor Isaiah
Bowman.
PROFESSOR EDWARD L. THORNDIKE, of Teachers College, Columbia Uni-
versity, will give the psychology lectures on the Ichabod Spencer Lecture
Foundation at Union College in February and March of this year. The
general subject of the lectures will be " The Springs of Conduct," and
the special topics will include " Human Instincts : A General View,"
" The Social Instincts," " The Original Roots of Wants, Interests, and
Motives," and " The Value and Use of Human Instincts."
PROFESSOR J. MARK BALDWIN has returned from the South, where he
lectured in the University of South Carolina and the Columbia College
for women. He sailed on February 1 for Paris to lecture for the Comite
France- Amerique on " French and American Ideals."
HENRI BERGSON, professor of philosophy in the University of Paris
and visiting French professor at Columbia University for the year 1912-
13, delivered his first lecture at Columbia University on February 3.
PROFESSOR JAMES HAYDEN TUFTS, head of the department of philos-
ophy in the University of Chicago, has been made chairman of the Illinois
Committee on Social Legislation,
PROFESSOR WILLIAM P. MONTAGUE, of Columbia University, who was
away on leave of absence during the first half year, returned from Europe
on February 3.
VOL. X. No. 5. FEBRUARY 27, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD:
PHILOSOPHY AND OUR LEGAL SITUATION 1
difficulties inherent in our American legal system are in some
-- important respects more deep reaching than many of us are
aware. To a number of us the cause of maladministration of justice
is personal ; it is due, we think, to poor judges, to ignorant or biased
or pettifogging or corrupt judges. To some of us, the remedy lies in
the impeachment, to others, in the recall by popular vote of these un-
faithful or ill-trained public servants. Doubtless both the cause and
the cure are to an extent true. Individual judges in many cases do
not prove to be all that we may rightly expect them to be, either
in intelligence or in integrity ; and in view of this the large measure
of .irresponsibility which they enjoy which is sometimes euphemistic-
ally expressed as their "judicial independence" is unquestionably
a menace to the public welfare. No doubt therefore any steps which
will properly induce in our judicial servants a deeper and more real
sense of their public responsibility must be of social advantage. But
there are difficulties that lie still deeper. For they remain even when
we have good judges, learned, unbiased, and honest judges. To
others, the evil lies in the over-great complication of our legal proced-
ure, and the remedy in simplification. Again, no doubt, both cause
and cure are to an extent true. But even should such simplification
of the processes of law be accomplished, it is a question whether it
would relieve us of the gravest of the distresses from which we now
suffer. For there are difficulties in our legal system that penetrate
as deeply as the fundamental principles of our political and social
life. They reach down even deeper than the much berated constitu-
tion, for the constitution itself is, in many respects, but the instru-
ment of these same fundamental principles.
The chief and captain of the difficulties lies in a certain philos-
ophy which for two centuries at least has played important part in
our common law and which has been adopted by Americans as pe-
1 The major portion of this paper was read at a meeting of the New York
Alumni Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, May 31, 1912.
113
114 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
culiarly expressive of their social and political thought. This may
indeed seem strange, that a philosophy should be the cause of our ills,
for to most of us, doubtless, philosophies are of the insubstantial stuff
that dreams are made of and have little bearing upon our practical
life. But the fact remains that in this case not only is this certain
philosophy determinant of many of our judicial decisions, but it is
determinant in so widely disastrous a manner that it is rousing well-
nigh a whole people to indignant protest. It must call forth in the
philosopher some quiet pride, though of a mixed character, no doubt,
to realize this fact. For if a false or inadequate philosophy can work
so much of evil, how much of good, he may rightly ask himself, might
not a true philosophy accomplish ! Nor need he take to himself blame
for the evil effects. For the philosophy which is thus the cause of so
great difficulty in the administration of justice is one which he, with
most of his fellows of the social sciences, has long since abandoned.
Only the law (may we not say it) , unwitting in its scientific isolation,
laggard in the swift race of research, still worships devotedly at the
otherwise abandoned shrine.
Since I am unfortunately only a philosopher and not a jurist, it
is of this philosophy that I wish to speak, to the end of making clear,
if I am able, its peculiar inadequacy and the need for its effective
modification.
The English common law, in which this philosophy has promi-
nent part, for many centuries served the high purpose of defending
liberty against despotic oppression. Its principle of ' ' the supremacy
of the law" was construed for the sake of guarding individual rights
against the arbitrary will of other individuals or powers. It had its
strong development in centuries when, by reason of the aristocratic
and theocratic 2 organization of society, the oppression of the indi-
vidual was relatively easy the oppression of him bodily, or through
his property, or family affections, or religious convictions. In such
an age, the defense of the individual had to be secured by law express-
ing unequivocally and emphatically the sacredness of certain indi-
vidual rights. Thomas More gave expression to this in the revolu-
tionary principle that in an ideal state all individuals must be equal
before the law.
But it was increasingly realized by the social philosophers of these
centuries that opposition to the two strongly intrenched classes the
clergy and the nobility to be successful, must be founded upon
a ' ' Relatively to lay society, the clerical order was a separate, and, in a
sense, a superior caste a spiritual aristocracy." Ritchie, "Natural Rights,"
page 254.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 115
wholly unassailable principles. Those rights of the common man
which the law was seeking to defend must be shown to be grounded
not in anything as capricious and open to doubt as the will of legis-
lators, but in the very nature of reality itself. For the privileged
classes might easily retort that it was not in fact socially expedient
to regard all men as equal before the law. Aristotle, for example,
had reasoned that certain persons were naturally slaves; a society
organized according to a graduated system of special hereditary
privileges would, according to him, offer far more promise of a bril-
liant development than one in which the highest in birth and accom-
plishment was regarded, legally, as of no greater worth than the
lowest. Thus, to the social philosophers intent upon undermining
the system of class privilege there was apparently but one course to
pursue : to prove that the equality of all men, their possession of cer-
tain unassailable rights irrespective of class or station, was grounded
in nature itself. So, to the end of defending the common man and of
abrogating special privileges and immunities, the philosophical
theory of natural rights was slowly wrought into shape. This is the
theory which is still the basis of our American legal and constitutional
systems.
It will be unnecessary here to enter into a detailed history of the
development of this momentous social theory. It will suffice to re-
call its main points: (1) that all men are born free and politically
equal ; and that it is their natural right therefore to remain thus free
and equal; (2) that since men are by natural right equal, no one can
have any right to encroach on another's equal right, among these
rights being those of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happi-
ness; (3) that political rights are based upon contract.
The first two principles are sufficiently familiar. The third,
which is their logical outcome and which has brought in its train
most of the difficulties since encountered, is not so familiar. Accord-
ing to the theory of equal birth and equal right, the individual is the
primordial unit. All institutions, organizations, societies are second-
ary to him, have their growth out of him. The state therefore is but
the product of individual wills; the individual is in no sense the
product of the state. The state exists to serve these primordial wills ;
it must in nowise encroach upon them save as they have themselves,
for their own advantage, consented to such encroachment. What-
ever powers therefore the state possesses are powers granted to it by
individuals. The state, in short, is wholly the result of the mutual
consent or contract of individuals to enter into community of life.
From this point of view the state is, as it were, a necessary evil. It
is simply the surrendered residuum of individual rights and privileges.
It follows from this view that the power and authority of the
116 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
state are to be jealously restricted. The prime concern of men is the
preservation of the rights and privileges of each individual. We
find a vivid expression of this individualism in a typical passage
from Blackstone : " So great moreover is the regard of law for private
property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no not
even for the general good of the whole community. If a new road,
for instance, were to be made through the grounds of a private per-
son, it might perhaps be extensively beneficial to the public, but the
law permits no man, or set of men, to do this without the consent of
the owner of the land. In vain it may be urged that the good of the
individual ought to yield to that of the community, for it would be
dangerous to allow any private man, or even any public tribunal, to
be the judge of this common good, or to decide whether it is expedient
or no. Besides, the public good is in nothing more essentially inter-
ested than in the protection of every individual's private rights." 3
In the light of historical conditions, it is not difficult to explain
such a view, so jealously careful of individual rights, so suspicious of
governmental encroachment. The explanation will be found to have
important bearing upon our own peculiar attitude toward govern-
mental interference with the rights of individuals. "The eighteenth-
century conception of liberty, ' ' writes Professor J. Allen Smith,*' ' was
the outgrowth of the political conditions of that time. Government
was largely in the hands of a ruling class who were able to further
their own interest at the expense of the many who were unrepre-
sented. It was but natural under these circumstances that the people
should seek to limit the exercise of political authority, since every
check imposed upon the government lessened the dangers of class
rule." There was every reason, then, why the common man should
be suspicious of government, and why the English common law, de-
veloped in large measure to protect him, should lay stress upon his
individual right against the relatively irresponsible power of the
ruling classes.
It was in this thought of individual freedom from governmental
control that our American nation was born. There was the memory
of aristocratic oppression, political and clerical, and the thought of
government as the ready instrument of such oppression. To secure
liberty, then, meant to secure the individual against political domi-
nation. Government was indeed a necessity even for freemen; but
the less one had of it the better. This accounts largely for the ex-
treme care with which the founders of our nation guarded themselves
against political encroachment, hedged the state about with all man-
ner of restrictions, and surrounded their individual rights and liber-
8 Blackstone, " Commentaries " (Wendell), page 138.
*J. Allen Smith, "The Spirit of American Government," page 291.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 117
ties with secure protective devices. Government was to be feared;
for had it not always been the source and instrument of privileged
oppression ?
Yet, curiously enough, in the brief period of our national exist-
ence, the situation has become almost exactly reversed. In the eight-
eenth century the political order was oligarchic, while the economic
order was democratic small producers and manufacturers, an easy
transition from employee to employer, wealth very widely distrib-
uted, economic opportunities relatively equal. The hope of the
members of that democratic economic order was to be let alone by
the oligarchic governmental order. Laissez faire was the solvent word.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on the contrary, the con-
ditions have been exactly reversed. The economic order is now the
conspicuously oligarchic order: through the introduction of complex
machinery and the concentration of industries, the small producers
and manufacturers have been swept largely into the class of hired
workers; a wide gulf yawns between employers and employees; the
employee may no longer easily become an employer; wealth is con-
centrated in the hands of a few; economic opportunities are exceed-
ingly unequal. The industrial revolution, in short, "has resulted in
the transfer of industrial power from the many to the few, who now
exercise in all matters relating to production an authority as absolute
and irresponsible as that which the ruling classes exercised in the mid-
dle of the eighteenth century over the state itself." As against this
development of oligarchic organization in the economic order, there is,
on the contrary, in the political order increasing realization of demo-
cratic equality. Thus the ' ' class ' ' which is now a danger to the liberty
of the common man is no longer, as in the former century, the political
ruling class, for in our political democracy we have no class with
special political privileges. The class which is now the chief source
of both actual and potential danger to liberty is the economically
regnant class. I need not dwell upon this. There will be no
question, I think, that the chief threat to our democratic institutions
to-day is not our legislative bodies, but the vast economic powers
which tend more and more to override our legislatures, to defy our
common will, to suppress the sovereign rule of the people by the more
powerful sovereignty of economic compulsion. More and more the
political state, once supreme, tends to become but a lesser state within
a state. The fight for democracy, in short, is now an economic, not a
political, fight. That, I take it, is the essential significance, e. g., of
the socialistic movement.
*Ibid., page 307.
118 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
II
And now we may perhaps realize the curious contradiction in
which, as a nation, we find ourselves to-day. The theory of natural
rights, fashioned in the years when the state was the natural foe and
the economic order was the refuge of the common man, is still our
national theory in the day when, on the contrary, the state is the
refuge and the economic order is in many respects the chiefest foe of
the common man. In the earlier century the cry of "hands off of
business ' ' was the slogan of individual liberty ; in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries it is the slogan of economic concentration and
oppression. It is not surprising then that a theory embodied in the
common law and stated expressly in the constitution, which once
served for the protection of the common man has become increas-
ingly the instrument of his oppression. As a distinguished jurist
has recently expressed it, ''To-day for the first time the common law
finds itself arrayed against the people ; for the first time, instead of
securing for them what they most prize, they know it chiefly as some-
thing that continually stands between them and what they desire.
. . . There is a feeling that [the common law] prevents everything
and does nothing. ... It exhibits too great a respect for the indi-
vidual and for the intrenched position in which our legal and po-
litical history has put him, and too little respect for the needs of
society, when they come in conflict with the individual, to be in touch
with the present age. ' ' 6
This reversal of the situation may be aptly illustrated by refer-
ence to recent decisions of our high courts of appeal. To take a
famous instance, a law is passed prohibiting the manufacturing of
cigars in the home. It is obviously a law framed in view, not only
of social welfare, but of the welfare of those whom it prohibits from
sweatshop work. Yet a high court of appeal pronounces the law
unconstitutional. Its reason for so doing is that such a law restricts
the workman in his liberty of choice as to the place and manner in
which he is to earn a livelihood. "Liberty in its broad sense as
understood in this country," says Justice Earl in his decision in this
case, "means the right not only of freedom from actual servitude,
imprisonment, or restraint, but the right of one to use his faculties in
all lawful ways, to live and work where he will, to earn his livelihood
in any lawful calling, and to pursue any lawful trade or avocation.
All laws, therefore, which impair or trammel these rights (except as
such laws may be passed in the exercise by the legislature of the
police powers . . .), are infringements upon his fundamental rights
of liberty, which are under constitutional protection. ' '
E. Pound, "Do We Need a Philosophy of Law?" Col. Law Eev., Vol. V.,
page 344, May, 1905.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS U9
It is true, indeed, that by such a decision of the court, the indi-
vidual's liberty is protected against the encroachment of the state.
But in this case the real enemy is not the state, but exploiting manu-
facturers. Thus the court, in protecting the worker against his ap-
parent enemy, actually delivers him bound hand and foot to his real
foe, the sweatshop manufacturer, and this in the sacred name of pro-
tection to the worker's fundamental rights.
Again an act is passed by a legislative body prohibiting the pay-
ment of workmen in anything except money. Speaking of these sec-
tions of the act, the court said : 7 ' ' They are wholly unconstitutional
and void, inasmuch as by them an attempt has been made by the leg-
islature to do what in this country can not be done ; that is, prevent
persons who are sui juris from making their own contracts. The act
is an infringement alike of the right of the employer and the em-
ployee. He may sell his labor for what he thinks best, whether
money or goods, just as his employer may sell his iron and coal, and
any and every law that proposes to prevent him from so doing is an
infringement of his constitutional privileges and is consequently
vicious and void."
Here again the court is ostensibly defending the right of the in-
dividual laborer, placing him as a free individual with "rights" on
a par with his employer. But who that knows the viciousness of
the widespread system of payment in company orders or in truck
store goods or in forms of vague promises, and who that knows the
weakness of the individual laborer to protest against such payment,
does not realize that such ostensible court protection exposes the
worker but the more fatally to the oppression of unscrupulous em-
ployers.
Again an act is passed restricting the number of hours of work
per day to eight. (Ex parte Kubach, 85 Col. 274.) The court pro-
nounces this null and void, supporting its decision as follows: "We
can not conceive of any theory upon which a city could be justified
in making it a misdemeanor for one of its citizens to contract with
another for services to be rendered because the contract is that he
shall work for more than a limited number of hours." Again the
discussion is in a wholly individualistic spirit. There is no thought
that the permission given to each individual to contract as he pleases
as to number of hours is really a power given to employing agencies
to compel as long hours of labor as they possibly can. Again in this
case it is the legislature that seeks to protect the common man, while
it is the court that, protesting against legislative interference with
his individual "rights," in fact exposes the man to the exploitation
'Godcharles and Wigeman, 113 Pa. St., 431.
120 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
of employers. The court, curiously enough, thus makes it necessary
for the worker, if he would defend himself against exploitation, to
do so by extra-legal methods of trade union pressure. And yet when
such pressure is brought to bear, the court is the first to issue the
summary injunction.
Again an act is passed requiring that wages due be paid on the
day of discharge. The court pronounces this act null and void ; and
in so doing declares with eloquent indignation : 8 ' ' The patrimony of
the poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his own hands ; and
to hinder him from employing these in what manner he may think
proper, without injury to his neighbors, is a plain violation of this
most sacred property. ' ' Therefore, says the court in effect, the poor
man must never be deprived of the inestimable privilege of agreeing
with his employer to wait patiently six months or even a year or a
dozen years for the money justly due him at the time of his discharge.
Summa jus summa injuria!
One might easily multiply instances, but the foregoing are typical
of scores of decisions.
In all of these cases the object of the court is perfectly clear and
the procedure perfectly legal : to protect the individual in his right
freely to contract, to prevent any encroachment upon this funda-
mental right of his on the part of the state. This protection is
granted on the theory that the individual has a natural right to the
ownership and disposal of his private property his property in
things or in his labor. But the thought, as we have seen, is wholly
absent from these decisions that the real encroacher is not the state,
but the economic powers against which the state directs its legisla-
tion. "I do not criticize these decisions," says Professor Pound,
after detailing a score or more of them. "As the law stands, I do
not doubt they were rightly determined. But they serve to show
that the right of the individual to contract as he pleases is upheld
by our legal system at the expense of the right of society to stand
between our laboring population and oppression. This right of the
individual and this exaggerated respect for his right are common-
law doctrines. And this means that a struggle is in progress between
society and the common law." Again, it is a sheer reversal of the
older situation.
Ill
It is in this conception of the individual's natural right to the
unrestricted ownership, use, and disposal of his property, to his free-
dom therein from state control, that the crux of our present American
difficulty lies. It is in this conception, too, that the theory of "nat-
"Leep v. St. Louis I. M. & S. B. Co. (1894) ; 58 Ark. 407.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 121
ural rights" 9 comes into direct conflict with its own more essential
principles. For among the other "natural rights" assumed, by the
theory, to be possessed by men are the rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. We have just seen how the strict carrying out
of the principle of the inviolability of private property (i. e., in the
right freely to contract) comes into tragic conflict with the industrial
liberty of workers, with their pursuit of happiness, and, too often,
with their life itself. In the earlier centuries, as we have seen, such
a conflict could hardly occur, by reason of the relative equality of
men in the economic order. But the conflict was simply dormant.
Logically it was present all the while; and it required simply a
change of economic conditions to bring it glaringly into relief.
The significance therefore of our present American situation is
that, owing to important changes of economic conditions, it shows
forth as never before the fundamental self-contradiction hitherto
lurking in the theory of natural rights. The tragedy of the situa-
tion lies in the fact that, because the American constitution which
embodies that self-contradictory theory is practically unchangeable,
and because the courts are sworn to the service of that constitution,
our American life must subject itself to the curious and really un-
precedented indignity of ruling itself by laws and principles patently
self -contradictory. For an age of reason such a situation is indeed
the speaking image of unreason itself!
IV
What then of the remedy ? Obviously, it must lie in such modifi-
cation of the philosophy which is at the foundation of our legal sys-
tem as will eliminate the patent self-contradictions. How is such
modification to be accomplished? Let us regard in this connection
two remedies widely proposed as a cure for our legal and political
difficulties: the recall of judges and the recall of decisions. Will
these remedies really cure the evils? That they would cure some
evils, one may easily believe, although one may easily be certain, too,
that one of them at least will bring distempers greater than the evils
cured.
Would the recall of judges solve our difficulties? The recall of
9 Lest the reader should misapprehend the main point of the article, let me
hasten to say that the argument of the paper is directed, not against any and
every interpretation of the theory of natural rights, but only against the indi-
vidualistic interpretation which has been in traditional vogue in England and
America. I make this note at the suggestion of my colleague, Professor Morris
E. Cohen, who calls my attention to the recent work of Charmond, "La renais-
sance du droit nature!," in which the natural rights theory is interpreted in a
non-individualistic manner.
122 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
judges might indeed be effective in eliminating certain forms of per-
sonal corruption ; but it could hardly be effective in overcoming the
legal self-contradiction of which we have spoken. For the judges
who would replace those dismissed would be men trained in the same
legal theories, and inevitably responsive to the same legal philosophy.
Besides they would be in sworn service to a constitution which ex-
pressly embodies that philosophy.
Would the recall of judicial decisions effect a cure? Here we
come, I think, to the root of the question. However great the evils
which such recall would bring in its train, it might indeed be effec-
tive if we as a nation were ourselves conscious of a solvent social phi-
losophy. But we are not. We are vaguely, more or less distressfully,
aware that something is wrong, that we have not, often, the legisla-
tive right to accomplish what we deeply desire to accomplish, that
liberty goes hand in hand with servitude, and the rights of man with
oppression. But what the fundamental reason for it is, and what is
the way out, we American people simply do not know. Thus grant-
ing that we had recalled the decisions decisions rendered in faithful
accord with our accepted national philosophy we should ourselves
have no coherent legal or political or economic philosophy to offer in
terms of which later decisions might be more adequately rendered.
The fact is, in short, that our normal American life exhibits the very
self-contradictions found in our national philosophy. We believe
implicitly most of us in the inviolable rights of private property
even at the very moment when we realize the havoc to social welfare
wrought by that very theory of inviolability.
To whom, for example, belong the inviolable rights of property
to the owner of various forms of capital, or to the owner of labor ? If
inviolability means unrestricted possession and use, then both of
these rights can not be equally inviolable; for one of them, as we
know labor is easily forced into submission by the other. What is,
then, the true relation between the inviolability of a man's property
in his labor and the inviolability of a man 's property in his capital ?
The two inviolabilities would seem to be inherently self-contradictory.
Is the equitable relation between them that of a drawn battle
the property in capital, on the one side, and the property in labor on
the other ? Shall the state, then, recognizing the drawn battle, recog-
nize the right of the laborer to organize for such battle? And if it
recognizes that right of industrial organization, shall it protect him
against persecution by employers for exercising that right in times of
industrial peace? Or shall the state frown upon such extra-legal
methods of adjustment, and either leave the individual owner of
labor to his individual fate, or secure his labor rights, as to hours and
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 123
wage, through legislation? As to all this, of course, we are wholly
unsettled. Our court decisions are now one way and now another.
Or is the difficulty still deeper? Does the inviolable right to one
kind of ownership the ownership of capital grant to such owner-
ship a wholly disproportionate power the power, first, to extort more
than its fair share of reward, and, secondly, to influence legislative
bodies to the end of preventing the passage of laws curtailing that
power? And is the way out of this difficulty, the removal, as far as
possible, of such ownership from private to public hands?
We do not know. In this matter, we as a people are still almost
wholly at sea. And our courts drift as we drift, now to this compro-
mise, now to that.
Our deepest task, in short, to-day is the achievement of an eco-
nomic or industrial philosophy that will be adequate to the full de-
mands of a democratic civilization. We have to a degree wrought
out a philosophy of political democracy. For a while we accounted
that sufficient. But we have been realizing increasingly of late,
through the sad and somewhat terrifying lessons of legislatures de-
bauched by private enterprises, of courts owned and controlled, of
political parties for the most part the subservient tools of the regnant
economic powers, that political democracy is in fact impossible of
achievement where there is not present a like democracy in the eco-
nomic life of a people. But what are we to mean by economic or in-
dustrial democracy ? I take it that as yet we, as a people, simply do
not know. Thus there continues in our national life this conflict be-
tween an undemocratic belief and behavior in our economic life, on
the one hand, and our fundamental democratic ideals, on the other;
and it is this conflict that leaves us so vaguely distressed and un-
witting of our way.
More fundamental therefore than any of the reforms in our po-
litical or legal machinery is the reform in our national social phi-
losophy, particularly in that aspect of the philosophy which is con-
cerned with the idea of property. How to democratize ownership!
With all our present vagueness, there can be no question, I think,
that such a reform of our national philosophy is in process. Reforms
of this kind are not made by single men, though often the single man
strikes out the trenchant summary, nor, indeed, by legislative pro-
nouncements. They occur as a result of increasing pressure of wide-
spread social difficulties, and through the gradual awakening of men
to new social needs. Such is the condition of our present day. The
well-nigh universal, ofttimes violent criticism of our courts, where
our undemocratic economic philosophy is displayed to us in its most
uncompromising form, the social weepings and gnashings of teeth
over decisions that hinder the prosecution of our earnest endeavors
124 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
for human welfare, are indications of our growing dissatisfaction
with the national theory that is ours. We launch out indeed against
the courts, but all the while, in fact, we are launching out against the
inadequacies of our national theory; gradually we are framing for
ourselves a new theory of law, economics, and politics. It is for this
reason, above all, that public criticism of the courts as well as of our
constitutional government, instead of being hushed as unseemly,
indeed as sacreligious, should be welcomed as the surest, healthiest
means of the nation 's emancipation from old doctrines and of its edu-
cation to a more adequate economic, political, and legal under-
standing.
Again the vast unrest in the economic world, the growing recog-
nition of the necessity for curbing economic liberty, of controlling,
indeed of abrogating certain ownership, is clarifying the national con-
sciousness both as to the character of this more deeply laid problem
and the way of its solution.
There can be no question, I think, that a new social philosophy of
momentous import for democratic civilization is to be the outcome
of this period of stress and storm. To this new social synthesis the
vast and for the most part still ill-assorted results of modern econo-
mists, sociologists, social psychologists, political scientists, moralists,
and philosophical jurists will be the essential contribution. It is not
altogether improbable, I think, that we who are here will live to see
the day when out of the conflicts and contradictions, the confusions
and misunderstandings of the present there will rise a nationally
accepted philosophy of social not simply of political democracy,
momentous to the coming centuries as was the philosophy of Rous-
seau to the Revolution, of Grotius to nationalism, of Locke to civil
and religious liberty. There is here a fascinating task for the phi-
losopher of the present and the future to grasp the essential contra-
dictions of our present social order, and out of the sorry members of
them to help rear the structure of a more adequate social theory.
Thoughts, indeed, sometimes are greater than things, for thoughts
of ten rule the destiny of things. As Hegel trenchantly put it: "In
earlier days men . . . thought away freely and fearlessly. They
thought about God, about Nature and the State. . . . But while
they so thought, the principal ordinances of life began to be seriously
affected by their conclusions. Thought deprived existing institutions
of their force. Constitutions fell a victim to thought: religion was
assailed by thought . . . the old faith was upset. . . . Philosophers
were accordingly banished or put to death, as revolutionists who had
subverted religion and the state. . . . Thought, in short, made itself
a power in the real world, and exercised an enormous influence. . . .
It became urgent therefore to justify thought . . . and it is this
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 125
examination into the nature of thought and this justification which
in recent times has constituted one of the main problems of phi-
losophy."
To-day it is such an examination into the nature of our social
thought, political, legal, and economic, which is our chief est task.
Before it, all the temporary tinkerings with this bit of machinery and
that sink into insignificance. The day, in short, is ripe for a new,
deepened conception of human rights and obligations, for a solvent
"thought" that, in Hegel's words, will remove what is no longer
trustworthy in the old beliefs the old conceptions of liberty and
property, of labor and wage and in their place rear a firmer, more
deeply and widely grounded structure of democratic mutuality. 10
After speaking thus strongly of the need for a readjusted social
philosophy, however, I have perhaps made it imperative that I say no
more. For it will now seem inexcusably presumptuous for me to
venture a prophecy as to the nature of this more adequate social phi-
losophy. And yet since the formulation of such a philosophy is an
essential task for every one who pretends to serious philosophic in-
terest, I may not as a professing philosopher escape my share of re-
sponsibility. Let me then risk the danger of immodesty and indicate
as best I can in brief space what, to my mind, would seem to be the
generating principle of the social philosophy now in process of forma-
tion in America.
10 It is significant to note the confirmation of this view by a group of our
leading teachers of law. In the General Introduction to the ' ' Modern Legal
Philosophy Series, ' ' issued by a committee of the Association of American Law
Schools, we find the following : ' ' ' Until either philosophers become kings, ' said
Socrates, 'or kings philosophers, states will never succeed in remedying their
shortcomings. ' And if he was loath to give forth this view, because, as he
admitted, it might 'sink him beneath the waters of laughter and ridicule,' so
to-day among us it would doubtless resound in folly if we sought to apply it
again in our own fields of state life, and to assert that philosophers must become
lawyers or lawyers philosophers, if our law is ever to be advanced into its perfect
working.
"And yet there is hope, as there is need, among us to-day, of some such
transformation. Of course history shows that there have always been cycles of
legal progress, and that they have often been heralded and guided by philos-
ophies. But particularly there is hope that our own people may be the genera-
tion now about to exemplify this.
' ' Hitherto . . . our . . . outlook on juristic learning has been insular. Our
juristic methods are still primitive. . . . Without some fundamental basis of
action, or theory of ends, all legislation and judicial interpretation are reduced
to an anarchy of uncertainty. . . . [But at last] we are on the threshold of a
long period of constructive readjustment of our law in almost every department."
126 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
As we have noted, the circumstances of history particularly
those of the nineteenth century have brought us far more clearly
than ever to a consciousness of the interdependence of the members
and activities of society. That no man liveth to himself alone is be-
come a truism. But if no man liveth to himself alone, it follows that
no man is alone responsible either for failure or success. The tubercle
bacillus that infests my body and wrecks my life is borne, all uncon-
sciously to myself, from some suffering neighbor, who likewise has re-
ceived the same manner of infection through no overt act or fault of
his own. Doubtless had my neighbor and I lived healthier lives we
might not have succumbed to the germs. But my neighbor, by rea-
son of financial stringency, is compelled to live in insanitary rooms,
while I, let us say, am compelled to support my family at sedentary
labor. Thus neither my individual effort nor the individual effort of
my neighbor could serve to free me from the danger of infection.
The wider and more complex conditions of our life, in short, are only
slightly within our individual control. So, one 's success as a business
man, an engineer, a teacher, depends upon a thousand things of
family environment, of communal spirit, of educational opportuni-
ties for which the individual person is not simply responsible. The
more, in brief, we realize the inescapable interdependence of living
creatures, the more we discover that society is not a loose aggregate
of relatively independent individuals, but is rather an originally knit
unity of life centers. An individual is an active point of differentia-
tion within the unity ; he is not, as the older theories tended to regard
him, an area of independence.
For such a society, organically close knit, it is a poor and mis-
leading statement of the life relations to lay prime stress as our nat-
ural rights philosophy does upon the fundamental freedom of each
individual, and then, with the discovery that the sheer freedom of
each individual is in practise impossible, to declare that such free-
dom must be limited by non-encroachment upon the like freedom of
others. The difficulty is not that such a view is unworkable, for this
is precisely the view in the egoistic spirit of which our American so-
ciety indeed, most modern society is organized. Indeed, when we
cease to sentimentalize about our glorious civilization, we note that
the essential mechanics of modern society, particularly in the eco-
nomic sphere, is a more or less nice adjustment between the claims of
the one individual to all he can possibly get and hold, and the like
claims of all others. In fact, to some, this seems the only possible
principle upon which a society can be organized. Live and let live.
Each one must concern himself with himself and must not tread at
least not unduly upon his neighbor's toes. The serious social dis-
order of the present, they would say, arises out of the fact that a few,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 127
the stronger and ruthless ones, are trampling, without thought or
consideration, all over their weaker neighbors. If these stronger ones
would but keep within bounds, if they would give the weaker neigh-
bors equal room in which to move, society would live a harmonious
life. Live and let live.
The difficulty with this view, I say, is not that it is unworkable, it
is rather that it is too low, too negative, too self-stultifying. It is
doubtless the only view possible for a certain stage of society. But it
can not be held to be a solvent view. It presents the picture of a so-
ciety, each member of which holds a suspicious eye upon the others,
while with mind thus divided, he works feverishly at the enhance-
ment of his own private good. It is a view without secure generosity,
without the spirit of vigorous giving and serving. It has no glimmer,
in short, of that profoundest and most virile of moral truths, that
only he that loseth his life shall find it. A society organized in the
spirit of each for himself, without encroachment upon others, may,
indeed, if rigorously administered, be a relatively peaceful society;
but no one would venture to say that it was a society cast in heroic
moral mould, or even in a moral mould respectably ideal.
It is interesting to note that while the pregnant moral truth em-
bodied in the sentence that he that loseth his life shall find it has
been accepted as expressive of the highest moral ideality, it has been
understood, curiously enough, only in an individualistic sense. It
has scarcely yet been regarded as a truth expressive of what ought to
be the spirit and organization of social life. For example, the truth
has been understood to mean that I, the individual, should seek in the
main to further the ends of other individual lives. How I am to do
this is not indicated. In one way or another, I, the individual, am to
seek to aid other individuals. Yet, as we have said, we have been in-
creasingly realizing of late years that the conditions which shape the
life of any individual are not only beyond his individual control;
they are likewise beyond the control of any other single individual
who essays help. Hence while the individual assistance of one per-
son may ameliorate whatever ills another individual may experience,
such service must ever fall far short of curing the ills. Any one, for
example, who has taken a vigorous personal part in the effort to re-
move individual poverty knows how ineffective such effort is, how
inevitably it calls for wider and wider cooperation; until suddenly
there dawns the conviction that there is no adequate hope save in the
concerted thought and will of the whole society.
The profound moral truth contained in the dictum that he that
loseth his life shall find it needs therefore to be translated into its
widest social terms. It will then mean that the only adequately moral
society is one in which the persistent and essential spirit a spirit
128 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
embodied in all the significant institutions of the society, domestic,
economic, educational, legal, political, religious is the spirit of com-
munal cooperation. It must mean a mutuality of service not hap-
hazard, not isolated and individual, a bit of help here and a bit of
stimulus there, but a mutuality intelligently organized, cooperatively
administered. Unquestionably much of the weakness of the Christian
churches has lain in their failure to pass beyond the haphazard in-
dividualism of this great doctrine which it has been their good for-
tune to teach, to its essential social-ism to the thought, in short, that
the fulfilled ideal of a life-in-others is nothing more or less than a
society organized in the conscious pursuit of a common or communal
interest. It is this advance beyond the individualistic to the social
and institutional interpretation of the highest of our moral truths
that is doubtless to constitute the distinguishing achievement of
our age.
Doubtless such a society is exceedingly difficult to realize, one in
which all the commanding and widely significant activities are or-
ganized in the spirit of communal cooperation. Unquestionably, it
could not be realized in ages preceding our own. The very physical
isolations made communal cooperation on any large scale unfeas-
ible, while the ignorances concomitant with isolations made the very
thought of such cooperation impossible. Life was almost wholly a
matter of group isolation and group antagonism. The ills of such
society were born of the twin sisters of enmity and ignorance.
Modern life on the contrary exhibits an increasing drawing to-
gether of groups and people. Even the bonds of nationality no longer
vitally separate ; national enmities are for the most part the enmities
of groups masking their commercial avidity under the guise of po-
litical necessity. The time is conceivable when the national bonds
will have been reduced to the purely administrative lines of demar-
cation within a federation of the world; while within each lesser
group the interrelations brought to pass by rapid communication and
transit, newspapers and books, have become so intimate and far-
reaching that the life of each person in the group is far more deeply
than ever before a life in and with all his fellows. Modern life be-
gins to exhibit, too, an increasing understanding of the facts and
forces of its existence ; it no longer lives largely in haphazard igno-
rance of means and processes. Poverty and disease are being increas-
ingly understood. They are no longer divine visitations salutary to
the soul, but noisome sores in the body of humanity that must be
cured. Such phenomena in the economic world as unregulated pro-
duction, with its wretched consequences of stagnation and unem-
ployment alternating with wasteful oversupply; such phenomena as
the hideous waste and bitter inhumanity of individualistic commer-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 129
cial competition, with its concomitants of wage-slavery, poverty,
child labor, criminality, and prostitution phenomena due almost
wholly to the fact that there is here neither understanding of com-
munal interests nor cooperative effort to that end such phenomena
will tend increasingly to disappear as intelligent understanding
grows of facts and causes and of the remedies that lie in concerted
effort. Science is after all but a very young child of our civilization.
It has scarcely as yet even attempted the big problems of our hu-
manity. It has been concerned with matters on the outskirts. But
unquestionably the time is not far distant when it will have grown to
a strength and stature commensurate with the vital human issues,
when entering the industrial, political, and legal realms, it will bring
intelligent order out of the anarchy of unrationalized tradition and
anti-social self-seeking.
This the principle of communal cooperation, rather than that of
individual rights is, I take it, to be the generating principle of the
new social philosophy. In all the social movements that are absorb-
ing our interests the hitherto undreamed-of extension of the pub-
lie educational system, the growing acceptance by the public of re-
sponsibility for recreational opportunities, the growing public ac-
ceptance of responsibility for intemperance, prostitution, and crime
that come of bad housing, of low resorts, of unhealthy and morally
unclean streets, and above all, of inadequate wages, and the vigorous
search of the public for measures of amelioration, if not of cure
housing regulations, readjustments of tax proportions, censorships,
but most significant of all, public wage regulations, laws for accident
compensation, unemployment and old-age insurance, and public con-
trol and ownership of economic enterprises all of these bear witness
to the increasing socialization of the various activities of our life, the
lifting of these out of the sphere of free individual initiative into the
sphere of communal initiative and administration. It is an age, in-
deed, of half-conscious, bungling attempts. But one who watches
carefully may see that the old way of individualism is past, and that
the way of the future is to be the way of social cooperation and inte-
gration.
In view of this, then, we may see how lamentably our courts are
situated. They are perforce the spokesmen and executors of a social
philosophy which even now, as a people, we have ceased in any vital
or consistent sense to hold. They are sworn to the service of this
older view, sworn to declare its outworn principles, to work havoc
with its ill-adjusted machinery, sworn to a service which they may
not abandon until, perchance, the old shall abdicate its right and
make way for the more adequate new. The profoundest of our diffi-
culties, then, lies not in our courts case-bound and biased and even
130 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
corrupt though they are at times but in ourselves. We are unclear
both as to what is and what should be our national philosophy.
Doubtless the coming years will witness, what will indeed in the re-
sult be an epoch-making event, the slow working into shape of a more
adequate social philosophy. To this task the labors of the philosopher
aware of the human obligations of his subject are peculiarly called.
HARRY ALLEN OVERSTREET.
COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
A PECULIAR COLLECTIVE ILLUSION 1
ON the night of August 1, 1912, at the Puget Sound Marine Sta-
tion, Friday Harbor, Wn., E. Karrer and H. C. Stevens were
the subjects of a collective illusion. The two persons named and D.
H. Wenrich were sleeping in cots in a tent which measured 10 X 12
feet. The tent was erected upon a wooden platform about 12 X 15
feet. Walls of boards of about 4 feet in height and of the same di-
mensions as the tent, and a frame-work roof, over which the tent was
stretched, were erected upon the platform. The site upon which this
structure had been built was a steep, rocky hillside about 100 feet
from Washington Sound and approximately 50 feet above the water.
Numerous slender fir trees filled in the foreground between the front
of the tent, which was kept open day and night, and the Sound. In-
asmuch as the growth of the trees was not dense, patches of blue
water were visible through the open door from the interior of the
tent even when the occupants were lying in their beds. Owing to the
steepness of the hillside, the front of the tent was supported upon
posts about 10 feet in height and 5 to 6 inches in diameter. At the
right front end, and at the left rear end, the platform was in con-
tact with living fir trees, one of which (that on the right) was about
18 inches in diameter and the other (that on the left) was about 12
inches in diameter. The three cots were arranged parallel to the
long dimensions of the tent with the heads to the rear of the tent and
close to the wooden wall. E. Karrer occupied the left cot, H. C.
1 The above case has a wider interest than appears on the surface of the
report. It bears directly upon one of the oldest, most persistently debated ques-
tions in the theory of cognition. Ever since Heraclitus the subjectivity of sense
perception has been regarded as proved by the fact of illusions. An illusion, it
has been argued, is, in its very nature, private; and privacy means subjectivity.
Now, Dr. Stevens exhibits to us an illusion which is not private. It is precisely
analogous to the illusions which skillful legerdemain produces upon large audi-
ences; but, unlike legerdemain, it involves no apparatus other than the natural
equipment of the nervous system in a natural environment. That this raises
grave difficulties for the subjectivity argument must be obvious. Editors' Note.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 131
Stevens the right, and D. H. Wenrich that in the middle. The latter
individual was not subject to the illusion. In view of a possible ex-
planation which I shall offer later, it is necessary to state that all of
the occupants of the tent had been spending a considerable portion
of their time in small boats collecting biological specimens and that
K. and S., not W., had passed two hours from 9 to 11 o'clock of the
same evening in a small motor-boat. A breeze of perhaps 10 miles
an hour had been blowing during the early part of the night. K. and
the writer went to bed at about 11:30 P.M. and each fell quickly
asleep. At an hour which, unfortunately, was not determined, but
which probably was not later than 1:00 A.M., I (the writer) awoke
and sat up in bed feeling that the platform was afloat in the water
and that it was moving into the trees. The bright light of a full moon
cast dark shadows of the trees upon the ground and illuminated
brilliantly the water of the sound. The illusion was persistent and I
could not rid myself of the sensation of motion until I had got up
and walked out onto the platform in front of the tent and looked at
the solid ground beneath. After awaking and before getting out of
bed I looked across the tent at K. 's cot and saw him sitting upright
in bed looking out of the tent. I can recall no dream prior to awak-
ing. That I was awake when I sat up in bed is attested by the fact
that I remember looking across at K. and seeing him sitting upright,
and also by the fact that I observed W. who did not wake up ; by the
act of getting out of bed to dispel the illusion and by the fact that I
remembered calling out. K. 's account of his experience is here given
in his own words.
"I felt the tent rolling slightly. I felt the tent and bed floating
forward. I sat up in bed, looked out of the tent door over the water.
The trees immediately in front of the tent seemed approaching quite
rapidly due to our floating and I felt some anxiety as to our safety,
wondering how to avoid a collision with the trees. I called out
' Where are we ? ' I heard H. C. S. exclaim ' Ho ! ' and I noticed him
sitting up in bed. He immediately jumped up, ran to the door and
looked out. In the meantime I felt somewhat relieved, thinking that
he might guard against a collision while I might back the engine of
the ' Ha ! Ha ! ' (the motor boat) . I had had no idea of the ' Ha ! Ha ! '
or of a boat up to that time. At the time of calling I looked upon
floor of tent where the clothes, etc., on floor appeared as ripples mov-
ing upon the water. Another glance, with recognition of the tent
floor, dispelled the illusion. I was quite awake during the whole
time, for I heard D. H. W. stir in bed and heard H. C. S." (Written
August 5, 1912, 10:30 A.M.)
The peculiarity of the experience lies in the simultaneous experi-
ence by two persons of an almost identical illusion which occurred at
132 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the moment of awaking from a sound sleep. Neither observer was
asleep and, therefore, the experience may not be called an hallucina-
tion. Apparently no dream state similar in kind to that which oc-
curred upon awaking had preceded the illusion. An explanation
which naturally, under the circumstances, can not claim to be proof
positive, may be suggested. K. and S., not W., as a result of their
evening in the boat went to bed with a pronounced motor adapta-
tion due to the rocking of the boat. During the night, the motion of
the wind was transmitted to the platform of the tent by the two fir
trees (right and left) which were in contact with the tent platform.
This motion was greatest nearest the trees, that is to say, on the right
and left sides of the tent where $.'s and E.'s beds stood. The mo-
tion of the platform was sufficient to awaken both K. and 8. but not
W. The gentle swaying of the platform with the moving trees in the
foreground and the water shimmering through them was sufficient
stimulus to light up the perseverationstendenz of the motor einstel-
lung which K. and 8. had taken to bed with them. The vivid revival
of the motor adaptation with the added suggestion from the sight of
the water and the moving trees was sufficient to produce the illusion
which was experienced. The marked perseverationstendenz of this
particular form of motor adaptation is very well known and
renders the explanation suggested highly probable. (Written 2:00
P.M., August 3, 1912.)
H. C. STEVENS.
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON.
The Science of Logic. P. COFFEY. Two Volumes. London: Longmans,
Green, and Company. 1912. Pp. xx + 445 and vii -}- 359.
These two volumes of Professor Coffey present an appearance suffi-
ciently formidable and abstruse to satisfy the most pedantic of academic
minds. But as the author states, " the aim and scope of this treatise are
more modest than perhaps its dimensions might suggest. It attempts, in
the first place, to present in a simple way the Principles of the Traditional
Logic expounded by Aristotle and his scholastic interpreters; secondly, to
show how the philosophical teachings of Aristotle and the Schoolmen con-
tain the true basis for modern methods of scientific investigation, induc-
tive no less than deductive ; and finally, to extend, rather than supplement,
the traditional body of logical doctrine by applying the latter to some log-
ical problems raised in more recent times. But the treatment is confined
mainly to principles, and is meant to be suggestive rather than exhaus-
tive" (Preface).
As this passage indicates, the book is more or less unique in its content
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 133
and aim. One of its purposes is to serve as a text-book, and it is for this
reason, presumably, tbat formal logic is presented in patient and unspar-
ing detail. The exposition, however, is interrupted from time to time with
material of the most recondite character, in order to indicate and criticize
the deviations of various philosophies, especially sensationalism and ob-
jective idealism, from the scholastic trail. " Logic has philosophy for its
background. The study of logic raises many large questions, leading into
various branches of .philosophy " (Preface). Some of these leadings are
followed to a considerable distance, notably in the discussion of the pre-
suppositions of induction. Hence the book combines to some extent the
features of a text-book in logic, an exposition of a philosophical stand-
point, and a defense of Scholasticism.
The first division of the work, entitled " Introduction," consists of three
chapters, discussing respectively the nature of man and the standpoint of
" moderate realism," the scope of logic and the relation of logic to kin-
dred sciences. The position adopted is dualistic, and the moderate realism
advocated by the author is defined by differentiation from the realism
which asserts that universals exist as universals outside the mind, and
nominalism, which denies universals even as concepts (pp. 8-11). Diffi-
culties arising from this mode of approach are passed on to metaphysics.
Nevertheless the author discusses from time to time the relation of his
standpoint to that of other writers, with reference to matters which de-
pend directly on metaphysical considerations, such as the relation of con-
cepts to reality, the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments,
and the doctrine of a First Cause. The comparison thus becomes a com-
parison of results or conclusions, without due consideration of the ques-
tions in which these divergent conclusions have their origin, a procedure
which gives the author an advantage in that his standpoint appeals more
directly to common sense, as also a certain facility in dealing with prob-
lems which must look for their final justification to some other source
than logic. While it is held, for example, that scientific procedure leads
us to the notion of a First Cause, the meaning of this metaphysical notion
is not discussed. Similarly the view taken of induction rests on the dis-
tinction between necessary and contingent judgments, but the nature of
this (equally metaphysical) distinction is left very much in the dark.
Necessary judgments, i. e., judgments " formulating relations which can
not lie conceived otherwise than they are " (p. 178) are not derived from
the constitution of the mind exclusively, " but from the nature or consti-
tution of the mind, together with the nature or constitution of Being
itself" (p. 179). Contingent judgments, on the other hand, are such as
can not be derived "from an examination of the terms themselves, from
an analysis of the comprehension of the notions compared, and without
appealing to any independent source of information" (p. 171).
Beyond statements of this kind the nature of necessity is left wholly
undefined. And if we ask how the same being or reality can be the basis
for contingent and for necessary judgments, the answer must be that
"this ultimate question also belongs to metaphysics. The answer given
by Scholastics will explain why they call the latter class of judgments
134 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
metaphysical and the former class physical. Physics studies being as re-
realed to the senses, *. e., as subject to change, and as existing in the con-
crete conditions of time and space: physical judgments, therefore, are in
materia contingenti. But the human mind has the power of abstracting
from those changing conditions of concrete existence in time and space,
and of considering the essences and attributes of things in a purely ideal
or possible condition non-temporal, non-spatial, non-changeable, and
absolutely static. It does so in metaphysics; and, manifestly, Being when
considered in that static condition, can and does give rise to those neces-
sary judgments, which Scholastics accordingly call metaphysical" (p.
180).
Apart from excursions of this sort, and in spite of a protest in the
preface against the " arid formalisms that pass for logic," the author de-
votes the first of the two volumes to the discussion of formal logic. He
not only gives to the subject an exceptional fulness of presentation, dis-
cussing all sorts of minutiae that have accumulated in this congenial en-
vironment, but he permits his views on logic to take their coloring largely
from this particular field. His definitions of concept, judgment, and in-
ference are taken from formal logic and apparently are to be taken at
face value. Concept, judgment, and inference are held apart as distinct
mental processes, and the substantial results of modern logic in this field
are passed over with little appreciative recognition.
The second volume contains two parts, one dealing with method, the
other with " The Attainment of Science and Certitude." Induction aims,
like deduction, at necessary truth ; but its process is the reverse of deduc-
tion. It proves some one of the conceivable antecedents to be the real
antecedent, and it does this by the indirect method of disproving the other
alternatives (II., 55). Induction founds itself on the axiom of sufficient
reason. " No doubt the logic of induction can not be understood without
a statement of the principles which underlie the process. But a treatise
on logic is hardly the proper place for their full exposition and vindica-
tion; nor is it our intention to go into them here at great length " (II.,
56). It is presumably on this ground that the purposes of logic concern-
ing causation are held to be satisfied when the statement is made that a
cause is " anything which contributes in any positive way to the existence
or happening of something else" (II., 62).
Since logic presupposes a metaphysics to which it may appeal for the
justification of its fundamental principles, truth is sufficiently defined if
we say that it is the conformity of the mind judging about reality with
the reality to which the judgment refers. When the mind adheres firmly
to a judgment which it knows to be true, it is said to have certitude. The
objective evidence necessary to guarantee certitude is " simply the objec-
tive relation between two aspects of the same reality, between subject and
predicate, shining in clearly upon the mind, and grasped by the mind in
forming the judgment, in interpreting the reality through this mental act.
It is, therefore, simply the manifestation of reality to the mind" (II.,
212). When the objective evidence " is not grasped or comprehended sub-
jectively with sufficient clearness to guarantee a certain assent," we have
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 135
opinion or probability. In this whole discussion there is scarcely a hint
of the controversy concerning truth which has been in the limelight so
many years.
This is not the place to discuss the relation that should obtain between
logic and the other philosophical disciplines. It appears from Professor
Coffey's treatment, however, that a more unfortunate status could hardly
be assigned to logic than that which he bestows upon it. The moment we
advance beyond the discussion of mechanical formulae and common sense
distinctions, which can scarcely be dignified with the name of science, we
trench upon territory which is labeled, " No Trespassing." All the funda-
mental considerations of logic are determined elsewhere, and the logician,
as logician, is not permitted to discuss them at all. It is to be expected,
therefore, that Professor Coffey's exposition should rarely go beneath the
surface of the subject, or that he should fail to throw light on important
questions in logical theory. Loose definitions, questionable assumptions
and unconvincing elaborations are the natural, if not inevitable result of
such limitations. In view of these limitations, the book has many merits.
It is interesting as an exposition of a point of view, and its contents are
presented in a clear and simple style. The writer disclaims all conscious-
ness of " having said or intended anything new or original. But neither
has he intended to make a mere compilation. It has been his ambition to
assimilate and analyze what he has learned from others; and, bearing in
mind the requirements of beginners, to set forth the results of his own
labors in the manner and order he considers most helpful to those for whom
he has written."
B. H. BODE.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.
Immanuel Kant. OSWALD KULPE. Third edition. Leipzig: B. G.
Teubner. 1912. Pp. viii + 153.
Since the " return to Kant " there has not been an uncritical accept-
ance of his teaching, even in his sometimes too admiring fatherland.
Few books upon him, however, have been written by men so well fitted as
is Professor Kiilpe to bring to the discussion a scientific viewpoint, and
few works have so happily combined clear exposition and criticism with
popular yet accurate expression.
Books about Kant are not so much interesting because they state what
Kant thought as because they tell us how men of the present age regard
him. Professor Kiilpe has allowed his point of view to appear throughout
the entire work, which traces the development of Kant's thought, states
the critical problem, reviews the contents of the three critiques, and ends
with an appreciation of the man and his place; but we are given the
clearest insight into his position in the chapters " Raum und Zeit " and
" Die Aprioritdt als Subjelctivitat und der Phanomenalismus." These, he
tells us, he has again rewritten for this, the third, edition.
Kiilpe attacks the Kantian proofs of the a priori and intuitive char-
acter of space and time, and considers these to be inferences of thought,
136 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
idealized products based on perception. To the first argument, that ex-
ternal experience is impossible, unless the mind possesses an intuition of
space previously to which to relate it, the author replies that we have
immediate spatial relations only in experiences of sight and touch. In
these cases the relations are present because spatial characteristics come
to us just as other peculiarities of objects do. We may believe, further-
more, in a fixed external order of spatial relations since we can not give
our impressions these relations arbitrarily. The second argument, that
we may represent to ourselves an empty space, but never space as non-
existent, fares little better. Kiilpe denies that empty space can be imag-
ined, though it may be conceived. We may even have a non-spatial
experience as of a being whose presence is indicated solely by its odor.
Were space a subjective a priori factor it would form a poor basis for
the exact natural sciences, because perception is exposed to numerous
spatial illusions. Kiilpe attacks the third argument, that there is but
one space and that it must be existent previous to all its parts, by again
pointing out that space is not an accompaniment of all sense perceptions
and that in sight and touch it is open to subjective variations. Space
as a conception should be differentiated from the perception and imag-
ination of space. Even though Euclidean geometry did rest on space
considered as an intuition, that would be no proof of the impossibility of
viewing space as a conception. To the fourth proof, that space is bound-
less and that no conception can be formed which embraces in itself a
countless number of perceptions, the author rejoins that boundless space
is only an inference. The right-hand argument is not valid, since space
may be a conception as well as an intuition, and proof established from
one point of view does not necessarily invalidate the truth of the other.
The claim that geometry can not rest on a mere conception is countered
by the statement that geometry may not be a science equally valid for all,
if it rests on a subjective basis such as an intuition might give. The
absolute space of Euclid and Newton is not our space-intuition, but an
idealization, the product of thought.
Professor Kiilpe objects to the use of the table of judgments for the
deduction of the categories, since all that is valid for conceptions may
not be valid for objects. Philosophy and the individual sciences, espe-
cially mathematics and mechanics, must work together to formulate a
table of categories. Kant through his combination of concept and object
began the movement which Hegel and Fichte finished.
Kant sought by considering the forms of intuition and the categories
a priori to win for the products of pure reason certainty and to degrade
the world of the senses to mere appearance. The independence, however,
is not genetic, but logical; and as soon as the categories and formal
elements are applied to sciences other than those resting on logical pre-
suppositions Kant is lost. The fact that he considered the mathematical
sciences the only true ones is explained by the wretched state of the
biological study of his day. Kant can not disprove the reality of the
world of sense. Indeed, the fact that we can not think arbitrarily, but
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 137
meet constantly with restraining situations, points either to a preestab-
lished harmony between our thought and the world, or else to the fact
that the genesis of our thought lies in the world itself. Here we have
Professor Kiilpe giving us his own position most clearly and with the
greatest enthusiasm.
The volume is, altogether, one of the best small books on Kant and
might well be published in some translation series. It is another instance
of the possibility of really authoritative books in popular form at a very
modest price a possibility which the series " Aus Natur und Geistes-
welt," to which the book belongs, has already abundantly proved.
JOHN J. Coss.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Traite international de psychologic pathologique. A. MARIE (editor).
Paris: F. Alcan. Vol. I., Psychopathologie generale. viii + 1028.
1910. Vol. II., Psychopathologie clinique. xxiii + 1000. 1911.
Vol. III., Psychopathologie appliquee. viii + 1086. 1912.
That there have been great advances and interest in our knowledge of
abnormal mental processes during the past few years is well known,
and the publication of this large work tends to confirm the belief. A
literal translation of the title and subtitles does not give an indication
of the contents of the three volumes, which deal largely, but not exclu-
sively, with matters more properly pertaining to psychiatry. For these
volumes there have been written long articles by over 40 contributors,
and their international character may be estimated by the fact that only
one contribution is from Germany (Ziehen), while Italy is represented
by 7 articles and the same number of authors, and England by 2 articles
(Havelock Ellis, Clouston). The editor has contributed to 9 articles, and
over half of the work is by French authors.
Every contribution tending to advance our knowledge in the fields of
psychiatry, psychopathology, etc., should have a welcome, but it is impos-
sible for the reviewer to recommend this work to psychologists and others
who are interested in the abnormal. To those who prefer easy and
entertaining reading rather than exactness and critical evaluation of the
data the work may be of interest. It is difficult to select from the whole
those parts which may properly be recommended, but in general it may
be said that the clinical volume, the second, is more nearly what such a
work should be. It would take too much space to give the titles of the
individual contributions, but they range from the chemistry of the brain
to the description of psychoses in animals, from the discussion of mental
evolution at the period of puberty to an account of insanity at different
historical epochs, and from methods of electrical examination of the
insane to the consideration of their statures, crania, anomalies, etc.
Several articles are worth mention. That on mental disturbances in
animals will be of interest to comparative psychologists, who will find that
Nass in 1820 described mental abnormalities in animals, that Friedreich
in 1830 described a case of transitory mania in a cow, and that as late as
138 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
1888 Vogel attempted to develop a system of the psychic anomalies to be
found in animals. Here also will be found references to such conditions
as delirium, melancholia, and cretinism in animals, and psychoparalysis
in dogs and horses, animal hysteria, and allied things of a bizarre nature.
It is needless to say that in these accounts animals are considered like
man, although there is some recognition of possible differences in quan-
tity and quality of their mental processes.
The account of the effect of cosmic phenomena on mental states (by
the editor) deals with the relation of nervous and mental diseases to
changes in barometric pressure, heat, light, wind, humidity, electricity,
the lunar cycles ( !), eclipses ( !), etc. All of these are grouped with other
well-considered data, and the whole gives evidence of little critical judg-
ment. In another chapter on the application of experimental psychology
to psychiatry some history of the development of experimental labora-
tories is attempted, and certain of the supposed facts are given incorrectly.
Although the supreme value of psychoanalysis is not universally
admitted, it is well recognized that it is important both in the examina-
tion and treatment of mental abnormalities, but to this subject there is
devoted a scant 3 pages out of 3,000.
The proof-reading of the book is poorly done within a space of five
pages we find Kraepelin and Kroepelin, to mention only one instance.
There are no general or volume indexes; some of the articles are accom-
panied by bibliographies (at times with inaccuracies), but many are lack-
ing in this respect.
While some of the articles are valuable, the reading of most of them
calls to mind the statement made by a reviewer of a similarly constructed
German work " that it appeared as if the individual authors had written
their articles because they wished to know, rather than because they knew,
something of the subjects."
SHEPHERD IVORY FRANZ.
GOVERNMENT HOSPITAL FOE THE INSANE,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES DE NETJROLOGIE. Septem-
ber, 1912. Les psychoses dans I'histoire (pp. 162-177) : A. CULLERRE. -
Absolute power and privileges exercise a pathogenic influence upon the
intellectual and moral faculties of sovereigns, and give rise to a special
form of monomania, known as Caesaritis. Aphasie motrice et agraphie,
avec epilepsie jacksonienne faciale gauche d'origine syphilitique, durant
un jour (pp. 137-141) : DR. BERNHEIM. - From a case of combined aphasia
and agraphia, complicated with Jacksonian epilepsy, the author con-
cludes that the graphic and phonetic centers either are different or send
their impulses through different paths. L'etat actuel de la Psychoanalyse
(pp. 141-161) : CH. DE MONTET. - Psychonalysis is no longer a mere branch
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 139
of medicine. It embraces the collection of all affective and emotional
experiences of mankind from the point of view of psychical evolution.
Hallucinations cryesthesiques dans un cas de demence precoce (pp. 177-
179) : DR. HALBEBSTADT. - An account of a curious case of dementia precox
in which one of the prominent factors was a sensation of chill constantly
experienced in all parts of the body. Revue des Congres et Societes.
Analyses bibliographiques. MacAuliffe and Chaillou, Morphologic hu-
maine: F. HELME. F. Le Dantec, Contre la Metaphysique. L. Perrier,
Le sentiment religieux a-t-il une origine pathologique? B. Battistessa,
Du traitement de la paralysie progressive par la tuberculine : L. MONGERI.
M. Rusconi, Les injections intramusculaires du zymargol dans le traite-
ment de la choree de Sydenham: L. MONGERI. Ladame, Encephalite sous-
corticale chronique. Mme. Long-Landry, Maladie de Little. Hesnard,
Les fumeurs de chanvre en Orient.
Wallin, J. E. Wallace. Experimental Studies of Mental Defectives.
No. 7. Baltimore : Warwick and York. 1912. Pp. vi + 155. $1.25.
Ward, J. S. M. Brasses. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1912. Pp.
vii+159. $.40.
NOTES AND NEWS
HENRI BERGSON, Litt.D., professor of philosophy in the University of
Paris, and visiting French professor for the year 1912-13, completed his
course of French lectures at Columbia University on February 18. An
outline of the lectures, of which the general subject was " Spiritualite et
Liberte," follows : February 3 Les nouvelles tendances de la philosophie.
Attitude de la philosophie vis-a-vis de la science et vis-a-vis de 1'art.
Importance capitale du probleme de 1'esprit. Rapport de ce probleme a
celui de la liberte. February 4 Des illusions ou 1'intelligence tombe
naturellement quand elle s'attaque au probleme de 1'esprit et
a celui de la liberte. Croyance des anciens a la destinee. Croyance
des modernes a la determination necessaire de la conduite des indiv-
idus et de la vie des peuples. Influence constante que les mathe-
matiques ont exercee sur la pensee des anciens et sur celle des modernes.
February 10 De la relation de 1'esprit au corps. Dans quelle mesure le
fait mental depend-il du fait cerebral? Danger des theories toutes faites,
Comment elles se sont insinuees dans la description et meme dans la
constatation des faits. Necessite de revenir a 1'experience pure et simple.
February 11 De la relation de 1'esprit au corps (suite). Le corps con-
sidere comme orientant dans une certaine direction particuliere 1'atten-
tion de 1'esprit. Comment le corps et 1'esprit peuvent agir 1'un sur
1'autre. February 17 L'esprit envisage comme une force. L'elan
psychique. Signification de certaines maladies de 1'esprit. Caractere
artificiel des difficultes soulevees autour du probleme de la personnalite.
February 18 Spiritualite et liberte. A quoi peut servir une force
140 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
spirituelle et libre? D'ou vient-elle, et ou va-t-elle? Signification de la
vie individuelle et de la vie sociale. Possibilite d'une metaphysique
f ondee exclusivement sur I'experience. His lectures in English, on " The
Method of Philosophy: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge," which were
given under the auspices of the department of philosophy, occurred as
follows: February 6 The different kinds of philosophic doctrines.
Metaphysical and critical. Inadequacy of the constructive method in
metaphysics. Illusions to which the critical method is liable: false prob-
lems and artificial difficulties in philosophy. Need to return to intuition,
but to expand it. Movement and immobility. February 7 Change and
rest. Real duration. Apparent difficulties and illusory problems raised
about the question of real duration. The " self -contradictory " in phi-
losophy. Distinction between what is apparently or provisionally self-
contradictory and what is really and definitely so. Examination of one
or two notions from this particular point of view. February 13 Real
extension. Distinction between this extension and space. In what sense
extension, like duration, is indivisible. How certain difficulties relative
to matter and mind, and their mutual relation, arise from a misunder-
standing of the character of extension and duration. Examination, from
this point of view, of the first two antinomies of the Critique of Pure
Reason. February 14 First consequences: our experience, properly di-
rected, attains absolute reality. An experimental metaphysics is pos-
sible, but can only be progressively built up. Method that such a meta-
physics must adopt. Necessity for recasting, not only " forms " in the
Kantian sense of the word, but also " concepts " or " categories." Ex-
amination, in particular, of the concepts of " unity " and " multiplicity."
Bearings of this examination on the theory of the nature of truth.
February 20 Causality and Law. Concept of Cause subordinate to that
of fact. In what sense a fact is real, in what sense artificial. Psycho-
logical origin of our belief in causality. Metaphysical basis of this be-
lief. February 21 " Generality " and " concept." Radical difference
between resemblance and identity. Real and artificial genera. Generali-
zation, viewed as a function of life. The treatment of concepts by phi-
losophers. Necessity of recasting the terms in which problems are set.
The part played by intuition. Conclusion.
THE Revue de Theologie et de Philosophic of Lausanne, the publica-
tion of which has been suspended for several years, commenced a new
series in January. The periodical will be published regularly under the
editorship of Messrs. Pierre Bovet, Samuel Gagnebin, Rene Guisan,
Charles Mercier, Henri-L. Mieville, Henri Reverdin, Arnold Reymond.
and Maurice Vuilleumier.
THE Western Philosophical Association will hold its annual meeting
at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, on Friday and Saturday,
March 21 and 22. There will be a joint session with the Western Psycho-
logical Association, probably Saturday morning.
ON February 14, Professor D'Arcy Thompson delivered the Herbert
Spencer lecture at Oxford University on " Aristotle as a Biologist."
HT
VOL. X. No. 6. MARCH 13, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODC
MAN AND FELLOW-MAN
AT every turn of my thought respecting the meaning of truth, I
am met by a figure that has no dwelling on land or sea and
whom I have come to call the Man Without a Fellow. It is strange
that so lonely a phantom should have anything in his aspect to
trouble the quiet of a philosopher, yet the more I consider him, the
more the impression forces itself on me that he holds in his hands
the fate of my philosophy and of the science of many another.
I say the science of many another must be concerned for the laying
of this ghost, if ghost he be, yet it is exactly because the philosophers
of our own day who I should have thought had most to fear from
him have either noticed him not at all or passed him cavalierly by,
that I wonder whether I can have understood these philosophers
aright.
Have I, for example, caught the meaning of the instrumentalist
when he insists upon the "social reference" of even the most inti-
mate of our personal experiences? "The fact is," writes Professor
Dewey, summing up the case for instrumentalism "the fact is that
the life, the experience of the individual man, is already saturated,
thoroughly interpenetrated, with social inheritances and references.
. . . Education, language, and other means of communication are
infinitely more important categories of knowledge than any of those
exploited by absolutists. And as soon as the methodological battle of
instrumentalism is won . . . the two services that will stand to the
credit of instrumentalism will be calling attention first to the connec-
tion of intelligence with a genuine future, and, second, to the social
constitution of personal, even of private experience, above all of any
experience that has assumed the knowledge-form. ' '
Do I, I ask, take Mr. Dewey aright in supposing that he is here
not merely calling attention to certain facts respecting the psychology
of a beiag who happens to stand in various social relations with
others of his kind ; but rather that he is deducing from the very mean-
ing of truth and error certain conditions without which truth and
141
142 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
error, and so experience, knowledge, mind, can neither be nor be con-
ceived? He means, does he not, that consciousness is so essentially
social in its reference that if there were no society to refer to, there
would be no consciousness to refer? He means, in a word, that it
takes at least two minds to make one, or, as Fichte has put it, "ein
Mensch ist nur unter Menschen ein Menschf"
If this is what the instrumentalist stands for, then the image of
our man without a fellow must be as critical for his philosophy as for
mine, and nothing could more quickly and effectively clear the way
for his onward march than the removal of this enigmatic figure from
his path. But if the instrumentalist means less than this if he
means no more than to observe that minds which happen to have been
brought in contact are so profoundly affected by this accident of
their history that the result is better symbolized as an interpenetra-
tion than as a point or surface contact then instrumentalism may
have called attention to an interesting fact of psychology, but I fail
to see in what sense the categories used to arrive at this conclusion
can be judged either more or less important than ' ' those exploited by
absolutists." For the absolutist is not interested in these historical
accidents of mind, not merely because he hopes in the end to show
that there are no historical accidents, but also because at no stage of
his reasoning does it appear to him accidental that the finite mind
owes its being and its meaning to its fellowship with another mind.
For him quite frankly it takes two minds to make one, and one of the
two is the Absolute. Therefore I should expect him to take up the
instrumentalist's reflection on his categories in some such terms as
these : I am trying, he would say, to arrive at a definition of truth, if
you are only interested in some accidents that attach to truth as it is
found in this or that empirical situation we have no quarrel, for we
have no common problem. If, however, you have my problem in
mind, then you must show that the categories you deem so important
are suitable to the discussion of truth wherever truth may exist.
They can only be so if thinking beings exist essentially, and not
merely per accidens, in social groups. You must show that for you
too it takes two minds to make one, that the man without a fellow is
not merely a possible imbecile but an impossible square circle.
It is only on the assumption that the instrumentalist means to ac-
cept this challenge that I can suppose the problem of the man without
a fellow to have more than a passing interest for him. But for the
absolutist who makes the challenge the lonely being of my imagining
can not but be vital, has been vital throughout the history of abso-
lutism, and should be more than ever vital to the absolutist of our
day. For in spite of Mr. Dewey's claim upon the gratitude of pos-
terity for the service rendered by instrumentalism in calling atten-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 143
tion to the "social constitution of personal, even of private experi-
ence," I can not think that posterity, supposing it to be duly grate-
ful for the idea itself, will find much to choose between instrumental-
ist and absolutist in the matter of calling attention to the idea. In-
deed, when I said that the image of the man without a fellow must be
as critical for other philosophies as for my own, it was rather the ab-
solutist than the instrumentalist I had in mind ; for not only is it the
central thesis of absolutism that the finite mind can not exist save in
fellowship with God, but it is to historic absolutism that we owe the
first Deduktion of the dependence of finite mind on finite mind. And
the absolutist of our day is no whit behind his forerunners in calling
attention to the social reference of the most impersonal as well as of
the most personal and private of our experiences, for Professor
Royce, nature itself is a social concept, nature is that in the descrip-
tion of which many men agree, in the moulding of which to their
harmoniously different purposes many men cooperate.
So it has seemed to me that Mr. Dewey's claims for the service
rendered by instrumentalism in ' ' calling attention to " a doctrine that
was old before we were young were tant soit pen exaggerated. The
school that invented the theory has not abandoned it, has not spared
emphasis in continuing to call attention to it, has outdone all others
in the bold clearness with which it has set forth its meaning.
And yet this last statement of mine is perhaps in its turn an ex-
aggeration. If there can be no doubt as to what a Fichte means to
prove in the opening of his " Rechtslehre, " there are whole chapters
of Hegel's "Phaenomenologie" that leave me uncertain as to what
they are intended to establish, and I am quite prepared to be told
that my understanding of Mr. Royce 's doctrine is a complete mis-
understanding. When Mr. Royce speaks of nature as a "social con-
cept" I have taken him to mean that a non-social being a man with-
out a fellow-man would lack this concept; that a finite mind shut
off from converse with other finite minds would be without any notion
of a world in space and time, following mechanical laws and heaving
with great rhythms. But such is the delicacy of the issue here in-
volved that were Mr. Royce or another to tell me that he had no
such meaning, but that his intention was merely to point out the ex-
tent to which we who are as a matter of fact social beings are influ-
enced by that fact in our conception of all things not merely in our
ideas of property, credit, love, hate, and such like mutualities, but in
our notion of nature itself if any one were to tell me this I could
not gainsay him with chapter and verse precluding such interpreta-
tion. I should be left trembling alone before the image of the man
without a fellow, abandoned to the laying of my own ghost in my
own way since for me alone is the portent.
144 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
But for me portent there would seem to be and the ghost must be
faced if it can't be laid. In a number of papers addressed to this
association in previous years, I have found myself maintaining a
thesis that may best be defined in terms of what it denies. And what
it denies is the spirit of Augustin's saying "Noli in foras ire Go
not out into the world ; but return into thyself, for there in the inner
man dwells truth." From this monkish sentence I have turned be-
cause I could find no way of getting at the truth about myself even
my innermost self save by going abroad for it and receiving it as
often as not at the hands of my fellows. It takes, I find myself hav-
ing written it takes all the science of all the world to tell whether I
am really in love as I think I am, whether I am really in pain as I
take myself to be, whether I really see the color red as I sincerely as-
sert that I do. No one familiar with the history of modern philos-
ophy will find anything new or revolutionary in such utterances,
though their import be to deny even to an idea any immediacy of
meaning that is more than a relative immediacy, any truth that can
be established without appeal to another. Such denial is sympathetic
with the development of many modern idealisms and it antagonizes
only such philosophies as starting with an immediate datum of con-
sciousness sensation or feeling attempt to construct a world, a so-
ciety of fellow-men, it may be a deity out of these data. What it ac-
cords with most intimately is that experience of life which one may
have for the trouble of living. Is it a sound disjunction that one who
proclaims his love is either really a lover or really a liar? Is it true
that laments are either final evidence of grief or proof of insincerity ?
Is the master of an art a convicted hypocrite when it is discovered
that art for art's sake is not so surely the motive of his conduct, but
that, free to exercise his mastery to his heart's content, he does so in
infinite discontent until recognition comes his way ? Is he not rather
in his deepest heart uncertain of the truth about himself, of the real-
ity of his mastery until it is recognized, acknowledged, confirmed to
him by another ? In short, is there not that in the very meaning of
truth which makes every truth depend upon an appeal to another?
And if this necessity of appeal is evident when the truth to be
established by it concerns the most intimate and personal of private
experiences, is it not all the more evident when there is question of
the truth of ideas respecting nature? Whatever else we may think
of those hard facts and inexorable laws which make up our image of
physical nature, we always contemplate ourselves returning from
the empirical study of them with our hands more firmly tied. But
who or what is it that ties our hands ? Part, at any rate, of the an-
swer is to be read in that recurrent phrase of scientific literature:
"So-and-so reports that he has obtained such-and-such results, but
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 145
his observations remain unconfirmed by other experimenters." Ex-
perience so reported leaves our hands as uncomfortably free as be-
fore and we look to other observers to tighten our bonds for us.
It will readily be understood that this manner of reflection would
leave me in closest sympathy with such utterances whether of instru-
mentalist or of absolutist as point out the dependence of an idea
upon the appeal that it makes to another, and it was natural that I
should have turned to these philosophers with my anxious question,
But what if there is no other? What truth can there be for a man
without a fellow-man to whom to appeal ? Is it indeed true that my
brother is so completely my keeper that without him I must dwindle
and vanish? Their ways of answering these questions I must have
imperfectly understood, for I find myself still addressing the same
question to myself with what result the remainder of this paper
shall set forth.
The situation from which we depart is in the nature of an anti-
nomy. On the one hand we admit that a mind, to exist, must appeal
to another; on the other we are not prepared to maintain that the
conditions which bring into being such minds as we know, condi-
tions of inheritance, education, intercommunication, are the only
ones that could produce a mechanism reacting purposefully to the
world about it. A first step toward the solution of this antinomy
is clearly enough indicated, for if in order that we may attribute an
idea to a finite being we must see to it that he is provided with
another to whom to appeal, and if at the same time we place him in
a situation that furnishes no Peter to his Paul, then we must regard
this finite self as capable of being its own other.
I know that those who recognize in such a formula one of those
amusing Hegelisms from the odd compulsion of which they have long
since, praise God, emancipated themselves, will have nothing more
to do with a "self that is its own other." But out of this situation
I may be permitted to derive some amusement in my turn, for each
of these emancipated ones is by way of congratulating himself on
having become other than he was, without having ceased to be him-
self. And the truth of one's idea about Hegel will serve as well as
any other example of truth to illustrate my meaning when I say that
the finding of truth is indeed an appeal, an intercommunication
between points of view ; but every man, however complete his social
isolation, is himself a society of points of view. If indeed he live
with other men, their point of view respecting any truth, even one
touching most intimately himself, his own emotions, his own mastery,
may be worth as much as his own ; but if he live by himself, his own
other points of view may be depended on to try out his present
146 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
opinion we say that he may change his mind. The first condition
of there being a mind is simply a situation in which there is room
enough for a change of mind; instead of Fichte's formula, No man
without a fellow, I should conclude, No mind without a change of
mind.
I am not sure whether the instrumentalist would accept this
interpretation of his category of "social reference"; but it is certain
the absolutist would not be done with me if I were to let matters
drop here. He would lose no time in pointing out that our troubles
were not over, but only fairly begun. "If," he would say, "truth
involves an appeal from one point of view to another, which point of
view holds the truth and how are we to know it? An appeal to
truth is something more than a polite conversation between different
view-points content to remain in such agreement or disagreement as
their intercourse reveals. ' ' He would ask this question knowing full
well that my answer must be, No point of view holds the truth, nor
does any finite group of actually expressed opinions give us a way
of calculating the truth. And to come at once to the point to which
the absolutist would have me come, I may as well admit that the
series of points of view to which we must appeal for the truth of the
most private of our meanings is essentially infinite. "Then," the
absolutist would urge, "some of these points of view, and of course
an infinity of them, must be merely possible points of view ? ' ' The
confession that such is my understanding of the case would probably
end his interest in the matter, for absolutism might well enough be
defined as the philosophy that flees from an infinite series to take
refuge in an infinite mind. But from this very definition it follows
that it is not from the infinite that the absolutist flees; he would
distinguish between infinities and would represent himself as deliv-
ered from the bad infinite by an acknowledging of the good. Now
the bad infinite is one that endlessly loses itself in bare possibilities
in bare possibilities that are for him impossible. He flees from
infinite to infinite indeed, but from the possible infinite in which
meaning is lost to the actual infinite in which meaning is realized.
With all the absolutist's criticism of the category of possibility I
find myself in close accord. If I judge a proposition to be possibly
true, it is because its contradictory does not follow from certain
premises presupposed. Often enough these premises are tacitly pre-
supposed and then we have the illusion that we are dealing with pure
possibilities; but this is only illusion, the premises are there or the
possibility is not there take these actualities away and the possi-
bility left on our hands is indeed too bare for presentation. Against
the danger of falling into a way of thinking in terms of bare possi-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 147
bilities, I would be as anxious as the absolutist to protect myself, and
if I have escaped from an antinomy to fall into the pit of "perma-
nent possibilities" I ask no one to join me there the place is uncom-
fortably full and full of discomfort.
But while the absolutist's caution against bare possibilities is
wise and admirable, his precaution against them is exaggerated. It
is not enough for him to be assured that there is a core of actuality
to an infinite series, he must be assured that it is actual in all its end-
lessness. Most of us, however, find no difficulty in handling an infi-
nite whose law is given in a finite number of terms and not merely
some finite number, but a perfectly definite finite number. Such a
series is that of the integral numbers, whose law is given as soon as
the phrase "and so on" with which any such law must end is mean-
ingful and unambiguous. But this phrase does become meaningful
and unambiguous after the two equations, + 1 = 1, l-f-l = 2 are
written down ; then and not till then is the third equation defined to
be 2 -f- 1 = 3. Since the series is infinite, no one can construct all
of its terms without accomplishing a contradiction; but the terms
that remain at any given time unconstructed are no bare possibili-
ties, their possibility is a logical consequence of actually given
premises, finite and definite in number.
The bearing of these reflections upon the nature of that infinite
series of points of view to which an idea must appeal for its truth
and meaning is obvious enough. I have said that there could be no
mind without a change of mind; let me put the result in another
and more definite form: It takes two points of view to make one,
and both of these points of view must be guaranteed as actual before
that infinite series can be constructed without an appeal to which no
truth can be defined, no idea can have meaning.
Of the minimal situation which permits of ascribing an idea to
any perceiver we may now draw a preliminary picture. This attri-
bution is made by an onlooker A whose world contains a perceiver B,
and the object C of B's perception. It is essential to this situa-
tion that the perceiver B should himself be perceived ; for ' ' it takes
two points of view to make one. ' ' As for the object C of this percep-
tion, it is doubtless inaccurate to speak of it as though it existed
ready-made in A'B world; my meaning is that this world contains
the actual material out of which the notion of the object may be
constructed. Suppose B to be observed in the act of measuring the
length of a rod. A, the onlooker, calls this measurement B 's idea of
the length of the rod. In doing so he contrasts this single measure-
ment with a series whose average, as the series progresses, is subject
to a decreasing probable error and freed from one source after
148 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
another of constant error. Without the data and the method for
constructing this series, object and idea lose their meaning together.
The onlooker A sees clearly that the series is infinite, but there is
enough that is actual to define this infinite and to keep its unrealized
terms from becoming bare possibilities.
Nor is this infinite reference of the idea to other points of view
the only series that develops from our minimal situation. The
onlooker A takes to heart the lesson he has learned from watching,
commenting on, and defining B's idea and its object. From a new
point of view he applies the result to the former situation. His
world with B in it, a highway to truth stretching out before him,
becomes itself the idea of a world. The philosopher sees his old self
part of a new world, and in this world his old self stands in its turn
facing an infinite highway at the end of which lies the truth about
B's idea and the object of B's idea. A second infinite series is
defined, but like the first it grows out of hard actualities and its
possibilities are not bare.
In this analysis the otherness of the standpoints that I have
called A's and J3's, the onlooker's and the perceiver's, is a matter of
definition ; the otherness of the men who occupy these standpoints is
an historical accident. My man without a fellow might occupy both,
for such is the nature of the self that it can well enough be its own
other. Nor do I see that a mind so isolated need be limited in its
possibilities. True, a hundred men can build a house more quickly
than one, but if that one happen to be a genius he might give him
time build a finer house. Just so our dependence upon neighbors
for the acquisition of knowledge is a question of speed; give him
time and it all depends upon the manner of man he is whether our
man without a fellow turn out imbecile or philosopher.
In view of these reflections, is the importance attached by the
instrumentalist to his social categories altogether justified? I do
not say that they are less significant than the categories exploited by
absolutists, for if I have gone so far as to maintain that the man
without a fellow will not be lost for lack of a brother hand to guide
him, I must go to the extent of denying that he will need the ever-
lasting arms to uphold him. In which conclusion I find a certain
interest, for I have suspected at times that our lonely figure was less
a homeless ghost than the being who dwells deep down under the
familial, convivial, social surface of each one of us.
EDGAR A. SINGER, JR.
UNIVEKSITY OP PENNSYLVANIA.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 149
PERCEPT AND OBJECT IN COMMON SENSE AND
IN PHILOSOPHY
II
THE COMMON SENSE DOCTRINE AND THE PHILOSOPHER
BEFORE turning to the philosopher, I may be permitted to say
a word about the man of science. It need be but a word, for
I hardly think that it is worth while to point out in detail that the
men who occupy themselves with the special sciences do not, in
acquiring the specific knowledge and skill required of them, come to
discard the plain man's treatment of percept and object as some-
thing easily outgrown, and to be regarded as the product of a
blundering ignorance.
We may freely admit that the man who has never occupied him-
self with psychology gives little attention to percepts as such, while
the psychologist may give them the closest attention; the one may
never have asked himself expressly the questions to which, as others
see him, he appears to be constantly furnishing answers, while the
other lives in an atmosphere of sharply drawn distinctions. Never-
theless, can we hold that the psychologist rejects any of the distinc-
tions dimly recognized by his less scientific neighbor? Does not he,
too, accept both percept and object? Does he not recognize their
independent variability ? May he not raise questions as to the time
and place of the percept, refusing to accept the time and place of
the external occurrence perceived as furnishing the answers that he
seeks ?
And is either the psychologist or the worker in any other science
which is concerned with the observation of things ignorant of the
role played by the brain and organs of sense in the perception of
objects? Does he not quietly accept the fact that we know things
only as we know them ? And does he not, in spite of all this, hold
that "things," objects, and not merely percepts, are presented in
his experience? Does he regard it as impossible to describe things
"as they are"? Does he find it hopeless to attempt to distinguish
between mere changes in percepts and real changes in "things"?
The common-sense doctrine does not appear to meet with criticism
and to suffer a recasting at the hands of the man of science, as such.
It seems to be accepted in all its articles. If common sense is incon-
sistent, so is science, as far as concerns the point at issue. It is only
when we come to the philosopher that we find a genuine sifting of
the material, and a conscious acceptance or rejection of the positions
which are taken instinctively by less reflective men.
150 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
I shall discuss this work of the philosopher in a moment, but first
I permit myself to call the attention of the reader to the remarkable
fluctuations of interest which make themselves apparent to one who
views thoughtfully the public that interests itself in philosophy.
There is nothing precisely like it in the field of science, I think.
To be sure, scientific discoveries are always exciting attention
and interest. The new is, as is natural, much discussed. It may be
immensely significant for human knowledge. Sometimes a door is
thrown open that gives novel and even startling glimpses into the
treasure-house of the universe. Thus, the accidental by-product of
a physical investigation in the laboratory at Wiirzburg, seized upon
and subjected to scrutiny by an acute and trained intellect, results
in a blaze by the light of which the complexion of things is sur-
prisingly changed. We are introduced, if not into a new world, at
least into regions of our old world hitherto uncharted and even
undreamed of.
If the public interest in such a discovery wanes; if men say less
about it than they did a few years before ; it is not that men have
come to the conclusion that the discovery was unimportant. It is
that the new truth has been added to the store of old truths which
are valued, but which do not occupy the center of attention because
men are seeking to make some further addition to the store. They
may be accepted more unquestioningly than they were at the time
when they were most eagerly discussed.
Such achievement in the discovery of the indisputably new, which
may come to be the indisputably accepted, seems to beckon less
encouragingly to the philosopher. Again and again philosophies
have arisen which have claimed, and have appeared, to set nature
and man in a startlingly new light. There has been an illumination
a quite sufficient blaze to set men running and shouting. But has
not experience taught us that, after a little time, the fire may be
expected to die down, and to take a not exceptionally prominent
place among the other small fires scattered over the horizon, at the
one or the other of which this or that group of men may be found
warming the hands and cheering the eyes? There is usually some
fire which occupies the center of attention and creates more or less
of a disturbance. In the general public interested in philosophy
there seems to be something like a permanent weakness for running
to fires. But it is rarely the same fire that draws the crowd for
many years together. Quite recently we have seen this fact illus-
trated in our own country, where what was a veritable stampede has
given place to comparative indifference, and those who had faced
excitedly in one direction seem about ready to seek a new center of
excitement.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 151
To the reflective it seems not unnatural that there should be
such fluctuations in the public interest and attention. The philos-
opher, as such, is not a man who is dealing with new facts. He is
not one who has, by some happy chance, wandered into a wholly
undiscovered country. The material with which he works is the
common stuff of human experience, and the distinctions which he
tries to make clear are distinctions of which the implicit reason of
mankind has long had to take account. If, when the philosopher
brings us his revelation, he himself neglects to take account of that
implicit reason if he treats human experience as though no one had
enjoyed it before him he may interest us, charm us, startle us,
dazzle us; but he can scarcely leave with sober men a permanent
conviction of the supreme value of his message. Reflection is no new
thing; the materials which it must use are not something quite
recently brought to light. That men should think they have made a
really important discovery when their attention has been caught by
some aspect of experience upon which they have not seen emphasis
laid before is to be expected. That they should find other aspects
of experience soon acting as a damper to their ardor is equally to
be expected.
And now for the philosopher's treatment of percept and object.
A given philosophy may lay much stress upon one element in what
has, in the last paper, been put forward as the common sense doc-
trine, and it may ignore or reject others. Whether this is just or
not is, of course, a fair question; but it is surely a question to be
decided only after careful reflection. We may not reject lightly
what seems to be vouched for by the common experience of mankind.
We may not ignore without a thought assumptions which appear to
have their place both in common thought and in science, which work
satisfactorily, and which lead, as far as can be seen, to no ulterior
inconveniences or perplexities. That emphasis upon one element
recognized in the common sense doctrine may lead to the denial or
to the ignoring of another that it may set one in opposition to some
of the articles of the plain man's creed seems to be revealed by even
a cursory review of various well-known types of philosophical theory.
Let me illustrate this.
I. Suppose that much weight is given to the principle that per-
cept and object are ever to be kept distinct, that they vary inde-
pendently, that the object may continue in existence when the per-
cept has ceased to be. Suppose, furthermore, that one is keenly
conscious that percepts must be regarded as, in some sense, a func-
tion of the constitution of the percipient creature. Suppose, still
further, that one feels that one must hold on, at all hazards, to the
object, and must keep intact the distinction of percept and object
152 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
with which one seems to start out in all one's dealing with things.
What is the natural outcome of a reflection that concentrates its
attention upon these points to the exclusion of others?
Has the matter not been brought before us again and again in
the history of philosophy? What comes of "drawing within," one
by one, all those things that can be immediately experienced, and of
contrasting with them an ever-receding "object" which grows more
and more indefinite and illusive as the reflective process grows more
consistent and thorough-going ? Does not this splitting apart of per-
cept and object naturally result in such a dwindling and disappear-
ance of the object that the apparently significant contrast of percept
and object with which we started has been replaced by a distinction
between what is given in experience and that unknown or unknow-
able something against which we have all in turn exercised our skill
in polemic, and which it is the fashion to hold up to scorn ?
Manifestly, a philosophy of which this is the outcome has not
done justice to all the elements in the common sense doctrine. The
plain man may claim that he never has had, and never can possibly
have, any interest in such an object as this. The man of science
may hold that no object which he has ever attempted to describe,
and no object that the progress of science can ever attempt to reveal,
can have any relation to this so-called object. Does not this philos-
ophy appear to have quite wandered away from the problem of
percept and object as it presents itself in our common experience?
Is it busied with a fictitious problem? Has it missed the whole
point ? Or is common sense in the wrong from the outset ?
II. Suppose that a philosophy gives weight to much the same con-
siderations as those dwelt upon at the beginning of the preceding
section, but sees the futility of insisting upon an object that can not
conceivably ever be an object to any one at any time. Suppose that
it still recognizes the distinction of percept and object, but, in view
of the considerations which have fettered its attention, it absorbs, so
to speak, the latter into the former. Something like this was done
by Berkeley, as we all know. He did not make the object identical
with any single percept, but he refused to recognize its independence
of percepts. In the percepts of some mind or minds it had its being.
And Mill followed in the same path. His ' ' possibilities of sensa-
tion" have no blood in their veins save what they draw from per-
cepts. In so far as one does not unwittingly turn them into
"objects" of the unnatural sort discussed above, they appear to be
nothing more than the shadows of percepts. Several men of science
of our day, having wandered over into philosophy, have treated
objects as did Berkeley. The object has become to them a some-
thing composed of sensations. On reading their utterances, we all
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 153
cry out "subjectivism!" and we hasten to show that their doctrine,
brought to a clear consciousness of itself, must, in despair, destroy
itself.
That they have laid stress upon certain things accepted as fact by
common sense, no one can deny. But have they accepted all?
Have they been guilty of misconception and exaggeration? Cer-
tainly their conclusions, expressed in plain, every-day language,
appear incongruous and absurd. Men talk as though they treated
sensations, ideas, percepts, in one way, and objects, in quite another.
If the latter are really composed of the former, the same stuff,
precisely the same, why this difference of treatment? How about
the independence, or relative independence, of the object, accepted
in common sense and in science ? Is it not simply ignored in these
subjectivistic philosophies? Yet the role played by this indepen-
dence, both in common life and in science, seems altogether too
important to be ignored.
III. Subjectivism appears to be, for the time being, in eclipse.
Even the idealist, however unwilling he may be to write himself
down a subjectivist, is told to draw his blade and stand on guard.
Kather an aggressive band of realists has arisen to champion the
object more than that, to champion its actual presence in experi-
ence. What is given in experience is not, on this view, a represen-
tative, a copy, an indication, of the object; it is the object itself.
Consciousness must not be regarded as a something that intervenes,
a veil that covers and disguises the "thing." The thing is there;
it is given; its immediacy is as assured as is that of anything else
in our experience.
In writing these sentences, I am describing what seems to me to
be a present-day tendency sufficiently marked in certain quarters.
I am not attempting to define the position of a single writer, or to
quote his words. The tendency is the extreme reaction against the
subjectivism discussed above.
That it bases itself upon a principle recognized in common
thought, and, as it seems, tacitly accepted by science, appears plain
enough. Does not the plain man take it for granted that objects are
directly given in experience? Does not the man of science assume
that things can be observed and described ? Does either find himself
embarrassed by a veil or medium which disguises the object and puts
it at one remove? Then, why not say simply that what is given is
the object and leave the whole matter there? Why confuse things
by talking about percepts and their variability ? Why emphasize the
senses and the central nervous system, and dwell upon the different
guises under which objects present themselves to the same sense and
to different senses ?
164 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Why? Because these stones of stumbling actually lie in our
path and have to be gone around or stepped over every single day.
They are commonplaces of our ordinary experience; they beset the
scientific investigator at every step of his progress. Fatal to investi-
gation they can not be, for investigations, scientific and unscientific,
actually do go on, and end in results. The perplexing facts may be
ignored in the sense that the attention may not expressly occupy itself
with them. But they must be taken account of, in some sense, never-
theless. Are objects ever presented except under some guise? Has
the guise no significance at all? If we deliberately reject all the
"guises," what can the object mean to us? Common sense appears
to accept tacitly all the guises, to recognize the significance of the
conditions under which each is given, and yet to hold to the fact that
the object is given given as object and not merely as percept. Is it
permissible for a philosophy to emphasize the latter of these positions
at the expense of the former?
IV. Suppose that the philosopher lays much emphasis upon the
pervasively volitional character of our mental life, and points out
that the light under which men see the world is not independent of
their desires and purposes. Is he not calling attention to a truth
perfectly well recognized by men who are not philosophers? Com-
mon sense appears to accept without question the variability of the
percept, and surely no plain man would deny that our choices from
moment to moment have much to do with the aspects under which
things are experienced. We can put ourselves in this or that position
with respect to objects ; we can, under the influence of permanent in-
terests, come to embrace in our experience whole systems of objects
which, had we not had those interests, would certainly never have
attracted our attention, and many of which would, perhaps, never
have been experienced at all. He who seeks, finds; he who elects to
close his eyes does not see.
Even the interests and choices of those who have lived before us
are not without significance for us. It is recognized on all hands, and
not merely by the philosophers, that our problems are, to a great ex-
tent, set for us by others, and that others influence us to look for
their answers in this direction or in that. Common sense, where it is
in the least reflective, recognizes as much as this. Does any man
doubt that, if I am not interested in a thing, it may pass by me un-
heeded? Does any man doubt that others may call my attention to
things, to aspects of things, to the significance of things for human
life?
In recognizing all this, is common sense doing anything more
than recognizing the variability of the percept commented on above ?
Is it not simply accepting the fact that the desires and volitions of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 155
men have something to do with the selection of the particular guise
under which objects or systems of objects may be given in experience ?
But does the fullest recognition of the significance of desire and
volition in this field imply that common sense even tacitly admits that
they have the same significance when we are dealing with objects as
such? Could the plain man, could the typesetter, be possibly in-
duced to accept the statement that our inattention to typographical
errors really tends to make them "unreal"? Does the scientist ever
dare to use such a principle in his dealings with an undesirable ele-
ment in a compound which he is investigating? The concrete is the
touchstone of abstract theories. The laying aside of a philosophical
terminology, and the adoption of plain and simple language, may be,
in effect, the discarding of a cloak.
If, then, a philosophy lays stress upon the fact that the character
of our experiences may be accounted for, in part, by having recourse
to the interests and choices of men, and, if it does no more, it seems to
have proclaimed the secret of all the world, and to have brought no
new revelation. But, if it does more ; if it speaks a language which
suggests to us that we can, by taking thought, add a cubit to our
stature, does it not come into conflict with a doctrine as clearly rec-
ognized by common sense, and, apparently, as plainly revealed in
our experience, as is that of the variability of our percepts and their
relative independence of objects? That such a language has recently
been spoken by some, can scarcely be denied. Must not he who be-
longs even to the moderate wing of such a party justify his state-
ments in detail, and with constant references to concrete instances, if
he would clear himself of the charge of subjectivism ?
The common sense doctrine seems, then, to be many-sided. When
the plain man insists that he perceives an object, now under this
guise, now under that, and never under no guise at all, does he re-
solve the object into percepts, or deny its existence ? When he recog-
nizes the significance of his senses, of his desires, of his choices, does
he repudiate the independence of the object? Does he ever put the
object, as such, at one remove, and make it a thing never really
"given" in experience?
Each philosophy commented upon above seems to have one foot
on the common sense doctrine. But it appears to emphasize one ele-
ment in it to the detriment of others. The several philosophies do
not appear to be at one touching the element that should be empha-
sized. Has the philosopher, in each case, exaggerated one truth at
the expense of others? or is common sense inconsistent, and in need
of correction at the hands of the philosopher ?
I have no intention here of putting forward any doctrine of my
156 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
own. What I have to say I have said elsewhere 1 as clearly as it is in
me to say it, and there is little profit in mere repetition. I may, how-
ever, record the conviction that each type of philosophy commented
upon above has recognized a truth, that each truth finds its implicit
recognition in the common sense doctrine, and that it ought to be pos-
sible to do justice to these truths without falling into a tangle of incon-
sistencies. It is to be expected that, from such a mutual adjustment,
there should emerge a doctrine more moderate and less striking per-
haps, less interesting than what may be looked for where the distri-
bution of emphasis has been more one-sided.
In closing, I may be permitted to dwell upon a point which seems
to me to possess a greater importance than that which is usually con-
ceded to it. It is that of the nature of the language which should be
used even by the philosopher in discussing such problems as the one
we have been considering.
I have said that the concrete is the touchstone of abstract theory.
By this I have by no means meant to indicate that abstract theory is
to be discarded, or that abstract and even highly technical language is
in all cases to be eschewed. I suppose no cultivated man in his senses
would wish to rob the mathematician of his system of symbols, or to
denude other special sciences of a labor-saving terminology which has
been coined with much thought and care, and which fixes generally
accepted distinctions that might easily be lost were they not em-
balmed in certain words and phrases or even in what seem to the
uninitiated cabalistic signs. And surely no one who has the slightest
appreciation of the methods of science can feel justified in maintain-
ing that trains of abstract reasoning should at every moment be in-
terrupted by a precipitate descent upon the concrete fact which alone
gives significance to every formula.
Nevertheless, it remains true that the concrete is the touchstone
of abstract theory ; and it is equally true that one runs a certain risk
in coining technical terms and in entrusting oneself to the conve-
nience of the abstract symbol. The danger is palpably greater in
some fields of investigation than in others. It is, I think, greatest in
the philosophical sciences, where the facts supposed to be dealt with
when a writer uses this or that constantly recurring technical expres-
sion are by no means admitted by all competent judges to be facts
at all.
In such cases a direct return to the concrete and to common and
familiar forms of speech may not necessarily be a mere inconvenient
interruption of a justifiable flight. It may result in an exposure of
the truth that 'the flight should never have been undertaken at all;
it may amount to a revelation that the word or phrase one is using
'"The World We Live In," New York, 1912.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 157
is an empty one, or that the symbolic statement carries with it a
misconception of the experience with which one is supposed to be
dealing.
It is far harder to judge whether a man is talking significantly or
uot, when he uses a language which departs widely from that of com-
mon life, than it is when he employs the common phrases which have
a meaning for us all. We do not habitually think in algebraic
formulas, nor can most of us check off readily the real worth of a
statement when it is placed before us in such a form. The speaker
may be saying something wise or he may not ; it is not easy for us to
say, and few take the trouble to find out.
In philosophy, I do not believe that the convenience of using tech-
nical and abstract expressions where such can be avoided, as I be-
lieve they may, in most instances can counterbalance the danger
which one incurs in having recourse to them. In support of this
statement I shall give but two illustrations.
Suppose one maintains : "Every element in the objective order of
experience may conceivably take its place in the subjective order
also;" and suppose the man to whom he is speaking adds: "And
every element in the subjective order may take its place in the ob-
jective order." Is it as easy to judge whether one should give or
withhold one 's assent, as it would be if the first speaker had said :
"Every aspect of every material thing can conceivably be known-;"
and the second had continued: "And everything that can conceiv-
ably be known even my dream of last night, or the centaur which I
am now imagining may have its place in the material world"?
Again. We have seen the logicians examine such a statement as
"that inkstand is black," turn it into "a is 6," and then ask them-
selves, with shakings of the head, what mystery of identity under-
lies the fact that a, which is a and not 6, can still truly be affirmed
to be &. Suppose we leave a -and b and come back to the concrete
statement. Is there any man, learned or unlearned, who, when he
sits at his desk, and, raising his eyes, exclaims "that inkstand is
black, ' ' ever means to assert that one thing, which is manifestly not
some other thing, nevertheless is that other thing?
The formula is general and abstract. It fits, among others, such
statements as "this horse is that cow," and "red is not red," in
which case it expresses the absurd. But surely this has nothing to
do with the judgments that men pass upon the colors of the things
about them, and gives no indication of what actually takes place in
their minds when they form judgments. When abstract formulae
seem to result in mystification, a descent upon the concrete is, as the
physicians say, "indicated."
Now, in dealing with percept and object, we are not in a realm
168 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
which belongs exclusively to the few who have appropriated the latest
discoveries of the sciences. We are dealing with what has its place
in the realm of common experience. Men, plain men generally, are
more or less at home in this realm, and we can not assume that gen-
erally received opinions are wholly to be disregarded. If we speak
to such men in an unknown tongue, if we describe to them their fa-
miliar experiences in abstract and unfamiliar language, they will
certainly not understand us, and any answers they may make to our
questions can not be of service to us. It is quite likely that, by so
speaking, we may prevent even our colleagues, who may have a lan-
guage of their own, from understanding us, and that we may give
rise to profitless discussion. It is not impossible that we deceive our-
selves as well as others, contenting ourselves with words and phrases,
when our whole endeavor should be to bring clearly before ourselves
the most concrete and commonplace experiences, and to overlook none
of their aspects.
GEORGE STUART FULLERTON.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
CONSONANCE AND DISSONANCE 1
nnHE facts of consonance and dissonance imply a large number
-- of psychological problems : of sensory perception, of represen-
tation, of judgment, and of feeling problems which, to a great
extent, are capable of exact experimental analysis. In the historical
development of these problems, the psychological point of view has
but lately been differentiated from the metaphysical, the physical,
and the physiological.
Helmholtz, on the basis of modern epistemology, first treated the
subject in a purely empirical and scientific manner. Psycholog-
ically speaking, he left to us numerous intricate, but yet not hopeless
tasks. His theory puts the main stress upon the harmonic overtones,
their coincidences and mutual disturbances. Though modern criti-
cisms of this theory, such as that of Stumpf and Lipps, overshoot the
mark, the theory itself is far from being completely satisfactory.
It does not explain the facts of tone-combinations with no, or with
only a few, overtones.
Lipps 's theory of unconscious rhythms is more metaphysical than
scientific, and is not in accordance with ascertained facts. The the-
ory of "fusion," held by Stumpf, is based upon interesting experi-
1 This article is a summary of two lectures, given (with demonstrations)
before the New York Branch of the American Psychological Association, and
before the late meeting of this association at Cleveland.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 159
mental results. However, aside from some discrepancies with ex-
perience, it recurs too prematurely to a physiological hypothesis and
neglects a complete analysis of the conscious data.
In order to analyze all the phenomena, which the hearer con-
sciously perceives at different intervals, the writer tested the matter
with a large number of intervals and with independent subjects
having no knowledge of the objective relations. Very soon he
noticed the fundamental importance of the difference-tones for the
perception of all the degrees of consonance and dissonance. Even
two simple fundamentals regularly produce 5 difference-tones, the
vibration-numbers of which are to be found by a continuous sub-
traction of the already existing tones. Thus, for instance, the minor
third, 500:600 gives the difference-tones, 1^ = 100, D 2 = 400, D 3
300, Z) 4 = 200, Z) 5 = 100 (coincident with PJ.
1J 5:6 4:5 3:4 5:7 Z:3 3:8 3.5 4:75:9 14
In the accompanying chart the upper horizontal line symbolizes
the continuous enlargement of an interval, starting from the unisone
(1:1), passing through the two thirds, the fourth, the natural tri-
tone (5:7), the fifth, the two sixths, the natural (4:7) and the minor
seventh, to the octave (1:2). All of the changes of the difference-
tones, corresponding to this range of intervals, are represented by
the unbroken lines below the upper line. The vertical dimension of
the figure signifies the pitch of the difference-tones as it increases or
diminishes between the vibration-number zero and that of the lower
fundamental. It is obvious that consonant intervals are character-
ized by exceptional relations of all their partial tones.
The general law holds that a difference-tone is related to every
other simultaneous tone (either a primary or a combination-tone) in
160 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
exactly the same manner as two simultaneous primary tones are
related to each other. They coincide and strengthen each other, if
they are of the same pitch. They give beats, roughness, and noises,
they produce an intermediate tone, and make each other lower or
higher, if they are near enough together. Now, the phenomena, due
to the difference-tones, are in exact correspondence to the degrees of
consonance and dissonance. The most perfect consonances (unisone
and octave) have no distinct difference-tone at all. The more imper-
fect the consonance, the larger the number of difference-tones, and
the greater the consequent danger of mutual disturbances. The
fundamental phenomenon of all dissonance consists in the existence
of a mistuned unisone at the bottom of the total acoustic complex.
As regards the consonances and their mistunement: the purer the
interval, the more distinct and intensive (the clearer and smoother)
are the remaining difference-tones, most particularly the "charac-
teristic" one, which always corresponds to the ratio-number 1.
In the concrete perception of tone-combinations on account of
the relative frequency of the intervals and their similarity to single
musical sounds several associative factors cooperate.
The objections made by Lipps and Stumpf to this theory neglect
these associative factors. On the other hand, Stumpf, in his discus-
sion of the theory, treats as being dissonant some intervals, such
as 5:7, which originally are characterized in the sense of imperfect
consonance, and only for historical reasons are excluded from our
musical system. Finally the immediate perception of consonance
and dissonance is not independent of the absolute pitch. Psycholog-
ically speaking, consonance and dissonance seem to have originated
within the limits of the human voice.
The relations of difference-tones that we have described sys-
tematically explain the fundamental conditions of the real phenom-
ena of fusion and many other facts, which Stumpf 's theory does not
pretend to explain ; for instance, the dissonance of the excessive triad
like c-e-as.
Successive tones can be called consonant or dissonant only in a
translated sense of the word. However, several of the phenomena
corresponding to them, like the facts of tonica, are in part condi-
tioned by the laws of perception of simultaneous tones. 2
FELIX KRUEGER.
UNIVERSITY OF HALLE, GERMANY.
'Full reports of the author's experiments and theory are to be found in
Philosophised e Studien, Vols. 16, 17 (1900-1901); Archiv fur die gesamte Psy-
chologic, Vols. I., II. (1903) ; Psychologische Studien, Vols. I., II., IV., V.
(1906-1910).
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 161
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Problems of Philosophy. BERTRAND RUSSELL. New York: Henry
Holt and Company. Pp. viii -f- 253.
This stimulating little book, one of a series written "for the general
reader as well as the student," contains fifteen keen essays, as follows:
(I.) Appearance and Reality, (II.) The Existence of Matter, (III.) The
Nature of Matter, (IV.) Idealism, (V.) Knowledge by Acquaintance and
Knowledge by Description, (VI.) On Induction, (VII.) On Our Knowl-
edge of General Principles, (VIII.) How a priori Knowledge is Possible,
(IX.) The World of Universals, (X.) On Our Knowledge of Universals,
(XI.) On Intuitive Knowledge, (XII.) Truth and Falsehood, (XIII.)
Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion, (XIV.) The Limits of Philo-
sophical Knowledge, (XV.) The Value of Philosophy.
Mr. Russell tells us in a one-page preface that he has confined himself
to those problems in regard to which it seemed " possible to say something
positive and constructive, since merely negative criticism seemed out of
place." He has, therefore, either discussed very briefly or omitted alto-
gether many topics much discussed by philosophers. The unpublished
writings of Mr. G. E. Moore and Mr. J. M. Keynes, so he tells us, were of
help to him in the formulation of his somewhat original views upon sense-
data and induction, respectively, while the suggestions of the editor of the
series, Professor Gilbert Murray, were of great profit.
In this little book Mr. Russell has set his face against recent dominant
tendencies in English thought. And, indeed, the volume constitutes further
evidence of what may be called a rising tide of a twentieth-century Pla-
tonism. This is not surprising; the recent emphasis upon relativism calls
for it. That such a clear statement of Platonic realism should come from
Cambridge is not out of keeping with her traditions.
It is, however, not unlikely that Mr. Russell will be sharply criticized
in some quarters for his efforts to limit the task of philosophy in the man-
ner that he does, i In his opinion, if one seeks by the study of philos-
ophy to bolster up dogma or personal views of the universe; if one hopes
thereby to solve the problem of evil, or even to establish the essen-
tial rationality of the universe, he has misconceived the function of
philosophy. Such hopes are vain.> It is not a difficult matter to show that
all notable efforts in that direction have come to nothing; the proofs set
up do not withstand critical analysis. The ancient belief that that philo-
sophical reflection affords some mysterious insight into the secrets of the
universe is not to be countenanced. Philosophy is, to be sure, an attempt
to answer ultimate questions, not after the manner of common sense or
even of science, which in such matters is too often careless and dogmatic,
but critically; for criticism is of the essence of philosophy. But the
knowledge thus gained does not differ essentially from that of the special
sciences. Most of the great thinkers of this class have based their case
upon the self-contradictions of the world of appearance; for example,
Kant in his conception of space, time, causality, etc. But mathematicians
have not only shown that space, as we commonly think it, is possible, but
162 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
that there are many other possible kinds of space. The same thing is true
of time. And what has happened in the case of space and time has also
happened in the case of logic, which, far from being a " bar to possibili-
ties," has become "the liberator of the imagination," and thereby offers
not merely one world, but a wealth of possible worlds.
Mr. Kussell's unqualified confidence in the essential features of Pla-
tonism is shown in his examination of the doctrine that synthetic judg-
ments a priori are of unique character. While Kant is to be given the
credit for the discovery of synthetic propositions, his theory that they can
be accounted for only by the introduction of some transcendental factor of
unity is, for Mr. Russell, merely interesting. At first blush, to be sure,
such judgments do possess mystery ; in some strange manner they seem to
anticipate experience, or even to control it. Upon analysis this mystery
clears away, however, and the assertion that the sum of the angles of a tri-
angle are equal to two right angles takes its place beside the statement that
the inkstand is upon the table.
Kant's effort to read logic and mathematics into nature does not con-
clusively account for the feeling of certainty the real problem in the case ;
for our minds are themselves part of nature. Platonism affords a reality
that is neither physical nor mental, and thereby gives a better basis for
a priori knowledge. Universals are such realities. We can become ac-
quainted with these just as we become acquainted with sense-data. The
kind of knowledge is the same. It does not follow that we will form our
acquaintance with triangularity as early as with redness; the power of
abstraction is not concerned here. " Between universals, as between par-
ticulars, there are relations of which we may be immediately aware."
When the unconditional assertion is made that 7 and 5 are 12, I am aware
of such a relation between universals. And I am aware of it in the same
way that I am aware that the inkstand is upon the table. We are aware
of the relation ; in one case it is a relation between universals, while in the
other it is between particulars. This, then, is the long and short of a priori
knowledge. It " deals exclusively with the relations between universals."
It is this that gives synthetic judgments a priori their distinctive character.
It thus appears that " what seemed mysterious in our a priori
knowledge is seen to have been based upon an error," the confu-
sion of the general proposition with its application to actual par-
ticulars. And this really accounts for the difference between a genuine
a priori judgment and an empirical generalization. When it is asserted
that all men are mortal, the meaning of the statement is understood, pro-
vided the universals involved are understood. But " the difference between
an a priori general proposition and an empirical generalization does not
come in the meaning of the proposition; it comes in the nature of the
evidence for it." The evidence for the belief that all men are mortal rests
upon our experience with particular instances. " We do not believe it be-
cause we see a connection between the universal man and the universal
mortal."
There is a solid feeling as well as a strange familiarity about this ex-
planation of a priori general propositions. It carries one back to those
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 163
normal explanations sometimes advanced by students whose minds are still
unacquainted with strange doctrines in philosophies. One need not ac-
cept Mr. Russell's Platonic realism as applied to the universals to thor-
oughly enjoy his keen analysis of Kant's synthetic judgments a priori.
I am not, however, by any means certain that Mr. Russell would not feel
obligated to exclude the rest of us. In that event, we can be charitable;
for it is of the essence of Platonism to be exclusive. This would explain
his inhospitality. Nevertheless I can not see why, if one refuses to be
pigeonholed as nominalist or conceptualist, preferring rather to regard
universals now as conventions dependent for their existence upon the sub-
ject's reaction upon reality, now as more or less accurate guesses at reality
I can not see why he should not be inclined to accept such an explana-
tion of general propositions. Would this not be harmonious with the rest
of Mr. Russell's wonderful little book?
One of the best things in the book is Mr. Russell's attitude, quite un-
conscious, I presume, towards the would-be sceptic among youthful phi-
losophers. Most good students pass through the stage when they come for
the first time to an examination of the presuppositions of experience, so
strongly urged by Mr. Russell as the essential task of philosophy. They
take up an attitude of doubt, if not of complete negation; not to do so
would be stultifying. Whatever may be the value of the classic argument
against the sceptic, there can be no difference of opinion about its failure
to get at the difficulty of sincere students. It is good to see that this an-
cient weapon finds small place in an essay that is destined to become
classic.
Mr. Russell's kindly attitude towards the youthful doubters is in some
sense of a texture with his candid statement of the value of philosophy,
which " is, in fact, to be sought largely in its rery uncertainty." Thus it
liberates the mind from the prejudices of common sense and the tyranny
of custom. " While diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things
are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be ; it removes
the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into
the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by
showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect." Thus the true value of
philosophy consists in the asking of questions rather than in the answering
of them. In so doing we uncover " the strangeness and wonder lying just
below the surface even in the commonest things in daily life," and thereby
increase the joy of life. To quote in full his concluding words, which I
account unmatched : " Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any
definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule,
be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves;
because these questions enlarge our conceptions of what is possible, en-
rich our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic assurance
which closes the mind against speculation ; but above all because, through
the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind
also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the uni-
verse which constitutes its highest good."
The book is written in a clear, logical style, in language free from an
164 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
outworn terminology reminiscent of other ages. There is a sparing
use even of those technical terms in good standing among philosophers.
The treatment is of such a character as to awaken interest and encourage
inquiry. For this reason it should be especially serviceable where philos-
ophy is a required course of study, to say nothing of the pleasure the
general reader will take in it. One possessed of normal curiosity, after
he has read this stimulating little book, is more than likely to find him-
self keenly interested in the essential problems of philosophy. But, what
is better still, he will be far from unacquainted with the characteristic
aspects of the great world-views, and that, too, in a manner not unsym-
pathetic. Mr. Russell's discussion of the doctrines of those with whom
he strongly disagrees is tactful as well as discerning; it should, therefore,
afford an excellent point of departure. There are other features that
commend themselves, not the least of which is the strong spirit of
optimism with reference to the future of philosophy. This runs through-
out the entire essay. JOHN PICKETT TURNER.
THE COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
The Applications of Logic. A Text-book for Students. A. T. ROBINSON.
New York : Longmans, Green, and Company. Pp. x + 219.
Here is a book that is true to its title. In it there is not a whisper of
those alleged problems of logic over which philosophers are wont to
wrangle; and the cause of this happy omission doubtless lies in the
circumstance that the author stands not in the haughty lineage of Sig-
wart, Venn, et al., but is only an 'umble teacher of English in the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology. This same fact also puts the little
volume into that choice but painfully small band of works which ma-
terially assist their readers in thinking straight and talking straight.
Professor Robinson evidently has been dealing, these ten years past, with
young gentlemen who care nothing about the metaphysical status of
universals, but are acutely interested in writing lucid, convincing reports
of electric-lighting plants and in classifying bolts, gears, and shaft-
hangers. And so he teaches, not logic, but something immeasurably
more precious the art of forming and arranging opinions.
Nearly half of his pages are filled with skilfully fashioned exercises.
The student is required to take notes on readings and lectures, with an
eye to seizing the logical structure of these. He is put to studying the
connection between statements in his own conversation and private reflec-
tions. He is called upon to make full reports of some familiar place and
to arrange his observations into classes determined by various definite
purposes which a writer might have. There is also served up the usual
and inevitable array of excerpts containing peculiar or faulty inferences,
which the student must discover. But, unlike most collections of fal-
lacies, this one is composed chiefly of arguments on topics in which an
educated young man of to-day may be expected to take lively interest and
about which he ought to have definite, if not well buttressed, convictions.
The abolition of football, the honor system in examinations, and kindred
college issues naturally bulk large here.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 165
These exercises give the book its greatest value. The well-written
studies to which they are appended are not remarkable. They make not
the slightest pretense of originality, and they do not rest upon a clearly
thought-out hypothesis of logic and mental operations. This defect, how-
ever, works little harm; for in real thinking and writing, neither teacher
nor student need know anything save the particular aim of the particular
line of reasoning and the subject-matter which this aim involves. Pro-
fessor Eobinson drives home this fact by word and by deed. He believes
that genuine thinking is shaped by the thinker's purposes, and that to
have a definite purpose with respect to a given subject, one must be
familiar with it at least in some of its aspects. Consistently with this
doctrine, the author bends his efforts, not toward schematizing the stock
fallacies and explaining how Achilles really does overtake the tortoise,
but toward showing the student, in concrete instances, how those two
factors, purpose and knowledge, guide his pen through small talk and
solemn essay alike.
The work is admirably adapted to the needs of a first course in logic
or to an advanced course in composition. WALTER B. PITKIN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
A Method of Measuring the Development of the Intelligence of Young
Children. ALFRED BINET and TH. SIMON. Translated by CLARA HAR-
RISON TOWN. The Courier Company. 1912. Pp. 83.
It is quite unnecessary to review the subject-matter of this monograph,
since it has now been seven years since the Binet-Simon scale of tests for
the measurement of children's intelligence was first published in " L'Annee
Psychologique." Many investigators and educators to whom the original
articles have not been easily accessible have been awaiting a full transla-
tion of one or more of the first-hand accounts of the series of tests, the
methods of applying them as recommended by their originators, and some
general discussion of their intent and significance. Because of the fact
that " the popularity of the tests is not paralleled by accurate knowledge "
concerning them, Dr. Town has presented this translation of the 1911
article in the Bulletin de la Societe libre pour I'Etude psychologique de
I'Enfant. This is the finally revised form of the Binet-Simon scale. The
manual contains a preface by the translator, a detailed description and
classification of the tests, with suggestions and directions for their ad-
ministration, a general discussion of the conditions necessary for satis-
factory examination, and an appendix containing the series of tests ar-
ranged in convenient age and diagnostic groups. The manual will be
welcomed by all who are interested in the psychology of tests.
It is much to be regretted that such a timely translation should be
marred by such a profusion of orthographical, grammatical, and typo-
graphical errors of the most unpardonable sort. The most casual reader
finds such words as " verticle," " presumptions," " difinition," " whch,"
" howver," " wheher," " useing," " nameing," etc ; such hyphenations as
" but-cher," and " fee-ble " ; many errors of alignment and spacing ; and
the most riotous and indiscriminate use of commas and semicolons. Of
166 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the 52 pages of Part I., on "Description of Tests," 21 pages of the re-
viewer's copy of the manual contain from one to three such uncorrected
errors, remarked in the course of a reading actuated by no intention of
proof-reading. On the whole, however, these errors do not detract from
the intelligibility of the translation, although such a statement as "A
great variety or error are made by the children " (p. 12) is more or less
ambiguous. H. L. HOLLINGWORTH.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. September, 1912. La notion du
miracle (pp. 225-242) : A. CHIDE. - An effort to exhibit the concept of the
miracle as a special form of causality having significance for thought,
and also, perhaps, for the cosmos. La philosophic russe contemporaine
(pp. 243-274) : G. SELIBER. - Discusses a number of different points of
view Wvedensky, the adversary of metaphysics, and Lapchine, his dis-
ciple; Askoldov, an opponent of Kant; Lossky, a mystical empiricist;
Berdiaiew, a social and religious philosopher and an opponent of the
separation of philosophy and life. Notes et documents. Le symptome
metaphysique de la neurasthenic: A. MARTIN. Revue critique. La phi-
losophic de I' intuition : P. BERROT. Analyses et comptes rendus. C.
Radulescu-Motru, Elements de metaphysique: D. DRAGHICESCO. C. Lalo,
Introduction a I'esthetique: L. ARREAT. Van Viervliet, Esquisse d'une
education de V attention: L. DUGAS. Marie Jaell, La resonance du toucher
et la topographic des pulpes: B. BOURDON. P. Hachet-Souplet, La genese
des instincts: H. PIERON. Oesterreich, Die Phaenomenologie des Ich in
ihren Grundproblemen : J. D.-B. Laboratoire de Psychologic experi-
mentale de Rome: G.-L. DUPRAT. A. Maire, L'oeuvre scientifique de
Blaise Pascal: M. SOLOVINE. Branislav-Petronievics, Principien der
Metaphysique: M. S. G. Colle, La metaphysique d'Aristote: C. HOT.
H. Hoffding, Personlighhetsprincipen : J. DE COUSSANGE. Notices Bibli-
ographiques.
REVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE. September,
1912. Le progres sociale comme substitution de valeurs (pp. 623-637) :
A. CHIAPELLI. - Progress consists in a substitution of values in which the
energies latent in humanity are brought out and developed. Les condi-
tions dialectiques de la philosophie de I'intuition (pp. 638-652) : G.
MARCEL. -The philosophy of intuition must be established by a rational
criticism of the idea of absolute knowledge and will stand or fall with
that idea. L'enterprise philosophique de Renouvier (pp. 653-681) : R. LE
SAVOUREUX. - Renouvier's early work is studied to show that moral theses
were the deepest and most permanent element of his philosophy. Etudes
Critiques. La philosophie de Georg Simmel : A. MAMELET. Discussions.
Une definition genetique du plan et de la ligne droite, d'apres Leibniz et
Lobat chevsky : G. LECHALAS. Sur les nombres de M. Russell: A. KOYRE.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 167
Beponse a M. Koyre: B. RUSSELL. Questions pratiques. Esthetique,
Morale, Politique: G. GUY-GRAND. Supplement.
Bligh, Stanley M. Social Therapeutics. London: Henry Froude. 1912.
Pp. 74. 6 s.
Buchanan, Estelle D. and Robert Earle. Household Bacteriology. New
York : The Macmillan Company. 1913. Pp. xv + 536. $2.25.
Fazio- Allmayer, V. Materia e Sensazione. Milan: Remo Sandron.
1912. Pp. 256. L3.
Geiger-Upsala, Reinhold. Die Situation auf dem psychologischen Ar-
beitsfeld. Berlin: Leonhard Simion. 1912. Pp. 90. 2.50 M.
Krewer, M. Grundlagen einer organischen Weltanschauung. Berlin:
Leonhard Simion. 1912. Pp. 73. 2.00 M.
Miinsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and
New York : Houghton Mifflin Company. 1913. Pp. 321. $1.50.
Neophilosophos Tis. Der Mensch und seine Kultur. Konstanz: Verlag
yon Ernst Ackermann. 1912. Pp. 100. 3 M.
Picard, Emile. Das Wissen der Gegenwart in Mathematik und Natur-
wissenschaf t. Leipzig und Berlin : Verlag von B. G. Teubner. 1913.
Pp. iv + 292. 6 M.
Tardieu, Emile. L'Ennui. Paris: Felix Alcan. 1913. Pp. ii + 283.
5 Fr.
Walter, Herbert E. Genetics. New York: The Macmillan Company.
1913. Pp. xiv + 272. $1.50.
NOTES AND NEWS
SUBJECT OF DISCUSSION FOR THE NEXT MEETING OF THE AMERICAN PHILO-
SOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
THE Executive Committee of the American Philosophical Association,
in order to carry out the instructions of the Association with reference to
the discussion at the next meeting, convened on December 28, and has
since been in correspondence concerning the matters referred to it for
arrangement.
The Committee early reached the decision that, in order to facilitate
the selection of a subject for discussion, it should make itself the Com-
mittee on Discussion. Accordingly, in that capacity, it has selected the
problem of Values for discussion at the thirteenth annual meeting of the
Association. The Committee, after considerable discussion, has decided
to state this problem in only the most general form and in such a way as
will allow all parties to present their more specific points of view and to
participate in the discussion. To this end the Committee presents:
The Problem of the Relation of Existence and Value, including their
relation both as facts and as concepts, and also the Relation of a Theory
of Existence to a Theory of Value.
The Committee realizes that even this brief formulation may be open
to criticism, but submits it with the request that it be accepted only as a
point of departure for the discussion of the various minor problems and
168 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
points of view that are involved in the general problem. With the con-
sent of the editors of the Philosophical Review and of the JOURNAL OF
PHILOSOPHY, the Committee now requests that either brief analyses, form-
ulations, and discussions of the problem, or longer papers, be submitted
for publication. Four members of the Committee have agreed on the ap-
pended formulation of the problem as involving the main points to be
discussed and as connecting the next discussion with the principal points
raised in the recent one at Columbia University. However, this formula-
tion is published not even as a majority report, but only as one analysis
out of the many which the Committee hopes will be submitted either to
Professor Woodbridge or to Professor Creighton. The Committee now
urgently requests a number of analyses of, and papers on, the problem se-
lected, in order that later on the Committee may use this material as a
basis for a final formulation, if this step be deemed wise.
The Committee wishes to announce that the invitations of Yale Uni-
versity and of the American Psychological Association have been ac-
cepted for the next meeting, which will consequently be held at New
Haven on dates subsequently to be decided, though probably on December
29, 30, and 31, 1913. A joint session will be held with the Psychological
Association for the purpose of discussing some topic of mutual interest.
E. G. SPAULDENG,
Secretary.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.
THE PROBLEM OF VALUES
1. Is Value (1) something which is ultimate and which attaches itself
to " things " independently of consciousness, or of an organic being with
desires and aversions, or (2) is it a characteristic which a thing gets by
its relation to the consciousness of an organic being, or to an organic
being with desires and aversions?
2. In either case, as concerns philosophical technique, may, or may
not, a theory of the nature of things be successfully developed without
reference to a theory of values, and vice versa?
3. In both cases (under 1) what theory of relations holds for the rela-
tion (a) between values and other " things," (6) between a theory of
values and a theory of the nature of other things, and how can it be shown
that the specific theory of relations alleged to hold really does hold?
4. Could every position taken in 3 itself be taken only in dependence
upon a prior theory of values, or upon values themselves?
5. Is there one fundamental standard of values, or are there more than
one? How is the position taken here related to the positions taken with
reference to Questions 1-4?
E. B. McGlLVARY,
W. B. PlTKIN,
H. A. OVERSTREET,
E. G. SPAULDIXG.
VOL. X. No. 7. MARCH 27, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD:
INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MINDS 1
WE have generally spoken of mind in the past as though it were
made up of individual streams in abstract isolation from
each other, each bound up with its own organism. "We have become
accustomed, thanks to the sharp abstractions of science, to look upon
mind as subcranial. "We can not, however, in my opinion, solve this
difficulty of abstract isolation by substituting for mind organic reac-
tions as some recent writers seem to do. 2 Mental behavior is not mere
physiological behavior; and adding the quale of interested behavior
merely introduces the problem of mind through the back door. For
we must still define interest. This is no mere neutral light, but an
energetic reaction between the will and a stimulus. The stimulus
may be physicoorganic ; it may be internal to the will 's own rhythm ;
but it may also be another will. It is the relation in the latter case
with which we are here concerned.
In assuming, as psychologists have done in the past, the isolation
of minds, the relations between minds have necessarily been regarded
as external relations. The continuities between minds have been as-
sumed to be physical continuities, unless in some "spooky" instances
of telepathy. We become conscious of other minds, it is supposed,
only through analogy from physiological conduct, i. e., we represent
to ourselves that other people have minds from the similarity of their
bodily behavior to our own, assuming, of course, that we have knowl-
edge of our own minds from the start.
Why this precedence should be given to physical continuities is
not easy to understand from the point of view of logic, though it is
natural enough from the point of view of custom. The material
1 This paper was read in part before The American Philosophical Association
at its recent meeting at Columbia "University. It is intended as a chapter in a
forthcoming volume, "A Eealistic Universe."
8 See E. B. Perry in a remarkably keen article ' ' The Mind Within and the
Mind Without," this JOURNAL, Vol. VI., especially pp. 172-175. Perry reduces
mind to organic behavior. It is significant that Perry draws his data from the
comparative psychology of the lower animals, where mind is bound up exclusively
with organic behavior. He does not deal with the intersubjective relations.
169
170 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
world has been too much with us. Early and late, through a long
survival struggle with the sense environment, we have been directly
dependent upon it for our immediate wants, while conscious coopera-
tion with our fellows and the treatment of them as anything more
than things breathing bodies is comparatively late and not over-
widespread now. In the lowest animals, mind seems entirely en-
slaved to the organism and its needs. Blind impulse and habit seem
here indeed a part merely of organic behavior, as our neorealist
friends would have us believe of mind in general. In the higher ani-
mals the free association of ideas, the division of labor, and coopera-
tion for common ends help to liberate mind from this instrumental
relation to the body until, in civilized man, the relation is reversed:
Body comes to be the instrument of mind, and the individual 's world
of ends comes to be found more and more in social companionship,
in the mutual cooperation and appreciation of his fellows. This
fellow world comes to be looked upon more and more, not as a mere
artificial contract, but as the fulfilment of spontaneous and funda-
mental needs. A world of spiritual relationships thus arises where
the individual lives and moves and has his being; and compared to
this the solid physical world, through the progress of science, comes
to seem more and more a plastic means.
This mastery, however, is made possible only by means of abstract
thought; and abstract thought, indispensable as it is to this process
of liberation, carries its own penalty. It tends to make us insen-
sible to the immediate continuities of life. It cuts the world up into
abstract elements. It atomizes its integral situations for descriptive
purposes, and then unconsciously substitutes the instrument for the
concrete interrelations of the real world. Thus conceptual thought,
the most efficient of social institutions, dulls the sense of social con-
tinuity and reduces mind to a mere abstraction. Its relation to its
world becomes a mere external relation, at the same time that the ob-
jective world is broken up into abstractions with their external rela-
tions. Incidentally thought, when thus cut loose from the concrete
processes, for which it is to furnish the leading, makes itself impos-
sible and absurd. A world made up of abstractions is no longer con-
ceivable; and so thought in despair comes to discredit itself and to
seek solace in mysticism.
It is one of the paradoxes of human development that conceptual
thought, the social instrument by which mind dominates matter and
secures efficient cooperation of mind with mind, should thus in theory
liave come to isolate mind in the universe, if indeed not make it a
mere function of matter. As the substantives of thought occupy the
foreground of our consciousness, it has made us correspondingly neg-
lectful of that sense of immediate companionship of mind with mind
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 171
which furnishes the propelling motive of social cooperation, includ-
ing abstract thought. Not that thought has destroyed the reality of
companionship. Constructive imagination does not make men selfish,
as some suppose. By liberating mind from the immediate sense
world, it has, on the contrary, vastly enhanced both the need and the
reality of spiritual association. It has made possible the relationship
of friendship, the freest and most precious of social communions,
where man rises above, not merely the slavery to animal want, but the
bondage to tradition as well, and where soul meets soul on the basis
of lasting ideal kinship. In practise, therefore, thought has well ful-
filled its function as an instrument of the social mind, even though in
theory it has resulted in social atomism. This defect, however, can
be cured by thought itself when it recognizes its instrumental char-
acter and examines its deeper, though often subconscious, motives.
Perhaps Bergson is right that the higher insects with their con-
crete intuitive life and their lack of abstract thought are more keenly
conscious of the real continuities than we. But at any rate they
don't know it if they are, while we can with an effort at least call
back thought to its original task of making clear and distinct our
concrete intuitions.
We are thus, in the process of experience, literally differentiated
out of a social continuum. In this process of differentiation, in this
growing recognition of each other's reality, the combative instincts
play the important role. "We are no sooner brought together by the
irresistible pull of the social tendencies the instinct of gregarious-
ness and the instincts bound up with sex, together with the more gen-
eral tendencies of imitation and sympathy than we, like children,
fight to possess the same things. Perhaps we fight for physical
things, perhaps for the mastery of the social situation, perhaps to
emulate each other in a self-imposed task. And in the fight we dis-
cover the mutual reality of wills and our relative place in the scale
of valuation. In the meantime the sense of companionship which
pulls us together and holds us together in spite of the conflict, and
even makes us enjoy the conflict, is in the background of conscious-
ness and is apt to be overlooked by the intellectual attention. It may
seem as though we were just together to fight, to be the interference
and the torment of each other. We fail to realize that war itself,
however destructive, and however clumsy and primitive a method of
social evaluation, is a social process which "makes some gods, some
men."
In brief, we may say that while at the start, both in race history
and in individual history, the particular will is a rather blind func-
tion of an individual organism, in the growing civilized life of which
we are a part the particular mind becomes rather a function of a so-
172 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
cial organization of mind, with its necessary division of labor and free
or compulsory cooperation. In this spiritual economy of the world we
are literally members one of another.
If we succeed in recovering to some extent the innocence of that
immediate experience from which all our abstractions are made, we
shall find, I think, that the isolation of mind from mind is based in
prejudice, not in the intuited facts. The processes of external rep-
resentation and analogical inference presuppose immediate social
acquaintance, valuable though they are in our attempts to know
about other minds. We do not start with a knowledge of our own
minds and then eject it into other bodies, but we become conscious of
being minds through our interaction with other minds. It is in meet-
ing the other will, which thwarts and baffles it, that our own will
awakes to its reality and claims. Except for this social interaction,
this intersubjective tension, it would remain submerged in the phys-
ical continuities, a mere function of organic conduct as we find it to
be in the non-social animals. Our knowledge of social continuities
starts, like all knowledge of reality, with certain intuited facts. The
intersubjective continuities are first of all felt, and they are felt to be
different from physical continuities. This fact is more elementary
than the representation or inference of other minds ; and is presup-
posed by these intellectual processes. It is because we feel the con-
tinuities with other minds and must adjust ourselves to them that we
try to know about them. Our intuition of social continuities is as im-
mediate and elementary a fact as that of physical continuities; and
from the point of view of knowledge, it is the demands of the social
interactions which lead us to distinguish between intersubjective and
physical continuities. We could not, therefore, very well infer the
former from the latter.
The agnostic is at any rate consistently wrong. He does not hold
that we have a true intuition of physical continuities, but are isolated
as minds. He regards both continuities as subjective states. We
thus live in a sort of middle world of phantasms (to use Hobbes's
term) a world neither mind nor body nor a copy of either, but a
misrepresentation of both. Hence we can know no real things, we
can trust no intuitions as regards either world. The pragmatic point
of view, 3 on the other hand, insists that we must start with our im-
mediate intuitions and beliefs and try to make them consistent and
clear. And one of those intuitions is that of the first-hand and im-
mediate character of social companionship. This for the mind, un-
spoiled by artificial abstraction, is as categorically convincing a fact
as the immediate sense-continuities.
*My own conception of the pragmatic point of view I have tied to state in
*' Truth and Beality," Macmillan, 1911.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 173
What is there to set over against this convincing intuition of so-
cial continuities? There is an abstract body of secondary beliefs.
We still insist upon applying the molecular conception of interaction
to the relation of mind to body. To the old type interactionist, it
means that mind must somehow be located within the brain and give
a push to its molecules. To the parallelist such interaction is incon-
ceivable and absurd; and the only relation possible is that of inert
concomitance and miraculous correspondence, while the materialist
caps the climax by ruling out mind altogether except as the bare ab-
straction of a neutral consciousness.
The mechanical theory has long presented a similar difficulty as
to physical interaction. This difficulty led Leibniz to deny any inter-
action between monads. It led physical science to discard the so-
called secondary qualities, because, in their case, the characteristic
action of the physical stimuli was supposed to stop with the end-
organs. Just how the primary qualities got past was not explained,
but merely taken for granted; and the agnostics and subjectivists,
who were more consistent, had no trouble in insulating mind from
any outer physical world. Such was the logic of the old mechanical
hypothesis.
Fortunately we have oome to know a type of energy which is not
ponderable matter. The immaterial character of electricity was long
obscured by our carrying over our mechanical models into the new
field. The ether was invented with all sorts of contradictory proper-
ties to furnish a medium for this new energy. But whatever may be
our belief as regards the existence of the ether, we have at any rate
come to recognize that in electrical energy, in its various forms, we
have a unique type of immaterial continuity which intersects and
pervades the gross material framework in all sorts of ways. What is
opaque to one wave-length becomes translucent to another to X-
rays or violet rays. However difficult it is to accustom our minds to
the properties of this immaterial energy, we have here a type of con-
tinuity of far greater subtlety than known before a type where
molecular models cease to be applicable. As the discovery of free
electricity has liberated the conception of this energy from matter,
it is to be hoped that the conception of mind may also be liberated
from the hypothetical models which have made our immediate con-
victions in the continuities of mind with the physical world and with
other minds absurd.
As electrical energy rides on material energy and is thus focal-
ized in definite directions, while yet establishing its own unique ter-
minal continuities, so we may conceive that mental energy rides on
electrical energy and yet establishes its own immediately intuited
continuities. Within our own body the mental energy seems to
174 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
travel on the electrical energy of the nervous system. And why not
on the electro-magnetic field and on the material vehicles with which
our nervous system is continuous? When we send a voice over an
electric wire, don 't we also send the mental impulse which gives char-
acter and persuasiveness to that voice and makes a will at the other
end respond to it in a definite way 1 Are we certain that the will to
send the voice stays in the brain ? That we believe so is due, I believe,
to an artificial tradition.
I do not care to go on indefinitely and work out possible analo-
gies between mental energy and electrical. They will easily suggest
themselves and may easily be overworked. We have no more right
to transfer the electrical conceptions bodily to the mental realm than
we have to transfer the material conceptions to the electrical realm.
What I wish to emphasize is that the conception of electrical fields
of energy and their immaterial continuities across space, intersecting
our gross material world, seems to furnish a model which fits in with
our conviction in the immediate acquaintance of mind with mind.
Let us substitute for the old conception of the soul as being an in-
divisible, localized atom, the conception of a field of energy with its
vague penumbral edges or spreadings and its more or less focalized
and shifting center of activity, and we shall have no intellectual ob-
stacle to dealing with our social intuitions.
Such a conception conveys no new information. This must be
gotten from experience as before and always. It does not support
a telepathic hypothesis except as social experience indicates such an
hypothesis. Our social continuities become no less mediated by a
nervous system, end-organs and an intervening physical world,
whatever its constitution may be, than before. It simply insists that
mental energy rides across and over these other energies and estab-
lishes real overlappings, true continuities in its own right and kind.
Whether more direct and free continuities across intervening space
than those so mediated are possible under conditions of high inten-
sity and the special receptivity of the polar fields must be established
by evidence; but if so established no intellectual model need dis-
credit them; and we must admit that there is being accumulated a
number of uncanny instances that may point to a telepathy of this
more special kind.
When once we abandon the dogma of the insulation of mind some-
where in the skull, there are many interesting phenomena about hu-
man relations that may throw light on the activity of this mental
energy. Just exactly what is it that makes people attractive or re-
pellant to each other and sometimes the opposite to different people
and to the same people at different times? What is it that consti-
tutes the "atmosphere" of some personalities and the absence of it
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 175
in others, or that gives some a positive, others a negative "atmos-
phere ' ' ? What is it that makes some psychically warm, others cold,
and others colorless? Why do some people move us and others
not, though the latter may have the better argument and the better
cause? What takes place when we find a person animated in con-
versation? What constitutes the rapport between the speaker and
his audience? These are just a few of the questions of every-day
social life which we shall be able to understand better when we are
ready to accept the intuition of immediate experience that the will
is an energy which radiates beyond any definite center ; that when we
meet in sympathy two fields of will actually blend; and, vice versa,
that they repel each other when we are antagonistic. Thus love and
hate become real first-hand interactions of wills.
Language, gestures, and other sense symbols are merely the code
for controlling or canalizing (to use Bergson's term) the intellectual
associations and thus making definite the meaning of mental con-
tinuities. They do not constitute the continuities. Common moods
and conative attitudes are possible without such symbols ; but with-
out them we can not be sure of the similarity of the associative trains
of ideas and images that go with the attitudes. As these are bound
up with the brain and are primarily physical, the direct communi-
cation of them becomes more difficult. Strangely enough it is the
physical aspect of experience which particularizes or furnishes the
hidden and only indirectly accessible factor in social communication.
Music succeeds in producing common emotions and attitudes, but
the intellectual associations vary greatly with different listeners. It
is the former that furnish the directly intuited character of inter-
subjective continuities. It is reported that Carlyle and Tennyson
would often visit together for a long time without either saying a
word. Then Carlyle would get up and take his hat and say: "That
was a good visit, Alfred. ' ' Silent communion of soul with soul may
give us the strongest sense of companionship.
We have seen that we must recognize two types of continuity,
material and immaterial. These two types may occupy the same
space, the immaterial intersecting, riding over, and bridging the ma-
terial in various ways. In a scientific way we have come to know one
type of immaterial continuity with great definiteness, that of elec-
tricity. The other type of immaterial continuity, viz., the mental
type of intersubjective communion, human beings have been ac-
quainted with and convinced of since the beginning of social rela-
tions, but our knowledge of it is fragmentary. This is probably in
part due to our scientific prejudice. In no case of spatial continuity,
can we follow it point for point. We must piece out our percepts by
means of our concepts in any knowledge of continuity. But we make
176 THE JOWRNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
our concepts in any case to describe the intuited results. If we can
understand these results only by assuming energeti confluence, i. e.,
if somehow two energies must eontribute directly to the new unity,
then we have a right to believe that the continuity exists.
In a physical compound such as H 2 we know that there must be
action of the chemical energies upon each other, because the result
is not the mere external addition of the properties of the two ele-
ments as we know them in other contexts. The compound, water, is
a new individual with distinct properties of its own. The relations
are in part at least internal relations, affecting the nature of eaeh
element contributing. What is true in the physical compound is true
in the social compound. The will of the group, swayed by a com-
mon motive and common emotion, is not an external addition of the
traits of the particular individuals, as taken either in psychological
isolation or in other social compounds. The specific group mind has
properties of its own which involve fusion of the various individuals
into a new result, as the tones fuse in the chord. The various indi-
viduals feel a different degree of convincingness, of power, of sug-
gestibility as regards the dominant impulse, because they are part of
the social situation. A new energetic field has been established, a
new individual has arisen with distinct characteristics. There is
somehow a real overlapping an immediate inhibition or reinforce-
ment of wills, peculiar to the unique social situation. The relation
here as in chemical compounds affects the natures of the terms and
is not merely an external relation between abstract entities. If we
must thus take the result, then the continuity must be real. Will
must somehow act upon will within a common energetic field to pro-
duce individual unity. Instead of speaking of sympathetic induction
as an elementary relation between minds, we ought rather to speak of
sympathetic conduction. Here we have the real dynamics of social
' ' contagion. ' '
In the overlapping of mental fields, it is not necessary that the
impulse of each should travel to all. The living continuity may be
an overlapping from next to next, like the intersection of circles, or
as the sea is continuous from shore to shore though each wave gives
up its impulse to the next. Beside these next-to-next continuities
there are also the more distantly mediated continuities across space.
The telephone and telegraph carry mind actual mind and "in-
telligence" over great distances and past numerous by-stations, es-
tablishing mental unities irrespective of proximity. My unity is
with the person at the other end of the 1,000-mile telephone connec-
tion, rather than with the person outside the booth. There is bound
to be, therefore, considerable diversity of opinions and sentiments in
complex wholes such as a nation. But with it there must be implied,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 177
at least subconsciously, a sense of common direction. This is focal-
ized ordinarily by the consciousness of a common tradition and a
common group name. In times of stress a case of national danger
or of family honor this consciousness becomes intensified into ac-
tive loyalty to a common ideal.
It is through the variety of social situations that the self comes
to know its own characteristics. No man liveth unto himself; we
live only in situations. And the most important situations for
knowing ourselves are these common reactions, when we feel each
others' tension, conflkt, and sympathy. We exist in constellations,
whose mutual attraction or repulsion we feel, rather than as indi-
viduals. The particular self is a later distinction, made possible
largely because of the variety and the complexity of social situations
into which civilized man enters as compared with tribal man. This,
with his abstract name, enables himself and others to dissociate him
from particular contexts and to regard him as an independent per-
sonality. But even this abstraction is a social function and is rather
a discrimination of a group of certain constant traits within a variety
of situations than an independent existence, which would mean
nothing.
Not only is the social field of mind intuited as having its own
unique traits as an individual, but it must be so dealt with in our
practical relations. It commands our loyalty or antagonism as an
individual. This is very different from the loyalty or antagonism
which we show toward particular components. It may even be the
direct opposite. "We may love the particular person and yet hate his
nation, or vice versa. This loyalty or antagonism to the group is not
an attitude to a mere collection of particular persons, but to a
solidarity or unity that includes them and in a measure makes them
what they are. In savage life where persons are not abstracted from
the group, no difference is made in the treatment of the isolated
person and the group. The religious command to the ancient
Hebrews was to exterminate indiscriminately the members of another
nation. These were not conceived as having potential relations as
possible members of the conquering group. The more common cus-
tom among primitive nations was to preserve the conquered as slaves
of the conquerors. This, however, was a merely instrumental and
external relation. In the case of the subordinate unity, the family,
the individual member was not, any more than in the nation, con-
ceived as a potential member of other families. Even after marriage
he remained a part of the family of the patriarch, and subordinate
to it. It is in the complexity of the potential relationships of civil-
ized life that the individual comes to stand out as having a dignity
and independence apart from any one complex.
178 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
In studying the nature of the social mind, we must proceed
empirically, as we do in the case of the particular mind. In the case
of the social mind, as in the case of the particular, we can study the
subject-object relation, the unity, the identity, the worth, and the
immortality of the individual concerned. As regards the subject'
object relation, there is in the case of the social mind, the dominant,
selective will, and there is the object aimed at. "While there is a
many-headed focus of the social consciousness, the real subject, which
evaluates and decides, is not the particular individual, but the field
of common tendency and emotion. It is the group-will which decides
through the particular person. This will selects differently empha-
sizes different values, has different inhibitions and releases, from the
individual will. It may select to sacrifice, when the individual
would conserve; it may even disregard the individual's claims alto-
gether. The individual can say: I live, yet not I, but the common
will which lives in me.
The leader is no exception to this. He is the function of the
group, swayed by its common interest and in turn swaying it by his
affirmation. The leader and the led are part of the same social
situation victims of the same illusions, subject to the same exag-
gerations, fascinated by the same ideals. Only because the leader
and the led are controlled by the same values can the relation exist.
There could have been no Napoleonic age of sacrifice and devasta-
tion, if the people had not shared with their leader the false dreams
of military glory and of bloody conquest. They were alike victims
of the illusions of the age. The leader may grasp the situation more
clearly than the rest; he may divine what the others want; but in
the end he only leads because he symbolizes the ambition and ideals
of the led.
In this social situation, the intellect plays its due role, as it does
in individual life. The object aimed at calls up the appropriate
associations or means for its realization; and the movements and
ideas spread from one to another by imitation all in obedience to
the internal contagion and the dominance of a common impulse.
Here as in the economy of the individual consciousness, the intellec-
tual factor rises or sinks in prominence with the complexity and
novelty of the task to be performed. Where there is ease and
fluency of ideal coordination, the social mind, as does the particular,
enjoys a sense of freedom. While in the chance-crowd and the mob,
habit and spontaneous association are sufficient to satisfy the simple
impulse, and the action is, therefore, mechanical, in difficult situa-
tions deliberative judgment may be called for in order to adapt
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 179
means to ends. But in either case it is the group will which is the
subject, controlling the train of ideas of the various brains involved.
It is a common mind tapping the resources of the individual centers.
Since this common mind is known through the intuited and prac-
tical differences to the fields which overlap, we have nothing to do
with the supposed mystery of a transcendental consciousness over
and above individual consciousness. The cognitive function, so far as
we can see, must still go on in connection with the individual brains
with their images and associations. What is important to the con-
ception of a social subject is that these individual intellects, with
their conscious focus, are all owned and controlled by the common
field of tendency which uses them as instruments for its own end.*
In the group mind, too, there is the* consciousness of identity
from moment to moment the persistence of the impulse or ideal to
be realized. This, as in the case of the mob, may be a mere momen-
tary impulse, due to the predominance of a certain primitive instinct
for the time being, such as fear or anger. But it may also be a more
complex and permanent tendency, involving ideal organization. The
will of a nation may persist generation after generation, while indi-
viduals come and go. Through the internal changes and external
vicissitudes of ages, there is still something distinct and character-
istic about British mind as contrasted with French. It is a mistake
to identify the social mind with the mob merely and its evanescent
existence. Its identity must be judged, as we judge individual
identity, by the common drift of tendencies, by the persistent traits^
which overlap the various moments of its existence. This is never
abstract identity, any more than it is in the case of the particular
self, but the persistence of a direction of will within an ever-changing:
historic process.
As regards the type of unity which dominates social minds, here
again we find the same variety as in particular minds. The unity
may be largely external the imitation and veneration of common
customs and traditions or it may be a thoroughgoing unity of com-
mon ethical ideals and the recognition of common claims and respon-
sibilities. Only in the highest stages of development is the latter type
of unity dominant. With the group mind, again, as with the par-
ticular mind, it is only through some great crisis that it discovers
what it really means, that its dominant tendency rises to a conscious
purpose and that conscious loyalty to such an ideal becomes a
guiding emotion in its conduct. In the absence of such crises, the
ideal is implicit and life becomes routine, guided largely by the
external associations of custom.
4 Contrast with this view the subjective standpoint of Dr. Marshall, "Con-
sciousness" (Macmillan), pp. 173 ff.
180 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
As regard the worth of social minds, this as in the case of par-
ticular minds, must be determined by the dominant ideal. Does its
leading furnish the largest harmony and realization of the particular
factors involved? Does it produce proper control of the primitive
by the ideal, and yet give the primitive its due? Does it play the
whole scale of values possible to human nature ? Does it furnish the
fullest possibility of development for the future? Then it has real-
ized the maximum of worth. If, on the other hand, the common
direction of tendency is produced merely by the intersection of a
certain level of human nature to the inhibition and neglect of others,
more particularly if this level be that of the primitive tendencies of
impulsive satisfaction, then the social mind, as the particular, be-
comes immoral.
Finally, as regards the immortality of social minds, they will
survive as individuals wilj survive, if they are recognized as furnish-
ing permanent leading in the growing process of history. Here as
a matter of fact the immortality of the individual and that of his
group are inseparable. The immortality of the Greek mind will
survive while the minds of Homer and Plato survive. In them
lives the genius of the Greeks, even as they live in its atmosphere
and give articulate meaning to its tendencies. The merest frag-
ment of a Greek artist is alive with the Greek mind. Neither indi-
vidual nor social will depends upon physiologieal vehicles, once it
has created for itself a spiritual body of art, science, and institutions.
In these lives the real will, the real purpose of a people. Connect
with this spiritual field of energy, and you feel the influx of its blood,
with new capacities for growth and appreciation. Whenever history-
lias connected vitally with the Greek mind or Hebrew mind, it has
meant a new epoch of life and inspiration a new impulse towards
science and art, or a new heightening of the moral level of the times.
And minds which can thus energize and transform mankind are not
dead, though for a time they may be disconnected from history. In
the unified self of human development, they continue their full
significance and life. And if there is an overarching spiritual com-
munion, greater than humanity, enveloping and conserving spiritual
values, these social minds, we may believe, have a unique individual
immortality within it, proportionate to their permanent significance.
JOHN E. BOODIN.
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 181
" FLUCTUATIONS OF ATTENTION" AND THE REFRAC-
TORY PERIOD
IN an interesting and suggestive article published some two years
ago 1 Professor Wallin suggested that it seemed possible to con-
nect the fluctuations of attention as observed in reversible perspective
and in observations of minimal stimuli with the refractory period of
the reflex as it has been developed by modern physiologists, particu-
larly by Sherrington. The obvious difficulty in the way of relating
the two phenomena lies in their difference in duration. The iater-
mittences in attention usually mentioned, reported by Lehmann,
Marbe, Urbantschisch, and others, come every three to ten seconds
or more, while the refractory period lasts only from one tenth of a
second to a second at the maximum. During some years past Mr.
Billings and Mr. Work have been studying in my laboratory and
under my direction another periodic fluctuation that corresponds
more closely to the period of the refractory phase of the reflex and
which has several characteristics that make plausible the assertion
that it is the sensory correlate of the refractory period of the reflex.
The phenomenon first attracted my attention in connection with
recording the ordinary so-called attention waves. I noticed that fre-
quently I would be uncertain just at what time the gray ring on the
Masson ring had disappeared. I would seem to be distracted at the
moment that I desired to notice it most. I would see that it had
vanished, but could not see it go. This suggested that the most care-
ful observation was not continuous, and that there was another
periodic alternation of attention that was shorter than the usual at-
tention wave, and superimposed upon it. Acting upon this sugges-
tion Mr. Work began to experiment with several persons to determine
whether such an intermittence of sensation was common, what its
length might be, and to determine how it might be influenced by dif-
ferent conditions. When he was compelled to discontinue his work,
Mr. Billings took it up and extended it. He will soon publish his re-
sults in detail.
The method of attack was perfectly simple and direct. A dot was
placed before the subject and he was asked to press upon a key dur-
ing the period when he was occupied with the dot, to lift his finger
when he was distracted by anything whatever. Each subject worked
with was found to give evidence of the fluctuation, and for all the
different sorts of material investigated. Dots, parts of pictures, tones,
and pressures were used as stimuli and all were found to fre inter-
mittent. Thera was always some difficulty in keeping the records
since the observer often forgot to notice that he was not conscious of
the stimulus in his interest in the distracting stimulus or event. It is
1 This JOURNAL, Vol. VII., page 33.
182 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the one instance in my knowledge in which the observation of the
conscious process really interferes with the conscious process, as the
older theoretical objections to introspection assumed that it must.
Here interest in the mental process interfered with recording the
changes rather than vice versa. The observer would remember after
attention had wandered to several other things that it had wandered
and would then lift his finger. He would be conscious that several
things had been attended to, but could record the whole series only as
continued attention to the stimulus. This source of error in the
measurements was always present and tends to make all values given
for the time of attention to an object too large.
Another difficulty that was much in evidence early in the observa-
tions was that it was hard to distinguish between assurance that the
dot had not vanished objectively and its continuous presence as a con-
scious process. One might be certain that the dot were still present
all the time, but not have observed it continuously. In this re-
spect these alternations are different from the "attention wave"
in the classical use of the term. Those can frequently be seen
to vanish or seen to reappear. These can only be recorded in retro-
spect as an awareness that one was not looking just before. As soon
as the observer becomes conscious that he is not looking his attention
is at once attracted to the object, and it again enters consciousness.
It is hard for the inexperienced observer to believe that the object
has not been in consciousness all the time, since he is certain that the
stimulus has been acting continuously. It is this "stimulus error"
undoubtedly that has prevented the phenomenon from being ob-
served earlier. The practical certainty that an object persists ob-
scures the intermittence of its image. Another difference between
the older recognized "attention waves" and these is that in the
former the fluctuations are confined to stimuli of liminal intensity
while these affect all stimuli, whatever their intensity. This differ-
ence contributes in some degree to the difficulty mentioned above of
discriminating between objective persistence and subjective inter-
mittence.
The general results showed that all of the individuals could with
a little practise observe the fluctuations and record them. Occasion-
ally at first they would be sceptical about their existence or their
ability to register them, but a few minutes' training would bring
them out and a few hours would serve to give sufficient training to
produce satisfactory records. The times varied somewhat for dif-
ferent subjects and for the same subjetrts, in the different series. The
range for most was from 0.2 second to 6 seconds. The average for
the different subjects ranged from about 1.0 second or a little under
to 2 seconds. The average is probably too high for two reasons. The
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 183
first is due to the frequency with which disappearances are over-
looked through interest in the distracting stimulus or process. Even
in the most successful series these were large in number. The second
depends upon the fact that each fluctuation recorded really involves
two acts, one the turning to the distraction, the other the recognition
that distraction had taken place. To obtain the length of each single
mental wave it would be necessary to divide by two for this correc-
tion, and that would still leave the averages too large for the length
of the longest period that one can attend. If we compare these re-
duced values we would find that the periods of attention would be of
approximately the same length as the reflex and its refractory period,
from .1 to 1.0 second as noted in the beginning of the article. It
should be added that this time could not be changed by voluntary
effort. The wave was of the same length when a strong effort was
made to hold the attention to the one object as when consciousness
was permitted to follow its natural course. One of the few factors
that showed any effect upon the length of attention was increasing
the size or complexity of the object attended to. This seemed to
lengthen the period, as might be expected, since the large object
would permit many different phases or parts to come under observa-
tion successively. This was not to be ascribed to the lengthening of
the separate impulses, but merely to the fact that the changes do not
necessarily bring new objects into consciousness. As the experiments
involved in all some twenty thousand observations, it would seem that
considerable weight must be given to the conclusion.
We may conjecture from these observations that just as motor dis-
charges are strictly limited in the rate at which they may repeat them-
selves by the fact that the discharge of the nervous impulse is inter-
mittent or rhythmical and that each discharge is followed by a period
of incapacity, the appreciation of objects through the senses is simi-
larly intermittent, that consciousness is made up of pulses that can not
last more than a second or so. The apparent continuity of a conscious
state is due to the rapidity with which these pulses succeed each other
and to the fact that it is assumed that objects are present persistently
between the pulses. This is probably also due in part to the fact that
objective change will invariably attract attention to the object from
the distracting stimulus. When attention has not thus been forcibly
attracted it is assumed that the object has been persistently present,
and this is mistaken for continuous observation. These pulses come
every 0.2 second or so, are fairly constant for all conditions, can not
be influenced by voluntary effort or desire and affect all external im-
pressions. It follows, if these results be accepted, that all conscious-
ness or at least all observation of external events is intermittent.
What is in effect continuous observation is made up of a number of
184 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
rapidly following views that are interpreted to be persistent and un-
interrupted. As one can hold the hand fairly steady in spite of the
fact that the impulses that keep the muscles contracted are intermit-
tent, so the perception of an object, or of a small part of the object,
seems continuous in spite of the fact that the observation of no single
phase of it can last more than a fraction of a second.
A study of the order and duration of the distracting stimuli indi-
cates that this constant coming and going of consciousness holds for
ideas as well as for sensations. In several series of experiments, the
observer was asked to press a key whenever the distracting stimulus
altered as well as when the object observed disappeared, and then was
asked to make a list of the distracting events in order. This showed
that memories were quite as often the distracting event as external
things. It was found, as would be expected from older work on as-
sociation, that these succeeded each other at about the same rate as
the external sensations and had on the whole about the same laws and
conditions. The general statement may be extended then to say that
the entire stream of consciousness is made up of a number of small
jets that change their character from once to several times a second.
That these jets may be of external or subjective origin, and whatever
their origin they are pieced together to constitute the series of experi-
ences. The continuity of the stream comes from the use that is made
of it rather than from its essential character, if these may be dis-
tinguished. The times of association, like the time of perception or
the minimum of attention, might then be related to the time of dis-
charge and recovery of the cortical cells.
It might be noted also that this time is within the range of sev-
eral of the times that have a psychological importance and which at
different times and by several authors have been referred to the older
longer ' ' attention waves ' ' in spite of the fact that there was a marked
difference in the length of the two times or processes. Thus the indif-
ference time for estimations of time intervals is given between 0.5
and 0.75 second, which is about the time that it would be possible to
keep a single tone in consciousness without change. The displacement
of one of two stimuli by attention in tke complication experiment
may be nearly as large as half of our shortest period. "Wundt early
offered the periodic character of consciousness as an explanation for
this. But the then known fluctuations were altogether too long.
Our periods are still pretty long, but if it is assumed that the dis-
placement represents the time between the peaks of two alternating
series of impressions, they might be brought into somewhat close con-
nection. Just beyond the outer limit of our range stands the most
satisfactory period of preparation for a reaction. If a signal is given
from one to two seconds before the stimulus it is found that the reac-
185
tion is shortest. This again may be related to the time that must
elapse between one apex of attention and the next. One might also
suggest that the specious present was limited by the time that a simple
sensation could receive attention or persist in consciousness. This
seems, however, to be limited, by the memory after-image, which in
turn evidently lasts through a number of these shortest alternations,
rather than by the single pulse of response. It should of course be
said that it is hardly probable that all of the other times should prove
to be ultimately connected with this period of maximum duration of
a simple conscious experience, but it is at least significant that the
time required for association, the indifference point for the com-
parison of intervals, the most favorable time of preparation for a
reaction, should lie within the limits that our observers gave as the
minimum time between successive appreciations of a simple object,
and this also corresponds fairly closely to refractory period of the
reflex. How they may all be related is not always clear, but each has
been regarded as connected with the old "attention wave" by one
or more authorities, in spite of the difference between these absolute
durations. We may leave the more detailed discussion of this point
to others. Our purpose is fulfilled when it is seen that the length of
attention waves as observed corresponds with the times of other proc-
esses that have been or may be connected with them.
A secondary question arises as to the relation of these fluctuations
to the longer and earlier described ' ' attention waves. ' ' It seems prob-
able that the two are of altogether different nature and origin. The
times do not at all overlap. They differ, too, in that in these short
pulses the object is always appreciated as in consciousness if one defi-
nitely looks for it, while the minimal stimulus that fluctuates in the
longer waves is out of consciousness and can not be brought back by
attending. Again these short alternations affect stimuli of all intensi-
ties, are not confined, as are the others, to faint stimuli. That they
are different seems clear from the fact that the shorter may be a hin-
drance to the appreciation of the longer waves. These three consid-
erations suffice to mark the two sets of fluctuations as of fundamen-
tally different character and probably of different origin. The
longer waves may be related to the long circulatory waves as I and
several of the workers in my laboratory among others found evidence
for, or they may be related to fatigue processes in the sense organ as
Ferree thought. These new shorter ones are more directly connected
with the ultimate perceiving process and from their times as indi-
cated above seem related to the latent period and period of recovery
of the sensory neurones concerned in consciousness.
"W. B. PlLLSBURY.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
186
DISCUSSION
"EVERYBODY'S WORLD" AND THE WILL TO BELIEVE
A READING of Professor Fullerton's recent volume, "The
World We Live In," has left me in some doubt as to the re-
lation between the doctrines of the new realism and the will to be-
lieve which I should like to record. In all of the chapters of this
fascinating book except the last, we are again and again bidden to
come back to "Everybody's World," which is the world both of
common sense and of science, and to distrust any prophet whatever
"who would transfigure the system of things, given in our common
experience." 1 To be sure, "Everybody's World" is only a world
of phenomena, but this means that we have a world which does ap-
pear to us. And this world is the only world which a sensible per-
son will concern himself with. From the point of view of the new
realism "we are relieved of the burden of a hopeless search for a
reality wholly different in nature from the homely realities with
which we are brought face to face every day." 2 We are at the very
heart of things, or as much so as it is conceivable that we should be. " 3
It is, once more, a "world which we already know pretty well, and
to which we are, perforce, more or less adjusted. Our task seems to
be to see somewhat more clearly and in better perspective what we
have already seen imperfectly, and to make our adjustment a more
reasoned one." 4 And of course it is science which alone will give
us further information about "Everybody's World," and so permit
of our better adjustment to it. The philosopher may attempt to see
more of "Everybody's World" than is ordinarily seen either in
common life or in science, but he must not expect to see anything
which would in any way whatever "transform the world before our
eyes. ' '
So far well and good, and if Professor Fullerton had closed his
discussion with this injunction to take "Everybody's World" just
as "common life and science," find it and adjust ourselves to it and
it alone, then there would be nothing to discuss except the soundness
of Professor Fullerton's defense of such a realism, and to remind
the reader that in such a "world of sober earnest" one had better
not entertain any illusory hopes about the survival or triumph of any
human interests whatever. The reader might then have been re-
ferred to the last paragraph of Mr. Russell's "The Free Man's Wor-
ship" for information and solace with respect to the appropriate
attitude in the presence of "Everybody's World" of common life
a Page 165.
'Page 164.
1 Page 255.
4 Pages 163-4.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 187
and of science. He would, of course, also be warned not to let any
dissatisfaction with the inevitable fate of all human interests at the
hands of Everybody's World of common life and science impugn in
the slightest the finality and ultimateness of just that world. For
precisely this is the one sure outcome of philosophy.
With how much surprise, then, does one discover that in the final
chapter of Professor Fullerton's book it is implied that as a man, if
not as a philosopher, one might well have some respect for the will
to believe (how much is not precisely specified). For, the "Will to
Believe is a social phenomenon," and "both in Everybody's World
and in the World of the Scholar, there are dim distances, shadowy
outlines, subdued and faintly apprehended radiances, which give
soul to the picture." 6 There are even in Everybody's World "his-
toric faiths which claim the allegiance of whole nations . . . weighted
with the authority of a rich past . . . which draw man close to man
in a common hope 6 . . . which seem to embody a Life, contact with
which has been prized by countless multitudes, and in approaching
which man has sought and found consolation." 7 Besides "adjust-
ing ourselves to what is definitely known of reality" (which is the
only sound injunction for realism to give), we are also, it seems, "to
face life bravely, giving play to hope and confidence in the Heart of
the World. ' ' 8 But was not the entire criticism of all the false sepa-
rations of appearance and reality, of the failures and absurdities of
idealism above all based on the thesis that the world hasn't any
"Heart," any not-immediately-to-be-experienced reality in the only
sense in which I for one can understand the above injunction to have
confidence in the "Heart of the World," ar^, too, the only sense
in which it has been understood in the historic faiths in which the
will to believe has found expression. Were we not assured that in the
world of common life and of science, in "Everybody's World," we
are already "at the very heart of things, or as much so as it is con-
ceivable that we should be"? 9 What need or excuse for any hope
or confidence in the "Heart of the World" if in Everybody's World
we are already ' ' at the very heart of things as much as we can be " ?
Or does Professor Fullerton intend to suggest that hope and confi-
dence may legitimately be directed toward a future of the phenom-
enal world (which, we are assured, is the real world) in which hu-
man interests and values will be conserved? But even more than
any confidence in the "Heart of the World" is such confidence in
"Page 272.
* C/. the following from Russell 'a essay, page 69 : " United with his fellow-
men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, ..."
' Page 268.
Page 273.
Page 255.
188 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the future of the phenomenal order wholly baseless if we accept as
literally final about the world everything of which science and com-
mon sense assure us. Of course, in Everybody's World, as filled out
by science, there are some empirical values whose existence and tem-
poral stability one may legitimately hope for and believe in, but
within very definite limits. But does any one really suppose that it
is this confidence, this faith, which is concerned in that will to be-
lieve expressed by the historic faiths "rich in the associations which
feed helpful emotions, . . . which seem to embody a Life, contact
with which has been prized by countless multitudes ? " 10
Let us indeed be quite clear as to where we stand. If philosophy
calls us back to Everybody's World of common life and science, and
makes no attempt to interpret Everybody's World in any deeper or
different way from that in which "everybody" interprets it, then let
not philosophy, in a postscript, pretend to give us any confidence in
the will to believe of the historic faiths. But if philosophy does com-
mend a will to believe as something other than a mere deference to
social tradition, then let philosophy ask what kind of a world Every-
body's World would have to be in order that any such confidence
might be other than a survival or a superstition. Perhaps an asking
of this question would have led Professor Fullerton to a somewhat
different account of some of the philosophies which have tried to see
Everybody's World as a world in which men not only do "cherish
hopes and ideals which seem not of our commonplace every-day
world," 11 but a world in which this occurrence itself finds some
justification.
GEORGE P. ADAMS.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
EEVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Sexual Life of the Child. Dr. ALBERT MOLL. Translated by Dr.
Eden Paul. London : Allen and Company. Pp. 339 -f- 15.
Ever since Freud, some fifteen years ago, began to publish his obser-
vations and conclusions showing that the sexual life of the child not
only existed, as had previously been denied, but was of an unexpected
richness, interest in the subject has been gradually increasing, and its
importance for both pedagogy and psychopathology has become more and
more realized. Moll attempts here to give expression to this general
interest by devoting to the subject a volume of considerable dimensions.
The chapter-headings will give some notion of the ground covered:
I. Introductory and Historical. II. The Sexual Organs The Sexual
10 Page 268.
11 Page 268.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 189
Impulse. III. Sexual Differentiation in Childhood. IV. Symptoma-
tology. Y. Pathology. VI. Etiology and Diagnosis. VII. Importance
of the Sexual Life of the Child. VIII. The Child as an Object of Sexual
Practices. IX. Sexual Education.
Moll points out that in the past too much attention has heen paid the
childhood sexual life of perverts to the neglect of that of the normal,
and combats, with right, the resulting conclusion that sexual manifesta-
tions in childhood are a sign of morbid development; he compromises,
however, at the age of seven, holding quite arbitrarily that before this
time "the occurrence of manifestations of the sexual impulse must
arouse suspicions of the existence of a congenital morbid predisposition."
He admits that voluptuous sensations may occur in the normal before
this period, but would not call them sexual (though after the age of
seven he would). The mutual examination and exhibition of genital
organs he thinks is dictated by curiosity, not by the sexual instinct,
though the same acts later on are of course sexual. Nevertheless he
fully admits the general importance of the subject: "When we consider
the enormous importance and great frequency of the sexual processes of
the child, we are positively astounded at the manner in which this depart-
ment of knowledge has been ignored by those who have written on the
science and art of education, and by those psychologists who have occu-
pied themselves in the study of the mind of the child."
Since Freud is the only author who has proffered a theory of sexual
evolution in the individual, and it is he who has brought the childhood
period to the foreground of interest in this respect, one naturally antici-
pates that in a book devoted to this subject Freud's conclusions will
receive due consideration, or at least that they will be properly described.
In this anticipation the book disappoints us, for Freud is referred to only
quite incidentally and his views are nowhere discussed; indeed the author
allows himself to make the remarkable statement that " Freud has not
systematically studied the individual manifestations of the sexual life of
the child." A few of his isolated conclusions are casually quoted, only
to be met with a flat denial of their validity, the author not finding it
necessary to give any reasons or bring forward any evidence for his
opinion. His pointed endeavor to depreciate Freud sometimes carries
him to unintended extremes, of which the following is an example: In
discussing the subject of non-genital erogenous zones (page 91) he speaks
of the anal region and then adds, " Other erogenous zones are also at
times found in children, but not often," evidently forgetting the lips,
which surely is the least unequivocal of these zones in every human being.
He deals with Freud's view that repressed sexuality is the cause of morbid
anxiety merely by discussing whether anxiety can lead to sexual excita-
tion. The personal feeling constantly interpolated on the subject of
Freud's work greatly detracts from the scientific value of the book.
Some, though only a part of, his divergence from Freud ia due to the
different conceptions of sexuality held by the two writers. Whereas
Freud attempts genetically to trace adult sexual manifestations to their
190 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
earliest origins in the individual, and maintains that it would be un-
reasonable to expect to find the sexual life of the child to be the same as
that of the adult, Moll proceeds to the opposite extreme; he not only
refuses to regard as sexual in the child any act or function that is not
obviously so also in the adult, but, as we have seen, even denies this term
to a number of acts which in the adult would certainly be called sexual.
Freud therefore widens the conception of sexuality, while Moll narrows it.
Another important ground for divergence is the question of method.
Moll says that there are three methods available for such a study: (1)
experiment (castration, etc.) ; (2) the observation of children, which is
largely vitiated by both the child's inability to describe his sensations and
his feeling of shame towards any adult; (3) the later memories of adults.
The latter, however, are seriously imperfect, both in extent, the greater
number being forgotten, and in accuracy, important subsequent distor-
tions having falsified them in important particulars. Moll sees no way
out of this dilemma, and therefore has to content himself with material
that is of necessity poor from a scientific point of view. Freud, on the
contrary, having devised an exact method, with a reliable technique,
namely, psycho-analysis, has been able to correct both these imperfections
in the later memories, i. e., to resuscitate what had been forgotten, and to
correct what had been distorted. Moll, it is true, will have nothing to do
with psycho-analysis, which he says consists in making arbitrary inter-
pretations at will, but it is throughout plain that he is talking without
any knowledge whatever of the method, so that his opinion of it is of
little interest.
The book as a whole contains many useful and valuable sections,
notably those on the legal and educative aspects of the subject, and it
may serve to direct attention to an important and neglected field of study;
it can not, however, be regarded as having any great scientific value.
The translation is as a rule accurately done, and is written in a clear and
good style; Dr. Paul has evidently taken great pains with his task, as is
shown by, for instance, the useful explanatory footnotes he has added on
linguistic and other difficulties. Among the corrections that should be
made in a future edition are the following: The title of Freud's Drei
Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (Three Essays on Sexual Theory) is
incorrectly quoted in German and incorrectly translated (page 14) ;
Abraham's paper on " Das Erleiden sexueller Traumen, etc.," is curiously
rendered as " The HI Effects of Sexual Dreams," Trdume (dreams) being
confounded with Traumen (traumata).
ERNEST JONES.
TORONTO, CANADA.
The Influence of Caffein on Mental and Motor Efficiency. H. L. HOL-
LINGWORTH. Archives of Psychology. New York : The Science Press.
1912. Pp. iv + 166.
The diversity of popular opinion concerning the effects of caffeinic
beverages lends a special interest to this admirably and carefully planned
investigation. Previous researches on the influence of caffein have been
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 191
limited for the most part to studies of ergographic performance and the
effects on reaction times. While the general result has been to show
the stimulating action of caffein and an increased capacity for mental
and muscular work under its influence, the lack of rigorous control of
experimental conditions and the small number of tests on a few individ-
uals make any definite and exact conclusions concerning the influence of
caffein on mental and motor processes doubtful. The present investiga-
tion was undertaken to secure unambiguous evidence on this problem for
the Coca-Cola Company, by whom the research was financed, and the
results have been used as evidence in litigation before the federal courts.
The experiments were made on sixteen subjects, ten men and six
women, over a period of forty days, including an intensive experiment of
three days to study the effects of caffein at close range and to determine
their time relations, and an experiment of seven days to study the effects
of caffein administered with syrups. The doses, in capsule form, except
in the last experiment, varied from 1 to 6 grains and were administered
to one squad at half past ten in the morning alternately three days in
succession and then sugar of milk three days, to a second squad caffein
and sugar of milk on alternate days at the lunch hour, and to a third
squad caffein and sugar of milk on alternate days from two and a half to
three hours after lunch. The control squad was given only sugar of
milk daily.
The tests employed were as follows : three motor tests of speed
(tapping test), steadiness, and coordination (three hole test), three simple
association tests of different degrees of complexity, association of ideas
and words with simple objects of experience (color-naming test), associa-
tion of one idea with another specific idea (opposites test), association of
an idea with a specific task or situation (calculation test), two tests of
sensory discrimination and attention (cancellation test and discrimination
reaction-time). The questionnaire, the daily health book kept by each
subject, and introspective notes furnished information on the relation
of caffein to the quality and amount of sleep and to general health.
The effect of caffein on the speed of motor processes seems to be a
stimulation, sometimes preceded by a brief and slight initial retardation,
the magnitude of the stimulation varying directly with the size of the
dose and being relatively slight when the caffein is taken in the forenoon.
The effect, varying with the size of the dose, begins from 45 to 90 minutes
after administration and persists from one to two hours for doses of 1 to
3 grains and as long as 4.5 hours for 6 grains. The effect on steadiness
is a slight nervousness after doses from 1 to 4 grains and a pronounced
unsteadiness after 6 grains, which begins within an hour or so after the
dose and is still greater after 3 to 4 hours. The effect of small doses on
coordination is stimulation, while that of larger doses is retardation, slight
when taken in the morning, and greatest when taken in the afternoon
without food. The magnitude of the caffein effect varies inversely with
the body weight of the individual tested, a result which appears to hold
for both the mental and motor tests. One subject was used to test
192 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
throughout four weeks the influence of caffein on speed and quality of
performance in typewriting, the general result being an increase in speed
with small doses of caffein alkaloid (1 to 3 grains) and a retardation
with larger doses (4 to 6 grains), and a superiority in quality as measured
by the number of errors for the whole range of doses.
The general result with the three association tests is stimulation, more
apparent after the smaller doses than after the larger ones. The effect
begins in 1 to 2 hours when the caffein is taken in a syrup and from 2
to 3 hours when taken in capsule form. The stimulation in the opposites
and calculation tests is present 6 to 7 hours after the dose and there is
evidence that the influence of caffein is still operative the following day,
though it is difficult to disentangle the effects of the caffein from general
practise effects. In general the effect on higher mental processes comes
more slowly and is more persistent, while with motor processes the effect
comes quickly and is transient.
The effect on discrimination reaction time with small amounts of
caffein is a retardation, accompanied by a greater number of false reac-
tions, with larger amounts after two hours a considerable stimulation.
The cancellation test, owing to individual differences in method of per-
formance and variations in the same individual at different times, gave
no very definite results. '
The effect of small doses of caffein alkaloid (1-4 grains), taken
either in the pure form or accompanied by syrup, on sleep is unappre-
ciable except in a few individual cases. With 6-grain doses there is a
marked sleep impairment with most subjects, an effect which is greatest
when the dose is taken without food. The two principal factors which
seem to modify the degree of caffeinic influence are body weight and the
presence of food in the stomach at the time of the dose. The general
health of the subjects improved during the 40 days, a result attributable
to the regular regime of life. It is noteworthy that no secondary reac-
tions or after effects of importance were noted.
The widespread consumption of caffeinic beverages seems to be justi-
fied by the results of the experiment. The author carefully points out,
however, that the question of the continuous use of the drug and the effect
of caffein in tea or coffee (a cup of coffee contains about 2.5 grains of
caffein) can not be answered by these experiments owing to the possible
enhancing or neutralizing influence of other non-caffein ingredients.
V. A. C. HENMOX.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.
Une philosophic nouvelle, Henri Bergson. EDOUARD LE ROY. Paris:
Alcan. Pp. v + 208.
This books comes to us fortified by the following words from M. Berg-
son himself: " Over and above the method, you have caught the intention
and the spirit. . . . This study could not have been more conscientious or
more faithful. ... In the measure that it advances, it gives evidence of
an increasing effort of condensation; one has the feeling of a progressive
rolling up of the exposition on itself, similar to that rolling up by which
193
I have characterized real duration. To give such a feeling to the reader,
much more is needed than an attentive study of my works the faculty
of re-thinking, in a personal and original manner, what is therein set
forth. Nowhere does this sympathy show more than in the last few pages
where you have indicated in a few words the possibilities of ultimate
development of the doctrine. I should have said nothing but what you
have said."
To seek untruthfulness to " the master " would be, then, an ungracious
task, but the book is not free from the disadvantages, although it has
also the advantages, of this close doctrinal sympathy. To a reader about
to approach the study of Bergson, or to one who, after a first, or a frag-
mentary reading, desires an apergu of the whole ground covered, it should
prove invaluable, and not the least of its merits is the lucid and wholly
charming simplicity of the style of its author. For the already critical
student, there is little to be gained from it.
The first half is in two chapters, the first concerned with " Method "
and the second with " The Doctrine," of which the former is rightly made
slightly predominant as of more general value. Then follow several
miscellaneous sections by way of " Complementary Explanations." These,
however, are disappointing. There is some talk of misunderstandings of
critics, but M. Le Roy's very sympathy with his subject keeps him from
understanding these misunderstandings, and from illuminating, more
than M. Bergson has already done, the inevitable dark corners of so
complex and new a point of view.
Apart from the historical settings, which are brief but excellent, we
find everywhere saying again substituted for explanation, a repeated exposi-
tion of Bergson's own exposition. If the reader is curious as to Bergson's
actual dependence upon the highly questionable biological theory known
as neo-vitalism, or whether ambiguities and vacillations such as Professor
Dewey seems to find, are real, 1 or why we should strive after an intuition
that is merely a " luxury," 9 he will find no shadow of help. The cruder
charges of mysticism, and of the vicious circle of anti-intellectualism,
are, to be sure, rebutted, but these charges are usually on a par with those
that first met pragmatism, and are to-day unworthy of a scholarly critic.
There remains, then, serious work for the fellows of M. Bergson, as
well as for his opponents, and it is to be regretted that M. Le Roy did
not devote some of his sympathetic insight to helping them along by a
more free and a more critical mode of exposition. In short, one can not
help feeling that M. Bergson might have written M. Le Roy's book even
better than M. Le Roy has done it, and that is a pity.
HAROLD CHAPMAN BROWN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
x This JOURNAL, pages 645-668.
" Creative Evolution," page 47.
194 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. October, 1912. La religion comme
type de conduite rationnelle (pp. 321-337) : LEUBA. - An extract from a
French translation of Leuba's " Psychological Study of Religion."
L'oubli et la personalite (pp. 338-358) : DUGAS. - Memory expresses organ-
ization, forgetfulness disorganization of the ego. Les tendances de la
logique contemporaine (pp. 359-378) : DUFUMIER. Revue generale. Le
choix volontaire: L. DAURIAC. Analyses et comptes rendus. J. Bourdeau,
La philosophic affective: TH. RIBOT. Ossip-Lourie, Le langage et la ver-
'bomanie: TH. RIBOT. W. Stern, Die differentielle Psychologic in ihren
methodischen Grundlagen: G.-L. DUPRAT. K. Krall, Denkende Tiere:
H. PIERON. V. Josef ovici, Die psychische Vererbung: G.-L. DUPRAT.
J. Kollarits, Character und Nervositdt: N. KOSTYLEFF. M. Maurice
Vauthier, Essais de philosophic sociale : DR. S. JANKELEVITCH. D. J. Hill,
L'etat moderne et I' organisation internationale : A. BAUER. M. Drouilly,
Les proUemes sociaux du temps present : E. D. Sp. C. Haret, Mecanique
sociale: DR. S. JANKELEVITCH. Dr. F. Muller-Lyer, Die Familie: DR. S.
JANKELEVITCH. Friedrich, Die Bestrafung der Motive und die Motive
der Bestrafung: G. RICHARD. A. Namias, La Pedagogia sociale de Paul
Bergemann: J. PERES. Rava, II diritto come norma tecnica: G. RICHARD.
P. Teodoro Rodiguez, Augustino, Estudios Sociales: J. PERES. E. Terail-
lon, L' Honneur: A. JOUSSAIN. Revue des periodiques etrangers.
RIVISTA DI FILOSOFIA. July-October, 1912. Henri Bergson e
la cultura Contemporanea (pp. 407431) : ALBERTO CALCAGXO. - Creative
evolution is opposed both to the intellectualistic evolutionism of pan-
logistic hegelian dualism and to the modern scientific monism. II fatto
educative (pp. 432-466) : P. CARABELLESE. - The educational factor is not
biological, physiological, or psychological, but teleological, i. e., an arti-
ficial adaptation of one individual to others. L'autonomia scientifica della
Storia dell' Arte (pp. 467174) : A. B. CALOSSO. - The history of art pos-
sesses a scientific criterion of its own, namely, taste, which distinguishes
it from history proper, and from archaeology. La concezione del caso
come ignoranza (pp. 475-^89) : C. RAXZOLI. - The conception of chance as
ignorance is traced from Anaxagoras to Huxley; the author adopts
Hume's view of chance as ignorance of causes. La guerra di fronte alia
ragione (pp. 490-508).- Attacks the view of C. del Vecchio that war is
materially destruction and slaughter, and morally deliberate violence on
the part of one state to impose its will on that of another. Note e Ras-
segne Recensioni e Cenni. Rivista delle Riviste. Varieta e notizie.
Atti della Societd Filosofia Italiana.
Kiesow, Friedrich. Psychologic und Erziehung. Ansprachen an Lehrer
von William James. Leipzig : Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann. 1912.
Pp. x + 134. M. 1.
Monzel, Alois. Die Lehre vom inneren Sinn bei Kant. Bonn: Carl
Gerogi. 1913. Pp. vii+ 332. M. 6.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 195
Raab, Friedrich. Die Philosophic von Richard Avenarius. Leipzig : Ver-
lag von Felix Meiner. 1912. Pp. 14 + 163. M. 5.
Renouvier, Ch. Traite de Psychologie Rationnelle d'apres les Principes du
Criticisme. 2 vols. Paris : Armand Colin. Pp. 398 and 386. 16 fr.
NOTES AND NEWS
On the occasion of conferring the degree of Doctor of Sciences on Pro-
fessor Josiah Royce at Oxford University on February 25, the public ora-
tor, Mr. A. D. Godley, epoke as follows :
Credunt nonnulli populum cottidianis negotiis strenue occupatum non
vacare philosophise; verum ita natura comparatum est, ut, quemadmodum
hominibus, ita civitatibus adulescentia quaedam sit, et nova renim ex-
perientia semper novos profectus faciat: nee mirum est si talis gens
bominum, quam stirpe nostra oriundam jactamus, industria, inventione,
vigore animi insignis, veritatis cognitionem acriter appetat. Porro, sicut
prima gens mortalium ex Oriente lucem expectabat, nos eandem ex Occi-
dente expectare didicimus; ut poetae nostri Arthuri Clough versus pul-
cerrimos Latine reddam
" Sol licet in caelum tardo pede surgat Eoum,
Tractus Hesperios respice: lucet ager."
Hac gente ortus est philosophus ille, vir gravitate et facundia insignis.
quern titulo honorifico ornare Academiae nostrae placet. Non enim inter
eos philosophos numerandus est qui umbratiles scholastieorijm notiones
secum decantant, sed potius is est qui rem in aciem deduci oportere cen-
seat, ut homines summa voluntate, summo studio, summa relligione,
contra malos mores in contentionem Virtutis, et, ut ita dicam, in militiam
quandam tanquam sacramento adacti, omnes vires animi libere ac fide-
liter impendant.
Quippe jejunam et infructuosam earn ratus esse cognitionem quss sit
eolivaga et humanitatis expers neque societatem generis humani et com-
munitatem respiciat, tanquam e vivo fonte rivulos doctrinae deducit.
quibus aritudinem temporum reficiat, et semina virtutum bonarumque
artium auctet atque elat. Hoc enim opus esse philosophise plurimis
libris et praelectionibus confirmavit, ut desidia et veterno pessimis il-
lecebris torpentes excitet, ut vinculis cottidianae vitae constrictos
liberet, ut segritudine sollicitos cohortetur.
Ferunt philosophum quemdam Americanum, cum consenesceret,
juvenibus nonnulis de recto vitae itinere consulentibus ita respondisse:
Astro subjungite plaustrum.
Qua sententia, Delphico oraculo digna, significere voluit, non oportere
contemplatione et somniis pallescere, sed quomodo ille Heroules contra
res adversas
Enisus arces attigit igneas,
totis viribus ad alta animo esse contendendum.
196 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Igitur cum tali sit ingenio praeditus, prsesento vobis Josiam Royce,
Historic Philosophise Professorem in Academia Harvardensi, ut ad-
mittatur ad gradum Doctoris in Scientia, Honoris Causa.
AT the meeting of the Aristotelian Society on February 17, Professor
R. F. A. Hoernle read a paper on " The Analysis of Volition : Treated as
a Study of Psychological Principles and Methods." The chief cause of
the disagreement among current psychological theories of volition is to
be found in differences of principle, i. e., in the conflicting assumptions
made by different psychologists about the nature and aim of psychological
analysis, the methodical standpoint to be taken up, and the fundamental
conceptions to be employed. Most current psychology, in the endeavor
to be " scientific," begins with a standpoint so abstract that it is con-
stantly forced, by the pressure of facts, to pass on to more concrete con-
ceptions of mental life. This advance is made uncritically, with the re-
sult not only that important problems are left untouched, but also that
different parts of the same theory rest often on contradictory assump-
tions. There are four problems with which every psychological theory of
volition must deal: (1) Is volition complex or single? Is its character
derivative or unique ? (2) Does " realization " or " action " belong to the
essence of volition? (3) What are the limits of a single volition within
the stream of consciousness ? (4) What is the relation of " volitions " to
the " standing will," and of the will of the individual to the will of the
state? The paper was followed by a discussion.
PROFESSOR WILLIAM P. MONTAGUE, of Columbia University, has de-
livered the first four of his series of eight Hewitt lectures at Cooper
Union. The general subject of the course is " The Great Systems of
Philosophy " and the individual lectures already given have occurred as
follows : March 3, " Democritus and the Philosophy of Matter " ; March
10, " Plato and the Philosophy of Spirit " ; March 17, " Stoic and Epi-
curean : The Philosophy of Conduct " ; March 24, " Medieval Christianity
and the Philosophy of Nature." The four remaining lectures will be
given on March 31, "Descartes and the Philosophy of Nature"; April 7,
" Locke and the Philosophy of Experience " ; April 14, " Kant and the
Philosophy of the Transcendental " ; April 21, " Spencer and the Phi-
losophy of Evolution."
THE course of eight lectures given at Columbia University by Pro-
fessor John B. Watson, of Johns Hopkins University, on " Animal Psy-
chology," was completed on March 18. The topics of the individual lec-
tures were as follows : " Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It," " The
Problems of Behavior," " Methods and Apparatus in Behavior," " Sen-
sory Responses in Vertebrates," " The Experimental Study of Instincts
and Habits," " The Limits of Training in Animals."
PROFESSOR RUDOLF EUCKEN, of the University of Jena, has completed
his course of six lectures at New York University, on " The Fundamental
Principles of Ethics with Especial Consideration of the Religious Prob-
lem." On March 3 and 4, Professor Eucken lectured at Columbia Univer-
sity.
VOL. X. No. 8.
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD
"THE NEW REALISM" 1
THOUGH the polemic spirit has for some time filled the air of
philosophy, the numerous marches and countermarches can not
be said to have proved decisive. As the walls of philosophy re-
fuse to fall at the mere flourish of trumpets, there has been little
change in the status quo. Every one, therefore, interested in genu-
ine philosophic progress will welcome this volume and its well-or-
ganized attempt to advance the position outlined in the "Plat-
form. ' ' 2 Unless, however, I am very much mistaken, the authors of
this book may be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised at being
welcomed by many idealists, who will regard them, not as hostile in-
vaders, but as much-needed immigrants taking possession of the
abandoned or undeveloped soil and rendering it fruitful for the com-
mon good. Perhaps the authors of this book may resent this attempt
to minimize the importance of the destructive mission of their ' ' class
consciousness," but I think philosophers generally are more fortu-
nate in delivering the positive burden of their own vision than in
their denial of the vision of others. The polemic consciousness is
not in any of its forms conducive to complete justice, and history is
full of examples of philosophers, like Aristotle, attacking most ve-
hemently those most closely related to them. It is indeed a wise
philosopher who knows his own true opponent. Now neo-realism
looks upon idealism 3 as the great enemy, because as a matter of
1 A Keview of "The New Eealism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy" by
Edwin B. Holt, Walter T. Marvin, William Pepperrell Montague, Ealph Barton
Perry, Walter B. Pitkin, and Edward Gleason Spaulding. New York: The Mac-
millan Company, 1912. Pages xii + 491.
2 This JOURNAL, Vol. VII., pages 393 ff.
8 The essence of idealism, as that term has been used in philosophy, literature,
art, politics, etc., is that the structure of the universe justifies certain values,
called ideals, and with that doctrine the authors of this book have no quarrel
whatsoever. They are fighting epistemologie subjectivism; but for some unac-
countable reason they always call it idealism. That this use of the word idealism
involves unusual violence to the facts of history, e. g., in the implication that
197
198 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
fact the former movement originated in a reaction against such
types of idealism as is embodied in Bradley 's "Appearance and
Keality" and Strong's "Why the Mind Has a Body." When, how-
ever, one disregards the accidental starting point and judges neo-
realism by its fundamental tendency, the opposition between realism
and dualistic or psychologic pragmatism will be seen to be of far
greater significance. Between a position which would regard every-
thing in terms of the subject and a position which would regard every-
thing as objective, there may be very little or no theoretic difference,
for the same laws or relations may hold between "experiences" as
between "independent reals," i. e., the distinction between different
classes of entities may be the same in the two systems. Between a
view, however, which insists that the propositions of logic and mathe-
matics are as real or objective (i. e., independent of "mind") as
those of physics, and a view which denies to objects of thought the
ontologic status of objects of sense, the issue is significant, and, it
seems to me, laden with momentous consequences. I regard, there-
fore, the problem of the reality of universals, "the things of
thought, ' ' as the central question which this volume raises. It is not,
then, so much Berkeley's subjectivism (about which there is consid-
erable doubt) as his nominalism that presents the significant alter-
native to the neo-realist position. At any rate, if Professor Marvin's
paper proves its point, the epistemologic issue can not be the funda-
mental one, but must yield in fundamental importance to issues of
fact or theories of being.
Nominalism, the denial of "reality" to relations, abstractions,
etc., is based on the conscious or unconscious assumption of the an-
cient dogma that only a whole can really exist and that which is a
part (in intension) can not have independent existence. The es-
sence of neo-realism, the object's independence of our apprehension
of it, as developed by Professor Perry, would be utterly impossible
on a nominalistic metaphysic, and so would Professor Spaulding's
doctrine of analytic realism. At any rate, it is a significant fact that
the one positive doctrine which all the six authors find themselves
compelled to use in their arguments, is the non-mental character of
the propositions of logic and mathematics.*
There is, to be sure, a certain hesitation in the author's repudiation
of nominalism (e. g., p. 58). 5 While in general they "accord full on-
an idealist like Hegel is an epistemologie subjectivist, ought to be clear to all stu-
dents of the history of philosophy. But this is a minor matter, if the sympa-
thetic reader will simply substitute the word subjectivism wherever the authors
use the word idealism.
* Marvin, pages 57 ff., Perry, pages 129 ff., Spaulding, pages 204-205, Mon-
tague, pages 261-2, Holt, pages 363 ff. and page 472, Pitkin, pages 445 ff.
The word nominalism does not occur in the index.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 199
tological status to things of thought," logical and mathematical enti-
ties are denied the claim to existence, but are put in the undefined but
spacious realm of subsistence. I can not, however, but regard the dis-
tinction between existence and subsistence which the authors have
borrowed from Russell as merely a temporary or provisional make-
shift. Certain sensible or physical terms in time and space are re-
garded as existents, and all other possible or impossible objects of
thought are subsistents. This, like most dichotomous divisions, can
hardly be expected to be of much use ; for it puts too many things in
the negative class (in this case, the class of subsistents). The ques-
tion is important, because the facile division of objects into existent
and subsistent tends to obscure the fundamental problem or re-
quirement of any constructive philosophy, viz., a systematic classifi-
cation of reals, or doctrine of categories. To the neglect of this
problem may be ascribed a great deal of the misunderstanding and
futility of modern philosophic controversy.
The distinction between existence and subsistence arises from a
certain requirement in the modern philosophy of mathematics, viz.,
that mathematical propositions shall have a meaning which is non-
psychologic and non-physical. Russell expresses this fact by saying
that mathematical entities must be non-mental and non-existential.
Hence the term subsistence to cover those entities. The restriction,
however, of the term existence to sensible objects, which this termin-
ology implies, leads to considerable confusion in the neo-realist phi-
losophy. 6 Russell's statement repeated by Marvin (p. 85) that the
non-existential character of mathematics is one of the greatest dis-
coveries of the nineteenth century, is, of course, true. But what it
means is simply that mathematical propositions are formal, and
their truth is independent of the truths of physics. Mathematical
entities, then, are not physical, but they certainly have being as
much as physical entities do. What reason can there be, outside of
a nominalistic metaphysic, for denying the existence of one and not
of the other? Moreover, the restriction of the existential predicate
to sensible terms gives rise to confusion in the realm where the dis-
tinction between existence and subsistence first arose, viz., mathe-
matics. When a mathematician proves an existence theorem, e. g.,
that every equation of the nth degree has n roots, he surely estab-
* Russell says: "Except space and time themselves, only those objects exist
which have to particular points of space and time the special relation of occupy-
ing them," (Mind, 1904, page 211). I take it that Russell means to predicate
existence of those things only which occupy both time and space; so that things
occupying time only, e. g., misunderstandings of realism, do not exist. Moreover,
in the light of other utterances, Russell probably means that only points of space
and time exist, but that the series denoted by the terms time and space, like
existence itself, do not exist.
200 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
lishes something more than the subsistence of these n roots, for the
n + 4th root of the same equation has according to the neo-realists
canon (Montague, p. 253) subsistence though demonstrably no ex-
istence. The difficulty here raised does not seem to be sufficiently
met by Eussell's contention that mathematical existence denotes
something totally (i. e., generically) different from physical exist-
ence. For, if mathematical existence is only a kind of subsistence,
it is surely of the utmost importance to distinguish between the sub-
sistence of the nth root and the subsistence of the n -p 4th root. In-
stead, then, of inquiring into the kinds of existence, we have to in-
quire into the kinds or grades of subsistence.
Is it true, however, that mathematical and physical existences
are so generically different that they have nothing in common ? For
one thing the determination of physical existence is frequently, if not
always, based on mathematical existence. Moreover, the manner in
which mathematical and physical existences are determined is ex-
actly the same. Take the questions: Is there a root to every equa-
tion? Is there a maximum velocity in the physical universe? Is
there a special sex-determining factor in the germ cell? Did Moses
have a real (historical) existence? Now in all these significant ques-
tions, the existence or non-existence of the entities in question is de-
termined, in their respective sciences, not by reference to the ques-
tion whether they are mental, but by reference to their relation to
the body of propositions which form the sciences in question. 7 What
reason can there be, on realistic ground, for saying that roots and
velocities ,have no existence, but that the other entities do ? Does it
not seem that what we need is a fuller account of the different levels
or types of existence?
This question of the distinction between existence and subsistence
is an illustration of the truth of the authors' contention (pp. 21-22)
that care in the use of words is really important. An adequate doc-
trine of categories would do away with a great many of the difficul-
ties which Montague, for instance, finds in the existence of error and
hallucinatory objects. ( This does not hold of Holt 's theory) . Errors
and false propositions do undoubtedly exist in this world, if any-
thing does. The significant question is how do they exist, i. e., to
what type of existence do they belong. Many people, for instance,
will find unconvincing Spaulding's arguments for the existence of
points in space, or of atoms in material bodies, and will find good
reasons for their unbelief. This situation arises from the fact that
points are non-spatial (i. e., non-extended) and atoms non-material
(i. e., devoid of the ordinary properties of matter). Points and
T This point is missed by most critics of realism, e. g., Professor Pratt, this
JOUBNAL, Vol. IX., page 579.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 201
atoms, then, do not have the kind of existence of space and matter;
and unless this distinction is clearly recognized, both the affirmative
and the negative positions seem equally tenable or untenable.
In the light of a developed doctrine of categories, also, the distinc-
tion between discovery and invention, between finding and making,
which dominates neo-realism in its present stage, may turn out not
to be as thoroughgoing as it appears in the light of current contro-
versy. The distinction in question is certainly valid for a great many
types of reality. There is a real logical opposition between discover-
ing and inventing a polar continent. But did the Romans invent or
discover their jurisprudence? Did the authors of this book invent
or discover the neo-realist philosophy? These questions suggest the
possibility of a realm where invention and discovery overlap, or
cease to be clearly antithetic terms.
The authors' own statement (pp. 2-10) of the historical signifi-
cance of neo-realism seems rather unfortunate. The account in
question reads too much like an Hegelian a priori history, with its
distinct stages each by a dialectic process giving rise to its successor.
I regard it as unfortunate because it is not likely to discourage crit-
ics from dealing with neo-realism as a new epistemology, whereas it
is really a return to a mode of thought in which the epistemologic
specter need not trouble us. Take, for instance, the theory of error.
The authors (and their critics, like Professor Love joy) assume that
the first method of explaining error is by the introduction of mind
or consciousness. That, however, is not the fact, for this action of
consciousness as a disturbing medium seems to have been suggested
by the modern use of lenses. The earlier attempt to explain error,
found alike among the Hindoos and Greek philosophers, is to give
error a kind of secondary or shadowy existence of its own. Maya is
not due merely to consciousness, but is a sort of maze or fog which
surrounds the real, and "the way of error" in Parmenides is cer-
tainly not "the way of consciousness." The neo-realist doctrine of
error (as briefly indicated in the essays of Holt and Pitkin) will, in
fact, be found to begin where the Greeks left off, and to develop the
ancient method in a form consonant with the requirements of mod-
ern science.
The one modern movement with which neo-realism is closely allied
(in motive, at least), is radical empiricism. James was profoundly
dissatisfied with the prevailing nominalism, and saw that it must
logically lead to a hopeless and lifeless atomism. James tried to re-
store in philosophy the fluency of things, by giving relations, transi-
tions, etc., a psychologic status. Neo-realism aims at the same re-
sults, but turns its back on any attempt to construct the world out of
psychologic states. In the light of modern mathematical research, it
202 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
returns to the Aristotelian insight that what is prior in knowledge
need not be prior in nature, and thus re-opens the path of progress
along which all the objective sciences have been going, but which
has been shut to philosophy by the specters of epistemology.
II
The logical and historical introduction to neo-realism is to be
found in Professor Marvin's essay on "The Emancipation of Meta-
physics from Epistemology." The neo-realist movement is a "reac-
tion against the whole enterprise of Locke, Kant, and their follow-
ers, to get a fundamental science, and not merely against their ideal-
ism. Neo-realism is not only a different theory of knowledge, but,
what is more important for metaphysics, a different doctrine as to
the place of epistemology in the hierachy of the sciences" (p. 51).
Professor Marvin does well to thus refer to Locke as the father of
criticism, for Kant's boastful claim often makes us forget that it was
Locke who first set in fashion the view that we must examine the
nature of knowledge before "we let loose our thoughts into the vast
ocean of being." 8 Professor Marvin's attack, however, is directed
more particularly against the Kantian view of an a priori science of
knowledge as the necessary prerequisite for metaphysics. To offset
epithet criticism, Professor Marvin adopts the admirable device of
calling his position dogmatism and opposing it to criticism. Kant's
assumption of the possibility of a science or "critique" which can
determine a priori the nature, possibility, and limits of knowledge,
is really untenable ; for epistemology can function only if it assumes
that we already are in possession of valid knowledge, and this knowl-
edge, as a matter of fact, it borrows from logic, psychology, etc.
The "possibility" of mathematics, physics, or metaphysics is far less
questionable than the possibility of epistemology. The neo-Kantian
may reply : " Of coarse we must assume that we are in possession of
valid knowledge in order to proceed at all. But Kant never sup-
poses that the validity of science is in need of proof. The significant
question for him is, What are the conditions which make valid
knowledge possible?" To which we may answer, that this way of
putting the question is inconsistent with the claim of epistemology
as an a priori science more fundamental than metaphysics or psy-
chology, for the actual conditions of valid knowledge can be deter-
mined only on the basis of logical, psychological, or metaphysical
data. Indeed, Kant himself really does assume a particular system
of psychology of various "faculties," and certain definite views of
reality in order to work out his deductions of the categories and
* Essay I., ch. I., see. 7.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 203
other parts of his critique of pure reason. This Kantian metaphys-
ics may be valid. What Professor Marvin is intent on proving is
that it does not follow from, but, on the contrary, is the basis of
Kant's epistemology. The same may be said of the neo-Hegelian
metaphysics of Greene and his followers, which they claim rests on
an examination of the nature of knowledge. The history of science
shows no important scientific advance or metaphysical progress due
to epistemology. On the contrary, whatever influence the latter has
exerted on the former seems to have been pernicious. The various
sciences and metaphysics, therefore, are and by right ought to be,
free and independent of the sovereignty of epistemology, and they
may go on to develop their fields without waiting for the issue of a
permit by the science of epistemology.
This, I take it, is the gist of Professor Marvin's careful and most
conscientiously worked out argument. It seems so cogent and un-
answerable that it arouses a very distressing reflection, why has phi-
losophy so long failed to note this ? Marvin 's argument has been, in
part at least, made by such different writers as Hegel 8 and the Frie-
sian school, 10 but the intellectual world, without stopping to refute
these arguments, has calmly ignored them. Even the positive sci-
ences now feel it incumbent upon them to pay their respects to
Erkenntnistheorie, while metaphysics is considered as belonging to
the intellectual underworld. Nay, even Professor Marvin himself
subscribes to the statement of his colleagues that the epistemologic
question "is prior to all other philosophic issues" (p. 10).
Perhaps, however, the line between neo-realism and criticism is
not as sharp as Professor Marvin draws it. What Kant calls trans-
cendental method is not very much different in essence from that
which Marvin calls logical analysis and which, he maintains, is inde-
pendent of psychology. The more fundamental difference, I venture
to think, lies elsewhere, viz., in the conception of the realm of meta-
physics. Kant's metaphysic is essentially anti-evolutionary, a priori,
and incapable of progress. "Pure speculative reason," he tells us,
"is able to give a complete enumeration of the possible modes of pro-
posing problems to itself, and thus sketch out the entire system of
metaphysics"; and again, metaphysics, by means of criticism, "can
take in the whole sphere of its cognitions, and can thus complete its
work, and leave it for the use of posterity, as a capital which can
never receive fresh accessions. " " If we no longer believe reality to
be such a closed and limited system, then we must give up the at-
Encyklopadie, 41.
10 Nelson, ' ' Tiber das sogenannte Erkenntnisproblem. ' '
11 Preface to 2d ed. K. E. V., page xxiii.
204 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tempt to deduce it a priori and complete from the nature of knowl-
edge as such.
This anti-evolutionary view in the background of criticism ex-
plains why the most blighting effects of criticism have been felt by
such young growing sciences as sociology and jurisprudence. 12 Work-
ers in these fields are distracted at the outset by purely formal prob-
lems, as what is the nature of social science, its method, its object, its
limits, etc., etc. But there is no way of finding the limits of a science
except by actually developing it first. Epistemologic criticism is
applicable to science only when the latter is in a state of relative com-
pletion, e. g., in certain fields of mathematics and physics. Then
questions of procedure, the convenience of hypotheses, etc., have a
definite meaning. But such considerations must follow and can not
precede the constructive stage.
The elimination of "critical" epistemology leaves the field clear
for constructive metaphysics. Now, unlike most recent philosophic
procedures, neo-realism takes modern physical science seriously, or,
if you please, naively. It does not regard it as a "mere construction
of the mind, ' ' a more or less useful falsehood, but as a valid method
of discovering the constitution of reality. Hence, in adopting the
mathematical or analytic method of science as also valid for phi-
losophy, neo-realism finds itself under the guns of men like Bradley
and Bergson, who deny that analysis can enable us to reach ultimate
reality, and insist that it must necessarily falsify the real. Hence
the need for Spaulding's essay, "A Defence of Analysis," "as a
method of knowing which discovers entities or parts which are real
in quite the same sense as are the wholes which are analyzed " (p.
155). The neo-realist is quite willing to admit that the actual analy-
ses which men make are selected from a larger number of possible
ones, but this does not prove that they are falsifications. If there are
more parts or further divisions than those employed in our analysis,
it does not follow that our analysis is false : it may be true as far as
it goes. As the opponents of analysis do themselves employ analysis
in their attempt to prove their contention, it is at least doubtful
whether all analysis can be false qua analysis. Professor Spaulding,
therefore, examines in detail the various types of analysis, viz., that
of aggregates, classes, and organic unities, and shows that in each
case the objections are invalid.
An aggregate is analyzed by enumeration, i. e., by naming the
parts and the conjunctive relation. Why is this falsification? Be-
cause, says Bergson, there is no genuine plurality in nature itself,
M See Cosentini, in "Revue Int. de Sociologie, Jan., 1913, and Fragpane,
"Obbietto e limite della filosofia del diritto," II., pages 77-83.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 205
but all things interpenetrate. 13 This assumption, however, of a uni-
versal interpretation is a mere snap judgment or violent generaliza-
tion without adequate evidence. Any evidence for interaction must,
of course, begin by recognizing different things which interact.
Under the analysis of classes Spaulding includes the analysis of
number, space, time, motion, velocity, and acceleration, and such
classes of individuals as atoms, electrons, etc. The attack on this kind
of analysis is stated by Bergson in a form the logic of which
is identical with that of Zeno 's attack on motion. According to this
attack analysis breaks up space into non-extended points, time into
unenduring moments, and motion into a series of rests. But these
supposed parts are the contradictions of the given wholes. Therefore
is analysis falsification. To which Professor Spaulding justly replies
that this attack ignores and misstates the actual results of modern
analysis. The divisibility of continuous space does not lead to dis-
creteness, but, on the contrary, defines definitely what is meant by
continuity ; and, in the same way, it is not true that modern analysis
resolves motion into a series of rests. In its account of analysis, this
attack leaves out the organizing relations. While points, for ex-
ample, are non-extended, there is no contradiction in saying that
space is a class of points between which certain relations hold. ' ' Con-
sider both terms and relations and the properties of the whole which
may be left over, but which are revealed by analysis, and the analysis
becomes adequate at the same time that there is opportunity for that
'creative evolution,' for that creative synthesis which some of the
attacking party emphasize so strongly, but which is not dependent,
for its acceptance, upon the validity of the attack" (p. 168.)
Organic unities are distinguished by the fact that they are wholes
possessing properties which are not the sum of the properties of the
parts. This, however, is not confined, as is usually supposed, to
organisms. There are some qualities in a compound like water which
can not be obtained by adding the qualities of the components. But
whether the parts modify each other when united, or whether new
organizing relations arise when the parts are united as they were not
before, in either case scientific analysis or synthesis is adequate to
reveal the real change in nature. The introduction of entelechies to
distinguish organisms from inorganic physico-chemical complexes
is either scientifically pernicious or unnecessary, according to whether
the entelechies do or do not introduce an element of indeterminism.
A supervening awareness may occur, and "it is good realism to admit
that it may," but it can not be used as a principle of explanation.
The attack on conceptual analysis as conceptional, is based on the
""Creative Evolution," pages 11, 162, 188, 338, 340.
206 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
argument that concepts are necessarily static and inadequate to grasp
change or process. But why assume that only like entities can be
related? The concept of divisibility need not be divisible. At any
rate, there is no real contradiction in a definite or fixed concept of a
flow, and Bergson himself uses concepts to denote the three kinds of
change.
In this connection Professor Spaulding briefly indicates (p. 233)
four important characteristics of concepts, or "states of affairs."
These will well bear more extensive development in a future paper.
It must be conceded, I think, that Professor Spaulding 's very la-
borious arguments show the utter flimsiness of the attack on analysis,
so far as the latter is based on the argument that analysis of space,
time, or motion leads to contradiction. This last argument simply
ignores the fact that modern mathematics by its analysis of infinity
and continuity has definitely solved Zeno's puzzles. Besides the
change of contradiction comes with bad grace from those who are
skeptical about the force of logical contradiction when it is applied
to their own doctrines. Nevertheless, there is an element of real force
in the contention that analysis is by itself inadequate to give us a com-
plete account of space, time, and motion, and that resort to intui-
tion is necessary. Mathematical analysis can reveal to us only the
formal or structural properties of such entities as space. Having
started with a number of postulates relating to indefinable ' ' points, ' '
the properties deduced will be the same if these "points" are num-
bers, ideal citizens of an ideal commonwealth, or what not, so long as
the defining relations hold between them. What distinguishes physi-
cal space from any other possible interpretation of S (mathematical
space) can, therefore, be grasped only by intuition. Spaulding 's
statement (following Russell) that "points" are spatial is hardly
warranted by his own analysis, in which "points" are necessarily
(not "probably") indefinable. Professor Spaulding also seems to
forget that space is not determined solely as a point collection ; it may
also be constituted in diverse other ways, e. g., as a four-dimensional
collection of lines, in which the lines are the simple elements and
points complexes formed by the intersection of lines. This, of course,
in no way militates against the validity of any of these analyses of
space. The same thing may be correctly expressed in different sets
of units without damage to realism. But reflection on these consider-
ations, enables one to understand some of the motives of those to whom
the world appears more fluid than to Professor Spaulding. Indeed,
there is a hard and fast finality about some of the latter 's statements
which is hardly warranted by the present state of science, e. g., the
statement that points presuppose numbers (p. 174) is certainly not
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 207
true if we restrict ourselves to protective geometry. In his realistic
zeal, also, Professor Spaulding seems to me to obliterate the distinc-
tion between hypothesis and fact, as in his argument for the reality of
atoms. It is well to take science seriously, but why should philoso-
phers be compelled to take scientific hypotheses more seriously than
scientists themselves do? Why pin the hope of our salvation on
atoms when leading chemists like Ostwald, Duhem, and others can
get along without them ? Moreover, many scientists who profess their
allegiance to the atomic hypothesis do so merely as a matter of
form. Take any text-book on crystallography, on the phase rule, or
on any branch of thermodynamics. You may find a good deal said
at the beginning about the atomic constitution of matter; but when
the real work begins all that is silently disregarded, and integration
formulae are introduced which presuppose the continuity of matter.
Indeed, the attitude of most working scientists to-day to the atomic
and other regnant theories is very much like that of the Mexican
governor who is reported to have said: "I owe allegiance to what-
ever brigand is duly elected president, but first of all I must main-
tain order in my own province." Whatever objections may be
brought against this view, it at least saves us from the extremes of
anarchy and vicious absolutism.
Professor Perry's essay, "A Realistic Theory of Independence,"
is a painstaking attempt to define the distinctive epistemologic doc-
trine of neo-realism. The new realism differs from the old realism of
Reid in giving up the doctrine of a substance behind the qualities.
(I am not sure whether Professor Montague always does so.) Its
distinctive note is that the object is independent of the knower. What
does this mean? It does not mean, we are told, the absence of any
relation between the object and our knowledge, nor does the neo-
realist even wish to deny that knowledge may be in some sense prior
to the object. By the term independent we are to understand simply
the absence of certain specific relations which constitute dependence.
' ' In order to prove the dependence of a on b it is necessary to show
that a contains b; or that a is the cause or effect of 6 in a system which
exclusively determines a; or that a implies b; or that a is implied ex-
clusively by b. To exhibit any relation of a to & other than these
is beside the point. Whether a and b be otherwise related, or not,
does not affect the independence of a" (p. 117).
It is clear that with this definition of dependence our opponent will
never be able to prove the dependence of the object on consciousness;
for, if it can be shown that the object is in any way determined by
something else, it can no longer be said to be exclusively determined
by consciousness and is, therefore, independent. On the other hand,
208 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
so far as this definition goes, one may believe that consciousness modi-
fies every real and yet maintain that the latter is independent of the
former which would make it seem as if the chief novelty of neo-
realism on this point is the use of the word independent in an unusual
sense. Indeed, the proposed definition of independence is not only
somewhat unusual, but even directly contrary to popular use which
conceives what is included, implied, caused, or explained as the de-
pendent term rather than that which contains, implies, causes, or ex-
plains (p. 115) . Certainly a use of the term dependence which makes
the premises of a syllogism depend on the conclusion (p. 121) involves
some violence to ordinary usage. The neo-realist, of course, has a
perfect right to define his terms in any way he pleases; but as he
can not change the flavor which words carry along with them, some
confusion is bound to result.
The really vital point of Professor Perry's argument, however,
consists in the elimination of the ego-centric predicament, by showing
that the ubiquity of the knowledge relation is irrelevant in the de-
termination of the real. Indeed, scientific procedure depends on this
very ability to show that a condition may be irrelevant even though
it is always present. "It is the task of science to distinguish within
a total manifold those factors which do count and those which do
not." Thus, e. g., the equality of the ratios between the sides of a
triangle and the sines of the opposite angles is discovered in a larger
context containing, among other things, the absolute magnitude of the
sides; but though present, the absolute magnitude does not count.
Similarly, "when Galileo discovered that acceleration was a function
of the time of a body's fall, he discovered that it was not a function of
the body 's weight or volume. And to establish this it was not necessary
for him to obtain an instance of a body without weight or volume ; it
was sufficient for him to show that the factors, although present, did
not enter into the calculation" (p. 132). From this it clearly follows
that an object may enter into or go out of the cognitive situation with-
out losing its independence.
In the concluding portion of this essay, Professor Perry examines
various cases of "subjectivity," and concludes that the whole realm
of value, art, history, society, life, etc., is dependent on consciousness,
though independent of reflective or secondary conscious relations
with which it may enter. This admission or qualification may mini-
mize the issue between realism and "idealism"; but the critical on-
looker may well ask whether it does not prejudice the argument in
the earlier portion of the essay. Where is the difference in point of
objectivity or independence between a proposition of mathematics and
one of economics? Many judgments of value are purely logical or
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 209
mathematical. The test is laid down that "in so far as any given
object is deducible otherwise than from consciousness, it is independ-
ent of consciousness" (p. 135) ; and from this it is argued that if the
mean velocity of Jupiter can be deduced from the gravitational sys-
tem without reference to cognition it must be considered independent
of the latter. But is not the economic value of a thing in the same
way determined, not by reference to cognition, but by its quality,
quantity, cost of production, etc ?
It would be a pity if Professor Perry's view, that judgments of
value have not the same objectivity as judgments of mathematics or
logic, were to lead to the view that neo-realism has no message for
ethics or philosophy of life. To at least one reader of this volume the
great promise of neo-realism is precisely in the latter direction. The
great confusion and futility of social theory to-day seems to me to
result from the attempt to build up a social philosophy on a nominal-
istic logic. Nominalistie logic must inevitably lead to atomistic
individualism and to a psychology of moments or ' ' states, ' ' as can be
seen in the history of ethics from Antisthenes to Bentham or Spencer.
By emphasizing the reality of universals or "organizing relations,"
by recognizing the latter as real causes, neo-realism supplies a much-
needed aid to the analysis of the larger life.
Professor Perry and his colleagues frequently speak of absolute
simples. It is worth while raising the issue whether there are such
things. The argument is advanced that analysis, i. e., the recognition
of complexes, presupposes the existence of simples. But obviously
this simplicity is always relative to a specific complex. In another
context this simple term may itself be very complex. Smith may be a
simple unit for purposes of vital statistics, but infinitely complex to
his teacher, business partner, or sweetheart. A point is a simple
entity in our ordinary three-dimensional space, but a complex in line
geometry ; and so, atoms, electrons, the color green, etc., are simples
in certain contexts and complex in others. Even logical ideas like
"implication," "disjunction," "negation," etc., can be simple ideas
in one system, and complex in another. (Compare the indefinables of
Russell's "Principles of Mathematics" with those of the "Principia
Mathematical')
The foregoing three essays may be considered as an attempt to
clear the ground and indicate the method for a constructive meta-
physic. Thus considered they represent the necessary common
ground for the six writers. The remaining three essays are devoted
to a special problem which arises on this common ground, viz., the
nature of consciousness and error. As the solutions which Professors
Montague, Holt, and Pitkin offer differ from each other, and as
210 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in the present temper of philosophic discussion this topic is certain
to receive more than its due share of attention, it is not necessary to
review it here in detail.
In his suggestive essay, ' ' a Realistic Theory of Truth and Error, ' '
Professor Montague approaches the problem from a modified form
of his theory which identifies consciousness with potential energy.
Consciousness consists of the self-transcending implications which
the brain-states sustain to their extra-organic causes (or effects).
"Now if we single out some one event and inquire as to its cause, we
shall find a plurality of possible antecedents, any one of which if it
had not been counteracted would have produced it. ... It follows
from this that the implicate or conscious object of any brain state
may be, but need not be, an event which actually exists" (p. 287).
According, then, as the implicates are real things or their contradic-
tories we have truth or error.
The anthropomorphic or "common sense" view of causality which
this theory involves is of such limited application that Professor
Montague is sure to encounter considerable trouble in convincing
others of its adequacy. Professor Pitkin, for one, is convinced that
implication or meaning is of much wider extent than causality, e. g.,
the triangle implies [in Euclidean space] a constant sum of interior
angles; but the angles are neither the cause nor the effect of the
triangle (p. 485). It seems as if Professor Montague, the pioneer of
neo-realism in this country, is in danger of being considered a reac-
tionary by his more progressive or radical brethren. Thus, he refuses
to accept the relational formula which would explain the real exist-
ence of an optically bent but tactually straight stick. He does not
allow hallucinatory objects to invade the "real" world, and lapses
into such traditional utterances as "my awareness of objects is more
certainly real than anything else" (p. 269), and "we are more cer-
tain of our own thoughts and feelings than of anything else" (p.
290). In spite of the fact that he clearly points out that it is not
because of any character of belief, but "because of what is believed
that the belief is true or false," he is not willing to accept the view
that truth or falsehood are qualities of certain objects or complexes.
In common with Professor Spaulding and perhaps several other of
his colleagues, Professor Montague holds to the priority of empty
time and space over the content which fills it. No proof is offered
for this position, nor does it seem necessary for the realistic position.
Realism does not seem inconsistent with the view that time is the
measure of motion, and space a way of coordinating positions. Meta-
physicians who assume an absolute time or space should at least
reckon with the recent relativity theory of Einstein and Minkowski
211
the only theory which satisfactorily explains the Michaelson-Morley
experiments. According to this theory the time interval is just as
relative to the point of observation as the angle which a line subtends.
Any one who is inclined to think that realism tends in the direc-
tion of materialism will find much food for thought in Professor
Montague's keen criticisms of panhylism (pp. 269-272, and 277).
Professor Pitkin in stating the agreement between Professors Mon-
tague, Holt, and himself says: "Whatever consciousness is, it is
somehow connected with the activity of getting 'beyond space and
time'; that is, of adjusting variously to events beyond the organ-
ism's own skin and to conditions more than material" (p. 485).
As original and constructive contributions to philosophy, quite
apart from the realistic thesis, the essays of Professors Holt and
Pitkin seem to me the most important in this volume. Professor
Holt's remarkably well-organized attack on the theory of specific
nerve energy cuts at the root of a good deal of the vain speculation
which has overrun modern psychologic philosophy; and Professor
Pitkin 's effort at evolving a new system of categories wherewith to
express our biologic experience will go far to remove the light-
hearted reliance on the categories of popular biology which are fre-
quently nothing but the remnants of outworn metaphysical systems.
Limitations of space, however, and regard for the main current which
runs through all the essays, make only scant treatment of them
possible.
Some neo-realists and all their critics seem to feel that the problem
of error is a crucial one for neo-realism. I confess that while the
problem is one of the utmost importance, I can not see that it is pecul-
iarly a problem for the realist any more than for anybody else and
most modern schools have dodged it. If we maintain, as any analysis
of scientific procedure compels us, that a proposition is true or false
not because we make it or believe it, but because of what is asserted
in it, or because of the relation it bears to other propositions, then
it seems to follow that truth and falsehood are equally independent of
the consciousness in which they appear. At any rate, there is no
evidence from science that the line between the true and the false,
the real and the erroneous, is identical with that between the non-
mental and the mental. The denial of the realistic position, therefore,
can be made only on the basis either that all objects are mental or
that only unreal objects are of mental origin. The former does not
explain the difference between the true and the false, and the latter
admits the non-mental character of real objects.
Be that as it may, it is a fact that the existence of non-mental
but illusory objects is generally considered paradoxical; and Pro-
212 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
fessor Holt's essay, "The Place of Illusory Experience in a Realistic
World," tries to meet the objections on this ground. The argument
that in the case of an illusory object the person sees what is not there,
hence the act of seeing is constitutive of the object, is met by showing
many physical processes of copying, by cameras, etc., which reproduce
the same distortions or reduplications of the objects concerned.
There is, therefore, every reason to suppose that the distortion or
reduplication is due not to consciousness, but to the physical relation
between the sense-organs and the object. Thus the relativity of
secondary qualities, the production of negative or complementary
after-images, etc., are paralleled by the action of thermometers, the
receiving mast of a wireless telegraph system, etc. To the argument
that the outside world contains only primary qualities and vibration
rates, and that the secondary qualities must be aroused in the mind
by specific nerve energies, Professor Holt, after thoroughly refuting
the specific nerve-energy theory, produces a new hypothesis which
attempts to deduce the secondary qualities from the frequency inter-
val of nerve pulses or vibration, and thus reduce them to a genuine
part of the objective order. As this hypothesis will probably be seen
to greater advantage in his forthcoming book on "The Concept of
Consciousness," discussion of it had better be postponed for the
present. It is enough to indicate that it attempts to solve the
problem of illusory objects by showing "that the nervous system,
even when unstimulated from without, is able to generate within
itself nerve currents of those frequencies whose density factor is the
same as in ordinary peripheral stimulation (p. 352) ; hence the illu-
sory object with its secondary qualities is a genuine part of the
physical system.
The failure to work out clearly a theory of types or levels of
existence gives the neo-realist assertion in regard to the objectivity of
illusory objects the appearance of self-contradiction. It seems to say
that these illusory or unreal objects are true or real. 1 * The reader,
however, must not interpret the argument that illusory objects are
objective, non-mental, or parts of the physical world, to mean that
they are true or existent reals, for the neo-realist does not believe that
the objective is necessarily existent; it may merely have being or sub-
sistence. Nor has the illusory object the quality of being true. In
the subsistent world all sorts of contradictory or opposite propositions
are found side by side. It is only when we limit ourselves to "ex-
istent" entities that contradictory propositions can no longer be
applicable (p. 366). (As thus used the term "existent" covers not
14 It is so misunderstood by Professor MeGilvary, Philosophical Beview, Vol.
XXII., page 64, line 8.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 213
only physical and mental terms, but also mathematical entities whose
existence is demonstrated).
Of great significance is Professor Holt's criticism of Mr. G. B.
Moore's view that consciousness and its objects are distinct existents,
between which there is only the unresolvable relation of awareness.
The latter view seems to be based on an undue emphasis on the quali-
tative difference between the object and idea; thus, "fire burns, but
the idea of fire does not," etc. Professor Holt's answer is, "Fire
burns, but the shape of the flame does not. ' ' Surely the two are not,
therefore, two distinct entities.
In his essay on "Some Realistic Implications of Biology," Pro-
fessor Pitkin has attempted to introduce more material than can con-
veniently be compressed within the 90 pages at his disposal. It
is to be hoped that he will soon expand this into a respectable volume
and thus, perhaps, render it easier for the reader.
The main points which, as a result of his analysis of the biologic
situation, he contributes to the realist position are :
1. The organism does not always modify the stimulus. As
against Professor Dewey, for instance, it is maintained that "at
least in some cases the eye activity does not condition the specific
light-character of ether vibration, but only the distribution and em-
ployment of these" (p. 417).
2. The doctrine of internal relations and what is often called
the "organic" view of things find no support from the facts of
biology. According to the ' ' organic ' ' view every part of an organic
whole depends upon the whole and no part can be removed without
destroying the whole. The facts of experimental biology flatly dis-
prove this so far as natural organisms are concerned.
3. Planes, angles, numbers, ratios, and other such mathematical-
geometrical characters are genuine stimuli. They are thus real
causes.
4. The cognitive situation can be interpreted realistically by
means of a very suggestive analogy from protective geometry. Pro-
fessor Pitkin thus tries to make clear "how errors, illusions, and
hallucinations are not made by consciousness nor are peculiar to it,
but are necessary features of a projected physical system" (p. 377).
Attempts like these to dispense with old accredited categories and
to invent new descriptions which will eliminate discredited meta-
physical doctrines, make neo-realism appear excessively technical and
complex. However, if we distinguish between the familiar and the
simple, may not such an attempt lead to greater simplicity ?
Apart from its specific doctrines this book is bound to be influen-
tial in raising the standard of philosophic workmanship. Many,
214 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
doubtless, will be offended by the somewhat scant courtesy to all
previous philosophy ; and the promises of reform in the introduction
will be regarded by many others like a set of New Year's resolutions,
pious and necessary, but of doubtful efficacy. Few, however, will
deny that the authors have done their work in a genuine scientific
spirit. The book contains almost no rhetoric. There is no running
loose with such catchwords as experiential, functional, dynamic,
etc. Problems are minutely and patiently examined for their own
sake, and not simply as points in a more or less subtile apology for
supposed valuable human interests, like the belief in immortality,
freedom, etc. The authors in the main resist the temptation to deal
with wholesale affirmations or negations, but insist on a careful ex-
amination of the various meanings and situations involved, thus
tending to restore discrimination as a philosophic virtue. By thus
submitting the things of thought to the same careful study as the
things of sense receive in the physical sciences, the traditional dif-
ference between empiricism and rationalism as methods is wiped out,
and neo-realism may as well be called neo-rationalism or neo-em-
piricism differing from the older empiricism in recognizing the im-
mediate reality of the "things of thought."
Neo-realism is frankly intellectualistic and we may expect its op-
ponents to call it neo-scholasticism, but scholasticism of a kind has
always been needed to police the intellectual realm and check the
riot of anarchic mysticism.
The book before us is not likely to go through twelve editions
within the next year or to receive the Nobel prize for "idealistic"
literature. It lacks the sweep of popular assertions, and is written
with conscientious regard for qualification and detail often most
painfully so. It brings no easy solution to the riddle of the uni-
verse, and offers no texts for pulpit orations. But the discerning will
regard it as a notable contribution to constructive philosophy.
MORRIS RAPHAEL COHEN.
COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
DISCUSSION
SECONDARY QUALITIES AND SUBJECTIVITY
TN a recent communication, 1 Professor Morris Cohen challenges
a commonplace remark which I had found occasion to re-
peat; viz., that science regards the secondary qualities of matter
as subjective, in order to avoid the seeming contradiction of describ-
1 This JOURNAL, Vol. X., page 27.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 215
ing one and the same object as "really" possessing simultaneously
all the incongruous qualities which at any given moment appear in
the perception of different percipients such qualities as "long and
short, square and oblong, hot and cold, red and gray, ' ' etc. Two ob-
jections to this are raised by Professor Cohen.
1. "Is there, ' ' he asks, ' ' a science which actually treats secondary
qualities as subjective?" The answer is, of course, yes. Neither
physicists nor physiologists are wont to think of the specific sensible
quote which we call a sweet taste as a property inhering in a lump of
sugar irrespective of its relation to a sentient organism. The sugar
is commonly represented by them as having some qualities which are
independent of that relation; but literal sweetness an-und-fur-sich
is not, apparently, a conception which these sciences find it conve-
nient to use. So, again, writers on optics regularly distinguish be-
tween the "subjective and objective phenomena of light"; it must
therefore be presumed that they believe that there are phenomena
of the former sort. Once more, when a physicist writes that "the
distinction between radiant heat and light is non-existent," he mani-
festly does not mean that the distinction between heat-sensation and
color-sensation is non-existent; he is speaking of an objective heat
and light which, being identical, are by a plain implication repre-
sented as other than the two sensations, which are not identical.
That the answer to Professor Cohen 's question must be affirmative
is so obvious that it clearly must be quite another question which
he really has in mind. His context indicates what this other ques-
tion is, namely: Does science "use the category of subjectivity to ex-
plain why the same object appears long and short, square and ob-
long, etc."? But this question is ambiguous. If it means, Can not
science in all cases dispense with the notion of subjectivity in ex-
plaining this type of fact? the answer is negative. If, however, it
means, Does science in so explaining rely solely upon his notion?
the answer again is negative. Whenever what is supposed to be one
object is perceived differently by different percipients, science cus-
tomarily assumes some objective difference (of primary qualities)
between the two cases, e. g., a difference, as Professor Cohen puts it,
in the physical or physiological sensoria of the two organisms. But
this difference is not, by any science which keeps its wits about it,
supposed to be completely identical with the difference between the
two sensations; it is merely treated as the external occasion and
counterpart of the latter difference. A sensation is what it is at the
moment experienced as; and a sensation of red color is not experi-
enced either as an ether-undulation or as a (mere) change of relative
positions or of energy-relations of particles within the retina. Ac-
cordingly, the qualitative difference between a sensation of red and
216 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
one of green is not described or designated, not to say " explained, "
by mentioning quantitative differences between two ether-undula-
tions or between two types of motion or of energy-distribution in the
retina. Science, in short, correlates all qualitative differences be-
tween the secondary attributes of physical things with quantitative
differences stated in terms of the primary attributes ; but it does not
thereby reduce the one to the other. And if it is to make this corre-
lation work satisfactorily, it has need to assume a realm of merely
subjective appearances, to which the being of the former class of
qualities and of differences may be assigned.
2. Why does it need this assumption? Professor Cohen's second
objection touches the reason offered for this necessity. The assump-
tion that the same object "can not really and in itself," "at the
same moment" be long and short, etc., seems t6 him "a most unwar-
ranted assumption." This does not appear to mean that Professor
Cohen scorns the principle of contradiction, but only that he finds no
more contradiction in the cases mentioned than in the fact that ' ' the
same line may subtend an angle of 45 from one point and of 23
from another." But there seems to be here a rather curious disre-
gard of the familiar distinction between the relations and the quali-
ties of a thing. It is commonly admitted (though to Plato even this
involved some difficulty) that a thing may sustain a given relation
to one object, and the contrary of that relation to another object.
But it is also usually supposed by common sense and by most of our
science, that every real thing has, besides its relations, a "nature"
or character or set of qualities of its own ; in short, that to have re-
lations, you must first have a somewhat to be related; and that the
"nature" of the somewhat can not consist in a combination of
reciprocally contradictory predicates. Professor Cohen's second
question, therefore, seems to lack point, unless it involves the as-
sumption that the universe consists exclusively of relations, without
any things related. If this be his meaning, I can not share his confi-
dence that the issue he raises "can be readily settled," and settled
in favor of the position which he takes. The discrepancies between
the perceptions of different percipients, in the presence of the same
object, amount to contradictions just so long as the several percep-
tions are taken as equivalent to qualities inhering in the object. It
is for that very reason that they are regarded by science as due to
the diverse relations between the object and the several percipients;
since, as has been mentioned, in the case of relations such discrepan-
cies are possible without logical contradiction. But why, it may be
asked, is this relativity of the secondary qualities further construed
as equivalent to their subjectivity? Why may not these predicates
of the object be relational and yet objective ? Chiefly because as ex-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 217
perienced certain of them are not at all like what we mean by rela-
tions. As immediately given, a red color, a heat-sensation, a sweet
taste, though it may involve accompanying ideas or feelings of re-
lation, itself bears no resemblance to a relation. It is an eminently
substantive part of our experience. The situation, then, is this:
There are items in perceptual experience which can not be called
relations. But also they can not be called qualities inhering in the
perceived object independently of its relations to percipients ; for to
call them all so would be to describe the object in contradictory
terms. Hence, science regards these items as caused by. as functions
of, the diverse relations sustained by the object at any given
moment to diverse percipient organisms, yet not as existentially
identical with those relations. Since these qualities in their own
proper character, then, exist neither as qualities of the object
nor as mere relations, they must exist in some other manner; and
this other manner of existence is called subjective. Such seems to be
the underlying logic of the ordinary dualism of primary and second-
ary qualities.
Professor Cohen, in concluding his note, adds: "the impression
that consciousness is necessary in order to explain the facts of illu-
sion seems to me to rest on demonstrably false logic." I hope very
much that he may soon find time to furnish the demonstration. I
can 't quite suppose that he believes it to be furnished by the sentence
which follows : " To resort to consciousness as an explanation of the
facts of error and hallucination is precisely the same kind of pro-
cedure as to invoke the faculty of memory to explain the fact that
some of us forget things so readily." Surely, for one thing, the
parallel here is not altogether happily chosen. For it does, after all,
seem necessary to assume the existence of memory in order to con-
ceive forgetting as possible; those who have no such faculty can
scarcely be said to forget. But this aside, Professor Cohen's remark
leads one to suppose that the point of the argument from perceptual
error has not yet been fully appreciated by him. That argument, in
brief, is that there are data in people's experience which can not
without self-contradiction be supposed to exist as things in a single,
coherent world of extended objects, and which also can not be all
of them at once qualities of the single objects to which they seem
to belong; and which yet are not actually experienced as relations
between objects ; and that, accordingly, we must conclude that these
data at least exist only in the one context in which they indubitably
exist, namely, in the experience of individual minds and are to be
excluded from the supposed single, external world of " public and
218 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
neutral" objects. The pertinency to this argument of Professor
Cohen's reference to memory and forgetting remains to me obscure.
ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY.
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. JANE ELLEN
HARRISON. With an Excursus on the Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek
Tragedy by PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY and a Chapter on the Origin of
the Olympic Games by MR. F. M. CORNFORD. Cambridge: University
Press. 1912. Pp. xxxii + 559.
Miss Harrison, already well known to students of Greek religion by
her "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion" and other publications,
now presents an elaborate (though confessedly incomplete) discussion of
its origins, which abundantly merits and is sure to receive the attention of
scholars. No doubt many who are not scholars will read and quote it as
authoritative, a contingency assiduously to be guarded against by all
competent judges. Is then the book so bad or so dangerous ? some one will
ask. No; it is neither. Rather it is what the ideal book must be not
authoritative, but suggestive; and unless she would belie the conclusion
of her admirable booklet, " The Religion of Ancient Greece," Miss Harri-
son must be the last to wish her latest study to be accepted in any other
spirit.
In her ample Introduction our author defines the relation of the pres-
ent book to her " Prolegomena " and acknowledges her obligations to those
whose influence contributed chiefly to the change in her point of view.
It is to Professors Bergson and Durkheim that she owns her greatest debt :
to the former, for the conception of " duree, that life which is one, indivis-
ible and yet ceaselessly changing " ; to the latter, for the conception of
collective and individual representations. " These two ideas," she says
(p. ix), " (1) that the mystery-god and the Olympian express, respectively,
the one duree, life, and the other the action of conscious intelligence which
reflects on and analyses life, and (2) that, among primitive peoples, re-
ligion reflects collective feeling and collective thinking, underlie my whole
argument and were indeed the cause and impulse of my book. I felt that
these two principles had altered my whole outlook on my own subject, and
that, in the light of them, I must needs reexamine the whole material a
task at present only partially achieved."
The material for a study of Greek religion, as even a casual glance at
Gruppe's " Manual " will show, is in itself sufficiently appalling ; when in
addition thereto we consider the data of anthropology in their rapidly
increasing bulk, as Miss Harrison invites us to do, the mass threatens to
become quite unmanageable. Through this primeval forest, or rather
rank thicket, our volume leads us far afield by devious paths and no-paths,
and even an experienced indagator might at times lose his bearings did
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 219
not our author with a woman's sense of propriety graciously sketch in her
Introduction the course of her inquiry. This sketch it is not necessary
here to repeat and it absolves the reviewer from himself undertaking the
task. Instead, it will suffice to draw attention to the leading ideas of the
book.
The " Hymn of the Kouretes," discovered some years since at Palai-
kastro in Crete, offers the point of departure. The Kouretes invoke not
the Father of God and Men, but the Greatest Kouros, the projection of a
rite of initiation into the group or thiasos, the central ceremony of which
is the enaction of the new birth into the tribe. The rite or dromenon is
the magical re-acting or pre-acting of the second-birth in order to induce
it. The Kouros is the embodiment of the thiasos or group, and the indi-
vidual member of the group is, qua member, the Kouros himself in virtue
of his participation in the rite or collective life of the group. Thus the
Kouros dies and is born anew with each representative Kouros or member.
The Kouros is a daimon. Now a most common form of the daimon is the
Year-daimon, the fertility-spirit, representing the vicissitudes of the year
with the birth, death, and rebirth of vegetation. At this point is inserted
the discussion of the Dithyramb, as the song of the new-born spring, and
of the drama, as issuing from the Dithyramb and centering in the thiasos
or chores.
Collective action is attended with collective emotion, objectified as
magical power, and known among savages as Mana, Orenda, Wakonda,
among the Greeks by the names /xevos, OV/AOS. Various ceremonies, such as
the Thunder-rites and the Omophagia, confer or create this magical power ;
it is this connection in which one must consider sacramentalism and kin-
dred subjects. The daimon fully functions in the group alone ; he may by
degrees be so far projected from the group that he becomes partially in-
dividualized as a hero. Just in so far, however, as the hero or the mystery-
god retains a thiasos or continues in the consciousness of the group to
function as its representative, does he resist the process of trajection into
another sphere separate from men. Various offices, functional in char-
acter, mark him as in communion with his votaries, notably that of the
fertility-daimon, represented by the serpent. Complete extrusion from
the group relegates the hero or the daimon to Olympus, and he becomes a
God, immortal and exalted beyond the reach of human vicissitudes at-
tended with joy or sorrow. The daimon " worketh until now," whereas the
high Olympians dwell at ease.
" Whatever the differences between the religion of the Eniautos (year)-
daimon and that of the Olympians, the forms of both these religions de-
pend on, or rather express and represent, the social structure of the wor-
shipers. Above the gods, supreme, eternally dominant, stands the figure
of Themis. She is social ordinance, the collective conscience projected,
the Law or Custom that is Right" (p. xvii).
Now, what shall we say of this account of the origin of Greek religion,
of all religion? Probably no serious student will deny that our author's
point of view has justified itself in its application as a point of view, and
a suggestive and fruitful one. It is no news that man is a social animal
220 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
and that as such the social complex which objectifies and crystallizes his
social nature must play a leading role as indicator of the hidden currents
of his life. Then, too, since customs and institutions are notoriously
tenacious of life, especially such as " religious " rites which are invested
with a high degre of sanctity, they often afford us the earliest glimpses of
man. But, either one must hold that " social " is coextensive with man's
nature; or, if not, one must be prepared to show that it is only as social
that man has a religion at all. Failing this, the thesis advanced by our
author must fall to the ground. Now, there are some troublesome facts
which need to be disposed of before one may cheerfully adopt this thesis.
If man's nature be completely social, one wishes to know how individual-
ity may ever emerge. And if religion is a product of human life qua so-
cial, it should logically remain forever at the stage marked by the con-
sciousness of the utterly homogeneous group. But in that case we should
have neither hero, nor mystery-god, nor Olympian in other words, no
evolution at all. If, as our author says, the form of religion depends on,
or rather expresses and represents, the social structure of the worshipers,
and this is an exhaustive account of the facts, then we must either expect
the form of religion to change pari passu with the social structure and
assert that a given social structure can express itself in only one form of
religion, or else we must introduce untold quibbles and refinements such
as the evolutionist in general employs when he talks glibly of the adapta-
tion of the organism to the " environment." It is to be feared that the
phenomena of religion will refuse to be pigeonholed in so summary a
fashion. The Greek worshiper of the Olympian was also in thousands of
cases the worshiper of a daimon; indeed, according to the best accounts,
nearly or quite all the Olympians were at the same time daimons, though
not all daimons were identified with Olympians. Are we then to halve the
worshiper in the very act of worship? All this results from too hasty
generalization and the error of simplifying the problem overmuch. Thus
the individual and the group are too sharply contrasted, and it is assumed
that the sense of group-solidarity necessarily precedes individualism.
Possibly, and if you please, probably, in the total scale of human evolu-
tion it did precede, though the evidence is hardly conclusive. Such evi-
dence as can be adduced will, however, be furnished as much by psychol-
ogy, human and animal, and by child-study, as by the historical and an-
thropological investigation of the social structure. Yet, granted that this
is true in the total line of development, it does not exclude the ever recur-
rent shifting of the current of social life from one pole to the other; and
oftentimes the same stimulus brings about apparently opposite effects.
Thus mysticism and rationalism are notoriously twins, not only occurring
simultaneously, as when Orphism and Ionian rationalism flourished side
by side, but meeting in the same individual, as they have met in nearly
all the great mystics.
If there were space one might readily enlarge upon these general criti-
cisms and show by reference to the history of social and philosophical de-
velopment how ill suited our author's thesis is to explain all the facts.
Turning to the details of the volume, it should be said that, with all
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 221
its dash and brilliancy, it is extremely sketchy, and often, even in matters
central to its theme, suggests that its author has not found it worth while
to consider the data in detail. Thus when it appeared the writer assumed
that it was in some sort parallel to Professor Hirzel's " Themis, Dike und
Verwandtes " ; so far, however, is this from being true, that Miss Harri-
son does not appear to hare known of its existence, although, to say the
least, the astounding wealth of material it contains for the study of
Themis and Dike affords a ready means of fairly testing her conclusions.
To many readers the most interesting and valuable portion of the book
will doubtless seem to be Professor Murray's excursus on the ritual forms
preserved in Greek tragedy. Here, at any rate, are data which every stu-
dent of the drama must consider, whether he be interested chiefly in the
structural technique of this art-form or in the moot question of its origin.
Professor Murray appears to be wholly under the spell of Miss Harrison
in regard to his general theory. Indeed, the writer in this particular in-
stance, as in many others in the volume, is happy to find himself in per-
fect agreement with her. But it may be instructive, as affording an illus-
tration of the fact that the social group does not yield the only key to
such questions, to note that very much of what Professor Murray and Miss
Harrison have to say in regard to the drama was said mutatis mutandis
from the psychological point of view in the writer's essay, " Die Bekeh-
rung im klassischen Altertum," 1 in which the dromena of the mysteries
and the drama were compared with the typical phenomena of "conver-
sion " as revealed by the researches of Professor James and others.
Already too much space has been taken. In conclusion let it be re-
peated that as a rapid raid made into a large field, the present study is
suggestive and illuminating, if accepted at its true worth, which is that
of the application of an important but (if regarded as exclusive) one-
sided point of view to a body of phenomena infinitely complex.
W. A. HEIDEL.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY.
Lectures on Moral Philosophy. JOHN WITHERSPOON. Edited by VARNUM
LANSING COLLINS. Princeton, N. J. : Princeton University Press.
1912.
This attractive little volume is the first of a proposed series of reprints
of the works of early American philosophers. The series was projected by
the American Philosophical Association and is to be published under its
auspices by the institutions with which the authors of the works chosen
were affiliated.
Besides the lectures on moral philosophy this 'volume contains a check
list of forty-one titles of the published works of President Witherspoon
and an introduction by the editor, Professor Collins.
The introduction is chiefly biographical. It presents a very interesting
picture of the early president of Princeton, who was also an important
figure in early American history, as well as a prominent leader in the re-
*Zeitschrift fiir Eeligionspsychologie, Bd. HI., Heft 11, 1910.
222 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
organization of the Presbyterian Church in America. His personal char-
acteristics and his wide influence are briefly touched upon.
The "Lectures on Moral Philosophy" are in reality little more than
a syllabus which President Witherspoon used in his classes. They were
not intended for publication and they were preserved only in copies made
by his students.
Witherspoon's importance for students of philosophy depends on his
successful advocacy of the Scottish philosophy and not upon his own con-
tributions. A tendency toward idealism on the part of the younger mem-
bers of the Princeton faculty was promptly stamped out by the new presi-
dent. The philosophy of common sense supplanted it and soon estab-
lished itself as the dominant philosophy in America. The lectures pre-
sent this philosophy as it was held and promulgated by a strong, energetic,
and practical man. They cover a wide range of topics. The main sub-
divisions are ethics, politics, and jurisprudence. The discussion of ethics
includes a statement of his general philosophical position. The discus-
sion of politics covers both domestic and civil society. The law of nature
and of nations receives a brief treatment, and various legal conceptions
are associated with the discussion of jurisprudence. The value of the
work is of course almost entirely historical.
Both the editorial work and the printing are excellent.
ADAM LEROY JONES.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Ethics. G. E. MOORE. The Home University Library. New York : Henry
Holt and Company. Pp. 256.
The aim of this small volume is to present to laymen the outline of
the author's " Principia Ethica " in such a manner that it will serve not
merely to acquaint readers with Mr. Moore's own theory, but also to intro-
duce them to the science of ethics. To the reviewer, the former and less
important purpose seems to have been fulfilled more skilfully than the
second. Mr. Moore leads into his subject through an analytical descrip-
tion of utilitarianism. Having designated the fundamental presupposi-
tions and inferences of this hypothesis, he criticizes them. The one upon
which he concentrates is the assertion that the moral judgment simply
expresses the speaker's feelings toward the matter judged and does not
point out an objective character of the latter. Fully one third of the
book is filled with an elaborate disproof of this opinion, which, as Mr.
Moore rightly says, is much more widely held than utilitarianism is. Fol-
lows next a brief discussion of the tests of right and wrong. Here Mr.
Moore analyzes the three theories which maintain that the moral predicate
is determined respectively by the intrinsic nature of the act, or by the
agent's motive, or by the probable consequences of the act; and he ends
with the persuasion that none of these theories is well grounded. There
remain two short chapters, one on free will, which ends only with a doubt,
and one on intrinsic values, which gives voice to the author's most strik-
ing tenets. Many things, he tells us, are intrinsically good; their quality
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 223
does not depend at all upon the agent's attitude toward them, nor upon
his feelings ; and they possess no character peculiar to themselves.
While the reviewer heartily agrees, in the main, with Mr. Moore's
pluralistic objectivism, he does not admire the mode of its presentation.
Frequently the analyses are altogether too minute and subtle for the gen-
eral reader to whom the book is addressed. Also, they have crowded out
every account of typical ethical theories other than utilitarianism. And,
worst of all, they are presented abstractly and illumined with no simple
empirical illustrations. All this is unfortunate, in view of the intrinsic
merit of the book.
WALTER B. PITKIN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. September, 1912. Philosophy in
Germany in 1911 (499-526) : OSCAR EWALD. - Points out an increasing in-
terest in metaphysics. Reviews current German contributions to philos-
ophy, including the addresses of Kiilpe, Leonard Nelson, and Graf Keyser-
ling at the fourth International Philosophical Congress; the publications
of Bruno Bauch, Kelsen, Reininger, Victor Kraft, Vaihinger, Rickert,
Lask, Ebbinghaus, and Hans Driesch; with accounts, from German trans-
lations, of the philosophy of Boutroux and Bergson. The Problem of
Time in Recent French Philosophy. III. Time and Continuity: Pillon,
James (pp. 527-545) : ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY. - Pillon and Bergson start
from the same premises, but reach opposite conclusions concerning the
nature of time. Pillon's doctrine affords solutions of the three chief diffi-
culties of temporalism. James gives three accounts of time, tending finally
to accept one agreeing with Pillon's. Professor Bosanquet's Logic and the
Concrete Universal (pp. 546-565) : GEORGE H. SABINE. - The second edi-
tion of Professor Bosanquet's Logic has important additions which con-
cern the contemporary philosophical movements, realism, pragmatism,
pluralism, anti-intellectualism. The present article is a review of Pro-
fessor Bosanquet's criticism of these various movements. Hegel's Criti-
cisms of Fichte's Subjectivism. I. (pp. 566-584) : EDWARD L. SCHAUB. -
Singles out and estimates seven different interpretations of Fichte's funda-
mental principle. Proposes in a subsequent paper to show that the Hegel-
ian principle of the concrete identity of subject and object is not that of
Fichte. Reviews of Books (pp. 585-604) : William McDougal, Body and
Mind: A History and Defense of Animism: GEORGE M. STRATTON. Karl
Vorlander, Kant und Marx. Johann Plenge, Marx und Hegel: R. M.
MAC!VER. A. D. Lindsay, The Philosophy of Bergson. J. M. Kellar
Stewart, A Critical Exposition of Bergson' s Philosophy: EVANDER BRAD-
LEY McGiLVARY. F. C. S. Schiller, Formal Logic : A Scientific and Social
Problem: RADOSLAV A. TSANOFF. Notices of New Books. Summaries of
Articles. Notes.
224 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Henderson, Lawrence J. The Fitness of the Environment. New York:
The MacmiUan Company. 1913. Pp. xv + 317. $1.50.
Nathan, Marcel; Durot, H.; Gobron; and Friedel. Les Arrieres Sco-
laires. Paris : Librairie Classique Fernand Nathan. 1913. Pp. vi +
361. 5 fr.
NOTES AND NEWS
AT the meeting of the Aristotelian Society on March 3. Professor L.
P. Jacks read a paper on " Does Consciousness Evolve ? " The difficulty
that presents itself in the idea of an evolution of consciousness is that the
ends which are being evolved must be in consciousness from the first,
while, if the mind is conscious of them all to begin with, there can be no
evolution. The difficulty is generally met by a wholly illegitimate com-
promise. The mind is represented as at first neither totally unconscious
nor completely conscious of the ends to be evolved. Along with a clear
consciousness of the stage already reached, the mind is said to have a dim
consciousness of the stages to come. In this we may detect the psychol-
ogist's fallacy, which consists in treating a consciousness of what is dim
as though it were a dim consciousness of what is clear; a consciousness
of an evolving world as though it were the evolving consciousness of a
world; a consciousness of low gods (or goods) as though it were a low
consciousness of high gods. In short, " consciousness of degrees " is con-
verted into " degrees of consciousness," and the idea of development be-
comes the development of the idea.
AT the annual meeting of the Western Philosophical Association at
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, on March 21 and 22, the fol-
lowing papers were read : " Mill's Theory of Objectivity," T. F. Craw-
ford ; " Subjectivism and the Doctrine of Coherence," E. L. Schaub ;
"An Objective Criterion for Judging Conduct," E. B. Crooks; "Berg-
son's Intellect and Matter," C. E. Cory; "The Bent Stick," W. L. Raub;
"A Eealistic View of the Criterion of Truth," E. B. McGilvary; "Na-
ture and Human Nature," H. B. Alexander; "Voluntarism and the Cri-
terion of Truth," H. W. Wright; "Objectivity and Truth and Error,"
A. W. Moore; "Reality and the New Realism," H. M. Kallen; "Euler's
Circles and Inversion," A. W. Mitchell; " Epistemology from the Angle
of Physiological Psychology," G. D. Walcott. The session on the morn-
ing of March 22 was devoted to a joint meeting with the Western Psycho-
logical Association, at which the following papers were presented : " The
Basis of Internationalism," E. L. Talbert ; " Judgments as to Motives of
Group Actions," W. D. Scott; "The Social Implications of Conscious-
ness," Warner Fite; "A Point of View for Social Psychology," R. H.
Gault; "The Social Self," G. H. Mead. The presidential address was
given by Professor J. E. Boodin.
VOL. X. No. 9. APRIL 24, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD:
JURISPRUDENCE AS A PHILOSOPHICAL DISCIPLINE 1
THE philosophy of law has been an integral part of the great
philosophical systems ; but in common with other special fields
of philosophy, such as the philosophy of history, it is now with us
fallen into utter neglect. 2 While general interest in it can be re-
vived only by constructive work, which will demonstrate that this
ancient field can still be cultivated to bear a rich harvest, the aim of
this paper is to remove some of the ground on which the prevailing
apathy in regard to this subject seems to be based.
First, let us consider the view that law is a special field requiring
technical knowledge, and that only the lawyer can deal with it.
This is an objection which can be brought also against the philos-
ophy of nature, and yet many of us feel that the philosophy of na-
ture is a legitimate field of inquiry for others as well as for technical
physicists, witness our courses on the philosophy of nature, phi-
losophy of evolution, etc. Then again in all of our colleges phi-
losophers teach ethics. Are we ready to admit that a man need have
no special knowledge of the world to teach ethics? A philosophy of
law is an indispensable part of any system of social ethics; and it
may well be that a good deal of the futility of modern ethics-teaching
is due to its separation from what used to be called natural law. In-
dividual ethics seems to treat terms apart from their relations.
There can be no doubt, at any rate, that the significance of most eth-
ical issues becomes apparent only if they are writ large and made
principles of social legislation.
I Bead at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, New York,
December, 1912.
I 1 am referring only to the Anglo-American situation, and more particularly
to the latter. In Scotland and Italy the philosophy of law has always maintained
itself, and in Germany and France there is to-day a vigorous revival of interest
in this subject led by such men as Stammler, Joseph Kohler, Tarde, Charmont,
and Saleilles. See Vol. II. of Berolzheimer 'a "Eechts- und Wirtschaftsphilos-
ophie " (now translated in the Continental Legal Philosophy series under the
title, "The World's Legal Philosophies ") c f- Professor Pound, Harvard Law
Eeview, Vol. XXV., pages 147-168.
225
226 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
There are signs, however, that if the prevailing tendency con-
tinues, ethics will soon cease to be a philosophical study and will be
abandoned to the department of sociology, anthropology, or perhaps
history. It becomes, therefore, necessary to reckon with this prevail-
ing attitude which would restrict philosophy to such formal prob-
lems as the relation of mind or thought to reality.
The view that philosophy must keep its skirts clean of any contact
with the matters of fact treated in the empirical sciences is one that
the most modern schools share with the older Hegelians. But
whereas the Hegelians, in their endeavor after a comprehensive ra-
tional system, went on to survey all the fields of human interest, and
under the guise of deduction frequently brought forth a good deal
of fruitful generalization or insight, the modern tendency has been
eliminating all concrete material issues from philosophy, and has re-
duced it to a purely formal discipline intended to give us a formal
definition of reality. 3
This modern attitude, I have tried to show elsewhere, 4 grows out
of the division of labor in our American universities, and the re-
quirements of academic courtesy. But as nature, according to Fres-
nel, does not care about our analytic difficulties, it may be that the
universe does not run entirely for the convenience of academic ad-
ministration. Be that as it may, it can, I think, be shown that, even
from the narrowest conception of philosophy, the philosophy of law
is still extremely useful, and that an acquaintance with general juris-
prudence would enrich our discussion and teaching of logic, epistem-
ology, and metaphysics.
To begin with, it might be shown that many chapters in the his-
tory of philosophy are unintelligible without a knowledge of the
philosophy of law. Such are, for instance, the Aristotelian and
Stoic conceptions of nature and its laws, the complexion of the Leib-
nizian monadology, or the doctrine of the Summum Bonum in Kant.
But this would require treatment beyond the limits of this paper. I
must confine myself to more obvious points.
A. Logic. In spite of centuries of complaints of the futility of
formal logic, there seems to be no tendency to give it up, not even
on the part of its most aggressive critics like Mr. Schiller. How then
can we enrich it?
Now the law is the only social institution that is mainly a deduc-
tive system, or employs predominantly the logic of subsumption.
Instead, therefore, of using such elementary biologic propositions as
"all men are mortal" it would seem that we could use more signifi-
cant material from the realm of jurisprudence. The laws of evidence
* Philosophical Eeview, Vol. XII., pages 370 ff.
4 This JOUBNAL, Vol. VII., pages 401 ff.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 227
are supposed by Mill to be of the essence of logic, but neither Mill
nor any other logician has thought it worth while to examine the field
of jurisprudence to see how the laws of evidence have actually been
worked out under the pressure of life 's demands. I venture to think
that few logicians would find themselves unenlightened by the read-
ing of Thayer's ''Preliminary Treatise on Evidence" and his ac-
count of the genesis of our modern rational system of legal proof.
Any one who is inclined to belittle the importance of definition in a
deductive system will be surprised to learn how many actual transac-
tions of daily life depend on the definition of such terms as posses-
sion or person. Even such a time-worn, threadbare topic as the log-
ical formation of concepts receives new vigor and importance when
applied to the legal field by such writers as Korkunov. 6
B. Epistemology and Metaphysics. Consider how much would
our controversy over the nature of truth have been enriched if, in-
stead of our easy dichotomous division of propositions into the true
and false, we had taken notice of what lawyers call legal fictions.
Such propositions occur, for instance, when we say that the consti-
tution is the will of the people, or that the judges simply declare and
never make the law, or when we say that the innocent purchaser of
a chattel subject to mortgage has had notice of this fact if only the
mortgage is duly recorded. These propositions like the statement of
the actor, "I am thy father's spirit," are not adequately character-
ized when we say merely that they are true or that they are false.
To distinguish the sense in which they may be said to be true from
the sense in which they are undoubtedly false, is a significant in-
quiry which seems to me to throw a great deal of light on the central
problem of the new realism, viz., the problem of the categories. The
study of these fictions also throws light on the nature of such scien-
tific hypotheses as those of the ether. It is curious that the only two
writers who have considered fictions, Vaihinger in his "Philosophic
des Als Ob ' ' and Von Meinong in his book on Annahmen, have both
failed to treat of the logic of legal fictions.
We hear a good deal nowadays about intellectualism and anti-
intellectualism, and I am not sure that I understand the precise point
at issue. But if intellectualism means the tendency to reify or
hypostatize relational concepts, i. e., treat all concepts as of unchange-
able entities which are independent of any context into which they
enter, then there is no field which better illustrates the trouble with
this vicious kind of intellectualism than the field of law.
The end of law, the administration of justice, can not be accom-
plished by empiricism, i. e., by letting the judge decide each case on
its merits. Such a hand-to-mouth existence will not do; for people
1 Korkunov, ' ' General Theory of Law, ' ' section 64.
228 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
must know with some degree of certainty beforehand what they may
and what they may not do. Hence judges or magistrates must, even
in the absence of legislation, be bound by rules, so as to eliminate as
far as possible the personal equation and make the law uniform, defi-
nite, and certain. This requirement that the law should be rational,
i. e., deducible from established principles, compels the law to as-
sume the form of a deductive science. But this deduction soon be-
comes an end in itself and is frequently pursued in flagrant contra-
diction with the ends of justice. Thus there results what Professor
Pound has called mechanical jurisprudence, i. e., a jurisprudence in
which deductions are made from concepts without taking into ac-
count the question whether changing conditions have made them no
longer applicable. A distinguished jurist, Windscheid, speaks of ' ' the
ancient, never-ending dream that there is a peculiar rigid and un-
changeable body of legal rules which follow from pure reason and
are necessary for all times and all places. " 6 It is this false intellec-
tualism which under the guise of natural rights is in the United
States to-day stifling all progressive social legislation. 7
The most cogent argument for pragmatism or instrumentalism
that I know of (I speak as a friend, not as a member of the family)
is an article by Professor Pound. 8 Professor Pound does not seem to
know of any pragmatists in Columbia University, and the JOURNAL
OF PHILOSOPHY, published in the same University, seems never to
have noticed this or any other article of Professor Pound a signifi-
cant comment on the efficiency of our modern university organiza-
tion in the making of knowledge communicable.
While law thus forcibly and vividly illustrates the dangers of
intellectualism, the philosophy of law even more than the philosophy
of mathematics will prove a corrective to that myopic and stingy
empiricism, or sensationalism, which can not conceive anything to be
real except sensible entities that have a position in time and space.
The slightest reflection on the nature of legal rights or obligations,
our debts, or our property if we have any, will show that these are
real in any sense in which the word real is worth anything. The
Eectoral Address, page 7.
T That this vice is not exclusively modern may be seen from Aristotle '&
"Politics." According to the Greek law if a plaintiff claimed 20 minse when
but 18 were proved to be due him, there was no course but to find for the
defendant. The proposal of Hippodamus, "a strange man," to correct this
and allow a verdict for the amount proved due, does not meet with the approval
of Aristotle, who adds the following gem of intellectualism: "A judge who
votes acquittal decides, not that the defendant owes nothing, but that he does
not owe the twenty minse claimed." ("Pol.," II., 8. 1268 B 15.)
The only answer to this kind of intellectualism is to be found in legal
history. See Ames, Harvard Law Review, Vol. XXII., page 97.
8 "Mechanical Jurisprudence," Columbia Law Eeview of 1908.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 229
contingent right of the shareholder to receive a dividend, if there
will be one, may in the open market fetch more than the chairs,
desks, tables, or bedposts which seem to be all the furniture at the
philosopher's disposal.
These possible services of jurisprudence to philosophy may seem
trifling; but is not a purely formal philosophy tell it not to the
Philistines a magnificent piece of trifling? The sense of it must
come to all of us who receive students fresh from some laboratory
exercise or from a heated discussion in political science and set them
to solve the problem of the "real chair." I do not mean to belittle
the importance of the patient scientific work which is now being
done on these formal or logical problems. On the contrary, I regard
it as of no less importance than any of the researches carried on to-
day in the physical or social sciences ; for philosophy has always been
the intellectual instrument-maker for the sciences, or at any rate the
sharpener of the weapons used in all intellectual combat. But the
sharpener of tools can not carry on his business without some knowl-
edge of the uses to which the tools are put; or to put it in more
orthodox language, the analytic work of examining and criticizing
fundamental concepts and methods of science can not be carried on
without a Weltanschauung or at least a system of values ; and in any
Weltanschauung or system of values the philosophy of law must be
an integral part.
There seems to be a widespread conviction to-day that philos-
ophy can at best be only a reflection on the world and by no possibil-
ity an instrument for its reform or transformation. In the oft-quoted
words of Hegel, "Philosophy can not teach the world what it ought
to be. It comes too late for that. . . . The owl of Minerva takes its
flight only when the shades of night are gathering. " 9 The history of
the Hegelian philosophy itself is the best disproof of this view. For
under the form of Marxian economics, or economic history, the Hegel-
ian dialectic has, for good or for evil, been the most powerful influ-
ence in the political life of the last fifty years, just as Benthamite
individualism was the most powerful influence in shaping English
law and legislation of the nineteenth century. 10
I confess I never realized the significance of Comtean positivism
until lately, when in reading the history of Mexico and of other
Latin-American countries I had occasion to learn the extent to which
the conflict between scholasticism and positivism had been carried
into the educational, legal, and political life of those countries. 11
Hegel, "Philosophy of Right" (tr. Dyde), page xxx.
10 See Wilson, "The History of Modern English Law," and Dicey, "Law
and Public Opinion in England."
II For bibliographic references, see Valverde Tellez, ' ' Bibliograf fa Filos6fica
Mexicana. ' '
230 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Everyone here present, I presume, is generally acquainted with
the history of the Aristotelian and Stoic doctrine of natural law, how
it was carried into Roman law and used to mitigate the rigor of
slavery, how it became the intellectual weapon of the people against
the claims of popes and emperors, how in the hands of Grotius it
proved a powerful instrument for the mitigation of the barbarities
of war, or in the hands of American judges has become a powerful
influence for the defense of property against the claims of society or
of the working classes. 12
To the objection which will of course be made, that ideas have no
real influence in social development, that they are merely the clothes
in which the dominant interests array themselves, I can only answer
dogmatically that this narrow economic interpretation of history il-
lustrates Professor Perry's fallacy of exclusive particularity. Be-
cause economic forces do undoubtedly have a large share in deter-
mining history it does not follow that everything else is uninfluen-
tial. One can easily point out instances in the law of trusts or part-
nerships where judges have been influenced by tradition, sentiment,
or the exigencies of a received system even against the interests of the
class which they represent. 13 The American doctrine of the inde-
pendence of the judiciary, or of government by three coordinate
branches, is to-day the bulwark of our economically regnant classes,
but it originated as a matter of fact in certain logical considerations
in Aristotle and was copied into the American Constitution, not be-
cause of any class interests, but because of the "imposing" character
of the learning in Montesquieu's book on the "Spirit of Laws."
In our reaction against the old despotic claim of philosophy as the
absolute ruler and dictator to all human investigations, we have gone
to the other extreme and have put it in the position of a useless ser-
vant. To this servile period of philosophy there must succeed a
period of genuine cooperation between philosophy and the special
sciences. This cooperation is becoming easier because the various
sciences are beginning to outgrow their juvenile fear of philosophy,
and are no longer so effectively frightened by the bogey of metaphys-
ics. This is happening not only in mathematics, physics, chemistry,
and biology, witness Russell, Poincare, Duhem, Ostwald, Driesch,
etc. but also in jurisprudence.
When, under the influence of British empiricism, conscious phi-
losophy of law was almost ridiculed out of existence, the door was
left open for the antiquated individualistic natural rights philos-
" On the history and influence of ' ' natural law, ' ' see Pollock, ' ' The Expan-
sion of the Common Law," lect. 4, and Journal of the Society for Comparative
Legislation, 1900, pages 418 ff. Under the form of the jus gentium it occurs
even in Bracton. (De Legibus, etc., lib. I., ch. 2, fol. 9a.)
13 See Pound, Harvard Law Review, Vol. XXV., pages 166-168.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 231
ophy of the eighteenth century, as embodied in text-books like Black-
stone. As narrow empiricism always terminates in vicious intellec-
tualism, so the pseudo-philosophy of Blackstone with its ante-evolu-
tionary view of society and of an unalterable standard of justice, has
gained sway over the minds of our lawyers and judges, with the re-
sult of making our administration of justice a national scandal.
Through the efforts of thoughtful jurists like Professors Wig-
more, Pound, and others, the American Association of Law Schools
at its annual meeting in 1910 officially recognized the necessity of a
conscious philosophy of law as a way out of the impasse into which
we have got by pseudo-intellectualism and the empirical manipula-
tion of cases. The committee appointed by that Association, finding
no English or American philosophy of law, has planned to translate
a series of important continental works on this subject; and four
volumes have already been published. In their general preface the
committee begins with the Platonic dictum, "Until either philos-
ophers become kings or kings philosophers states will never succeed
in remedying their shortcomings." "And if," continue these law-
yers, "he was loath to give forth this view, because as he admitted it
might sink him beneath the waters of laughter and ridicule, so to-day
among us it would doubtless resound in folly if we sought to apply
it again in our own field of state life, and to assert that philosophers
must become lawyers or lawyers philosophers, if our law is ever to be
advanced into its perfect workings. And yet there is hope, as there
is need among us to-day, of some such transformation."
"Without some fundamental basis of action, or theory of ends,
all legislation and judicial interpretation are reduced to an anarchy
of uncertainty. It is like mathematics without fundamental defini-
tions and axioms. Amid such conditions no legal demonstration can
be fixed even for a moment. . . . Even the phenomenon of experi-
mental legislation, which is peculiar to Anglo-American countries,
can not successfully ignore the necessity of having social ends" (p. v).
To cooperate with the American Association of Law Schools in
this essential task of philosophy, to examine anew the problem of
social ends in relation to law and morals and the life of civilization,
would, I believe, be one of the most effective services which our Asso-
ciation can render to our national life as well as to the vitality of
philosophic study. This will undoubtedly mean our taking up em-
pirical facts which we have regarded as belonging to alien fields.
But it is precisely this readiness to take up facts from alien fields
that has made the various physical sciences fruitful. Perhaps phi-
losophy is the only profession that has not lately been raising its
standard of prerequisite general knowledge. We have been directing
our efforts almost exclusively to the refinement of our methods, but
232 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
it seems to me we need also the introduction of new material. The
vitality of philosophy can not continue if it adheres to the ideal of a
monastic or sterile celibacy, but rather
"All the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder peals
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact."
MORRIS R. COHEN.
COLLEGE OF THE CITY or NEW YOKK.
THE DEFINITION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
rriHE definition of consciousness is one of the questions that will
*- not down. For philosophical theory it is a sort of shibboleth ;
in psychology it is a ghost that walks at the most inopportune
moments, however carefully it may have been buried underneath
our working hypotheses and methodological postulates. There is
perhaps no more reliable indication that a profound change is taking
place in our philosophical attitude and modes of thought than the
persistent endeavors to formulate a definition of consciousness. In
view of the fact that the question is of a fundamental character and
that general opinion regarding it is in a state of flux, no apology
seems to be necessary for making another attempt at clear thinking
on this difficult topic.
In the interests of brevity I shall adopt at the outset the assump-
tion of naive realism that things exist at times when they are not
objects for any finite consciousness. The suggestion lies close at
hand that the nature of consciousness will be revealed by a com-
parison of things as they are when not experienced with things as
they are when presented to consciousness. But, as Berkeley pointed
out long ago, all the choir of heaven and furniture of earth is idea
the moment such a comparison is attempted. While this does not
prove that all existence is mental, it does indicate a difficulty of
procedure which must be kept in view at all stages, if our inquiry
is to bear fruit. The difficulty is simply that we can not set down
side by side the experienced and the non-experienced, in order to
take stock of the difference between the two. That this is done sur-
reptitiously in many of the definitions of consciousness which have
been put forth, there is good reason to believe. Theology and epis-
temology have conspired to induce a habit of mind which shuts us
in to the notion of consciousness as a mechanical, detachable entity.
While the doctrine that consciousness is a peculiar kind of existence,
alongside of, yet "separated by the whole diameter of being" from
physical reality is rapidly passing into history, the mode of thinking
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 233
of which this doctrine is the expression is with us yet, a mute witness
to the discrepancy between what we believe and what we think we
believe.
This limitation of procedure constitutes the problem of con-
sciousness a peculiar puzzle. Whether we identify consciousness
with the entire field of what we experience or with some specifiable
element within this field, we seem to encounter an insuperable diffi-
culty. If the whole situation is to be called consciousness, the
"object" or "real" must necessarily lie beyond, and must by defini-
tion remain inaccessible. On the other hand, if consciousness is
restricted to some element within the field, so that the distinction
between consciousness and object falls within the experienced situa-
tion, we have at once the difficulty that consciousness and object are
never given in separation from each other. The difference between
"in" consciousness and "out" of consciousness must be recognized
and in some way the two must be compared with each other. But
the comparing must be done within the conscious field. How to go
beyond consciousness without going beyond it is the embarrassing
question. From this familiar blind alley, filled with the debris of
discarded epistemological theory, there seems to be no possibility of
escape.
It seems, then, that our analysis must be confined to the experi-
ential situation and that this circumstance precludes in advance the
possibility of finding a consciousness at all. As a matter of fact,
the work done here has been peculiarly barren of results, so far as a
consciousness an sich is concerned, although it may lead, and has led,
to a wealth of material of a biological and psychological kind.
Instead of consciousness, we find ourselves dealing with reactions of
an adaptive sort, instinctive, habitual, and intelligent or experi-
mental. We learn little that is unequivocally consciousness as dis-
tinct from things, but we learn much about stimulus and response,
about attention and habit, about conflict and adjustment. It is not
difficult, therefore, to understand and sympathize with the tendency
to regard the problem of consciousness as a pseudo-problem and to
identify consciousness frankly with a type of behavior.
Such identification, however, has undeniably the appearance of
paradox. Apparently the original question has been permitted to
disappear from view. After all, the difficulties of the question are
no justification, as the German saying is, for pouring out the baby
with the bath. The identification of consciousness with behavior
looks like playing with words. If it is to justify itself, the behavior
in question is not to be interpreted as a set of muscular contractions,
but must be construed in such a way as to include a relationship to
234 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
things. A watch, for example, may be studied in a variety of ways,
but until it is studied with reference to its function of keeping time,
many things pertaining to the "behavior" of the watch necessarily
escape us. Certain adaptations of part to part in the mechanism
appear only when considered in relation to cosmic processes which
go on outside the watch. Similarly the behavior of the body which
is identified with consciousness must be brought into relation with
facts pertaining to the object 1 of which there is consciousness, or the
identification is nonsense. But if this be the case, the body is no
more important for the comprehension of consciousness than the
object, and the possibility suggests itself that consciousness may be
defined as readily in terms of the object as in terms of the organism.
Granted that both are necessary for an understanding of the nature
of consciousness, a definition that indicates the part played by the
object is likely to be the less paradoxical, as also to bring out with
greater clearness what is distinctive in this point of view.
The conditions of our problem have now been determined. A
definition of consciousness must be based on an analysis of what is
experienced ; not on a comparison of the experienced with the unex-
perienced. In other words, consciousness must not be regarded as a
distinct entity or kind of existence, for this implies that the nature
of consciousness is to be ascertained by a comparison of presence and
absence on the part of this entity. This is a procedure that is con-
demned by the whole history of the subject. Secondly, the definition
must take its clue from the relationship of bodily organism and
object, a relationship in which the changes of the organism are
properly correlated with certain corresponding changes on the part
of the object.
These conditions at once precipitate a difficulty. That objects
as perceived, for example, vary with certain changes of the body is
too trite a matter to be argued; every case of opening and closing
the eyes or of shifting the point of view is an illustration of the fact.
These changes, however, are not supposed to be changes in the object,
but in our perceptions of them. That is, the same object is found
to have different qualities under different conditions, but this does
not tell us what changes in the object are correlated with the bodily
behavior which is involved in consciousness. The perceived qualities
vary in the sense that we have different perceptions of the objects ;
they do not seem to vary in the sense that the objects themselves are
to be regarded as in a state of flux and varying concomitantly with
the changes in the perceiving body. The object is supposed to be
fixed, and the changes which occur, in so far as they relate to per-
1 The word object, it may be noted, is used here as equivalent to the entire
situation or complex.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 235
ception, are attributed to changes in the relation of the body to the
object, not to changes in the object itself.
At this point the suspicious reader will perhaps anticipate a
metaphysical dissertation on fixity and change in objects. My pur-
pose, however, is rather to direct attention to a peculiarity of objects
which furnishes empirical evidence that the notion of fixity rests on
an abstraction. This peculiarity we find discussed in our psychol-
ogies under the heading of the "margin" or the "fringe" of con-
sciousness. "Every definite image in the mind," says James, "is
steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes
the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence
it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The signifi-
cance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that
surrounds and escorts it or rather that is fused into one with it
and has become bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh ; leaving it, it
is true, an image of the same thing it was before, but making it an
image of that thing newly taken and freshly understood. ' ' 2
In his discussion of this topic James says that it is "the rein-
statement of the vague to its proper place in our mental life which
I am so anxious to press on the attention. ' ' 3 All experiences have
their focus and margin, hence the vague pervades the whole of our
mental life. It should be noted, however, that these experiences are
vague, not in themselves, but with reference to their leadings or
implications. When seen in retrospect, this peculiar mode of being
may be construed as tendencies, premonitions, nascent images, etc.,
but it is only with reference to some standpoint other than itself
that it can be called vague. While it is true that psychologists
have frequently attempted to reduce the fringe to sensory material
of various kinds, it seems to be reasonably evident that these sensory
elements merely repeat the situation, unless we bring the regress to
an end by postulating elements which are neither experienced nor
experienceable. We seem, therefore, forced to the conclusion that in
order to give a consistent interpretation to objects, it is necessary to
ascribe to them a character which, apart from the goal to which it
leads or the function which it performs, escapes formulation and
defies description. If objects are fixed with reference to our per-
ceptions, this indescribable character becomes an ultimate fact, which
can not be brought into relation with other facts. In this case the
attempt to define consciousness appears to be hopeless. If, however,
we construe it in terms of process and function, the way seems open
to interpret consciousness as a correlation between bodily processes
and changes in the object.
'"Psychology," Vol. I., page 255.
* Ibid., page 254.
236 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
According to this view, the reason why consciousness presents a
problem of such peculiar difficulty is that we ordinarily approach it
with false preconceptions regarding the nature of experience. If we
fail to utilize that phase or character of things which consists wholly
in this peculiar, dynamic relationship to other things, the problem
is apparently insoluble. Our analysis in this case finds objects of
various kinds, but never consciousness. We come upon physical
things, images, concepts, pains, and desires in endless variety, but
throughout we are harassed by the knowledge that these are objects
of which we are conscious, and not the consciousness that we seek.
If we then put in an awareness as an additional element or constit-
uent, it is merely in order to meet this demand for a consciousness,
and not in response to a mandate from introspection or to the
requirements of theoretical consistency. The puzzles and contradic-
tions which result, whether we leave out consciousness altogether or
place it in mechanical juxtaposition to its objects, are impressive
evidence that there is an error in the starting-point. We have left
out what James calls the "continuity of consciousness," or the
"fringe"; by which expressions he means to designate a peculiar
character of objects, which invariably slips through our fingers when
we attempt to lay hold of it in description.
That a correlation exists between this "total character" of
objects and physical responses, there seems to be no good reason to
doubt. James's brilliant presentation of the fringe, it will be re-
membered, includes a discussion of cerebral conditions. This cor-
relation takes the form of behavior, if we adopt the view that the
function of the brain is simply to coordinate response. Since this
"total character" of objects with which the behavior is correlated is
in the nature of a reference or relationship that faces the future, the
behavior in question differs from other forms of behavior in that it
is intelligent and not mechanical. Moreover, this total character
or fringe has endless shadings and is never twice the same; from
which we may infer that the correlated behavior is not determined
by fixed connections in the nervous system, but makes its appear-
ance at the point where instinct and pure habit are inadequate.
Consciousness, then, has to do with this particular correlation; it is
guidance or control through this peculiar foreshortening or "impli-
cation"; or to put it more briefly, albeit metaphorically, conscious-
ness is the margin or fringe.
If we thus identify consciousness with the fringe, however, it
must not be overlooked that the entire significance of the contention
rests on the view that the fringe is not a detachable appendage, is
not even something other than the object to which it belongs, but is
237
a purely metaphorical designation for the "total character" pre-
viously discussed. 4 It appears, moreover, that what James says about
the knower or the "passing thought" is of fairly direct application to
consciousness. We may say of consciousness that its present moment
is the darkest in the whole series, that it is always the knower, and
not the known, that it is born an owner and dies owned provided
that these statements be construed with reference to this peculiar
relationship of the present object to other objects. James's own
theory of consciousness, which identifies consciousness with objects
in so far as they appear in a certain context or setting, is open to
criticism on the ground that it leaves this total character of objects
altogether out of account. It distinguishes physical and psychical,
a distinction which does not concern the character of things as media-
ting future experiences, but it does not distinguish consciousness
and object. If we identify the two distinctions, we are unable to
correlate consciousness with a type of behavior, and we have no
explanation of the fact that we are as much conscious of the phys-
ical as of the psychical. As Woodbridge says, "The differentiation
simply divides the field of consciousness into two parts, but does not
isolate a separate field in which alone consciousness is found. Phys-
ical objects just as much as personal histories may be objects in
consciousness. . . . The differentiation in question thus appears
simply to reveal between our objects one of the distinctions of which
we are conscious. ' ' 5
This view of consciousness may be harmonized, as a little reflec-
tion will show, with Woodbridge 's definition of consciousness as
meaning. But in order to harmonize the two, it is necessary to
interpret meaning in such a way as to avoid the objection that mean-
ing "would seem to be the relation characteristic of discursive con-
sciousness rather than consciousness in general." 6 Meaning taken
in a discursive sense is as much object as anything else. We are
4 It is evident that if consciousness be identified with the fringe, i. e., with
a relationship of things to something in the future, a relationship which is
organic and vital to things and yet distinctive of the situations in which they
occur, the term object, when used as contrasted with consciousness, and not as
inclusive of the fringe, must be defined more narrowly. This is not the occasion
to enlarge on thia topic, but it may be suggested that the "object," in this
case, corresponds to the focus, as distinct from the margin. It is a name for
the "restingplaces" or the "substantive parts"; it designates both the terminus
a quo and the terminus ad quern of the experiential flux. Or we may say that
the object properly designates the factor of control in the experiential flux,
whereas the fringe designates the factor of control with respect to the bodily
organism.'
'JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Vol. II., page 124, 1905. Italics mine.
Perry, "Present Philosophical Tendencies," page 278..
238 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
conscious of meanings as we are conscious of other things. The dis-
cursive sense, it seems, is precisely the sense in which the word is
not to be taken, if the definition is to prove itself tenable; and for
this reason the use of the term in the definition is a matter of doubt-
ful propriety. But this is primarily a matter of words.- Conscious-
ness is a kind of implication ; it is an aspect or mode of objects which,
when viewed retrospectively and in terms of its temporal culmina-
tion or realization, may be called a form of connection among objects,
a connection by way of representation or meaning. If we distin-
guish, as Woodbridge does, between objects and consciousness, it
would seem to follow that meaning as known, as an object, is not the
meaning that is intended when consciousness is defined as meaning.
A word or two may be added with reference to the realistic defi-
nition of consciousness as a form of togetherness or unique grouping
of objects. Those who advance this definition seem to place the
principle of grouping more or less explicitly in the relation of the
experiential complex to the bodily organism. So far we can agree.
The definition fails, however, to give any clue to the nature of that
relation. It does not select a specific character or aspect of objects
with which to correlate organic response, and unless this is done the
criterion has significance only when applied from the outside and
through the agency of a bystander. What is needed is a specific
kind of response which can be contrasted with other kinds and can
be properly correlated with objects. In order to do this, however,
we must reinterpret objects and endow them with a character the
significance of which realism is wont to ignore.
If the view here presented is a defensible interpretation, we are
enabled to treat consciousness as a correlation and to deal with it
wholly in experiential terms. We can explain why consciousness is
so unobtrusive, and also in what sense it may be experienced. The
total character or fringe is easily made object and thus endowed
with a fringe of its own if we take a situation where we are con-
fronted with some difficulty, such as recalling a forgotten name.
We find ourselves here with a gap that "swims in a felt fringe of
relations," an "aching gap," and the peculiar, evanescent sense of
something which almost is and yet is not. Similarly, when we intro-
spect for the self we come upon a "warmth and intimacy" which
tantalizes and baffles us until it resolves itself into the feeling of
. certain bodily adjustments. In still another type of situation, when
the observer is peacefully aware that he is conscious of an object, the
total character or fringe has an undeveloped implication pertaining
to various relations between the object and the body, such as the
effect of closing the eyes, shifting the point of view, etc. And finally
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 239
we may say that to distinguish between consciousness and object, or
to recognize that an object existed prior to our experience of it, is
not to assume a comparison between the experienced and the unex-
perienced, but is to deal with the "meaning" of things, a meaning
which must be construed in terms of the fringe on the one hand and
of bodily control on the other.
As was intimated previously, the significance of this treatment
of consciousness lies in the interpretation which it gives to experi-
ence. The pragmatic movement of our day is, above all, an attempt
to reinterpret philosophic problems in the light of this conception.
It holds out the hope that many difficulties which so far have re-
sisted explanation will be overcome when approached from this new
standpoint.
B. H. BODE.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.
INTERESTING THEOREMS IN SYMBOLIC LOGIC
rpWO propositions in the algebra of implication or "calculus of
propositions ' ' have been much discussed. They are : " A false
proposition implies any proposition," and "A true proposition is
implied by any proposition." These theorems have been hailed as
discoveries and repudiated as absurdities. But on all sides the im-
pression seems to prevail that these two are sui generis in the algebra.
For this reason, it may be worth while to present a partial list of
propositions which are of the same kind, involve the same principles,
and can be proved from the same assumptions. Comparatively few
such theorems have been printed, but their number is apparently
infinite. Reference, following the proposition, indicates those given
in "Principia Mathematical' 1
1. qD(poq} (*2-02). A true proposition is implied by any
proposition.
2. ^ po (pD#) (#2-21). A false proposition implies any prop-
osition.
3. pi(^piq) (^2-24). If p is true, then not-p implies any
proposition.
1 The notation is that of ' ' Principia Mathematica ' ' with some modifica-
tions, p, q, r represent propositions. 3 symbolizes "implies." >, placed
before a letter or expression, is the sign of negation. p may be read ' ' not-p ' '
or "p is false. " Similarly p may be read as written or as "p is true." The
product pq means "p and q are both true"; ^p^q, "p and q are both
false," etc. + is the sign of disjunction, p -j- q is read "either p is true or
q is true." For the sake of clearness, I render the main implication sign in
each theorem by "if ... then," subordinate implications by "implies."
240 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
4. ^ (poq) D (^pDg) ( 2-5). If p does not imply q, then
not-p implies q.
5. <-' (pDg) D (pD'-'g) (#2-51). If p does not imply g, then
p implies not-g.
6. '-' (pDg) D (^ pD'-'g) (*2-52; misprinted, note proof). If
p does not imply g, then not-p implies not-g.
7. ^ (pDg) u (gDp) (#2-521). If p does not imply g, then g
implies p.
8. '-' (pDg) 3 p. If p does not imply g, then p is true.
9. / ' (pDg) D'-'g. If p does not imply g, then g is false. 8
and 9 are even more startling than 1 and 2, from which they are
proved by the rule (p D g) D (>- ' g D <-- ' p) .
10. - ' (p D g) Dp / ' g. If p does not imply q, then p is true and
g false.
11. pgD (pDg). (*3-4). If p and g are both true, then p im-
plies g.
12. pgD (gDp). If p and g are both true, then g implies p.
13. pg D (>-' p D g) . If p and g are both true, then not-p implies g.
14. pg 3 (/ ' g D p) . If p and g are both true, then not-g implies p.
15. <~> p <~> g3 (pDg). If p and g are both false, then p im-
plies g.
16. '-'p^-'gD (gDp). If p and g are both false, then q im-
plies p.
17. 'p'gD (pD'-'g). If p and g are both false, then p im-
plies not-g.
18. <-"$ <~- ' q^ (gD^p). If p and g are both false, then g im-
plies not-p.
19. -~'pgD (pDg). If p is false and g true, then p implies g.
20. ^pgD (pD^g). If p is false and g true, then p implies
not-g.
21. <~> pg D (^ g D / ' p) . If p is false and g true, then not-g im-
plies not-p.
22. >~> (pH-g) D (pDg). If it is false that " either p is true or
g is true, ' ' then p implies g.
In 22 the ^ p ~ / g of 15 is replaced by its equivalent, i~> (p -{-q).
Three more such theorems result from a similar substitution in 16,
17, and 18.
23. -> (^p-(- ^g) 3 (pDg). If it is false that "either p is
false or g is false, ' ' then p implies g.
23 results from substituting <~> (^ p -f- ' g) for pg in 11. Three
more theorems result from a similar substitution in 12, 13, and 14.
24. >-' (^p:+g) D (^psg). If it is false that "either p is
false or g is true," then not-p implies g.
24 results from substituting (^ p -|- g) for its equivalent, (p D g) ,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 241
in 4. Three more theorems result from, a similar substitution in 5,
6, and 7.
The above are the simplest of the theorems of this character which
involve only the terms, p, q, / ' p and - ' q. Without increasing the
number of terms, more complex theorems of the same sort can be
proved, apparently without limit. A few of the simpler theorems in-
volving a third proposition sign, r, are as follows:
25. <~> (pag) a (rap). If p does not imply q, any proposition
r implies p.
26. <~> (pag) a (gar). If p does not imply q, q implies any
proposition r.
27. <> (pag) a (-^par). If p does not imply q, not-p implies
any proposition r.
28. ' (pa g) D (r D - ' g). If p does not imply q, then any prop-
osition r implies not-g.
29. (pag) a [pa (rag)]. If p implies g, then p implies that
any proposition r implies q.
30. (p a g) a [p a t^ g a r) ] . If p implies g, then p implies that
not-g implies any proposition r.
31. (pag) a [' '#3 (ra^p)]. If p implies q, then not-g im-
plies that any proposition r implies not-p.
32. (pag) a [' 'ga (par)]. If p implies g, then not-g implies
that p implies any proposition r.
33. /-' (pag) a [ra (gap)]. If p does not imply g, then any
proposition r implies that g implies p.
34. >-' (p a g) a [r a (^ g D p) ] . If p does not imply g, then any
proposition r implies that not-g implies p.
35. r^ (p D g) D [r D (p z> ^ g) ] . If p does not imply g, then any
proposition r implies that p implies not-g.
The addition of a fourth proposition sign constitutes a vocabu-
lary sufficient for Alice in Wonderland. But consideration for the
reader and the printer requires that we make an end.
Any one of these theorems can be proved from the postulates of
"Principia Mathematica, " from those of Peano, from Schroder's,
and from any of the sets given by Huntington. They can also be
proved, in somewhat different form, from the assumptions of Mrs.
Ladd-Franklin's algebra, if the variables of that system are taken to
symbolize propositions or prepositional functions.
What these theorems reveal is the divergence of the meaning of
implies ' ' in the algebra of logic from the ' ' implies ' ' of valid infer-
ence. The way in which such theorems came to be included in the
"calculus of propositions" is, briefly, this: The calculus of proposi-
tions was preceded by and grew out of the ' ' calculus of classes. ' ' In
the algebra of classes, "all a is &" may be interpreted, "all cases of
242 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
a are cases of &, " or " all cases in which p is true are cases in which
q is true," hence, finally "p implies g." But the implication rela-
tion when "p implies g" means "q can be inferred from p" fails
to be analogous to the relation of class inclusion in more ways than
have yet been noticed. Many of the above theorems can be inter-
preted as propositions in the algebra of classes, and when so con-
strued become intelligible and true. Most of them will then be dis-
closed as results of the two conventions, (1) the zero or empty class is
contained in every class, and (2) every class is contained in the uni-
verse of discourse. These are the exact analogues of (1) a false
proposition implies any proposition, and (2) a true proposition is
implied by any proposition. In order successfully to symbolize valid
inference, the algebra of implication needs radical revision.
The consequences of this difference between the "implies" of the
algebra and the "implies" of valid inference are most serious. Not
only does the calculus of implication contain false theorems, but all
its theorems are not proved. For the theorems are implied by the
postulates in the sense of "implies" which the system uses. The
postulates have not been shown to imply any of the theorems except
in this arbitrary sense. Hence, it has not been demonstrated that the
theorems can be inferred from the postulates, even if all the postu-
lates are granted. The assumptions, e. g., of "Principia Mathe-
matica," imply the theorems in the same sense that a false proposi-
tion implies anything, or the first half of any of the above theorems
implies the last half. The postulates of the "Principia" imply the
"consequences" thereafter set down in exactly the same fashion
that "Socrates was a solar myth" implies "All triangles have two or
more sides. ' '
C. I. LEWIS.
UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA.
EEVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Meaning of God in Human Experience: A Philosophic Study of
Religion. WILLIAM ERNEST HOCKING. New Haven: Tale University
Press. 1912.
This is an interesting and important book. It is interesting because
of its subject, for it deals with the central theme both of philosophy and
religion, the meaning of God in human experience. It is interesting be-
cause of its method, for it is at all points the work of a fresh, original
thinker, dealing at first hand with his subject, and bringing to each ques-
tion which he faces at once a wide knowledge and an open mind. It is
interesting, finally, because of its conclusion, for the line which the au-
thor's thought follows leads him away from the beaten track of contem-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 243
porary philosophy and brings him to a position which, if not unique, is
at least unusual.
The book, it may be said at the outset, is not an easy one to read.
This is due in part to the style, which is singularly uneven, now suggest-
ing Carlyle in the ornateness of its rhetoric, and again speaking the sober
and exact language of science. A greater difficulty is the lack of a clear
and concise summary of the writer's argument. In the discussion of
isolated points, interesting and fruitful as they are, one is not always
conscious of their bearing upon the central theme. This is particularly
true when Professor Hocking assumes the role of expositor. He enters
so intelligently into his opponents' thought and states their arguments
with such inner sympathy that one finds oneself more than once on the
point of yielding assent to some position, only to find his guide shifting
his ground and beginning to argue on the other side.
But these difficulties lie on the surface. The reader who follows
Professor Hocking to the end will find himself richly repaid. The
author deals with real questions. He brings to their discussion not
only adequate technical knowledge, but personal graces of the spirit.
He is a philosopher who is also religious, and he writes with the glow
and fervor which true religion always produces in those who experience
it. He describes religion from the inside, not from the outside, telling
us what it means to the men who have it and never seeking to discredit
their witness or to transform it, as has so often been done in discus-
sions of the philosophy of religion, into something so different that they
themselves would not recognize it. At the same time he knows his phi-
losophy and brings to the interpretation of his subject that wide acquain-
tance with the thought of the past which is essential to progress in knowl-
edge. The book abounds in wise insights aptly expressed. Not in many
years have we read a book which lends itself so rewardingly to quotation.
We would be glad to illustrate this in detail did space permit.
In his preface the author defines his purpose and briefly indicates his
own philosophical position. He takes his departure from the general dis-
satisfaction with the older idealistic treatments of religion which has led
so many in our day to seek a positive groundwork for their faith elsewhere.
In the lack of clarity to which this effort has thus far led he finds the suffi-
cient warrant for his study. The book inquires "what in terms of ex-
perience its God means and has meant to mankind, and it proposes by aid
of the labors of all coworkers, criticizers and criticized alike, to find the
foundations of this religion, whether within reason or beyond" (VII.).
In other words, what is proposed is a rational study of religion in order
to determine whether or no religion be in its essence rational.
Having thus defined his problem, the author proceeds to indicate his
point of view, which is mystical as distinct from idealistic or pragmatic.
His mysticism is not indeed the negative mysticism which is world-denying,
not the " mysticism of mantic and theurgy, mysticism of supernatural ex-
ploit, seeking short-cut to personal goods " (XVIII.) ; rather the mysti-
cism which is implicit in all experience, the mysticism "which lends to
life that value which is beyond reach of fact, and that creativity which is
244 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
beyond the docility of reason; which neither denies nor is denied by the
results of idealism or the practical works of life, but supplements both,
and constitutes the essential standpoint of religion" (XVIII.). This
mysticism of experience the author further defines by contrast to idealism,
on the one hand, and pragmatism, on the other. The weakness of idealism
he holds to be its failure to do justice " to the particular and the historical
in religion, to the authoritative and the wholly superpersonal " (XL).
Just because it tries to bring everything under one all-embracing category
it does not do justice to the actual realities of life. It can not give us an
authoritative object existing over against us, commanding the allegiance
of the will. It shows, in short, " no adequate comprehension of the atti-
tude of worship " (XL). Pragmatism, on the other hand, is simply " ideal-
ism become more subjective, freedom less bound by authority" (XV.).
Useful in pointing out something wrong, it must leave the work of discov-
ering what is right to be done by other means. It may indeed serve as a
useful guide to action; it can not point for us the way of truth. For
knowledge deals with that which is given, and is impossible without ulti-
mates. The trouble with pragmatism is not that it is empirical, but that
it is not empirical enough. " An ultimate empiricism, a deference to what
is given, not makable, just in these regions of the supersensible and the
supernatural, is an attitude wholly necessary to human dignity and to true
religion. Far less than absolute idealism is positive pragmatism (radically
taken) capable of worship" (XVII.) .
What is sought then in the book is a rational defense of religion which
shall vindicate for the religious man what he has always believed himself
to find in his religion, first-hand contact with an authoritative object im-
mediately known as the most real and certain of facts.
The book falls into six divisions. The first deals with religion as seen
in its effects; the second, with religious feeling and religious theory; the
third, with the need of God; the fourth, with the knowledge of God; the
fifth, with worship and the mystics; the sixth, with the fruits of religion.
It is not possible to follow the course of the argument in detail, and we
shall have time only to comment briefly upon the points which seem to us
most important. These are, first, the author's conception of the nature of
religion; secondly, his view of the place of idea in religion; thirdly, his
view of the meaning of the God idea; and finally, his grounds for believ-
ing that such a being as God really exists.
Before beginning our comment in detail a word may be said of the
order followed. The philosophical discussion which fills Parts II. to IV.
is introduced and followed by chapters which describe religion as a fact of
experience. We can not but feel that this separation is unfortunate. The
materials from which the author draws his conception of religion as an
observed fact are not marshaled in any one place, with the result that the
reader is often left in doubt as to the ground of the conclusion drawn.
The discussion of worship and the mystical experience, as well as of the
prophetic consciousness, and other fruits of religion, are really presuppo-
sitions of the argument rather than its consequences, and the force of the
presentation would have been augmented if all the material dealing with
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 2i5
religion could have been grouped together at the outset. As it is, one has
the feeling of a certain abstractness and a priori character in the theoret-
ical discussion which is not really justified.
Taking up in detail the four points referred to, we begin with the au-
thor's view of religion. His analysis of the religious experience leads him
to note the following three characteristics : In the first place, it involves a
fearless and original valuation of things. It is an experience of individual
freedom and creativity over against one's environment. In the second
place, it is an experience of necessity. The fresh and original judgments
of religion seem to the man who possesses them to be not merely his own
individual creation, but due to an inner necessity to which he can not but
yield. And finally, the religious attitude assumes for the man who has it
a certain universal character. What is valid for him he believes to be valid
also for all men everywhere. The note of authority is the note of all
genuine religion. In these characteristics of combined freedom, necessity,
and universality, we have revealed the distinctive nature of religion as an
experience, namely, its " present possession of the distant sources of worth
and certainty" (p. 31). We may indeed define religion as "the present
attainment in a single experience of those objects which in the course of
nature are reached only at the end of infinite progression. Religion is an-
ticipated attainment" (p. 31).
This does not mean that the religious man is satisfied to accept his
environment as it is. On the contrary, the singular thing about religion
is that this experience of possession on the part of the person who has it
proves to be a spur to activity. The more intense the personal religious
experience, the more marked its effects in society. Religious men in every
age have been creators, alterers, turners of the world upside down. In-
deed, if one were to seek for a single word which would describe religion,
considered as an objective fact in history, it would be the word, creativity.
Religion, apparently often without independent content of its own, has
been the source of fruitful activity in every sphere of human interest.
This is signally illustrated by the mystical experience, that type of re-
ligious life which is commonly regarded as most anti-social and individ-
ualistic. Mysticism, Professor Hocking defines as " a way of dealing with
God, having cognitive and other fruit, affecting first the mystic's own
being and then his thinking, affording him thereby answers to prayer
which he can distinguish from the results of his own reflection " (p. 355).
It is not, at least since the Pseudo-Dionysius it has not meant to be, a
" rival theology," but rather " an experimental wisdom, having its
own methods and its own audacious intention of meeting Deity face
to face" (p. 355). Mysticism begins with a heightened consciousness
of self, a feeling of dissatisfaction with all the relative satisfactions af-
forded by life as it is. It involves a withdrawal into self, that in solitude
the hungry soul may renew its life by contact with the ultimate reality.
Herein lies its negative and world-denying character. But the mystic
does not stop here; at least, not ordinarily, or in the person of his best
representatives. Rather does he turn back to the world, in order that he
may live out the new insight which he has thus attained. In actual ex-
246 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
perience the mystics have been anything but solitaires. They have been
men of affairs, active, resourceful, creative. In their own personal ex-
perience they have discovered a profound psychological truth, the truth,
namely, that in order to insure the most effective social activity one must
from time to time withdraw into oneself for renewal through contact with
the primal founts of being. This law of alternation, which Professor
Hocking discusses at length in Chapter XXVIII., and of which he finds
many illustrations in human experience, is at once the explanation and
the justification of worship. To it are due those familiar social fruits of
religion, such as prophecy, inspiration, and the like, which he discusses at
length in his concluding chapters.
The second point of interest in the book is the author's discussion of
the place of idea in religion. How far, he asks, is the current tendency to
depreciate the intellectual content of religion justified? How far can we
adequately define religion in terms of feeling or of will? How far may
we regard the God idea as a by-product which is negligible for the pur-
poses of explaining the origin of religion and accounting for its function?
Professor Hocking answers all these questions in the negative. To him
idea is of the very essence of religion because it is implicit in the nature
of the religious experience itself. The religious experience is a metaphys-
ical experience in the sense of being an experience of contact with reality.
As such it involves an intellectual element which can not be ignored with-
out destroying the experience itself.
The section in which Professor Hocking maintains this thesis contains
the freshest and most original work in the book. It is an illuminating dis-
cussion of the psychology of feeling in its relation to idea. He discusses
the various theories which treat the two in their independence and shows
their inadequacy. It is impossible to isolate idea from feeling, for ideas
come into existence through our interest in reality. Love of truth is
itself a passion rooted in the nature of man, existing in and for itself
(p. 123), and conversely feeling never exists by itself, but is always a mark
of unstable equilibrium. Feeling is only another name for our search for
the idea. Religion, then, is quite in the right in insisting upon dogma.
Dogma is only our way of expressing our conviction that in religion we
deal with reality, and reality of a necessary and eternal nature. This is
why pragmatism, however useful it may be as a guide to truth, can never
satisfy us as an ultimate philosophy. "As mature persons we can wor-
ship only that which we are compelled to worship. . . . Unless God is that
being for whom the soul is inescapably destined by the eternal nature of
things, the worship of God will get no sufficient hold on the human heart "
(p. 152).
The conclusion, then, to which the author comes in his preliminary
study of the nature of religion is this : that " we can not find a footing for
religion in feeling, but must look for valid religious ideas. And these
ideas are not to be taken at liberty, nor deduced from the conception of
any necessary purpose. We are to seek the truth of religion obediently
in experience as something which is established in independence of our
finite wills" (p. 155).
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 247
So we are led to the third point to be noticed, the significance of the
God idea. Leaving open for the moment the question of the reality of
God, what must God be if he is to do for us what religion requires ? Three
things at least. In the first place, he must unify our world; secondly, he
must furnish us with an absolute standard ; and finally, he must be " inti-
mate infallible associate, present in all experience, as that by which we
too may firmly conceive that experience from the outside" (p. 224). He
must be one, not indeed in the sense of a bare abstract monism, but as
supplying that principle of unity that is necessary to a rational optimism,
a unity consistent, to be sure, with a relative pluralism, requiring it in-
deed in order to account for the evil of which we have practical experience,
but never elevating this evil to a level with itself, always regarding it as
the transitory, the subordinate, that which is ultimately to be overcome.
God, then, for religion will be " an individual reality not ourselves, which
makes for Tightness and which actually accomplishes Tightness when left
to its own working" (p. 177).
Again, God must be the Absolute, not in the sense of excluding the
relative that we know in experience, but as providing the standard by
which it is to be judged. So conceived, the Absolute is the most indis-
pensable of all conceptions, to which we are led on purely pragmatic
grounds. For action is not interested solely in making differences. It
is interested rather " in making improvement, or, in other words, change
in a situation which itself is permanent" (p. 186). The very conception
of improvement implies a standard, and so brings us face to face with the
Absolute. God, then, must be for us a unifying principle and an absolute
standard, but above all he must be that intimate personal friend that
religion has always affirmed him to be and that the experience of religious
men has shown him to be in fact.
At this point the author faces the crux of every religious philosophy,
the problem of evil. He considers the ancient dilemma, which Professor
McTaggart has recently revived in his book, " Some Dogmas of Religion."
Either God can control evil and does not, in which case he is not good, or
he would, but can not, in which case he is not God. The author points out
that the fallacy in this dilemma lies in regarding evil as something com-
plete in itself apart from its relations; whereas, the characteristic feature
of the religious life has been that it has never been willing to accept this
conclusion. Eeligion has never denied the fact of evil. Rather has it
intensified it in manifold ways. But it has insisted that evil is not the last
word of evil (p. 218). There is a meaning behind evil, a purpose working
itself out through it, which makes it worth all it costs, and God as the
great Other who gives the key to this meaning is the power by which this
transmutation of values is wrought.
From definition we pass to proof. Granting that we have correctly de-
scribed what religion seeks in its God, how do we know that such a being
exists in fact? Here Professor Hocking's answer is very simple. We
know God just as we know any other object, by first-hand experience
p. 229). Not indeed that the consciousness of God is everywhere and
always explicit, but that even in the simplest religious feeling we hare al-
248 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ready implicitly present " idea masses prepared beforehand in some more
elemental experience" (p. 233), which in time develop into the great con-
cept we call God. It is not that we come to the God idea at some partic-
ular stage of our experience, still less that we reason from this experience
to the idea, but that we discover on reflection that which has always been
present implicitly from the first. Our knowledge of God here stands on
the same basis with all other knowledge, notably with our knowledge of
our fellowmen. Indeed, Professor Hocking argues at length to prove that
we could not know other persons at all if it were not for this prior posses-
sion of a knowledge of God as the standard by which real personal exist-
ence is to be tested. In this respect all three of the fundamental objects of
our knowledge, God, nature, and our fellowmen, stand on the same level.
They are not independent objects of knowledge, but each is involved in
and with the others, and our consciousness of the reality of any one stands
and falls with our consciousness of the reality of the others. Nature is
known to us as real because it is the object of common knowledge by other
selves. Selves are known to us as real because they are fellow knowers of
a real nature; and nature and other selves are both alike known as real
because there is implicitly present in our knowledge of each that great
other self whom we call God. From the beginning " God is immediately
known, and permanently known, as the other Mind which in creating
Nature is also creating me " (p. 297).
If we ask more in detail how we come to the consciousness of this
mysterious presence Professor Hocking can give us no clear answer.
" Through no historical retracings shall we discover the silent entrance
into nature of that presence " (p. 234) . Shall we say that we rise to the
thought of God from the sense of mystery which primitive man feels face
to face with the phenomena of nature and of human life ? But before man
can feel mystery God must be there already. There is all the difference in
the world between the sense of ignorance and the sense of mystery. " The
former means, I know not ; the latter means, I know not, but it is known "
(p. 236). If then we wish to describe " the original source " of the knowl-
edge of God we should have to say that it is " an experience of not being
alone in knowing the world, and especially the world of nature. In such
an experience if there be such would be contained all the possibilities
for harm and for good which religion has exhibited" (p. 236).
Holding such views, it is not strange that the one argument for God's
existence which has weight for the author is the ontological argument.
This to him is not a syllogism of formal logic, but simply a report of ex-
perience. It is our way of telling what we actually find in our own ex-
perience and trusting the processes which make that report as valid wit-
nesses. If we were to put it in logical form we should have to say, not " I
have an idea of God, therefore God exists," but " I have an idea of God,
therefore I have an experience of God" (p. 314). In our knowledge of
God idea and experience belong together. We could not have the first
without the second. In the course of our experience, to be sure, the idea
is further developed and gains richness of content from many different
sources, but its essential elements are present from the first. The fact that
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 249
we have it at all is our guarantee that in religion we are dealing with a
reality as real as any of which it is possible for us to conceive.
So much by way of exposition. A word of final estimate. I have
spoken of the author's thought as leading him away from the beaten track
of contemporary philosophy and bringing him to a position which if not
unique is at least unusual. It is none the less true that the book is
symptomatic of a certain tendency in current thinking. It springs from
the same impulse which has given birth to modern realism, the desire to
get away from abstractions and artificialities and to recover contact with
the real world as given to us in experience. The originality of Professor
Hocking's treatment is found in his insistence upon the fact that the
most certain things in experience are not the physical objects that we call
things, but those centers of conscious rational activity that we call per-
sons. What he reaches to use his own words is " a supernatural real-
ism, or a social realism, or more truly a realism of the Absolute not far
removed from absolute idealism " (p. 290) . God and the self, or rather
the society of selves these for him constitute the ultimate realities.
We believe that this reminder is timely. It is high time that we real-
ized that no psychology of religion can be scientific which ignores the
meaning of religious experience to the man who has it. Writing as a
psychologist for psychologists Professor Hocking shows us what this ex-
perience implies, and behold, it is metaphysical through and through.
Accepting the pragmatist test of usefulness as a clue to reality, he applies
it to the object of religious faith and shows that the qualities of inevit-
ableness and finality in the older definitions of God against which prag-
matism protests are essential to its adequate functioning in religion. In
this we believe that he is entirely right, and in his emphasis upon the
pragmatic value of the Absolute for religion will be found the chief merit
of the book.
When we pass from this general thesis to the details of the treatment
we find ourselves now and again raising a query. Is the God whom we
find thus given in experience adequately defined? Admitting that Pro-
fessor Hocking is right in making place in his definition for the attri-
butes of unity and absoluteness has he done equal justice to other ele-
ments which have been central, we will not say in the idea simply, but in
the experience of God. One hears little of the qualities of justice and of
love which have played so great a part in historic religion. The ethical
experience with its consciousness of sin and its sense of brotherhood, is
given little or no place either in establishing faith in God or in deter-
mining the content of the God idea. One gains the impression as one
reads that however much may have entered into the content of the God
idea through the great ethical religions it is after all negligible compared
with those more general elements which are common to the ethical relig-
ions with the natural religions which they have replaced. More than once
we hear Professor Hocking saying that it is more certain to the religious
man that God is than what he is (p. 296 cf., p. 317), or using such sen-
tences as this: "In finding God simply existent we find him both good
and righteous in his activity, and the condition of so finding him is that
250 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
he himself remains above the contrasts of good and evil" (p. 332). Such
language in its abstract and a priori character is suspiciously suggestive
of the absolute idealism which the author repudiates. What has become,
one is tempted to ask, of the radical empiricism of which so much was
made at the outset? Wherein does the author's attitude toward the con-
crete and historic in religion differ from, let us say, that of Hegel?
Nor is it only in connection with the content of the God idea that we
find ourselves asking questions. In his statement of the grounds of
belief Professor Hocking passes lightly over aspects of the religious
experience which have seemed to many religious men of controlling
importance. One may agree with him that the experience which the
ontological argument seeks to express does really lie at the basis of every
proof of God. We believe in God not because we can demonstrate his
existence by logic, but because faith in him is so indissolubly associated
with all the highest values of life that we simply can not conceive of life
without him. But in experience this conviction never meets us alone,
but always associated with other convictions, intellectual and moral,
which clothe it with warmth and content. The God in whom faith rests
is never (certainly never at first) the abstract " I am," of whom one can
say only that " he is," but the God of strength or of wisdom, or of justice
or of love, who has some message to give, some purpose to be fulfilled, some
power to display. So the interests which underlie the cosmological, the
teleological, and above all, the moral arguments, can never be divorced
from the ontological, and the reasoning which (rightly as we believe)
endeavors to rehabilitate the one must concern itself with the others also.
The difficulty into which Professor Hocking has fallen at this point is
due, we can not but feel, to his failure adequately to estimate, or, at all
events, to use the contribution of history to religion. In spite of all that
is said about the importance of idea for religion the content of religious
belief is lightly touched on, and the difference which separates the historic
types of religion dismissed as irrelevant. For Professor .Hocking, as for
Professor James, the mystic is the typically religious man, and the dis-
tinctive contributions of ethics to religion minimized, if not altogether
overlooked.
But we would not end upon a note of criticism. We believe Professor
Hocking has a real message to the religious thought of our day. We
know no book which more adequately diagnoses the weakness of the pres-
ent religious situation or more clearly points out the needed remedy. We
need a philosophy which shall combine the firm grasp of idealism upon
the necessary and abiding elements in religion with the keen sense of the
concrete and the historic, and above all, the strong ethical interest which
characterizes pragmatism. We need a philosophy which shall bring to
the study of the religious experience that sober common sense, that re-
spect for fact as fact which gives our new realism its all but religious
quality, without making our experience of physical objects our exclusive
standard of reality. We need, in short, a philosophy which shall make
personality in the sense in which we know it in ourselves, and which is
presupposed in the great spiritual experiences of mankind, the most real
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 251
thing in the world, the standard by which everything that deserves to be
called reality must be tested. Professor Hocking has pointed out this
need; he has made a distinct contribution toward meeting it. We trust
that his book may lead others to move still farther along the path which
he has pointed out.
WILLIAM ADAMS BROWN.
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
THE PHILOSOPHICAL EEVIEW. November, 1912. Conscious-
ness and Object (633-640): FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE. - Eeplies to a
former criticism of Professor Thilly. Maintains and further explains the
soundness of the two assertions that consciousness marks the difference
between an object and the consciousness of the object, and that conscious-
ness has no efficiency. Implication and Existence in Logic (pp. 641-665) :
CHRISTINE LADD-FRANKLIN. - Sets forth the objections to making the
phrase, " p implies q" used by symbolic logicians, typical of pure mathe- 1
matics. Illustrates the misconceptions arising from following unwarily
M. Bertrand Russell by a criticism of Professor Mamin's article, " The
Existential Proposition." Henri Bergson : Personalist (pp. 666-675) :
MARY WHITON CALKINS. - A protest against current misinterpretations of
Bergson's teaching. " He is claimed, or criticized, as pragmatist or tem-
poralist when, as a matter of fact, he is first and foremost a personalist
and idealist of the renaissant spiritualistic school." Reviews of Books
(pp. 676-700) : George Malcolm Stratton, Psychology of the Religious
Life: GEORGE ALBERT COE. R. M. Wenley, Kant and his Philosophical
Revolution: ERNEST ALBEE, James Seth, English Philosophers and
Schools of Philosophy: GEORGE H. SABINE. Borden Parker Bowne, Kant
and Spencer: A Critical Exposition: EDGAR L. HINMAN. V. Brochard,
Etudes de Philosophic Ancienne et de Philosophic Moderne: G. S. BRETT.
Notices of New BooTcs. Summaries of Articles. Notes.
Allan, Archibald. Space and Personality. London: Oliver and Burd.
1913. Pp. xxv + 607.
Walter, Herbert E. Genetics; An Introduction to the Study of Hered-
ity. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1913. Pp. xiv + 272.
$1.50.
Weaver, Edward E. Mind and Health. New York : The Macmillan Com-
pany. 1913. Pp. xv -f- 500. $2.00.
NOTES AND NEWS
THE New York Branch of the American Psychological Association
will meet in conjunction with the Section of Anthropology and Psychol-
ogy of the New York Academy of Sciences, on Monday, April 28, at
252 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Columbia University. The following papers will be presented: "Binet
Tests in Schools for Incorrigibles in New York City," A. E. Rejall;
" Some Individual Differences in Immediate Memory Span," G. F.
Williamson; "The Order of Merit Method and the Method of Paired
Comparisons," Miss Mabel Barrett ; " Effect of Size and Frequency on
Permanency of Impression," Dr. E. K. Strong ; " A Comparison of the
Records of the Criminal Woman and the Working Child in a Series of
Mental Tests," Dr. Clara J. Weidensall ; " Families of American Men of
Science," Professor J. McK. Cattell ; " The Influence of Strychnine on
Mental and Motor Efficiency," Dr. A. T. Poffenberger.
MR. KmKpATRiCK, of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, announces that, in
accordance with his recently outlined plan to secure photographs of psy-
chologists, philosophers, educators, and scientists, on a basis of the demand
for them, pictures of psychologists are now being obtained. The demand
for photographs of philosophers, educators, and scientists has been very
slight, and it is, therefore, urged that requests for these be sent in at once.
The photographs will be of the uniform size of eight by ten and it is
expected that they will be accompanied by autographs.
A CONFERENCE between teachers of law, social science, and philosophy
to discuss the problem of " Law in Relation to Social Ends " has been
called for April 25, at the College of the City of New York, and for
April 26, at Columbia University, under the chairmanship of Professor
John Dewey. Papers on the main topic or on points bearing on the
relation of philosophy to law are to be presented.
THE appearance of the two following journals is announced by their
publishers: Jahrbuch filr Philosophie und phiinomenologische Forschung,
edited by E. Husserl, and published by Max Niemeyer, Halle, and Die
Geisteswissenschaften, edited by Dr. Otto Buek and Dr. Paul Herre, and
published by Verlag von Veit and Company, Leipzig.
UNDER the auspices of the Catholic Summer School of America, an
extension course of five lectures was given in New York City by the
Rev. William Turner, of the Catholic University of America, on " The
Philosophical Errors of the Day."
PROFESSOR JAMES H. TUFTS, head of the department of philosophy in
the University of Chicago, was the convocation orator at the eighty-
sixth convocation of that institution on March 18. The subject of his ad-
dress was " The University and the Advance of Justice."
PROFESSOR GEORGE HERBERT PALMER, Alvord professor of natural re-
ligion, moral philosophy, and civil polity, and Professor Francis Pea-
body, Plummer professor of Christian morals, have given their final lec-
tures at Harvard University.
DR. FELIX KRUEGER, professor of philosophy at the University of
Halle, and Kaiser Wilhelm professor at Columbia University, lectured on
psychological subjects recently at the University of Wisconsin cad the
University of Illinois.
VOL. X. No. 10. MAY 8, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
CONCERNING MULTIPLE INTERPRETATIONS OF POS-
TULATE SYSTEMS AND THE " EXISTENCE"
OF HYPERSPACE
WPIAT do we mean when we speak of M-dimensional space and
7i-dimensional geometry, where n is greater than 3 ? The ques-
tion refers to talk about space and geometry that are w-dimensional
in points, for ordinary space, as is well known, is 4-dimensional in
lines, 4-dimensional in spheres, 5-dimensional in flat line-pencils, 6-
dimensional in circles, etc., and there is naturally no mystery in-
volved in speaking of these latter varieties of multi-dimensional man-
ifolds and their geometries, no matter how high the dimensionality
may be. No mystery for the reason that in these geometries every-
thing lies within the domain of intuition in the same sense in which
everything in ordinary (point) geometry lies in that domain. In
other words, these w-dimensional geometries are nothing but theories
or geometries of ordinary space, that arise when we take for element,
not the point, but some other entity, as the line or the sphere, . . .,
whose determination in ordinary space requires more than 3 inde-
pendent data. Of these varieties of n-dimensional geometry, the in-
ventor was Julius Pliicker (d. 1868), but Pliicker declined to con-
cern himself with spaces and geometries of more than four dimen-
sions in points.
Since Pliicker 's time, however, such hyper- theories of points have
invaded not only almost every branch of pure mathematics, but also
strangely enough certain branches of physical science, as, for
example, the kinetic theory of gases. As to the manner of this latter
invasion a hint may be instructive. Given N gas molecules enclosed,
say, in a sphere. These molecules are, it is supposed, flying about
hither and thither, all of them in motion. Each of them depends on
six coordinates, x, y, z, u, v, w, where x, y, z are the usual positional
coordinates of the molecule regarded as a point in ordinary space,
and u, v, w are the components of the molecule's velocity along the
three coordinate axes. Knowing the six things about a given mole-
253
254 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
cule, we know where it is and the direction and rate of its going.
The N molecules making up the gas depend on 6N coordinates. At
any instant these have definite values. These values together define
the "state" of the gas at that instant. Now these 6A T values are said
to determine a point in space of 6A 7 dimensions. Thus is set up a
one-one correspondence between such points and the varying gas
states. As the state of the gas changes, the corresponding point
generates a locus in the space of 6N dimensions. In this way the be-
havior or history of the gas gets geometrically represented by loci in
the hyperspace in question.
Is such geometric w-dimensional phraseology merely a geometric
way of speaking about non-spatial things? Even if there exists a
space, S n , one may employ the language appropriate to the geometry
of the space without having the slightest reference to it, and, indeed,
without knowing or even enquiring whether it exists. This use of
geometric speech in discourse about non-spatial things is not only
possible, but in fact very common. An easily accessible example of
it may be found in Bocher 1 where, in speaking of a set of values of
n independent variables as a point in space of n dimensions, the
reader is told that the author's use of geometric language for the ex-
pression of algebraic facts is due to certain advantages of that lan-
guage compared with the language of algebra or of analysis; he is
told that the geometric terms will be employed "in a wholly con-
ventional algebraic sense ' ' and that ' ' we do not propose even to raise
the question whether in any geometric sense there is such a thing as
space of more than three dimensions. ' '
It is held by many, including perhaps the majority of mathema-
ticians, that there are no hyperspaces of points and that n-dimen-
sional geometries are, rightly speaking, not geometries at all, but
that the facts dealt with in such so-called geometries are nothing but
algebraic or analytic or numeric facts expressed in geometric lan-
guage. If this opinion be correct, then the extensive and growing
application of geometric language to analytical theories of higher
dimensionality indicates a high superiority of geometric over analytic
speech, and it becomes a problem for psychology to ascertain whether
the mentioned superiority is adequate to explain the phenomenon in
question and, if it be adequate, to show wherein the superiority
resides.
No doubt geometric language has a kind of esthetic value that is
lacking in the speech of analysis, for the former, being transfused
with the rich reminiscences of sensibility, constantly awakens a de-
lightful sense, as thinking proceeds, of the colors, forms, and motions
of the sensuous world. This is an emotional value. No doubt, too,
1 ' ' Introduction to Higher Algebra, ' ' page 9.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 255
geometric language has, in its distinctive conciseness, an economic
superiority, as when, for example, one speaks of the points of the 4-
dimensional sphere, x 2 -j- y z -f z 2 -\- w 2 = r 2 , instead of speaking of
the various systems of values of the variables x, y, z, w that satisfy
the equation x 2 + = r 2 . Additional advantages of geometric over
analytic speech are brought to light in the following remarks by
Poincare in his address, "L'Avenir des Mathematiques " (1908) :
"Un grand avantage de la geometrie, c'est precisement que les
sens y peuvent venir au secours de Pintelligence, et aident a deviner
la route a suivre, et bien des esprits preferent ramener les problemes
d 'analyse a la forme geometrique. Malheureusement nos sens ne
peuvent nous mener bien loin, et ils nous faussent compagnie des
que nous voulons nous envoler en dehors des trois dimensions
classiques. Est-ce a dire que, sortis de ce domaine restraint ou ils
semblent vouloir nous enfermer, nous ne devons plus compter que
sur 1'analyse pure et que toute geometric a plus de trois dimensions
est vaine et sans objet? Dans la generation qui nous a precedes, les
plus grands maitres auraient repondu 'oui'; nous sommes anjourd'-
hui tellement familiarises avec cette notion que nous pouvons en
parler, meme dans un cours d'universite, sans provoquer trop
d'etonnement.
"Mais a quoi peut-elle servir? II est aise de le voir: elle nous
donne d'abord un langage tres commode, qui exprime en termes tres
concis ce que le langage analytique ordinaire dirait en phrases pro-
lixes. De plus, ce langage nous fait nommer du meme nom ce qui se
ressemble et affirme des analogies qu'il ne nous permet plus d'oublier.
II nous permet done encore de nous diriger dans cet espace qui est
trop grand pour nous et que nous ne pouvons voir, en nous rappelant
sans cesse 1 'espace visible qui n'en est qu'une image imparfaite sans
doute, mais que en est encore une image. Ici encore, comme dans
tous les exemples precedents, c'est 1'analogie avec ce qui est simple
qui nous permet de comprendre ce qui est complexe. ' '
The question of determining the comparative advantages and
disadvantages of the languages of geometry and analysis is a very
difficult one. It is evidently in the main a psychological problem. It
appears that no serious and systematic attempt has ever been made
to solve it. Here, it seems, is an inviting opportunity for a properly
qualified psychologist, it being understood that proper qualification
would include a familiar knowledge of the languages in question.
The interest and manifold utility of such a study are obvious. In
the course of such an investigation it would probably be found that
the superiority of geometric over analytic speech is alone sufficient to
account for the extensive and rapidly increasing literature of what is
called n-dimensional geometry and that, in order to account for the
256 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
rise of such literature, it is therefore not necessary to suppose the
existence of w-dimensional spaces, 8 nf the facts dealt with in the
literature being, it could be supposed, nothing but analytic facts ex-
pressed in geometric language.
If such a result were found, would it follow that S n does not
exist and that consequently w-dimensional geometry must be nothing
but analysis in geometric garb ? The answer is, no ; for we may and
we often do assign an adequate cause of a phenomenon or event with-
out assigning the actual cause; and so the possibility would remain
that w-dimensional geometry has an appropriate object or subject,
namely, a space S n which, though without sensuous existence, yet
has every kind of existence that may warrantably be attributed to
ordinary geometric space, $ 3 . For this last, though it is imitated by
(or imitates) sensible space, as an ideal model or pattern is imitated
by (or imitates) an imperfect copy, it is not identical with it. S s is
not tactile space, nor visual space, nor that of muscular sensation,
nor the space of any other sense, nor of all the senses it is a concep-
tual space ; and whether there are or are not spaces $ 4 , S s , etc., which
have every sort of existence rightly attributable to ordinary geometric
space, $ 3 , and which differ from the latter only in the accident of
dimensionality and in the further accident that S 3 appears in the
role of an ideal prototype for an actual sensible space, whilst S 4 , $ 5 ,
etc., do not present such an appearance, that is the question which
remains for consideration.
A friend called at my study, and, finding me at work, asked,
' ' What are you doing ? ' ' My reply was : ' ' I am trying to tell how a
world which probably does not exist would look if it did." I had
been at work on a chapter of what is called 4-dimensional geometry.
The incident occurred ten years ago. The reply to my friend no
longer represents my conviction. Subsequent reflection has convinced
me that a space, $, of four or more dimensions has every kind of
existence that may be rightly ascribed to the space, $ 3 , of ordinary
geometry.
The following paragraphs present merely in outline, for space
is lacking for a minute presentation the considerations that have
led me to the conclusion above stated.
Let sensible space be denoted by s8 s . We know that sS s is dis-
continuous (in the mathematical sense of the term) and that it is
irrational. By saying that it is irrational I mean what common ex-
perience as well as the results of experimental psychology prove:
that three sensible extensions of a same type, let us for definiteness
say three sensible lengths, l lf 1 2 , 1 3 , may be such that
(i) Zi=z I 2 =>k,
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 257
Because sS 3 is thus irrational, because it is radically infected with
such contradictions as (1), this space is not, and can not be, the sub-
ject or object of geometry, for geometry is rational : it does not ad-
mit three such extensions as those in (1). Not only do such contra-
dictions as (1) render sS 3 impossible as a subject or object of geom-
etry, but, when encountered, they produce intolerable intellectual
pain nay, if they could not in somewise be transcended or overcome,
they would produce intellectual death, for, unless the law of non-
contradiction be preserved, concatenative thinking, the life of intel-
lect, must cease. In case of intellect we may say that its struggle for
existence is a struggle against contradictions. But mere existence
is not the characteristic aim or aspiration of intellect. Its aim, its
aspiration, its joy, is compatibility. Indeed, intellect seems to be
controlled by two forces, a vis a tergo and a vis a f route: it is driven
by discord and drawn by concord. Intellect is a perpetual suitor,
the object of the suit being harmony, the beautiful daughter of the
muses. Its perpetual enemy is the immortal demon of discord, ever
being overcome, but never vanquished.
The victory of intellect over the characteristic contradictions in-
herent in sS 3 is won through what we call conception. That is to say
that either we find or else we create another kind of space which, in
order to distinguish it nominally and symbolically from sS 3 , we may
call conceptual space, and denote by cS 3 . Unlike sS 3 , cS 3 is mathe-
matically continuous and it is rational. Like sS 3 , cS 3 is extended, it
has room, but the room and the extensions are not sensible, they are
conceptual; and these extensions are such that, if l lt 1 2 , 1 3 be three
amounts of a given type of extension, as length, say, and if 1 1 = 1 2
and 1 2 = 1 3 , then ^ = 3. The space c$ 3 , whether we regard it as
found by the intellect or as created by it, is the subject or object of
geometry. The current vulgar confusion of sS 3 and cS 3 is doubtless
due to the fact that the former imitates the latter, or the latter the
former, as a sensible thing imitates its ideal, or as an ideal (of a sen-
sible thing) may be said to imitate that thing; for it is precisely such
alternative or mutual imitation that enables us in a measure to con-
trol the sensible world through its conceptual counterpart; and so
the exigencies of practical affairs and the fact that reciprocally imi-
tating things each reminds us of the other cooperate to cause the
sensible and the ideal, the perceptual and the conceptual, to mingle
constantly and to become confused in that part of our mental life
that belongs to the sensible and the conceptual worlds of three di-
mensions. Nevertheless, it is a fact to be borne in mind that cS 3 is
a subject or object of geometry and that sS 3 is not.
Now, in order to construct the geometry in question, we start with
a suitable system of postulates or axioms expressing certain rela-
258 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
tions among what are called the elements of cS 3 . These postulates,
together with such propositions as are deducible from them, consti-
tute the geometry of c$ 8 . I shall call it pure geometry, for a reason
to be given later, and shall denote it by pG 3 . For definiteness let us
refer to the famous and familiar postulates of Hilbert. Any other
system would do as well. In the Hilbert system, the elements are
called points, lines, and planes. It is customary and just to point out
that the terms point, line, and plane are not defined, and in critical
commentary it is customary to add :
(A) That, consequently, these terms may be taken to be the names
of any things whatsoever with the single restriction that the things
must satisfy the relations stated by the postulates ;
(B) That, when some admissible or possible interpretation I has
been given to the element-names, the postulates P together with their
deducible consequences C constitute a definite theory or doctrine D ;
(C) That replacing / by a different interpretation /' produces no
change whatever in D-
(D) That this invariant D is Euclidean geometry of three di-
mensions; and
(E) That, if we are to speak of D as a theory or geometry of a
space, this space is nothing but the ensemble of any kind of things
that may serve for an interpretation of P.
That the view expressed in that so-called "critical commentary"
does not agree with common sense or with traditional usage is ob-
vious. That it will not bear critical reflection can, I believe, be made
evident. Let us examine it a little. In order to avoid the prejudicial
associations of the terms point, line, and plane, we may replace them
by the terms "roint," "rine," and "rane," so that the first postu-
late, or axiom, as Hilbert calls it, will read: Two distinct roints al-
ways completely determine a rine. Or, better still, we may replace
them by the symbols e 1} e 2 , e S) so that the reading will be : Two dis-
tinct e^s always completely determine an e 2 ; and similarly for the
remaining postulates.
We will suppose the phrasing of (A), (B), (C) ; (D), (#),
slightly changed to agree with the indicated new phrasing of the
postulates.
It seems very probable that there are no termless relations, i. e,,
relations that do not relate. It seems very probable that a relation
to be a relation must be something actually connecting or subsisting
between at least two things or terms. A postulate expressing a rela-
tion having terms is at all events ostensibly a statement about the
terms, and so it would seem that, if the relation be supposed to be
termless, the statement ceases to be a statement about something and,
in so ceasing, ceases to be a statement that is true or else is false. In
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 259
discourse, it is true, there is frequent seeming evidence that relations
are often thought of as termless, as when, for example, we speak of
"a relation and its terms"; but then we speak also of a neckless
fiddle without intending to imply by such locution that there can be
a fiddle without a neck. As, however, we do not wish the validity of
the following criticism to depend on the denial of the possibility of
termless relations, the discussion will be conducted in turn under
each of the alternative hypotheses: (hj There are termless rela-
tions; (h 2 ) There are no termless relations. We will begin with
HYPOTHESIS h 2
To (A) we make no objection.
Let us now suppose given to P some definite interpretation 7.
Let us grant that we now have a definite doctrine D, consisting of P
and C. Either the things which in / the e 's denote have or they have
not content, character, or meaning, m, in excess of the fact that they
satisfy P.
(1) Suppose they have not an excessive meaning m. Denote the
interpretation by J x and the doctrine by D^. This D : is a queer doe-
trine. We may ask : what does D 1 relate or refer to ? That is, what
is it a doctrine of or about? The question seems to admit of no in-
telligent or intelligible answer. For if the doctrine is about some-
thing, it is, it seems natural to say, a doctrine about the /^things
(denoted by the e's) ; but, by (1), these /^things can not be charac-
terized or indicated otherwise than by the fact of their satisfying P ;
and so it appears that such attempted natural answer is reducible and
equivalent to saying (a) that the doctrine D^ is about the things
which it is about. In order not to be thus defeated, one might try to
give an informing answer by saying that D { is a doctrine, not about
the /^things, *. e., not about terms of relations, but about the rela-
tions themselves. Such an answer is suspicious on account of its un-
naturalness, and it is unnatural because the propositions of D^ wear
the appearance of talking explicitly, not about relations, but about
terms of relations. Moreover, the answer is not an informing one
unless the delations that the doctrine D^ is alleged to be about can be
characterized otherwise than by the fact of their being satisfied by
the /^things, for, if they can not be otherwise characterized, evi-
dently by (1) the answer reduces to a form essentially like that of
(a). May not one escape by saying that the relations which D 1 is
alleged to be a doctrine about are just the relations expressed by the
propositions in Z^? Does this attempted characterization make the
answer in question an informing one ? If D! is a doctrine about the
relations expressed by its propositions, then D^ says or teaches some-
260 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
thing about these relations, for every doctrine, if it be about some-
thing, must teach or say something about that which it is about. In
the ease supposed, what does Z^ teach about the relations ? Nothing
except that they are satisfied by the /^things. In other words, what
D 1 teaches about the relations expressed by its propositions is, by
(1), that these are satisfied by things that satisfy them a not very
nutritious lesson. It is possible to make a yet further attempt so to
indicate the relations as to render the answer, that the doctrine D^ is
about relations, an informing one. It is known that P may receive
an interpretation /' different from J 1 in that the /'-things do not sat-
isfy (1), but have an excessive content, character, or meaning m.
May we not give the required indication of the relations that /) a is
said to be a doctrine about by saying that they are relations satisfied
by the /'-things, the presence of the m involved making the indication
genuine or effective ? It seems so at first. But if again we ask what
/>! teaches about the relations thus indicated, we are led into the
same difficulty as above. Moreover, when we ask what Z^ is a doc-
trine about we expect an answer in terms in somewise mentioned or
intimated in the D : discourse, whilst in the case in hand the required
indication has depended on m, a thing expressly excluded from the
Dj discourse by (1).
So, I repeat, D^ is a queer doctrine.
It must be aded that if there be an interpretation I lf it is unique
of its kind; for if // were an interpretation satisfying (1), the //-
things would have no excesive meaning m; hence they would be
simply the /^things, and / x and // would be merely two symbols for
a same interpretation.
Accordingly, if there were an interpretation I l} but no other, i. e.,
no interpretation / in which the /-things did not satisfy (1), then
(C) would be pointless; by (/)),/>! would be Euclidean geometry of
three dimensions; and, by (E), Euclidean space, if we wished to
speak of D i as a geometry of a space, would be the ensemble of the
/i-things ; but, if we wished to characterize the /^things, the elements
of Euclidean space, we could only say that they are the things satis-
fying certain relations, and, if we wished to indicate what relations,
we could only say, the relations satisfied by those things: a very
handsome circle.
In the following it will be seen that we are in fact not imprisoned
within that circle.
(2) Suppose the /-things of the above-assumed interpretation /
do not satisfy (1), but have an excessive meaning m. (It is known
that such an / is possible, an example being found by taking for an
e t any ordered triad of real numbers (x,y,z); for an e z the ensemble
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 261
of triads satisfying any two distinct equations,
A& + B,y -f C& -f 7>! = 0, A 2 x + B z y + C 2 z + 7> 2 = 0,
in neither of which the coefficients are all of them zero ; and for an
e 3 the ensemble of triads satisfying any one such equation ; the pres-
ence of m being evident in countless facts such as the fact, for ex-
ample, that an e^ is composed of numbers studied by school-boys or
useful in trade without regard to their ordered triadic relationship.)
Denote the assumed definite interpretation I by 7 2 to remind us that
it satisfies (2), and denote the corresponding doctrine by 7) 2 . It is
immediately evident that there is an interpretation 7 t and hence a
doctrine D ly for to obtain 7 t it is sufficient to abstract from the m of
the 7 2 -things and to take the abstracts (which plainly satisfy (1) ) for
7 1 -things.
Are D 1 and D 2 but two different symbols for one and the same
doctrine, as asserted by (C) 1 Evidently not. For, in respect of D 2 ,
we can give an informing answer to the question, what is D 2 a doc-
trine about? Owing to the presence of the m in the 7 2 -things, the
answer will be an informing one whether it be the natural answer
that D 2 is a doctrine about the 7 2 -things, or one of the less natural
answers, that D 2 is about the relations having the 7 2 -things for terms,
that 7> 2 is about the relations expressed by its propositions; whilst,
as we have seen, owing to the absence of m in the 7 1 -things no such
answers were, in respect of D^, informing answers.
Can not (C) be saved by refusing to admit that there is an inter-
pretation Zj, and so refusing to admit that there is a 7^ ? If there
is no I t and hence no Z) 1 , then (C) is pointless unless there is an 7 2 '
and so a D 2 in which the 7 2 '-things have an m' different from the m
of the 7 2 -things. But if there is an 7 2 ' thus different from 7 2 , then
obviously D 2 and D 2 are, contrary to (C), different doctrines, for
they are respectively doctrines about the 7 2 -things and the 7 2 '-things,
and these thing-systems are different by virtue of the difference of
m and m'. Now, it is known that there are two such differing inter-
pretations 7 2 and 7 2 '. For we may suppose 7 2 to be the possible
interpretation indicated in the above parenthesis. And for 7 2 ' we
may take for e l any ordered triad of real numbers, except a specified
triad (a, &, c), and including (oo, oo, oo); for e 2 the ensemble of
triads, except (a, &, c), that satisfy any pair of equations,
y &)
1 (a c) ^ 1 (o 2
y ft)
and for e 3 the ensemble satisfying any one such equation. Just as
262 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
when we compared D : and Z) 2 , so here the conclusion is, that (C) is
not valid.
As a matter of fact mathematicians know that there are possible
infinitely many different interpretations of P. It follows from the
foregoing that there are correspondingly many different doctrines.
For the sake of completeness we may include Z> x among these,
although, for the purpose of answering a hypothetical objection, we
momentarily supposed D t to be disputable or inadmissible.
Which one of the J>'s is (or should be called) Euclidean geom-
etry of three dimensions? I say which "one"? For, as no two are
identical, it would be willful courting of ambiguity to allow that two
or more of them should be so denominated. Which one, then?
Evidently not one of the numerical ones, such, for example, as the
two above specified. For who has ever really believed that a point,
for example, is a triad of numbers? We know that the Greeks did
arrive at geometry ; we know that they did not arrive at it through
numbers ; and we know that, in their thought, points were not num-
ber triads, nor were planes and lines, for them, certain ensembles of
such triads. The confusion, if anybody ever was really thus con-
fused, is due to the modern discovery that number triads and certain
ensembles of them happen to satisfy the same relations as the Greeks
found to be satisfied by what they called points, lines, and planes.
There is really no excuse for the confusion, for, if Smith is taller
than Brown, and yonder oak is taller than yonder beech, it obviously
does not follow that Smith is the oak and Brown the beech.
Evidently Euclidean geometry of three dimensions is that par-
ticular D for which the /-things are points, lines, and planes. Here
it is certain to be asked: What, then, are points, lines, and planes?
And the asker will mean to imply that, in order to maintain the
proposition, it is necessary to define these terms. The proper reply
is that it is not necessary to define them. All that can be reasonably
required is that they be indicated, pointed out, sufficiently described
for purposes of recognition, for what we desire is to be able to say
or to recognize what Euclidean geometry is about. To the question
one might, not foolishly, reply that the terms in question denote
things that you and I, if we have been disciplined in geometry, con-
verse understandingly about when we converse about geometry,
though neither of us is able to say with absolute precision what the
terms mean. For who does not know that it is possible to write an
intelligent and intelligible discourse about cats, for example, with-
out being able to tell (for who can tell?) precisely what a cat is?
And if it be asked what the discourse is about, who does not know
that it is an informing answer to say that it is about cats. It is
informing because the term cat has an excessive meaning, a meaning
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 263
beyond that of satisfying the propositions (or relations) of the
discourse.
Just here it is well worth while to point out an important lesson
in the procedure of Euclid. Against Euclid it is often held as a
reproach that he attempted to define the element-names, point, line,
and plane, since no definitions of them could render any logical
service, that is, in the strictly deductive part of the discourse. But
to render no logical service is not to render no service. And the
lesson is that the definitions in question, which it were perhaps
better to call descriptions, do render an extralogical service. They
render such service not only in guiding the imagination in the mat-
ter of invention, but also in serving to indicate, with a goodly degree
of success, the excessive meaning m of the elements denoted by the
terms in question and in thus serving to make known what it is that
the deductive part of the discourse is about. One should not forget
that no discourse, no doctrine, not even so-called pure logic itself, is
exclusively deductive, for in any doctrine there is reference, implicit
or explicit, to something extradeductive or extralogical, reference,
that is, to something which the doctrine is about.
Are the three Euclidean "definitions," thus viewed as descrip-
tions, sufficient or adequate to the service that they are here viewed
as rendering 1 If by sufficient or adequate be meant exhaustive, the
answer is, of course, no. For we may confidently say that no pos-
sible description, that is, no description involving only a finite num-
ber of words, possibly can exhaust the meaning of a system of terms
except, possibly, in the special case where these have no meaning
beyond what they must have in order merely to satisfy a finite
number of postulates. But exhaustive is not what is meant by
adequate. To employ a previous illustration, it is not necessary to
give or to attempt an exhaustive description of "cat" in order to
tell adequately what it is that a discourse ostensibly about cats is
ostensibly about. It is a question of intent. A description is nearly,
if not quite, adequate if it enables us to avoid thinking that terms
are intended to denote what they are not intended to denote. And,
whilst we may not admit that the three Euclidean "descriptions"
are the best that can be invented for the purpose, yet we must allow
that they have long served the end in question pretty effectively and
that they are qualified to continue such service. They have been and
they are good enough, for example, to save us from thinking that
the things which in geometry have been denoted by the terms,
points, lines, and planes, are identical with number triads, etc. The
open secret of their thus saving us is no doubt in their causing us to
think of points, lines, and planes in terms of, or in essential connec-
tion with, what we know as extension, whilst numbers and number
264 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ensembles are not things naturally so conceived. For evidently the
notions of "length" and "breadth" involved in the Euclidean "de-
scriptions" are not metric in meaning; they do not signify definite
or numeric quantities or amounts of something (as when we say the
length of this or that thing is so and so much) ; but plainly they are
generic notions connoting extension. It is safe to say that a mind
devoid of the concept or the sense of extension could not know what
things the "descriptions" aim at describing. It is true that Euclid's
"description" of a point as "that which has no part" implies a
denial of extension, but the denial is one of extension, and, in its
contextual atmosphere, it is felt to be essential to an adequate indica-
tion of what is meant by point. On the other hand, if one were (and
how unnatural it would be!) to describe an ordered triad of numbers
as "that which has no part," it would be immediately necessary to
explain away the seeming falsity of the description by saying that
the triad is not the ordered multiplicity (of three numbers) as a
multiplicity, but is merely the Uniphase of the multiplicity, and that
it is this uniphase which has no part. If, next, we were to say that
thus extension is denied to the uniphase, the statement, though true,
would be felt to be inessential to an adequate indication of what is
meant by a triad of numbers. Such felt difference is alone sufficient
to make any one pause who is disposed to adopt the current creed
that a point is nothing but an ordered triad of numbers. It is not
contended that a point is composed of extension; the contention is
that point and extension are so connected that a mind devoid of the
latter notion would be devoid of the former, just as a mind devoid
of the notion of variable or variation would be devoid of the notion
of constant, though a constant is not a thing consisting of variation ;
just as the notion of limit would not be intelligible except for the
notion of something that may have a limit, though the limit is not
composed of it; and just as an instant, which is not composed of
time, would not be intelligible except for the notion of time.
In a discussion of such matters it is foolish and futile to talk
about "proofs." The question, as said, is one of intent; it is a
question of self -veracity, of getting aware of and owning what it is
that we mean by the terms and symbols of our discourse. If, de-
spite the Euclidean "descriptions" and despite any and all others
that may supplement or supplace them, one fails to see that exten-
sion is essentially involved in the meaning that the terms points,
lines, and planes, are intended to have, the failure will be because
"as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our
soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all. ' ' Noth-
ing is more evident than that there is something that is called exten-
sion. We have but to open our eyes to get aware that we are behold-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 265
ing an expanse, something extended. We see things as extended;
things as extended are revealed to the tactile sense ; a region or room
involving extension is a datum of the muscular sensations connected
with our bodily movements ; and so on. So much is certain. But it
is said and rightly said that these are sensible things ; that the exten-
sion they are revealed as having is sensible extension; that these
sensibles are infected with contradiction, above noted, revealed in
common experience, and confirmed by the psychophysical law of
Weber and Fechner ; that geometry is free from contradiction ; that,
therefore, geometry is not a doctrine about these sensibles; that
among these sensibles are not the things which in geometry are
denoted by the terms point, line, and plane ; and that, if these terms
imply or connote extension, as asserted, this extension is not sensible
extension. Granted. The "connoted extension" is not sensible, it
is conceptual. How know, however, that there is conceptual exten-
sion? The answer is, by arriving at it. (We need not here debate
whether such "arriving" is best called creating or is best called
finding.) But how does the mind arrive at it? By doing certain
things to the sensibles, the raw material of mental architecture.
What things? An exhaustive answer is unnecessary perhaps im-
possible. The things are of two sorts: the mind gives to the sen-
sibles ; it takes away from them. Consider, for example, a sensible
line. From it the conceptualizing intellect takes away (abstracts
from, disregards) certain things that the sensible in question has or
may have, as color, weight, temperature, etc., including part of the
extension, thus, I mean, narrowing and thinning away all breadth
and thickness. What of the extension called length? Have the
narrowing and thinning taken it away ? It was not so intended, the
opposite was intended. Yet no sensible length (extension) remains.
Does the narrowing and thinning involve shortening ? We are abso-
lutely certain that it does not. What, then, is it that has happened ?
Evidently that, by the indicated taking away, the mind has arrived
at insensible length, one kind of insensible extension, that is, at con-
ceptual length, one kind of conceptual extension. A stretch, we are
sure, remains, but it is not a sensible stretch. The extension thus
arrived at is yet not the extension connoted by or involved in the
things that geometry is about, for in the taking-away process of
arriving at it there is nothing to disinfect it of the contradictions
inherent in the sensible with which we started. It remains, then, to
follow the indicated process of taking away by a process of giving,
that is to say, it remains to endow the conceptual extension (arrived
at) with continuity so as to render it free from the mentioned contra-
dictions. This done, the kind of extension meant in ordinary geom-
266 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
etry or ordinary geometric space is arrived at. Such is, in kind, the
conceptual extension that, it is here held, is essential to what the
geometric terms, point, line, plane, are intended to mean. Without
further talk we may say that such extension is essential in the con-
ceptual space that, we may say, ordinary Euclidean geometry is
about in being about the elements of the space.
If we denote this conceptual space by cS 3 to distinguish it from
(non-geometrizable) sensible space sS s , then the geometry of cS 3 , if
constructed by means of postulates P making no indispensable use
of algebraic analysis, may be called pure geometry, pG 3 . If, as in
the Caretesian method, we use ordered number triads, etc., as we may
use them, not to be points, etc., but to represent points, etc., then we
get analytical geometry, aG a , of cS s . On the other hand, if, as we
may, we interpret the P by allowing the /-things to be number triads,
etc., as above indicated, the resulting doctrine is, not geometry, but
a pure algebra or analysis, pA 3 . If we use points, etc., not to be,
but to represent, number triads, etc., and so employ geometric lan-
guage in constructing pA 3 , we get by tHis kind of anti-Cartesian pro-
cedure, not a geometry, but geometrical analysis, gA 3 .
HYPOTHESIS h^
It is unnecessary to say anything and is not worth while to say
much under this hypothesis. For if the e 's in P do not denote some-
thing, then as the relations (if there be any) are termless, the doc-
trine D (if there be one) is not about anything, unless about the
relations, but about these it says nothing, for, if it says aught about
them, what it says is that they are satisfied by certain terms whose
presence in the discourse is excluded by h^. We may profitably say,
however, that, in the case supposed where the e's do not denote
something but are merely uninterpreted variables ready, so to speak,
to denote something in this case we may say that, though there is
no doctrine D, there is a doctrinal function, A(e x ; e 2 , e^}. Then we
should add that the doctrines that do arise from actualized possible
interpretations of the e's are so many values of A. This function A,
if we give some warning mark as A' to its symbol, may be further
conveniently employed in talking about an ambiguous one of the
doctrines in question, i. e., about "any value," an ambiguous value,
of the function. As above argued, these values, these doctrines are
identical in form, they are isomorphic, all of them having the form
of A, but no two of them are the same in respect of content, refer-
ence, or meaning. In this conclusion, analysis, happily, agrees with
traditional usage, intuition, and common sense.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 267
CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS
We are, I believe, now prepared to answer definitively the long-
vexed question : What, if any, sort of existence have point spaces of
four or more dimensions?
As we have seen, the conceptual space cS 3 of ordinary geometry
is an affair involving extension; it is a triply extended conceptual
spread or expanse : three independent linear extensions in it may be
chosen ; these suffice to determine all the others. So much is as cer-
tain as anything can be. It is equally certain that we can, for we do
without meeting contradiction, by means of postulates or otherwise,
conceive (not perceive or imagine) a quadruply extended spread or
expanse, one, that is, in which it is possible to choose four indepen-
dent linear extensions, and then by reference to these to determine
all the rest. There is not the slightest difference in kind among
the four independents and not the slightest difference between any
three of these and the three of cC s . The spread or expanse thus set
up is a cS t ; like cS 3 , it is purely conceptual ; the extension it involves
is, in kind, identical with that of cS 3 ; it contains spreads of the type
of c$ 3 as elements just exactly as a cS 3 contains planes or spreads of
type c$ 2 as elements; it differs not at all from c$ 3 except in being
one degree higher in respect of dimensionality. In a word, c$ 4
(and, of course, c$ 5 , and so on) has the same kind of existence as
c$ 3 . It is true that c$ 3 is "imitated" by our sensible space sS 3 ,
whilst there is no sS 4 thus imitating c$ 4 . But this writing is not
intended for one who is capable of thinking that the mentioned
sensible imitation or imitability of cS 3 confers upon the latter a new
or peculiar kind of existence.
But one thing remains to be said, and it is important. If one
denies that c$ 3 has the conceptually extensional existence, above
alleged, then, of course, the denial extends also to c$ 4 , and the two
spaces are, in respect of existence, still on a level. If the denier then
asserts, and such is the alternative, that cS s is only the ensemble of
number triads, etc., as above explained, then, if he be right, c$ 4 is
only, but equally, the ensemble of ordered quatrains, etc., of num-
bers. Here, again, cS 3 and c$ 4 have precisely the same kind of
existence. The conclusion is that hyperspaces have every kind of
existence that may be warrantably attributed to the space of ordi-
nary geometry.
CASSIUS J. KEYSER.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
268 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
DISCUSSION
THE PKOBLEM OF VALUES 1
ALL members of the Philosophical Association owe a debt of
gratitude to the executive committee for formulating the
question to be discussed at the next meeting. I am aware of no better
way of expressing my own gratitude than to comply promptly with
the request of the committee for submission of additional formula-
tions of the question.
I shall first make a few remarks upon the formulation by four
members of the committee. 2 I assume that in the question, "Is
value something which is ultimate and which attaches itself to
'things' independently of consciousness, or of an organic being with
desires and aversions? " the "or" is to be understood as marking a
genuine alternative between "consciousness" and an "organic being
with desires and aversions," not as indicating that the latter clause
is in apposition with consciousness or explanatory of it. The al-
ternative is genuine and important : for some may be inclined to con-
nect the existence of values with organic behavior and yet not be
willing to equate desires and aversions with "consciousness"
in fact, they may go so far as to hold that "consciousness" (in
whatever sense the term is here used) is itself dependent upon mat-
ters connected with the desires and aversions of an organic being.
Since, however, unconscious desires and aversions may appear to
some to involve a contradiction in language, it would seem better to
substitute a more objective term, such as selections and rejections;
or better yet, to generalize the matter and make the alternative in
question to be simply that of connection with the behavior of or-
ganic beings.
When the question is thus understood, some doubt arises as to the
force of the term "ultimate" in the first alternative. Are values if
regarded as variables of organic behavior less ultimate than if
regarded as things irrespective of connection with organic behavior ?
And if the answer should be in the affirmative, what is the ground
upon which this answer rests?
I have no doubt a successful discussion may be had on the basis
of the formulation already presented. In some respects, however,
the formulation seems unnecessarily tied up with the idealistic-real-
istic controversy. I recognize that this complication has the ad-
vantage of preserving continuity in the discussions from year to
1 This paper is presented in response to the request of the committee that
further formulations of this problem be submitted for publication.
* This JOUENAL, Vol. X., page 168.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 269
year ; yet it is possible that the questions at issue might, in the pres-
ent juncture, be dealt with in the end more effectively if approached
by a flank movement. At all events, I venture to submit the follow-
ing list of questions :
1. Can the question of the status of values in philosophic discus-
sion be approached apart from the question of the status of qualities?
2. Can values be separated from traits of organic behavior? If
organic behavior has its own distinguishing traits, does the affirma-
tion that values are traits of organic behavior imply their "subjec-
tivity" ? If so, in what sense? Does connection with organic be-
havior imply their dependence upon awareness ?
3. Do values antecede, or do they depend upon valuation under-
standing by valuation a process of reflective estimation or judgment?
4. If they antecede, does valuation merely bring them to light
without change, or does it modify antecedent values? Does it pro-
duce new values ? If the latter occur, are the modification and pro-
duction merely incidental or are they essential?
5. Can the place of intelligence in behavior in general (and in
moral conduct in particular) be understood without implying that
reflection reorganizes antecedent natural values?
6. What is the meaning of appreciation ? Is it a particular mode
of apprehending (knowing) values, or is it a name for the direct
presence of values in experience ? How is it related to valuation and
criticism ?
7. Does the presence of values in experience in general (or say
religious values in particular) have an evidential import? That is
to say, does the existence of religious values, for example, prove the
existence of any class of objects beyond the values themselves ? Or,
again, does the presence in experience of any type of values purport
to make the mind aware of something in the environment, taking that
word in its widest possible sense? [This question may profitably be
considered in connection with the first question, regarding qualities.]
8. If the answers to these questions should be in the negative, is
the significance of such values for experience and for philosophy
thereby determined to be null or illusory? Can an affirmative an-
swer to this question be maintained except on the assumption that all
experience is, ipso facto, intended to be an awareness of objects?
JOHN DEWEY.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
270 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
SOCIETIES
THE NEW YORK BRANCH OF THE AMERICAN
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
npHE New York Branch of the American Psychological Associa-
-- tion met in conjunction with the Section of Anthropology of
the New York Academy of Sciences on November 25 and on Feb-
ruary 24. The following papers were presented at these meetings:
Difference Tones and Consonance: 1 F. KRUEGER.
The Attempt to Measure Mental Work as a Psycho-Dynamic Proc-
ess: 2 RAYMOND DODGE.
The Psychology of the Earthworm: ROBERT M. YERKES.
This is a preliminary report of an investigation, now in progress,
the purpose of which is (a) to demonstrate whatever ability the
earthworm may have to acquire habits of a certain order; (&) to dis-
cover the characteristics of any habits which appear; (c) to enumer-
ate and evaluate the various external and internal influences on
habit-formation; (d) to ascertain the degree of permanency of the
habits, and (e) to discover their relations to the anterior ganglia
(brain).
By means of a T-shaped maze constructed from plate glass, speci-
mens of the manure worm, Allolobophora fcetida, were tested. The
maze was placed with the stem directed toward the light. Across one
of the arms a piece of sandpaper was placed and, just beyond it, a
pair of electrodes. The other arm was left open so that the worm
might escape to an artificial burrow. The worms were driven into
the T by light and the chief motive for escape therefrom was the
tendency to avoid light. It was the purpose of the test to demon-
strate (a) any ability which the manure worm may possess to ac-
quire a direction habit and (&) to associate the tactual experience of
contact with sandpaper with the electrical shock which regularly fol-
lowed the tactual stimulus in case the worm continued to move for-
ward after reaching the sandpaper.
Trials were made in daily series varying in number from 5 to 20.
The 5 trial series were found, on the whole, more satisfactory.
Referring now exclusively to the results obtained for a single
worm which has been under observation since October, 1911, the fol-
lowing results may be presented: (1) Allolobophora is capable of ac-
quiring certain definite modes of reaction. (2) Modifications appear
as the result of from 20 to 100 experiences. (3) The behavior is ex-
tremely variable because of variations in external conditions and in
1 See "Consonance and Dissonance," this JOURNAL, Volume X., page 158.
3 See Psychological Review, January, 1913.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 271
the condition of the worm itself. (4) There is a tendency to follow
the mucous path through the apparatus, but this is not sufficiently
strong or constant to yield perfect results. (5) The following are
the chief modifications which have been noted: (a) increased readi-
ness to enter the apparatus and to desert it for the artificial burrow ;
(&) apparent "recognition" of the artificial burrow which is used
as "exit tube"; (c) a gradual increase in the number of avoidances
of the sandpaper and of contact with the electrodes as a result of the
"warning" influence of the sandpaper; (d) the disappearance of the
early tendency to retrace the path through the stem of the T ; (e) the
similar disappearance of the tendency to turn back after progress-
ing well toward the exit tube. (6) The correct performance of a
thoroughly ingrained habitual act, of the kind studied in this in-
vestigation, is not dependent upon the "brain" (portions of the ner-
vous system carried by the five anterior segments), since the worm
reacts appropriately within a few hours after its removal. (7) As
the brain regenerates, the worm exhibits increased initiative, its be-
havior becomes less automatic, more variable. (8) Within four
weeks after the operation the regenerated segments appear superfi-
cially complete and the worm naturally burrows in a mixture of earth
and manure. (9) Two months after the removal of the "brain,"
during the last four weeks of which period no training was given, the
habit had completely disappeared from worm No. 2, the subject to
whose responses this paper is devoted, and in its place there ap-
peared a tendency to turn in the opposite direction to that demanded
in the training. (10) Systematic training for two weeks resulted in
the partial reacquistion of the original direction-habit.
The general results which have just been stated are subject to
modification in the light of additional data. To the experimenter it
seems that the particular individual which has been longest under
observation is in many respects exceptional. It is perfectly clear,
however, from results obtained with other individuals that important
modifications in behavior appear as the result of training. It is
equally certain that direction-habits are not readily acquired.
Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It: 3 JOHN B. WATSON.
Methods of Orientation and Imaginary Maps: C. C. TROWBRIDGE.
The author classified the methods of orientation under two heads.
The first was called the domi-centric method, used by all living
creatures except man in a civilized state. In this case the manner
of moving about the surface of the earth relates to a point, usually
the home. In the second type, which was called the ego-centric
method, or cardinal point method, the use is made of the cardinal
* See Psychological Review, March, 1913.
272 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
points of the compass to give orientation, and those points do not
necessarily relate to any particular center or home. It is believed
that those creatures using a domi-centric method have an advantage
over civilized man in finding their way home. There may be readily
a combination of the two methods in special cases.
In the second part of the paper it was shown that a very large
percentage of people, amounting to the order of 50 per cent., are
accustomed to think of far distant places in an entirely different
direction than they really are, amounting to from 45 to 180 from
the real direction. The subjects tested knew the correct direction
within a few degrees. Statistics seem to indicate that individuals
having these "imaginary maps" were more apt to be confused with
respect to direction than those not having them.
The Probable Explanation of Certain Flock Formations of Birds:
C. C. TROWBRIDGE.
This paper also consisted of two parts, and in the first the author
showed that birds in a large flock when migrating, in all probability,
average their errors with respect to a certain distant destination,
and if this is the case the explanation of the migration in large
flocks of many species of birds can be explained, also; the principle
would prevent single birds from going astray.
The second part of the paper related to the Echelon formation of
flight of many large birds when flying in flocks; the explanation
given being that it is the most protective arrangement. Evidence
was brought forward to show that in this formation the birds in the
flock can see forward as well as to the side, these regions are the
chief "danger zones" that the flying flock is subjected to. The
paper was illustrated by diagrams, and by photographs of blue
geese taken by Mr. Herbert K. Job at Marsh Island, on the Missis-
sippi delta.
A Note on the Retention of Practise: F. LYMAN WELLS.
One subject was highly practised in the tapping test 5 years ago.
Six other subjects were highly practised in addition and number-
checking tests nearly 3 years ago. The present experiments were
made to ascertain the amount and character of the loss during the
relative disuse of the functions. In all tests the loss found was
about half the percentile amount gained by practise. The renewal
of practise does not bring with it an especially rapid practise gain.
Persons who gain much in the addition test regularly tend to lose
much in it, but this is not true in the number-checking test. Persons
who lose much in the one test, however, tend also to lose much in the
other, although the amounts of practise gain in them are negatively
related.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 273
A Comparative Study of the Illusions and Hallucinations of De-
mentia Prcecox and Manic Depressive Insanity: DARWIN OLIVER
LYON.
The various conceptions of the terms hallucination and illusion
were taken up in detail and it was shown that, although no sharp
line of demarcation could be drawn between the two terms, yet the
distinction was sufficiently fine to warrant their separation in an
experiment such as the one under consideration. An hallucination
was defined as a subjective sensory image arising without the aid of
external stimuli, or, in short, a perception without an object. Illu-
sions were defined as the false interpretation of external objects;
i. e., an illusion is the falsification of a real percept. The speaker
admitted that cases might occur in which ideas originating wholly in
the cortical center might become so vivid as to be taken for sensa-
tions that had arisen by stimulation of the sense organs but he
believed that these cases were much less common than is generally
supposed.
It was shown that the various authorities differed greatly as to
the frequency of hallucinations and illusions in the various forms of
insanity. Each of the various psychoses were considered. In de-
mentia paralytica, for example, the elder Falret absolutely denied
their existence. Kraft-Ebbing says they are so rare that where they
are found one should suspect a false diagnosis. Yet Jung, Saury,
and Mickle concur in saying that they occur in over one half of
all cases.
The part that the various senses play in the fallacious percep-
tions of the insane was then considered. Though this depends some-
what on the psychosis, both hallucinations and illusions of hearing
are much more frequent than those of any of the other senses or
even combination of the senses. In one form of mania sight hal-
lucinations were found to be greater in number than auditory hal-
lucinations. Hallucinations of taste are very rare. The speaker
considered it doubtful if the so-called gustatory hallucinations occa-
sionally seen in dementia paralytica were true hallucinations. His
experience led him to believe that they were rather the result of
delusions, in that when a delusion was being "described" by a
patient he naturally made his ideas and feelings "fit" accordingly.
Of the 361 cases of dementia prcecox and manic depressive insanity
tested, only 4 were found having fallacious perceptions of taste,
either alone or in combination.
In some cases the patient informs the physician of his own accord
regarding his hallucinations and illusions ; in others the information
sought for must be obtained by some roundabout method. Care
must be taken that reported hallucinations are not really illusions;
274 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
for example, when in a noisy ward a patient hears herself being
called a witch, it is difficult to decide whether she is experiencing an
hallucination or an illusion. When, however, the morbid perception
occurs in absolute silence we may feel reasonably certain that the
patient experiences an hallucination. It was shown that in those
cases in which the patient is suspected of endeavoring to conceal
the fact that he experiences hallucinations, considerable work may
be necessary before their presence or absence can be definitely deter-
mined. Careful observation of the patient when he is unaware that
he is being watched is, of course, necessary in many cases. Turning
the head in a certain direction to listen, gazing at a certain portion
of the wall and speaking to it, stuffing the ears with cloth or paper
these and many other "symptoms" lead us to suspect the exist-
ence of hallucinations. Evidence of strong emotion, expressions of
hate, fear, etc., though not of themselves evidence of hallucinations,
warrant further search. The entire test consisted of the following:
(1) An examination of the patient's "history." (2) Conversation
with the physician and attendants in charge. (3) Various questions
and tests varied to suit the case. The question concerning the extent
to which we should try to elicit hallucinations in an experiment of
this nature was taken up in detail.
Tables were then presented showing the results of the tests and
conclusions drawn. Of the 173 cases of dementia prcecox 100, i. e.,
58 per cent., had fallacious perceptions; of these, 87 were hallucina-
tions; 8, illusions, and 5 hallucinations and illusions. Of the 188
cases of manic depressive insanity 64, i. e., 34 per cent., had falla-
cious perceptions; of these, only 9 were hallucinations, whereas 51
were illusions. Space does not permit a tabulation of the 18 groups
into which the speaker assembled his cases. Suffice it to say that
hallucinations and illusions of hearing come first comprising as
they do, over one half of all cases. Then come hearing combined
with sight, and then those of sight alone. The other senses, either
alone or in combination, were but sparsely represented.
H. L. HOLLINGWORTH,
Secretary.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
A Short History of Logic. ROBERT ADAMSON. Edited by W. R. SORLEY.
Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. 1911. Pp.
vii-f 266.
The philosophical world is greatly indebted to the editor and publishers
of this little book for preserving to us in a convenient form and in its en-
tirety the article written by Professor Adamson for the ninth edition of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 275
the " Encyclopedia Britannica." The information which the reader of
this review is most likely to desire regarding the new edition is given us
in the editor's preface :
" The manuscript of the article has been fortunately preserved alone
among the manuscripts of the author's published writings. It is much
fuller than the printed article, a number of passages some fifty in all
having been struck out by the editor with a view to economy of space.
These passages affect both text and notes; they vary in length from a few
words to whole sections; they vary also in importance; but the author's
own opinion was that the value of his work had suffered by their omission ;
and with this opinion I agree. In the present book these passages have
been restored to their place, so that the article as it left the author's hands
is now, for the first time, placed before the reader.
" It should be borne in mind that the article on Logic was written and
published in 1882. The supplementary articles, by which it is followed
in this volume, are all contributions to the history of logic; but the first
of these that on the Category, also reprinted from the 'Encyclopedia
Britannica,' dates from six years earlier; and only the last carries the
story on towards a more recent development of logical theory. Readers of
the author's works do not need to be reminded that his own point of view
underwent modification, and that there are some things here which he
might have expressed differently had he revised the work himself."
The part of the book which seems to-day especially valuable is the long
(58 pages) and admirable chapter on the Aristotelian logic, a chapter which
could well be used as an introduction to the Aristotelian philosophy. Be-
sides the article on the Category the other articles included in this book
and referred to above by the editor were published originally in Mind.
Their titles are : " Lotze's Logic," " Lotze's Metaphysics," and " Mr. Brad-
ley's Logic."
Among Professor Adamson's conclusions regarding logic the follow-
ing seem to be the most general and should be recalled to mind. " Logical
theory must of necessity be formal, i. e., abstract and general." It can not
consider the specific knowledge of the sciences and include scientific
method or the various processes by which the sciences have gained their
results. In short, it can not include more than the most general scien-
tific methodology. Again, logic can be identified with the theory of knowl-
edge. " Logical laws, forms, and problems are hardly capable of state-
ment; certainly incapable of satisfactory treatment, except in the most
intimate connection with the principles of a theory of knowledge." Hence,
of course, the conclusion (a lamentable one for any real progress in
formal logic) : " It has been imagined that a symbolic logic might be de-
veloped which should be independent in all its fundamental axioms of any
metaphysical or psychological assumptions; but this is an illusion. No
logical method can be developed save from a most definite conception of
the essential nature and modus operandi of thinking." To which the
reply can in the present day be given : " But it has been done, such a
symbolic logic actually obtains." WALTER T. MARVIN.
KUTOERS COLLEGE.
276 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
The Persistent Problems of Philosophy. An Introduction to Metaphysics
through the Study of Modern Systems. MARY WHITON CALKINS.
Third revised edition. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1912.
Pp. xxvi + 1 577.
The first edition of this excellent book was reviewed in this JOURNAL in
1907. 1 In 1908 a second edition was already called for. The third, 1912,
has given the writer larger opportunity to revise the discussion, and to
bring it, in particular to bring the bibliography, down to date.
The principal changes in the second edition concerned a more accurate
interpretation of the meaning of causality in connection with the discus-
sion of Hume; corrections and alterations in the account of Kant's
Kategorienlehre; and a restatement of the writer's view of the self in
comparison with the theory of a spiritual substance (pp. 408 409).
The third edition carries the same process further. Within the limits
of the former pagination, emendations are made alike in the historical
interpretations and in the statements of doctrine. In both fields attention
is given to the most recent movements of opinion. And it need scarcely
be added that everywhere the same conscientious skill is evident which
happily characterized the original work. On the side of history, numerous
corrections are made in the account of Descartes's theism (pp. 45, 52, 53),
with an added summary of the Cartesian philosophy of nature (pp. 42-
43) ; an improved formulation is given of Hobbes's defense of material-
ism (pp. 62-63) ; restatements are offered of certain points in Berkeley's
system (pp. 122, 130), and a "more spiritualistic" interpretation ad-
vanced of Schelling's philosophy of identity (pp. 339-342). On the side
of doctrine, the most important changes are a defense of the writer's doc-
trine of the self against the objections based on the facts of multiple per-
sonality (pp. 409410), and a recasting of parts of the argument on free-
dom (pp. 429, 449, 451-152).
In almost every case these changes are improvements. They do not
amount, however, to essential alterations, for the point of view remains
the same. This appears also in the references to current movements which
include something of both interpretation and doctrine. Montague's Ener-
getik now shares in the criticisms first leveled at Haeckel and Ostwald
(pp. 399-400). A fresh section on neo-realism (pp. 402404) rebuts the
objections of the newer school to the idealistic position. Account is taken
(p. 441) of the relations of Bergson's conception of time to absolute per-
sonalism. But this continuity of doctrine furnishes no ground for regret.
On the contrary, friends and critics will unite in congratulating the au-
thor on the merited favor which has given occasion for this revision of her
work. And they will count themselves fortunate to possess her conclusions
articulated into the outline of contemporary discussions.
WESLETAN UNIVERSITY. A. C. ARMSTRONG.
The Imagined Reaction to Poetry. JUNE E. DOWNEY. The University of
Wyoming, Department of Psychology, Bulletin No. 2. Pp. 56.
Miss Downey presented to her subjects (12 all told) some 110 poetic
1 Volume IV., page 440.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 277
fragments selected from the works of Blake, Foe, Keats, Shelley, and
Swinburne. The subjects were required to report on the imagery roused
by each selection and to pass judgment on the affective value of each.
The first tests involved visual presentation of the material. Other tests
show the result of auditory presentation. Her tables show that, "Al-
though for every reagent visual images were more frequent than any
other kind of image, the excess of such images varied greatly from sub-
ject to subject." This was true for both kinds of presentation. Many
examples were found of auditory, olfactory, tactual, temperature, pain,
organic, kinesthetic, and optical-kinesthetic images, and some few of
gustatory images. The degree of conscious control over imagery varies
with different subjects. The part played by " inner speech " in the ap-
preciation of poetry is of considerable importance. Motor or auditory-
motor inner speech is common, but visual inner speech is very uncommon
except in the case of one subject.
An interesting comparison between the five poets comes to light in the
author's discussions of "the method of style." Poe, Shelley, and Keats
excel Swinburne and Blake in the number of visual images which their
lines stimulate. "Poe gives the highest number of successful auditory
suggestions; Shelley the highest number of successful olfactory sugges-
tions; Keats the largest number of successful cutaneous images, and Poe
the greatest number of successful organic suggestions, with Shelley but
slightly behind."
The relation between imagery and the affective judgment is also
studied, and it is apparent from the tables that rivid imagery is an im-
portant factor in the affective judgment of literature. Visual imagery
appears to be the most effective in stimulating pleasant reactions, and or-
ganic imagery in unpleasant reactions. Greater consistency appears
among the subjects in judging pleasant than unpleasant fragments.
The last division of this study compares affective with esthetic judg-
ments. The general conclusion is that, " although the very pleasant frag-
ment may be esthetic, or the esthetic pleasant, there is no necessary rela-
tion of the sort."
Miss Downey's monograph contains an extremely interesting set of
records, and her material is presented in such an adequate and straight-
forward way as to earn the gratitude and admiration of the reader.
KATE GORDON.
Los ANGELES.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE. September and October, 1912.
Double number, the first of two devoted to religious experience in Cath-
olicism. The criterion of distinction is that the experiences are within a
religion of authority. The first four articles describe the experiences of
the great orders. Each order emphasizes a phase of the complete religious
278 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
experience which is typical for it and becomes the basis of interpretation
for all its experiences. The last four articles treat the philosophy of re-
ligion on its theoretical side. La vie religieuse de I'anachorete, du ceno-
lite et du moine Benedictin (pp. 225-256) : D. H. QUENTIN. - The goal of
anchorite and cenobite is renunciation and personal perfection in a life
where all traces of action are banished. To asceticism the monks add
obedience as a means to attain their end. The religious tone of the
Benedictines is one of deep humility and reverence joined with an in-
ternal joy. L'dme franciscaine (pp. 257-299) : P. UBALD D'^LENCON. -
The Franciscan spirit is one of peace and submission, animated by a
passionate personal love for the humanity of Christ. Detachment from the
world and extreme poverty are means for the attainment of perfection.
Le Frere Precheur (pp. 300-333) : H.-A. MONTAGNE. - The Dominicans
show a great variety of experiences. They are animated by the zeal of
the apostolic life, and seek in contemplation the truth which they may
teach. Sainte Therese et le Carmel (pp. 334-370) : P. MARIE JOSEPH DU
SACRE COEUR. - The distinguishing feature of the Carmelites is a love of
the sacred person of Christ joined with the worship of the Virgin Mary.
Love brings about a union with the divine which begins on earth in con-
templation. Quelques reflexions sur la methode en psychologic religieuse
(pp. 371-391) : J. PACHEN. - Eeligious psychology has for its field the de-
scription and classification of the phenomena of consciousness purporting
to be relations with a superior world. Mystics and their writings must
be known and scientifically examined. History., sociology, and physiology
must aid in the investigation of mystic states. We must ask how we can
know God in the mystic state, even though the question can't be answered.
Miracles must not be disbelieved, yet the work of religious psychology is
to be free from all apologetic motives. L'epanouissement sociale de
I 'amour de Dieu (pp. 392-415) : GEORGES GOYAN. - The sacramental life
on earth is possible only by association with the love of God, which in its
turn expands itself in the loving actions of men. Sur quelques traits
distinctifs de la mystique chretienne (pp. 416488) : T. MARECHAL. -
Man's psychological life is a unity. The various stages in the spiritual
life are described. Ecstasy is a synthesis of a negative empirical and a
positive transcendental state. Christian mysticism is characterized pri-
marily by the supernatural grace which causes it, and the union of the
soul with God which accompanies it. Bibliography. L'experience, la
raison, les normes exterieures dans le catholicisme (pp. 489-529) : HENRY
PINARD. - Under the rule of faith reason is to establish truth which the
will is to accept as its norm with such loyalty that the soul comes to ex-
perience internally a partial union with God.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. November, 1912. La perception des
grandeurs (pp. 433-448) : B. BOURDON. - Qualitatively different phenom-
ena are brought together under the name of quantities and, consequently,
we have a habit of neglecting certain real ambiguities in the meaning of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 279
the term. L'authorite (pp. 449-464) : A. PENJON. - A criticism, not very
favorable, of C. B. Huizinga's " Authority," which is said to have made
some stir in America. Lf, concept de I'ideal (pp. 465-495) : D. DRAGHISCO.
- Many problems concerning the nature of the ideal spring from a divorce
of discursive reasoning from intuition. Revue generate. Les revues
allemandes de psychologic en 1911 : M. FOUCAULT. Analyses et comptes
rendus. G. Kichard, La sociologie generale et les lois sociologiques : G.-L.
DUPRAT. Dr. J. R. d'Allonnes, L'affaiblissement intellectuel chez les
dements: PH. CHASLIN. Dr. G. Saint-Paul, L'art de parler en public:
DR. CH. BLONDEL. Levy Bruhl, Preface a David Hume: M. SOLOVINE.
J. Fabre, Les Peres de la Revolution: L. DAURIAC. J. Goldstein, Wand-
lungen in der Philosophic der Gegenwart: M. SOLOVINE. Notice biblio-
graphique. Revue des periodiques.
Branford, Victor. St. Columba: A Study of Social Inheritance and
Spiritual Development. Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes and Colleagues.
1913. Pp. 83.
Dammkohler, Georg. Schellings Briefwechsel mit Niethammer vor
seiner Berufung nach Jena. Leipzig: Verlag von Felix Meiner. 4 M.
De Tonquedec, Joseph. Immanence: Essai sur la doctrine de M. Mau-
rice Blondel. Paris. 1913. Pp. xvi + 307. 3.50 F.
Wundt, Wilhelm. Reden und Aufsatze. Leipzig: Alfred Kroner. 1913.
Pp. viii + 397.
NOTES AND NEWS
LETTER TO DR. HARALD HOFFDING
February 14, 1913
DR. HARALD HOFFDING,
The University,
Copenhagen, Denmark.
Sir:
We, the undersigned members of the Department of Philosophy in
Columbia University in the City of New York, beg to tender you, on the
occasion of your seventieth birthday, an expression of warm personal re-
gard and of high appreciation of your long and eminent service as a
teacher of philosophy as well as of your valuable contributions to the
literature of our subject. Through translations, your writings in the
Danish language have been made familiar to students and readers of
philosophy in Germany, in France, in England, in the United States, and
elsewhere throughout the world. We hope that you may be spared for
280
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
many years of additional service to continue to spread abroad knowledge
and appreciation of the things of the mind.
We have the honor to be,
Faithfully yours,
HENRI BERGSON,
Visiting French Professor, 1912-18
JOHN DEWEY,
Professor of Philosophy
HERBERT G. LORD.
Professor of Philosophy
DICKINSON S. MILLER,
Professor of Philosophy
WENDELL T. BUSH,
Associate Professor of Philosophy
RUDOLPH EUCKEN,
(Exchange Professor)
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER,
President of Columbia University
F. J. E. WOODBRIDGE,
Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy
FELIX ADLER,
Professor of Social and Political
Ethics
ADAM LEROY JONES,
Associate Professor of Philosophy
WILLIAM P. MONTAGUE,
Associate Professor of Philosophy
WALTER B. PITKIN,
Associate Professor of Philosophy
DR. HOFFDING'S REPLY
COPENHAGEN TL, April 4, 1913
PRESIDENT BUTLER,
Dear Sir,
It was to me a very great honour and pleasure to receive on the oc-
casion of my seventieth birthday such a splendid message from you and
my other philosophical colleagues at Columbia University with the ad-
herence of two so eminent European thinkers as Bergson and Eucken.
I will keep this document among the best remembrances of the day,
which was a very beautiful day for me, owing to the warm sympathy with
which my colleagues and my students celebrated it.
I remember with pleasure your visit in Copenhagen, and I hope that
you and Mrs. Butler are quite well.
I beg you to express my warm and sincere thanks and compliments to
the colleagues who subscribed the salutation, and I am, dear Sir,
Your most affectionate
(Signed) HARALD HOFFDING
THE annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psy-
chology was held on April 8 and 9 at the Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore.
DR. WILLIAM ERNEST HOCKING, of Yale University, has been promoted
to the grade of professor of philosophy.
PROFESSOR LLOYD MORGAN, F.R.S., has been appointed Herbert Spencer
lecturer for 1913 at Oxford University.
VOL. X. No. 11. MAY 22, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD:
CONFORMITY, CONSISTENCY, AND TRUTH:
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY
WBAT constitutes truth for some years has been a question, if
not even the question, of the hour, at least among the philoso-
phers. Traditional criteria having from various reasons become
discredited, there has been need of the closest and hardest kind of
thinking on this important point, and with the rise of the need, as
always when a need comes from the passing of long-accepted
restraints, there has been a good deal of recklessness and extrava-
gance. Old restraints apparently out of the way, truth has come to
be what any one pleases, and in these days the thing that pleases
is the thing that "goes" or "works." At least so much has evolu-
tion done for the enjoyments of life, making movement, rather than
condition, doing something or producing something, rather than just
having or being or feeling something, at once the primary and the
ideal source of pleasure now or even hereafter. Indeed, only to come
back to my starting-point, it is evolution that besides changing the
tests of pleasure has also made necessary a change in the tests of
truth.
What, then, thanks to the new systems of values imposed by evo-
lution, really constitutes truth? What is it, in other words, to "go"
or "work"? How far in "going" or "working" can we discover,
not loose and dangerous tests, but tests that will secure both respon-
sible and vital thinking and knowing? Such is the problem; and
with regard to the present study being a sociological study, as indi-
cated in the title, I will say only, what in my opinion is quite obvious,
that the nature of truth, if a philosophical issue, is also a sociological
issue, and I am now concerned with a certain point, a simple point,
too, although to my mind of much interest and importance, in which
the problem of truth has a sociological bearing. Let me hope that
the elusive term, sociological, is here used within reasonable and
recognizable bounds.
Now, before considering the newer tests of truth, what have long
281
282 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
been the accepted tests? "Were I to put this question directly to
every one reading this article and to get answers from all, I think the
answers would come almost, if not quite, without exception, not neces-
sarily in these words, but with this substance: Conformity to an
external reality, to things, so to speak, out there, and complete con-
sistency with self; or, more concisely, external conformity and
internal consistency. Also, as I suspect, many of those who answered
would even be disposed to ridicule any other tests. Even in these
days of evolution they would conservatively still insist that, although
for actual experience at any stage or time, that is, for any experi-
ence that must be partial and relative, conformity and consistency
are no longer to be thought of as ever actually attainable, neverthe-
less they must remain the tests of final and absolute experience and
so, however unattainable, ought to be kept and vigorously maintained
as ideals. Perhaps ; only it is well to reflect at once that such ideals,
the ideals of unearthly perfection, show merely a formal appreciation
of evolution and, whatever their showing, they are discouraging to
the point of a stultifying pessimism. The journey of evolution, not
just the hopelessly far goal, the movement and action, not just some
imaginary place or condition at the end, the daily progress and
achievement, not just the last act, must have primary and essential
worth and significance. Yet, in virtual if not in intended opposition
to such a view, there are still many who insist on the medieval tests,
external conformity and internal consistency, which, or at least which
alone and not greatly qualified, being abstractly ideal, I submit,
never carried a traveller any recognizable distance or never, what-
ever value they may have for routine, characterized any real action.
Perfectionism and its false or only formal evolution aside, let me
try (1) to show very briefly what external conformity and internal
consistency as tests of truth really demand in practise, (2) to explain,
so far as I can, how such tests ever got their wide vogue and author-
ity, and (3) taking up the newer tests of "going" or "working," to
appraise these as tests, indicating what may be their relation to con-
formity and consistency and what, if any, use the new may make of
the old. When I have done so much, I shall be ready, finally, to sug-
gest, at least in a brief and preliminary statement, what to me is a
very interesting application to society and its part in true experience.
1. As to the actual use of the traditional tests of conformity and
consistency I suggest the following : One 's idea of a tree can be true,
first, only if it be the copy of a tree ; thus, in the case of any indi-
vidual tree, only if it have what I will call a photographic correspon-
dence to some tree "out there," say in my neighbor's orchard, or, in
the case of the class or genus, only if, as a conception, it reproduce in
the mind at once all the things and the constitutive unity of all the
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 283
things which all trees are ; and, secondly, if, besides being a copy of a
tree, it be also quite at one with itself and not incongruous with the
copies of other things already present or presentable to the mind ; in
other words, again in case of the individual, only if it possess stability
or what we sometimes know as self -identity, an internal orderliness
of its parts, and individual self-consistency, and, in case of the genus,
only if, as a conception, it involves nothing that, as to what trees
themselves are, is internally inconsistent or that by conflicting with
conceptions of other things, other natural objects, such as stones or
clouds or stars, will make the general content of the mind internally
inconsistent.
So runs the long prevalent notion of a true idea and, by obvious
implication, of truth in general. Further explanation of it or illus-
tration is, I think, not called for. It plainly accords with a type of
mind, a standpoint in life and thought, that is well enough known to
be recognized and appreciated, and its strict obedience to the tests
of conformity and consistency is apparent, although my unreservedly
bold statement of it must make also apparent certain inherent diffi-
culties attaching to those tests.
2. But, secondly, how came such a notion of truth to get its
vogue ? This how bromidic to say so is matter of history. There
was a time when the problem of truth did not worry mankind at all
and when men on whatever tests just took their ideas as true without
taking any thought at all or having any knowledge as to what their
tests were. Then, again, there was a time when a different notion of
truth from that just outlined prevailed and was recognized and con-
sciously avowed. Still, not to do more than just to mention these
conditions in a past more or less remote, the time came, as Chris-
tendom now knows so well, when dualism became the dominant ' ' ism ' '
at least of occidental life and thought. I say nothing of life and
thought in the orient. Dualism, which is of course in most minds
almost synonymous with medievalism, but which, although possibly
synonymous to a certain extent, is probably better thought of as an
effect rather than as a cause or condition of medievalism, being as
hereafter to be pointed out an outcome of ecclesiastical assertiveness
and isolation, made man live with reference to what was at once out-
side and alien. Being himself of two separate and exclusive parts
and natures, he was put in this situation : his physical nature had to
adapt itself to an external spiritual life, and his spiritual nature,
returning the courtesy, had to adapt itself to an external physical
life. To waive other special cases of such adaptation, in his knowl-
edge man had to know an external physical world and also a not
less external spiritual world. What, then, under such conditions
naturally would constitute true knowledge ? Dualism had no choice
284 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
but to make external conformity and internal consistency the tests,
sometimes putting emphasis mainly if not exclusively on consistency,
as in idealistic rationalism and deduction, sometimes on conformity,
as in empiricism and induction, and sometimes declaring equally for
both, as in Kantianism, where consistency applied to the form and
conformity to the matter or content of knowledge. That Kant found
neither consistent knowledge nor objectively true or conforming
knowledge 1 ever possible in positive or actual experience does not
affect the present point at all. We have simply to understand that so
long as the medieval dualism is retained, however refined and purified
it may be, true knowledge must be a matter of conformity, consis-
tency, or both. To have shown the humanly unattainable character
of such truth may have created a demand for other tests or at least
have raised doubts about the accepted tests; it may have amounted,
as in the opinions that some have of Kant's philosophy, to a very
nice reductio ad absurdum; but, once more, hold to the tradition of
medieval dualism and you are bound to the tradition of conformity
and consistency. Given two distinctly separate and different things ;
then each must be in itself identical and consistent and the two with
respect to any possible relation between them must, if positively
related, literally conform, and, if negatively, absolutely non-conf orm.
Dualism, honest with itself, can allow no middle course. True, the
two tests, external conformity and internal consistency, when both
insisted upon at the same time, may necessarily interfere with each
other, and knowledge, accordingly, each test in some measure com-
promising the other, may be made ' ' phenomenal, ' ' as Kant, in fact,
found it, but this is merely a luminating exposure of dualism which
from the very nature of the case ought to be expected to impose con-
flicting tests. Is it not quite conclusive that, if two things are
dualistieally different and exclusive, neither can really assume any
positive relation to the other by conforming thereto without com-
promising its own identity or consistency, and neither can assert
itself as identical and consistent without making conformity to the
other in just so far impossible ?
But here an important qualification must be added. In the
middle ages the authority of the church was such that, if I may so
express the case, the absurdities or impossibilities of dualism were
suppressed and nicely concealed. Under the artificial conditions
artificial at least to later discovery and retrospection which the
assertiveness of the church and all that this implied created, there
appeared no conflict or no serious discrepancy between the two tests,
consistency and conformity. True, non-conforming facts of very
brutal sort were present and by no means unnoticed; the world, the
1 In the sense of knowledge as reproducing something really "out there."
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 285
flesh, and the devil were at least not inactive; but it was assumed,
as for assertion's sake and authority's sake it had to be assumed, that
what did not conform did not really exist and in good time under
proper treatment would disappear. Of course, with the usual pleas-
antry of human events, the confident and assertive church fought
that non-conforming trinity, not merely with its own dogmatic trini-
tarian theology and the various rites and exorcisms thereof, but also
with weapons for which, although they were either formally sanctified
or carefully disguised, history the retrospective view again has
had no better names than these three, the world, the flesh, and the
devil. A non-conforming might made right as well as wrong in
those days. That, however, although hardly impertinent here and
although of considerable interest hereafter, is not exactly the story
which I am just now telling. Under the artificial conditions this
is what I would say the old tests held and they were found inade-
quate or rather, as final and immediate tests, not really applicable
until a hopelessly distant end of things, only at such time as the con-
ditions came to be seen and appreciated as artificial. The coming
millennium, near enough in the consciousness of the middle ages to
be felt as real, to be, as it were, a factor in the people's "specious
present, ' ' 2 was certainly a solvent for many difficulties.
On medieval dualism, then, lies the responsibility for consistency
and conformity as tests of truth. But medieval dualism may I not
now appear too presumptuous or over-confident has passed or, with
more accuracy, has lost its prestige. The dualistic way of explaining
certain facts is no longer the commonly accredited way. The differ-
ence between mind and matter, subject and object, spiritual life and
natural life, is now a difference that means, not the existence of two
separate and naturally exclusive worlds or orders or substances, but
the wealth, the inexhaustible life, the rich potentiality, even the crea-
tive activity of one. I can not here enter into a discussion of all that
this means. Some light, however, must be thrown upon it. Refer-
ence was just made to creative activity. So long as men held,
whether openly and literally or only virtually, to the notion of a
special creation a dualistic notion, of course, and not without its
own difficulties the natural or physical world, the created world,
had and could have only a somewhat narrow uniformity, its structure
and movement being under the constraints of some definite plan or pro-
gramme, but the natural world nowadays is not viewed, in the
orthodox sense, creationalistically. The world-process, instead of any
longer being the working out of a narrow programme specially con-
*By the people's "specious present" I mean so much of time, that is, so
much of the past and so much of the future, as the content or matter of their
life, as determined by knowledge and belief, seemed to them to fill.
286 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ceived as to its form, and specially timed and located, is the working
out of a free principle, which is so free that it is capable of expres-
sion in any number of programmes and which, although always im-
plying unity, differs from any single plan or programme or let me
say from uniformity as infinity from finiteness. Our modern world,
in short, has unity, not uniformity, and so, only showing how certain
tables have been turned, instead of being itself a product or result of
creation, it is in its own life, thanks to the freedom and bigness of the
unity, constantly creative. Its own life is creative at least in the
sense, certainly a genuine sense, of the unity of it being superior and
constantly showing its superiority to any manifested uniformity.
Indeed the superiority is so great that, not only is the actual world
spatially or temporally far from exhausting the content or the mean-
ing of the unity, but also no limits can ever be set to possibility
provided only that anything ever becoming actual accord, I do not
say with any now known or even any now conceivable plan, but with
some then discoverable plan. 3 Evolution, as it is at last coming to
be appraised, has thus given us a real universe, not merely a uniform
one. With uniformity went, as suggested already, special creation
and the medieval dualism; with unity, the free unity of a real uni-
verse, goes an always creative life and, with regard to the fate of
dualism under the newer view, this, even like the creation, has not
really been lost, but on the contrary has been wonderfully magnified
or aggrandized, having become can I count on being understood ?
a living principle of duality, a function, instead of remaining in its
quondam character of a single dual structure. Evolution has made
creation general, and natural as general, and dualism functional,
compounding both, one might almost say, to infinity, so that those
who have seen in evolution only anti-creationalism and only anti-
dualism have certainly been seriously misled by some one, perhaps, as
is not unthinkable, by the evolutionists themselves. As to the old-
time creationalism and its passing, has a real creature ever failed,
not merely to supplant, but also to honor by splendidly outdoing its
maker ? And another question : As to the medieval dualism, setting
the universe as it did to a given structure, must not any structure
imply action, and implying action, must it not with the action be
freed as a principle or function instead of remaining a set condition ?
But what of the tests of truth? With the medieval structural
dualism losing caste, with creation turned general and natural, with
a free unity, having for content, in addition to all defined actuality,
an undefined potentiality, taking the place of a narrow uniformity,
* The importance of possibility or potentiality to the unity or wholeness of
the universe is the burden of an article, "The Passing of the Supernatural,"
this JOURNAL, Vol. VII., page 533.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 287
for which there could be no possibility save that of unnatural miracle,
I say with all these changes, external conformity and internal con-
sistency could hardly be expected to retain their unqualified hold on
the minds of men. They might still be kept as helps or instruments,
that is, as having mediative value, but as final tests, as immediate and
conclusive, they must give way to something else. And to what ?
3. With this question, thirdly, we return to "going" or "work-
ing" as determining what is true; for the pragmatic test is that, not
which has merely taken the place of the others, but, as I would now
put the case, which has come as a result of the others or in fulfilment
of them. In my opinion the historical antecedents of pragmatism in
any of its aspects, but particularly in its doctrine as to what con-
stitutes truth, have had far too little attention. History is always
such an interpreter and it is so sure to correct the extravagance to
which those who are ignorant of it or unmindful of it are very prone.
But how can we best put the history by which the tests of consistency
and conformity have become the test of "working" ? In general the
historical change from medievalism to modernism has been this : The
assumed institutes of the earlier time have become the recognized
instruments of the later and, as the institutes have thus become in-
struments, life itself has changed from having relation to a complex
of supposedly commensurable factors to having relation to factors of
which commensurability is not a necessary condition. By commen-
surable factors are meant persons as well as things which may be
judged or measured according to some given standard, and which
being so judged may also be acted upon uniformly. But, now that
I have so concisely outlined the historical change, there is need of
some illustration. Thus, as to the first point, the institutes of
monarchy have become the instruments of democracy; the dogmas
of a religion of authority are now only the symbols or cults of a
religion of belief ; the ancient classics from being the learning of the
time are now little if anything more than so much educational dis-
cipline often even to the point of merely having given methods of
study and instruction to modern subjects ; castes, guilds, and the like
are only classes in a social life the labor of which is quite consciously
divided; one-time metaphysical doctrines of reality, wholly freed
from their original setting, from their very special application, as,
for a notable example, in the case of dualism or creationalistic causa-
tion, are now hypothetical standpoints or methods in the investiga-
tions of an empirical science; and, not to overwhelm any one with
evidence, even the earth is no longer an institute, but is instead the
mere instrument of the sun or more accurately is but one detail
in an unbounded system whose law is of far more significance than
any center. But now, besides so much evidence or illustration, there
288 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
is that which has central interest for the present study. External
conformity and internal consistency as tests of truth are no longer
institutes, but instruments ; no longer ends, but means ; or, as was even
suggested above, no longer of immediate, but only of mediate value.
And observe that this is to say that, although so changed, the old
tests are still with us. Also, although tests originating in artificial
conditions, they should suffer no opprobrium of artificiality, for the
simple reason that the conditions themselves are taken only as instru-
mental to what is real. There is, of course, a sense in which an
instrument must be artificial.
In addition to the growth of institutes into instruments there
was mentioned also the change from commensurability to incommen-
surability. The two changes, I am sure, belong most intimately
together, although I may have difficulty in showing just why. Still
the difficulty can hardly be insurmountable. Any institute may cer-
tainly be spoken of as a measure. Also as an institute it depends on
an assumption that life is concerned or at least is properly concerned
with nothing which can not be, so to speak, evenly measured by it.
To be "evenly measured" is to have nothing left over, nothing or
at least nothing of any significance or importance unaccounted for ;
to be classifiable without hesitation or equivocation ; to accord exactly
with the specific standard under which the accounting is made. But
if the institute, as institute, thus implies even measurements, let it
become instrument and the implication changes and must change
materially, for plainly life will have become larger and deeper than
its old measure. As to this, in the first place, institutionalism plainly
defines life spatially and temporally and actively or occupationally ;
for instrumentalism life is undefined or infinite, since the very idea
of an instrument, tool, or method calls for an unlimited field of use or
application. The field is as truly without limit as straightness,
measured let us say by the inch, can always be, however long, one
inch longer. Given any instrument or method, any tool or symbol,
any measure or any standard, there is always possible one more use
for it. But, in the second place, under instrumentalism, not only
can no limit be set to the possible applications of the instrument, but
also, only showing how truly the recognized field of life has widened
and deepened, besides such immeasurability or infinity there is incom-
mensurability to be accounted for and, as I think will be seen at once,
nothing could punctuate the widening of the field, the change from
finiteness to infinity, more than this, nor could anything more con-
clusively show the loss of immediacy or finality of value for the
given measure or instrument. What incommensurability is in mathe-
matics is common knowledge, but in the more general sense of meas-
ures adopted here I may not be understood. So let me add a few
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 289
more general remarks and then offer the most pertinent illustration.
In general, an institute become instrument must imply real action,
not routine. Real action must be in an unbounded or infinite field,
for a finite field would show the institute and its routine still imme-
diate instead of mediate in value. An infinite field, however, must
imply, not a merely negative immeasurability, but a positive immeas-
urability, that is, incommensurability. 4 Incommensurability, involv-
ing at least two measures instead of one, is only a sort of short-
circuiting of infinity ; it is a direct expression of what infinity as an
impossible limit is an indirection for; it is, not the form, but the
reality of infinity. To put the case geometrically, infinite length
formally may never look like anything but length long drawn out,
persistently measured, and eternally measurable, inch by inch or
mile by mile, but in real meaning it carries thought across the bridge
from length as just length to length as ratio, and so in real meaning
it is in a two-dimensional field and only formally in a one-dimensional
field. 5 Duality or in general multiplicity of dimensions is, geomet-
rically, the very essence of incommensurability. But with proper
apologies for my layman's geometry, let us turn to the promised
pertinent illustration. There was once that reigning institution, the
medieval church, that, as the years passed, became witness Protest-
antism an instrument. With this transformation real present
action took the place of routine or supposed routine and the field of
action became infinite witness the art and the science, the explora-
tion and the discovery, the substitution, in every department of life
and thought, of free principle for set and Heaven-sent programme
or form while the field of the routine had been finite. With the real
action, however, there early rose another institution, the state, and
life had in church and state two measures, or two dimensions, instead
of one, and medievalism came thus to its dualism. In reality, too,
the field of action it was real action was made infinite and incom-
mensurable then and there, but, as must now be said, outwardly life
was long in discovering or squarely facing the incommensurability.
Church and state, as dualistically different, as incommensurable as
two institutes could be, for many years remained outwardly rivals
for each other's prerogatives, as if each could be itself consistently
and yet also assume the form of the other, but the growing instru-
mentalism and the increasing freedom of real action and the constant
opening of the field finally brought only I do not dare to say just
4 The incommensurability or the same thing the duality of infinity I have
considered, not with any claim to originality, but still in my own way, at con-
siderable length in an article, "Dualism, Parallelism and Infinitism," recently
published in Mind (Vol. XX., N. S., No. 78).
'Or, more generally put, in an n -f 1 -dimensional field instead of an n-
dimensional field.
290 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
when what the historians are pleased to call their ''separation."
The action found itself, as so clearly it knows itself to-day, in a
really, not formally, infinite field ; it found itself, where real action,
so different from routine, must always be, in a field of incommen-
surable elements. So long as the rivalry of the institutions persisted
thus only expressing and perpetuating the medieval dualism the
field of action was apparently infinite only formally, that is, only
with reference to the possible application of the old institute become
instrument, and worth in general, as well as truth, continued to be
tested traditionally by consistency and conformity, although the tests
appeared ever more and more inadequate or absurd, but now that
the rivalry is dead, the "separation," begun long ago, being now vir-
tually complete, the field clearly is, as said before, really infinite and
with respect to its parts incommensurable and the obstinate tests of
institutionalism and routine have had to give place, so far as finality
goes, to the test of instrumentalism or experimentalism ? and real
action. In a word, then, the history that brought the development of
the supposed reigning institution into a recognized and freely used
instrument, and that at the same time showed life changing from
relation to supposedly commensurable factors to relation to plainly
incommensurable factors, only tells us in a new way the story with
which we are already familiar, namely, the change from uniformity
to unity, from the structural dualism of special creation to the func-
tional dualism of creative life, from some actual or given status or
routine to free action, to action that we saw to be free because the
unity, maintained, expressed, or constantly realized by it, had con-
tent of unlimited potentiality, not merely of any given actuality.
The potentiality, moreover, did not require that future realization
show literal or formal accord with any present plan; in other
words, in an important way connecting the earlier story with the
later, the unity was so free and its contained potentiality was so
unbound that commensurability was not necessary to the factors of
the former or the ever realized or realizable expressions of the latter.
Free unity and action, I think, are very commonly appreciated
as categories of the present time and that they are our inheritance
from the past even to the point of the action being in a genuine
sense creative action is also fairly well understood, but that free
unity, equivalent surely to the only real unity, and real action imply
incommensurability is not so well appreciated. This indubitable fact,
then, since it bears directly 'on the present problem of truth and its
tests, and particularly on the only instrumental value, but still the
instrumental value of conformity and consistency, is what I would
here specially emphasize. Even to repeat, no real action can be ade-
quately appraised under one measure ; under one measure it would
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS, 291
still be routine; for adequate appraisal there must be at least dual
measurement. No real unity, free from the incompleteness of some
set uniformity, can be single-natured ; it must be at least dually
complex. How best to describe the duality the required minimum
of complexity is of course a real question, but this may be said.
Suppose any two measures or standards, any two institutes, that are
not commensurable; it is plain is it not? that their difference
implies for the life which they both serve, first, a static aspect are
they not both set to a certain routine? and, secondly, a dynamic
aspect are they not different parts of the same unity? The static
and the dynamic, then, or say, recalling the history, church and
state, offer one possible description of the duality with which real
unity must be affected or in terms of which real action must always
be appraised. In recent times the disposition has been to neglect the
static and uniform whether as present fact or as an ideal. Yet real
unity is not, as many would loosely suppose, aloof from uniformity ;
free action is by no means superior to, or independent of, routine;
unity can be real only through a multiplicity of different uni-
formities and action can be free only through a variety of routines.
Once more, then, real unity and free action imply incommensurability
and, this being such a hard and forbidding name, no one can object
if I add that "the incommensurable" is necessarily only a collective
or Unitarian term for that medieval non-conforming trinity, the
world, the flesh, and the devil. Of course, there must be always
modern ways of sanctifying the incommensurable, but I am not now
formulating the proper ritual for a modern church, for the church
as free instrument instead of set institute.
And besides emphasizing the fact of unity and action implying
incommensurability, whether sanctified or unsanctified, I would
emphasize also another closely related fact, as follows: Free unity
and real action so truly are our inheritance from uniformity and
routine in a past life of supposedly commensurable factors that to
take a flatly negative attitude towards uniformity and commensur-
ability or towards the tests pertinent thereto, conformity and con-
sistency, is treachery as disastrous as it is unpardonable. Such
treachery, obviously, I have had in mind when I have insisted/
among other things having the same object, that the old tests are
after all still with us and are with us in a very real form, namely, as
instruments artificial instruments, if you please and, again, that
recent times have shown a disposition to neglect the static element in
life or action. The old conditions and the old tests may indeed have
lost their quondam importance and prestige, but here certainly is no
warrant for setting up plurality and incommensurability, inconsis-
tency and non-conformity, as things intrinsically worthy and so to be
292 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
cultivated for their own sakes. To set them up so is in fact only to
manifold the old status, no real change other than a merely numerical
one being accounted for. Yet the change from institutes to instru-
ments, from the commensurable to the incommensurable, is a real
change.
We can see now, as I think, what the test of "going" or "work-
ing" means or at least what from its relation to history it ought to
mean. Man has become, thanks to his past, not a mere creature, but
a freed agent. More than this, he is an agent with instruments
either actually at hand for his use or potentially at hand for his
invention. He is, as I have frequently liked to describe him, a
skilled mechanic 6 only this is a term that perhaps even more than
agent, lacks interest and romance for most people; he is a capable
user of well-made instruments, tools, methods, symbols; no longer
a soldier or no longer a creature of some external will or power.
And, man being this historically, coming up to the present with this
inheritance, "going" or "working" can mean nothing more and
nothing less than skilful action, the at once capable and effective
use of some highly developed instrument. Whatever enables, not
just action, but action with the mediation of such an instrument, and
not just mere use of this instrument, but its skilful use, is true. In
the making and testing of all instruments, however, of all tools,
methods or symbols, the medieval tests, conformity and consistency,
still hold, and it would not be very difficult to show that in their new
role of testing the means or instruments of action they really have
a larger significance than that which first belonged to them. They
have lost much, but they have found more : their whole world ; their
own soul. Moreover, although I said I was not at this time under-
taking to formulate the proper ritual for a modern church, have I
not, as a matter of fact, quite unwittingly made at least a very good
beginning in that direction? I think, indeed, that it is a matter of
history that a good instrument skilfully used will always go a long
way towards either consecrating or exorcising the incommensurable.
And just what was the point of so insisting on the use of an in-
strument being skilful? The point was this. Only skilful use can
be productive or creative, and, as has been seen, creative action is
the true action of our modern life. "Going" or "working," in
other words, properly that is, if judged by the history that has led
to it as a test simply requires discovery, productiveness, creation.
Ask any good scientist in the laboratory what truth is and, if he fail,
as he may, 7 to tell you in words he will at least show you by his acts
Cf. "The Will to Doubt," Ch. IX., The Doubter's World, page 224 sq.
London, 1907.
* Or, alas, as he is all too likely to. Science often seems still too institu-
tional and too structurally dualistic, too medieval or scholastic, too solicitous for
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 293
that anything is true that enables investigation and discovery.
Productiveness, in short, as well as the use of an instrument, is re-
quired by the pragmatic test, when this is estimated historically, and
with all that has been said I can hardly need to add that discovery or
production, coming only from the skilful use of some method or
instrument, always involves the development of new relationships,
that is, of relationships to what is not formally like or is not com-
mensurable with what has been. Only so could the test of ' ' going ' '
or ''working" meet the honest and honorable demands of modern
life. Modern life is itself the created product of medievalism.
But this was to be a sociological study and we are now able to
take up the special sociological bearing of what has been under dis-
cussion. To go at once to the point, the distinction between the old
tests and the new, between institute with its routine and instrument
with its creative action, between commensurability and incom-
mensurability, between uniformity and unity, is quite parallel to the
distinction between organized social life as perhaps best exemplified
in any class and the life of the individual person. Any instrument,
tool, method, or symbol, any institute which is of course destined to
become an instrument, always means actually or potentially a social
class, and within the characteristic life of the class, within the life
of the class as a class, although obviously this is all very much of an
abstraction, uniformity and routine are in order and consistency and
conformity may very properly be exacted of both action and thought.
Within the class imitation is the characteristic mental process and it
is quite pertinent to add that for medievalism life was always pri-
marily a matter of class. With the individual person, however, the
unit of modern life, the situation is very different. The character-
istic part of the person is invention, not imitation; creative action,
not routine. The consistency, then, and conformity, the uniformity
and routine of the class, are not properly for him, save as they put at
his disposal a highly developed instrument for use in his self-realiza-
tion, a means to his having part in the creative life of the world. His
first loyalty is to the incommensurable; his duty is to the "working"
imposed by the new test.
Is it to be wondered that those who have insisted on this test have
been charged with individualism, subjectivism, even solipsism ? Nor
can it be said that the charge is altogether unjust. Just as there has
been a disposition, doubtless from the impulsive interest in novelty,
to forget the institute in the freedom imparted by its having become
uniformity. Science has been, I think, only the medieval institutionalism greatly
generalized, much as the mathematics, to which it resorts, has been only a sort of
generalized, conventionalized, and de-humanized legal order, a formal discipline
abstracted from the material past.
294 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
an instrument, so there has been a disposition to forget the class in
the sense of personal efficiency that effective use of any method or
instrument, always the milieu of a class, always imparts. Still, what-
ever lapses of memory have occurred, and however natural the lapses
were, it remains that historically "going" or "working" means only
the action that is expressed in the skilful, that is, the creative use of
a well-made instrument or method, a highly developed institution,
and, as may now be said, also, only the action of an individual person,
the medium or instrument of whose activity is an inheritance from
the formally organized life, the institutional routine, of some larger
or smaller social group. Interpreted in this way, the test of ' ' work-
ing" may still involve individualism, but in no such sense as either
subjectivism or solipsism would carry. There may indeed be a
certain liberation of the individual from the slavery of the class,
from the mere routine of the life of a class, but, as he uses the instru-
ment given to him by that life, he becomes, not less, but more a social
being than ever, for, leaving the companionship and the loyalty of
uniformity and routine, he enters into the richer fellowship of unity
and creative life.
So do I find the problems of truth a sociological problem, and I
might very well, perhaps much better, leave the matter right here,
for the point that I wished really to make only a timely reminder
of the past as a proper source of interpretation for a certain modern
idea with an application to sociology has now been made and, I
allow myself to think, does not need further explanation. Among
the many suggestions, however, that the foregoing discussion has
started in my own mind, there is one, perhaps the one that would
least interest anybody else, which I am tempted into heeding and at
least very briefly developing. It comes, let me confess, from a most
technical region in philosophy, yet I trust I may give it a more than
merely technical meaning. Thus, as the ancient Greek Zeno, who
argued that the flying arrow must rest and that Achilles, however
swift, could never overtake the tortoise, and the modern or medi-
eval? German Kant, who formulated certain startling antinomies
of space and time and of several other fundamental factors of
experience, as these two notably among others have been at much
pains to let us know, in any doctrine of knowledge, and its truth, not
to mention other doctrines, there is always the peculiar difficulty of
finiteness and infinity, of finite divisibility and infinite divisibility.
Space, time, and process, the last whether viewed mechanically as
motion or dynamically as expressed in a causal series, are all in the
dilemma of needing to be finite and infinite at once. Zeno's and
Kant's solutions of the difficulty were what they were, but we must
not trouble ourselves directly with them beyond remarking that
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 295
old notions of things generally are commonly found to be only
modern ideas under quaint disguises. Thus, to hint at last at what
Zeno's paradoxes and Kant's antinomies have to do with the modern
test of truth, and particularly with the sociological application given
above, who would dream that in the opposition between finite and
infinite as found in space and time and process there is nothing more
nor less than the two demands, which we have found to be always
put upon experience, the social or institutional demand and the per-
sonal demand, or say the demand of the formal and the demand of
the vital ? Yet the finite is the uniformly measured and measurable ;
the infinite is the informal and immeasurable including, as should
be recalled, not merely the contextually or only negatively immeas-
urable, but also the incommensurable, the formally quite impossible.
A finite space can be only a space limited by some assumed unit of
measurement, whether inch or mile ; and so a finite time, be the unit
second or hour, day or year, age or ason ; and a finite process, mechan-
ical or dynamic, is limited not only spatially and temporally, but
also by some assumed formal plan or programme, as in the noted and
notable case of special creation ; but any assumed and determined, or
let me say now standardized, unit of measurement, inch or mile,
second or aeon, or any programme of movement or action has all the
character of an institute or instrument and always means, actually
or potentially, a social class. So, if I may venture one more inter-
pretation of a much-interpreted doctrine, Kant's finites, all of them,
may very well be looked upon as a bureau of course a bureau
a priori, but that is only a philosopher's joke of standards and
models, which is always so important to organized social life. Besides
standards and models and finites, however, besides measures and in-
struments, there is always infinity to be reckoned with, and, accord-
ingly, to continue the interpretation, the Kantian assertion .that all
the basal and primary forms or conditions of experience are with
good reason and real cogency infinite as well as finite gets new mean-
ing and very much enriched meaning from the here suggested asso-
ciation of the finite and the infinite with the social and the personal,
the formal and the vital. If the finites suggest a bureau of standards
and models, the infinites point to the transforming process, the
creative life which the bureau is always serving. Thus finiteness and
infinity, uniformity and unity, part and whole, the measurable and
the immeasurable, the tests of conformity and consistency and the
test of "working," the formally actual or possible and the formally
impossible, the formal and the vital, in fine, again, the social and the
personal or individual, or say even talent and genius, formality and
informality or originality, instrument and creative use these show
the Kantian antinomy in its modern dress or show how a modern idea
296 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
has remained disguised in the Kantain antinomy. And they show,
too, that truth, however broadened and deepened, however liberated,
by the new test, can not dispense with the old tests. It were cer-
tainly a foolish workman that threw away his measures and tools
because he so enjoyed the freedom and efficiency which they had
brought him. It were, again, a dishonest person who, having a good
time, gave no heed to the bill.
Now, is that which ' ' goes " or " works ' ' true ? Yes ; and, adopting
for the moment the Kantain phraseology, with the same underlying
meaning, forms that are with equal necessity finite and infinite are
the indispensable conditions, the conditions a priori, of all true or
valid knowledge; there can be no truth without both formality and
originality, without at once the possession of an instrument or method
and the productive using of it. Truth thus lies in real use ; that is,
in having from the formed past and in using actively for the
forming future. It is, again, a conscious act in time rather than
any present idea that is true. A present idea can be said only to
mediate a true act. Very commonplace? Doubtless. But it ex-
pounds, or exposes, both the Kantian a priori form and the pragmatic
test as having a place in history.
To conclude, in the preceding paragraph I have not been trying
to raise aloud and anew the cry of "Back to Kant!" nor would I
allow any one with impunity to dub me a neo-Kantian, but I have
wanted, I suppose, to bring certain wanderers into some fold or, so
to speak, to get them back to church, if not for the sermon, at least
for the service. Historical connection and historical feeling have
been a need of many recent "isms."
ALFRED H. LLOYD.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
CAN SCIENCE SPEAK THE DECISIVE WORD IN
THEOLOGY?
IN a forceful paper read at the last session of the American Philo-
sophical Association, Professor Leuba argued that it is a mis-
taken position to urge, as is so often done, that the fundamental
teachings of religion are not under the jurisdiction of science, but of
philosophy only. He denied the right of sanctuary in metaphysics
for such teachings as that of the existence and nature of God, on the
ground that, whatever may be the case as to the God of Aristotle,
Spinoza, etc., the God of the actual religions of the world is, and has
always been, a concrete existence, and not the Absolute a personal
Being who reveals himself in experience. He is to be known, if
known at all, empirically, either (1) in immediate experience (mystic
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 297
or intuitional), or (2) inferentially, on the basis of immediate experi-
ence. Now, as the speaker held, this situation as regards actual
accredited religious teachings, despite the contrary statements of
many philosophers and psychologists, puts theology distinctly within
the field of psychology, which has for its province all types of experi-
ence as such whatever.
Professor Leuba's paper impressed the present writer as an ad-
mirably clear argument and one with sound and useful distinctions.
It is to be commended to certain ultra "tender minded" people who
appear desirous of keeping their cherished religious ideals inviolate
by shutting them up in a kind of intellectual glass case, and re-
fusing, even at the risk of making them spiritually impotent, to artic-
ulate them in any efficient way with the processes and exigencies of
ordinary life. Is the main thesis of the paper sustained, however,
and the conclusion warranted, that psychology is competent to reach
trustworthy scientific conclusions regarding the objects of theological
inquiry ? Is the time not distant, for example, when the psychology
of religion will be able to establish, say, the conclusion of Locke, that
"We have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God, than
of anything our senses have not immediately discovered to us," or
the contrary one of Professor Leuba, that ' ' Belief in a God seems no
longer possible"? 1 I think not; and for the reason that the psy-
chology of religion does not possess, and seemingly can never pos-
sess, a body of critically determined and recognized facts in the
scientific sense.
I do not challenge psychology's right to investigate religious ex-
perience. On the contrary, I regard the subject-matter of religion
as lying very largely within its field. The seat of religion is as-
suredly in the inner life, and it is greatly to be hoped, and I think
expected, that psychological inquiry will reveal to us with increasing
clearness the processes at work in this the most shrouded arcanum of
that life, and the laws governing them. If there is really an invio-
late sanctuary, or holy of holies, within us, it appears to be the ego
itself, not any variety of experience. Furthermore, it is manifest
that the accredited results of such inquiry will naturally and prop-
erly influence greatly the reflective processes through which each
thinker by himself and for himself reaches his conclusions, whether
of faith or unfaith, as to what in the way of human welfare and
promise lies beyond the present pale of cognitive determination.
This is quite another thing, however, and a much more restricted
thing, than the affirmation that psychology is competent to pro-
nounce as to the objective actuality of the objects with which relig-
ious experience is concerned. Does any amount of acquaintance with
* ' ' The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Eeligion, ' ' page 95.
298 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
the mental processes of physicists qualify psychology to decide
whether molecules are actualities or whether Mars is inhabited?
A department of inquiry does not become a science merely by
adopting critical methods; it is not thereby distinguished from phi-
losophy. To be a science it must also possess a body of established
facts critically tested bits of experience which are recognized by
all competent inquirers, and accepted by them with substantially
identical meanings. It is on the possession of such unquestioned
data that the possibility of experimental verification rests, which is
the prime logical characteristic distinguishing science from phi-
losophy, and without which no conclusion can be acknowledged to
be scientifically certain. A scientific conclusion is not merely an
opinion which happens to be held by approximately all the accredited
inquirers in a certain field ; it is a statement which may be taken as
a universal truth because by a logico-experimental use of accepted
facts all competent investigators may be compelled to assent to it.
For such intellectual coercion a common body of critically deter-
mined, admitted facts is indispensable.
But does the subject-matter of the psychology of religion give
promise of yielding such a body of facts ? I can not see that it does.
That subject-matter consists in part of certain modes of external be-
havior in human beings, but more fundamentally it consists in those
distinctive emotions, ideas, and psychical impulses which prompt
the behavior and give it its characteristic significance. It is these
latter phenomena which constitute the real core of religious experi-
ence; and these phenomena have in each case but one observer, and
so but one reporter. They are essentially secret and private. Facts
they are, indeed, but not facts the observation of which is open to cor-
rection through the common inspection of many investigators. Nor
can they full often, even in the same observer, be repeated at will.
They are many of them more like historical than scientific facts
the outcomes of factors and situations which can not be reproduced.
Furthermore, Professor Leuba's expectations regarding the psy-
chology of religion require that it should become an applied science ;
for it is never the province of a descriptive science to make declara-
tions as to actual or possible concrete existences, such as the prog-
nosis of a sick man, the arrival of a new comet, or the reality of the
objects of religious insight and emotion. The deliverances of pure
science are fundamentally hypothetical, which is the reason why they
are also truly universal. Physics tells us, for example, that all ma-
terial bodies tend to move toward each other with a force inversely
proportional to the square of the distance ; but neither this law nor
any other principle of pure physics can by itself assure us of the ex-
istence of a material body in any definite location, for example, of
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 299
an unknown planet beyond the orbit of Uranus. Only the applied
science of astronomy can do that; and it can do it because it intro-
duces into the situation as determinants of the principles and gen-
eral agencies of pure physics, additional empirical data, accurately
determined and largely quantitative. The like is true in mechanics;
applied mechanics pronounces confidently as to the load-carrying
capacity of a bridge, not merely because of the principles of stress
resistance established by pure mechanics, but also because through
a multitude of experiments it has learned the strength of the bridge's
structural materials.
When now we ask whether the psychology of religion can become
in any measure an applied science, the answer seems hopelessly in the
negative. The requisite precise data as determinants of the application
of the general principles of religious experience (supposing these to
have been ascertained) are obviously lacking. "What kind of an
emotional experience and what amount of it is reliable indication of a
supersensible and superhuman stimulus? What kind of intuition
and what degree of it warrants one in thinking he has seen God?
Is it urged that, if psychology is not able to answer such precise
questions as these, yet it may at least so account for religious experi-
ences on physiological and social lines as to make the whole notion of
a supersensible stimulus needless, and so one to be scientifically ex-
cluded on parsimonious grounds? I reply that I see very well how
that result is feasible as regards individual perhaps very confident
individual conclusions; but I do not see how it can be effected
scientifically as a coercive judgment for all proficients in the field of
inquiry so long as these religious experiences are essentially private,
and there is no way of ascertaining whether the emotions, impulses,
and insights under review are alike for the different men who experi-
ence them and pass judgment upon them. What sort of a physiologi-
cal explanation of one's own religious experience is proof that another
man with a different experience has not seen God ?
It may be urged that this argument proves too much, since it
impeaches all introspective psychology ; but the objection is only par-
tially pertinent. The serious challenge which such considerations do
bring to introspectional psychology's claim to be a science is, of
course, well known. The case of the psychology of religion is espe-
cially acute, however, and the argument applies to it a fortiori; for in
ordinary normal psychology there are abundant indications that the
functioning of the vast multitude of individual minds, especially
those of the same race, are remarkably alike sufficiently so to be sub-
ject to safe generalizations. In religion, on the contrary, the indica-
tions make strongly for the conclusion that different minds function
300 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
in a great variety of ways in such very different ways, indeed, that
one man is often quite at a loss to understand the religious life of
another. As to physical objects, the thought processes of Laplace and
Kelvin were sufficiently alike to admit of substantial unanimity in
intellectual results; but how diverse were their theological conclu-
sions ! Eomanes and Haeckel could come into a very large agreement
in biology, and even also in theology on the negative side; for both of
them reacted radically from the traditional doctrines. Eomanes,
however, was able in time to make a new theological synthesis and
reach a new faith an outcome of which there is small promise in the
later thinking of Haeckel. This contrariety in theological result in
two men who agreed well in their own special field of physical science
is evidently due, not primarily to differences of reflective thought,
but to differences of religious experience. It is to just this experi-
ence that Eomanes appeals confidently and properly ; and to men who
have had, or may have, similar religious experiences, the appeal is
suggestive and helpful ; but for these thinkers whose religious experi-
ence is very different his words must often seem unreal and fanciful.
For philosophers this absence of a common body of religious facts
(in the scientific sense) to which appeal may be made is apt to make
fatally easy a common form of the assumption fallacy. Eeligious ex-
perience is primarily immediate experience and appreciative knowl-
edge. Now, philosophizing, with its generalizations and pitiless criti-
cism, is very unfavorable to such experience and knowledge. Indeed,
there is something like an inverse law betwen the two. As time goes
on, and critical reflection becomes more and more the dominant habit,
the mind's power of immediate and original reaction seems to be
atrophied and finally to perish. We are all familiar with Darwin's
sad comments on his loss of power of response to the esthetic stimuli
of nature and the fine arts. For myself Wordsworth's well-known
lines might well be made my own :
' ' There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it has been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. ' '
In later middle life as has been repeatedly shown since Professor
Osier's oft-quoted address on incipient senility one is indeed apt
to reach the maximum of his reflective powers, but it is with a great
price that he gains this philosophic freedom.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 301
Now, this religious situation, namely, that as an inquirer becomes
more competent to generalize and criticize he becomes, also, farther
removed from the phenomena with which he is to deal this is in
itself one sufficiently unfavorable to sound scientific conclusions, but
beyond the difficulty itself is the all but fatal facility which it makes
for the assumption that these receding phenomena are unreal in pro-
portion to their inaccessibility. The psychological investigator of re-
ligion perhaps feels the religious response and the religious craving
no longer. These things for him have lapsed into that limbo of his
memory where linger the shades of many adolescent ideals plans for
lofty service, schemes for human betterment, dreams of personal
achievements, etc. programmes which he has discovered can not be
realized in this heedless, refractory world ; and he easily assumes that
his religious experience possibly a meager and quite conventional
one is of the same stuff throughout as these youthful cloud castles.
The ideational part of that long-past experience seems easily explain-
able as the projection, under the suggestive conditions of some
ecclesiastical environment, of the mind's craving for continued better-
ment, and that form of the craving for betterment being no longer
felt by the philosophic inquirer, its real character and significance
are not appreciated. Naturally it is but an easy step further to con-
clude that the religious experience of other men, indeed of all men,
however larger in amount it may possibly be, is none other in signifi-
cance and validity than that now vanished phase of the inquirer's
own inner life. Now, evidently in such situations assumption, like
charity, easily covers a multitude of (logical) sins, leading to conclu-
sions which to the inquirer himself may wear the garb of science, but
which have no just claim to its authority.
Wherefore, I conclude that those thinkers who have denied that
science can speak the decisive word in theology, and have maintained
that when science has done its best, religion will still remain the field
of individual intuition and personal life venture, have reasoned well.
WM. FORBES COOLEY.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
The Mechanistic Conception of Life: Biological Essays. JACQUES LOEB.
Chicago: "University of Chicago Press. 1912. Pp. 227.
The title of this volume is somewhat misleading to the philosophical
reader. It leads him to anticipate that he will here find a mechanistic
interpretation of life. What he finds, though, is not an interpretation at
all, but a collection of studies exhibiting certain mechanisms of life. Now,
it is surely one thing to demonstrate, let us say, the chemical processes in-
302 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
volved in a tropism; and it is a very different thing to prove (or even
claim) that tropisms are nothing but chemical processes. The latter enter-
prise might result in a mechanistic hypothesis of life; but of this there is
scarcely a vestige in Loeb's book. What the author gives us is a valuable
collection of experimental studies in biological chemistry. They are such
work as even a vitalist like Driesch might have performed.
What is it, then, that warrants the title, " The Mechanistic Conception
of Life " ? Simply this : Loeb supposes that his recorded facts point un-
waveringly toward such a metaphysic, and he often repeats this assurance
at the close of his most striking empirical observations. So frequently
does the reader come upon such utterances that he may be deceived into
thinking that he is reading an interpretation of life logically similar
(though contrary in doctrine) to Driesch's " Science and Philosophy of
the Organism " or Bergson's " Creative Evolution." Whatever else critics
may say of these two monumental philosophical undertakings, they must
admit that these do not merely point to a view of life; they actually de-
velop, more or less minutely and coherently, that view together with its
wider implications. But it is precisely this which Loeb does not attempt,
much less accomplish.
To be persuaded that such a criticism is fair, the reader has only to
consult the opening essay, whose title is the title of the book. " It is the
object of this paper," so runs the first remark, " to discuss . . . whether
our present knowledge gives us any hope that ultimately life, t. e., the sum
of all life phenomena, can be unequivocally explained in physico-chemical
terms." Were we to take each word of this passage in earnest, we might
expect the author to reach the conclusion that there is hope of reaching a
complete physico-chemical explanation. But evidently we must not con-
strue so rigorously. For after a review of the now pretty familiar facts
about artificial activation of ova, the determination of sex, and the mathe-
matical relations in heredity, he finishes thus : " The solution of the riddle
of heredity has succeeded to the extent that all further development will
take place purely in cytological and physico-chemical terms" (p. 23).
And, concerning psychical life, he adds : " Our wishes and hopes, disap-
pointments and sufferings, have their source in instincts which are com-
parable to the light instinct of the heliotropic animals. The need of and
the struggle for food, the sexual instinct with its poetry and its chain of
consequences, the maternal instincts with the felicity and the suffering
caused by them, the instinct of workmanship, and some other instincts are
the roots from which our inner life develops. For some of these instincts
the chemical basis is at least sufficiently indicated to arouse the hope that
their analysis, from the mechanistic point of view, is only a question of
time" (p. 30). And the essay ends with this remark: "Not only is the
mechanistic conception of life compatible with ethics; it seems the only
conception of life which can lead to an understanding of the source of
ethics."
In Loeb's facts, however, the reviewer is unable to discern the least
evidence for the above assertions and hopes. That the organism is com-
posed of chemicals and varies with their processes, is a fact that no longer
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 303
calls for proof. But that every relation into which chemicals can enter
and to which the organism can react is a mechanical relation, is not merely
an unproved presupposition ; it is one which can be defended only by foist-
ing upon the term, " Mechanics," a connotation which it has never en-
joyed and which is quite repugnant to the mechanistic philosopher and
scientist. As the physicist understands it, mechanics is the science of the
action of forces on material bodies. Technically it is divided into two
branches: statics, which considers forces in equilibrium; and dynamics,
which has to do with forces non-equilibrated and hence generating mo-
tion. Now, if words are to be useful in serious discourse, they must pre-
serve an identity of meaning. Mechanism must signify mechanism.
What the man of physics lets it stand for, that must it also represent in
biological discussions. But clearly Loeb's usage of the term can not be
identified with the familiar one. Many passages from his pages might be
cited to prove this; but I shall adduce only a single exceptionally ob-
vious one.
In the essay on " The Significance of Tropisms for Psychology," Loeb
says that, while heliotropic phenomena are determined by the relative
rates of chemical reactions occurring simultaneously in symmetrical sur-
face elements of an animal, " there is a second class of phenomena which
is determined by a sudden change in the rate of chemical reactions in the
same surface elements" (p. 54). This second class Loeb distinguishes
from tropisms, and quite properly, too. He designates it with the ex-
pression, "differential sensibility." Such sensibility is used by Jennings
and others as evidence against the tropism hypothesis of life; but Loeb
deems this improper. " If we wish to trace all animal reactions back to
physico-chemical laws," he argues, "we must take into consideration be-
sides the tropisms not only the facts of the differential sensibility, but
also all other facts which exert an influence upon the reactions " (p. 55).
" Ideas can also act, much as acids do for the heliotropism of certain ani-
mals, to increase the sensitivity to certain stimuli, and thus can lead to
tropism-like movements or actions directed toward a goal" (*&.). Now,
all this is an amazing, yes, even a bewildering concession to non-
mechanistic hypotheses. In one respect it surrenders the case, while in
another it begs the question. It does the former in that it admits the dif-
ference between tropisms and reactions to intensity changes ; for assuredly
an animal which responds to the increase or decrease of stimuli in succes-
sive moments is responding to something that can not be described in
genuine mechanical terms, such as mass, velocity, momentum, force, or the
like. It is, of course, responding to acceleration and retardation of some
sort; but these are derivatives, ratios of functional increments to variable
increments, in short, peculiar relations between forces and space, and
time. But what does this imply, if not that an organism with differential
sensibility is stimulated by time? Or, more precisely stated, is it not re-
sponding to a stimulus containing as a constitutive part a duration?
What is acceleration if not a change of velocity per instant? And what
is change if not at least a time-character? As Spaulding has clearly
shown, 1 an acceleration is not a punctiform entity; t. e., it does not exist at
"'The New Kealism," pp. 209-212.
304 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
one position in either space or time, but is rather a one-one correlation of
the terms of a series of velocities with the instants of time. Now by all
odds the most significant feature of it is that it is a relational complex
extended in time. This fact makes obviously impossible the reduction of
it to a quantum of force. It is not a force at all, it is a relation of force
to time. And herein appears the difficulty of the would-be mechanistic
philosopher. If Loeb grants the existence of a differential sensibility, he
must grant also that organisms are affected by other things than mechan-
ical forces. He must admit that the behavior of an animal at a given
moment can not be deduced from the pattern of physico-chemical forces
in and around it at the previous instant. For a reaction to a change is
not a reaction to anything in the previous instant; it is a reaction to a
relation between some character of that instant and a character of the
succeeding instant. But if a temporal series of relations can stimulate an
organism, into what deeps of despondency must the mechanistic phi-
losopher fall ? How can he ever again hope, with La Place, to deduce the
entire state of the material universe at any desired instant, if only its con-
dition at some one other instant is fully made known to him? The mo-
mentary state of affairs is not the sole determinant of the next. The world
is full of fore-and-aft connections. These are not " spiritual " nor " vital-
istic " nor even psychical, so far as I see ; they are merely temporal. But
neither are they mechanical in the generally accepted and historical
meaning of the adjective. 2
Emphasis has been here placed upon this difficulty in Loeb's presenta-
tion because, in the reviewer's opinion, it is at once the most insidious,
the most general, and the least noticed of all mechanistic misinterpreta-
tions. It seems to be the original sin and orthodox error of the scientific
mind to suppose that whatever involves, in any manner whatsoever, me-
chanical factors or is in any regular way related to them is itself mechan-
ical. When, in the last passage cited, Loeb says that the mechanistic
biologist must take into consideration all facts which exert an influence
upon reactions, he believes that he is not damaging his arguments for
out-and-out mechanism; and he can believe this consistently only if he
falls into the error I have indicated. He must suppose that, if one starts
with chemical processes and observes only what influences them, one can
* This is not saying that accelerations and retardations are not reckoned
with in mechanics. They certainly are. And they are not misconstrued in
mechanical computations. But what I insist upon is that they are not admitted
as extra forces (energies) over and above those moving bodies which figure in
their differential ratios. For instance, the displacement of the body A by the
body B which impinges upon A is a function of B's momentum at the instant
of contact, regardless of the derivation of the momentum. That is to say, B
may have been moving with uniform velocity, or with some acceleration or some
retardation ; but this makes no difference in A 's displacement. Here we have,
I believe, an exact and demonstrable clue to the fundamental difference between
organic and inorganic behavior. "Mere matter" (the nickname for the mechan-
ical order of events) varies with instantaneous energetic conditions, while "life"
(another nickname) varies not only with such, but also with serial and other
time relations between those conditions.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 305
not pass beyond mechanism. Logically, this is identical in form with the
idealist's error of supposing that whatever is related to the cognizing
process is mental. Quite apart from the gratuitousness of the assumption,
the latter begs the whole question. If all that is related to mechanism is
mechanical, of course life is only the elder brother of the automobile. And
all biological discoveries are not proofs but merely illustrations of mech-
anism. Our metaphysics is settled in advance of research.
How far Loeb's discoveries herein recorded fall short of being proofs
of his mechanistic philosophy of life may be seen in the four most im-
portant essays, 3 which deal with the problems of artificial fertilization of
ova and the role of salts in the preservation of life. Lack of space for-
bids my reporting more than one instance from those fascinating pages.
Loeb has successfully produced artificial parthenogenesis in a number of
lower marine animals, sometimes by agitation of the eggs, sometimes by
pressure, and sometimes by brief immersion in chemical solutions (cyto-
lytics). What happens in all these experiments? Loeb finds that an
outside membrane of the egg is broken, chafed, dissolved, or precipitated;
and that probably this " facilitates the diffusion of oxygen or of HO ions
(bases) or other substances necessary for the development into the egg "
(p. 151). In other words, the formative stimulation is not formative
stimulation at all, but only a destruction of peripheral cellular matter
whose removal enables a protein substance of that layer to absorb water
and swell and pass on to the egg some food or stimulus which sets up the
constructive ovarian activities. To interpret this situation as evidence of
the mechanical character of life is quite as illogical as to argue that the
actors on a theater stage are made of asbestos because they can not begin
performing until the asbestos curtain between them and the audience is
raised.
There is a round dozen of other flaws in these pages which catch the
philosophical reader's eye. Two of these ought to be at least mentioned
here. In every inference from observed fact to mechanistic hypothesis,
Loeb seems to presuppose that inflexible regularity of behavior under defi-
nite physical conditions of the environment and of the organism indicates
the exclusively mechanical nature of the organic reaction. We have al-
ready pointed out the error of identifying physical with mechanical;
there now remains the other aspect of this presupposition, namely, the
implicit doctrine that inflexible regularity of reaction must be mechanical.
Expose the larvre of Balanus perforatus to sunlight, and they move toward
it. Place them in the light of a quartz mercury lamp, very rich in ultra-
violet rays, and soon the larvae move away from the rays. These tests are
alleged to indicate that the responses are exclusively mechanical. Now,
they can not be this merely because the stimulus is physical; for if that
fact were proof of mechanical reaction, then there is no problem at all.
All life, by virtue of its adjusting itself to a physical setting, declares
itself to be purely a machine, according to such an argument. We must
assume, then, that Loeb founds his presupposition on the other aspect of
the proposition, namely, upon the variation of reaction with stimulus.
* Nos. 6 to 9, inclusive.
306 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
What now is the logic of this assumption? It reduces to the following
primitive form :
A=f(B),
B = M;
:.A=M.
That is to say, the larval movements are functions of ether wave
lengths in the stimulus. The ether waves are mechanical. Hence the
larval movements are, too. Comment on such logical procedure should be
superfluous.
The other error to be noted is one which plays no part in the specific
arguments of Loeb. I cite it only because it is wide-spread and easy.
Throughout this book statements are made like the following : " Heredity
... is perhaps the most rationalistic part of biology " (p. 23). " Tropisms
. . . pave the way for a rationalistic conception of the psychological reac-
tions of animals " (p. 60) . " It is already possible to reduce . . . the trop-
isms to simple rationalistic relations" (p. 61). I think it only equitable to
assume that the author does not mean " rationalistic " here in either its
standard connotation or its accepted philosophical meaning. He does not
champion the rationalism which is historically opposed to empiricism.
And it would be unfair to charge him with using the term in its theolog-
ical sense, namely, as opposed to supernaturalism ; for such a meaning
makes nonsense of his assertions. And finally he can scarcely be accused of
Kantian rationalism nor yet of Platonic rationalism; for he scorns all
such theories as mere word play. I infer, therefore, that in the above con-
text " rationalistic " means only " rational," viz., deductively established.
If it is permissible to place this construction upon the word, the error
latent in its usage appears. Loeb is ever presupposing that a theory of
life can be rational only if it is mechanistic. Nowhere does he say this
unequivocally; but the creed cries shrilly from between the lines. Such
grotesque metaphysical leaps are all too common, and sprightliest jumpers
are to be found among the natural scientists who, like Loeb, ridicule phi-
losophy and her inquirers. They are the best justification for philosophy's
earnest continuance and for the encouragement of stiff logical analysis.
To halt here with comment would convey a false impression as to the
reviewer's verdict on the volume. Loeb's theory is lame, halt, and blind,
a simple tropism (as he himself would have to describe it). But the ex-
perimental data and results which he reports can not be recommended too
highly to the philosophical reader. Although some of them are now out-of-
date, they furnish a vivid picture of a field of research which will some day
upset many of our cherished misconceptions and teach us to see the world
with new eyes.
WALTER B. PITKIN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 307
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. December, 1912. La methode patho-
logique et le langage actuel (pp. 545-567) : F. LE DANTEC. - Objections to
the analytic method on account of its tendency to isolate elements that
really have no existence outside of a complex whole. La signification et la
valeur du pragmatisms (pp. 568-601): H. ROBET. - Pragmatism bridges
the gulf between the intelligence and the heart in which A. Comte saw
the chief characteristic of the spirit of modern times. Vers une nouvelle
conception du temps? (pp. 602-616): J. PERES. -Time is "the condition
of that which not only has not its cause in itself, but also imposes on us,
in order to be thought, a regression from cause to cause, and also an
anticipation of ends, themselves less than more remote ends." Revue
critique. F. Le Dantec, Contre la metaphysique : F. PAULHAN. Analyses
et comptes rendus. Meyerson, Identite et realite: A. PENJON. Larguier
des Bancels, Le gout et I'odorat: J. DAGNAN-BOUVERET. Dr. J. Grasset,
Traite elementaire de physiopathologie clinique: PH. CHASLIN. J. de la
Vaissiere, Elements de psychologic experimentale : TH. RIBOT. A. Mar-
ceron, La morale par I'Etat: M. CONSTANT. Notices bibliographiques.
Revue des periodiques Strangers.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: The
Macmillan Company. 1913. Pp. xiii + 510.
La Mettrie, Julien Offray. Man a Machine. Chicago : The Open Court.
1912. Pp. 216.
Myers, Philip Van Ness. History as Past Ethics. New York: Ginn
and Company. 1913. Pp. xii + 387. $1.50.
Rolfes, Eug. Aristoteles Politik. Leipzig: Verlag von Felix Meiner.
1912. Pp. xvi + 323. 4.50 M.
Seligman, Edwin R. A. Essays in Taxation. New York: The Mac-
millan Company. 1913. Pp. xi + 707. $4.00.
Wundt, Wilhelm. Die Psychologie in Kampf urns Dasein. Leipzig:
Alfred Kroner. 1913. Pp. 38. 1 M.
NOTES AND NEWS
AT the meeting of the Aristotelian Society on April 7, Professor Josiah
Royce was elected a corresponding member, and Mr. A. C. Tonides was
elected a member. Mr. W. W. Carlile read a paper on "Kant's Tran-
scendental Esthetics, with some of its Ultimate Bearings." Kants' a-pri-
orism was based on the view that necessary truth tells us not only what
is, but also what must be. It could only do this, Kant held, because it was
of a priori origin. But in as far as necessary truths rest on the law of
contradiction, it must be the case that the denial of them would contra-
dict at the end of the sentence some statement made or implied at its be-
ginning. If this was so, however, their origin could have nothing to do
308 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
with ante-natal inspiration. Kant's mathematicometaphysical specula-
tions, at the same time, had led indirectly to the recognition of the axiom
of free mobility as the basis of geometry, thus showing that the subject-
matter of the sciences was thoroughly materialistic, and all manufactured
articles might, at the same time, be regarded as the tracks of voluntary
motion in plastic material. The fact of their origin having that feature
in common with the origin of geometrical figures helped to explain the
fact of the application of geometry to the things of the outer world to
very many of them directly, and to others indirectly. The paper was fol-
lowed by a discussion. Athenwum.
A CONFERENCE on the Relation of Law to Social Ends was held at the
College of the City of New York and at Columbia University on April
25 and 26. The following papers were presented : " The Philosophy of
Law in America," Roscoe Pound ; " The Ethnological Approach to Law,"
A. A. Goldenweiser ; " Jehring's Theory of Law," Isaac Husik ; " The Re-
lation of Legal to Political Theory," W. W. Willoughby ; " Responsibil-
ity," H. Rutgers Marshall ; " The Criteria of Social Ends," J. H. Tufts ;
"The Conception of Social Welfare," Felix Adler; "Law and Progress,"
G. W. Kirchwey ; " The Content of Social Justice," Simon Patten ;
" Justice and the Individual," G. W. Cunningham ; " Our Litigious Sys-
tem," E. N. Henderson ; " The Principles of Judicial Legislation," M. R.
Cohen; "The Preamble to the Constitution," G. A. Black; "The Social
Sciences as the Basis of Legal Education," William Draper Lewis.
THE Trustees of Columbia University have formally accepted the pro-
posal made by the Austrian Ministry of Education for the establishment
of an exchange of professors between the universities of Austria and the
universities of the United States, George Stuart Fullerton, professor of
philosophy in Columbia University, was nominated by the Austrian Min-
ister of Education for appointment as exchange professor for the aca-
demic year 1913-14.
A JOINT session of the Mind Association, the Aristotelian Society, and
the British Psychological Society, will be held on June 7 and 8. Papers
will be read on the following subjects : " Are Intensity Differences of
Sensation Quantitative ? " by Messrs. C. S. Myers, Dawes Hicks, H. J.
Watt, and William Brown ; " Memory," by Dr. Arthur Robinson ; and
" Can there be Anything Obscure or Implicit in a Mental State ? " by
Messrs. Henry Barker, G. F. Stout, and R. F. A. Hoernle.
AT the ceremonies connected with the opening of the Phipps Psy-
chiatric Clinic of the Johns Hopkins University Hospital, addresses were
given by Sir William Osier and Professor William McDougall, of Oxford
University, Frederick R. Mott, F.R.S., of London, Professor Heilbronner,
of Utrecht, Professor Bleuler, of Zurich, and Professor Orovino Rossi, of
Italy.
THE second convention of the Societa Italiana di Psicologia was held
in Rome during the last week in March. The following questions were
discussed : " The Classification of Mental States, Mental Phenomena, and
the Nervous System," and " The Psychological Problems of Psycho-
therapy."
VOL. X. No. 12. JUNE 5, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
TIME AND THE PERCEPT
rFlHERE are two closely affiliated arguments against every real-
-L istic theory of perception, which deserve to be considered
again because they touch the most important and most modern of
philosophical issues, namely, the problem of time. One of these
arguments builds upon the fact that, in every perceptive act, the
agent relates the "immediate content" (the "pure datum") to a
host of prior data and fuses somehow the absolute present material
with certain antecedents in such a manner that only the resulting
fusion, and never the "immediate content," constitutes the percept.
From this fact it is inferred that we can never perceive things "as
they really are"; for is not every percept shot through with the
ghosts of past things ? The second argument I refer to touches, not
the past and its summing up, but rather the future. And now
pretty much the same assertion is made as in the former case. Per-
ceiving, we are told, involves conation, attention, expectation. It
occurs only in purposive conduct, and its "content" or "datum"
is integrally related to a foreseen and desired state of affairs. This
state of affairs may not and probably does not exist "absolutely" ;
certainly it does not at the instant of perceiving. Therefore the per-
cept is "humanized" and in the same measure stripped of its appar-
ent, independent, objective status.
In short, anti-realists urge that, in perception, both the past and
the personally colored future of entities are blended with their actual
present nature; and hence that we never perceive things "as they
are." The "pure datum" is vastly less than the percept, and thus
misrepresents reality. Also, what is added to it and modifies it is not
drawn from the real order (at least not entirely), but is purely
"mental."
That this theory underlies the thought of even many persons who
openly accept the reality of temporal relations is apparent (a) in a
manner of speech current in scientific and philosophical circles, and
(b) in various well-established methods of experiment.
309
310 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
(a) When a philosopher says that he does not perceive his study
lamp "as it really is," he commonly identifies the present tense of
"to be" with its existential connotation. If we purposely look away
from the space factor in determining an existent, we may say that he
equates "the lamp as it is" with "the lamp as it now is." The lamp
of yesterday, in so far as it is not identical with the lamp of the given
instant, is at this instant non-existent. And so, too, with the lamp of
to-morrow. Thus a radical difference is set up between the now and
the not-now; a difference much deeper than that between past and
future. Many persons will hurry to deny that they mean any such
thing as this. But they frequently accept the view in practise. We
find them doing so most conspicuously in their arguments over em-
pirical instances in psychology.
(&) Suppose they are considering the influence of adaptation
(or of after-images) upon succeeding vision. The answer is sought
in the following fashion. After exposing his eyes to a bright red
light, the investigator quickly inspects papers of various colors, at-
tempting to order them, let us say, with respect to their degrees of
saturation. The result is said to indicate that he overestimates the
saturation of the green series. What warrants this statement ? The
fact that a piece of green paper at which he looks is "really" much
duller, much more tinged with gray than he perceives it to be. And
how do we know that it ' ' really ' ' is duller ? Why ! A person look-
ing at it in the same instant with eyes uninfluenced by earlier lights
perceives its dulness. In other words, the instantaneous condition of
the paper is its ' ' real ' ' condition ; and the purely momentary condi-
tion of the eyes is that under which they see "truly." Now, this
presupposition is the chief support of much reasoning in psycholog-
ical investigations of errors, illusions, and the like. And, as the
reader will have no difficulty in discovering its employment in many
similar instances, I shall assume that it has been made sufficiently
clear. It is the purpose of the present study to show that this use of
the adjective, "real" is (a) inconsistent with the results of every
more careful analysis and classification of ontological terms, such as
"existent," "non-existent," "real," "unreal," "subsistent," etc.;
and ( b ) when thus inaccurately employed becomes anti-realistic only
through its highly questionable metaphysical presupposition about
time, namely, the presupposition that specific temporal relations are,
in the metaphysical sense, unreals. Once discard this opinion, and
we may remain thoroughgoing realists, while conceding all the em-
pirical facts about perception which the psychologist correctly dis-
tinguishes, but erroneously tickets.
The Inaccurate Terminology. The reader familiar with modern
philosophical literature hardly needs to be reminded of the vast dif-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 311
ference between the connotation of "real" in the experimenters' as-
sertion above cited and the meaning of the same word in works on
logical analysis. And he would be bored by detailed illustrations
and proofs of that difference. So I shall dismiss this point with the
summary declaration that in all modern logical analyses, however
divergent in their other results, there is -a general agreement that
spatio-temporal entities differing only in their spatio-temporal posi-
tions do not differ with respect to their reality. At most, they
differ with respect to existence. Or, to put the matter concretely,
Socrates is not unreal by virtue of having drunk hemlock in ancient
Athens ; his death made him, at most, non-existent. In the ordinary
speech, as in the technical, existence preserves something of its orig-
inal meaning; it is a "standing out" in the spatio-temporal order.
But reality, in none of its many conflicting definitions, is a mere
prominence; nor does it vary with any sort of prominence. 1 Thus,
when we speak of "real life," we do not refer to any historical period
in anybody's career, but only to the whole or some part of life, as
distinct from Thackeray's imaginary people and their adventures or
from our own erroneous views of life. ' ' Real life ' ' is life past, pres-
ent, and future; and no moment in it is more real than any other.
Once more we may go back to the root of the word itself for insight
into its connotation; "real" is that which pertains to a "thing" or
"state of affairs" and thus it is the " thingishness " of an entity,
rather than its prominence in space or time, that leads us to call it
real. Of course, men may dispute as to what "thingishness" is, and
that they have done these many ages but all such controversies do
not touch the distinction we have just indicated. Whatever a
"thing" and its characters may be, they certainly are not merely
conspicuous positions in either space or time.
Consequences of Adhering to the Erroneous Terminology. It is
a common thing to hear laymen and those philosophers who, for
artistic or other personal reasons, look askance at modern logical
analysis, declare that this line of research is barren. It is said that
what Meinong, Husserl, and Russell have been doing in their various
directions amounts to nothing more than perverted mathematics or
a revival of scholastic logic-chopping and the futile multiplication
of strange names and queer symbols that mean either nothing at all
or something already more simply known. Why spend years over
existential and non-existential propositions? To what end invent a
universe of subsistents? Wherefore worry over the class of all
classes? Why waste precious time searching out the assumptions
1 For a lueid, compact, and pretty satisfactory definition of all fundamental
ontological terms, cf . Montague, in ' ' The New Eealism, ' ' page 252 ff .
312 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
behind the practise of ordering colors with respect to intensity?
And so on interminably.
The implication of all such queries is that logical analysis has no
practical bearings upon the vital questions of philosophy or of life.
And were the implication defensible it would spell the early death
of this new species of investigator who has arisen to plague the
world with his curst hard reading. But I think that, in the prob-
lem now under inquiry, we have an ample reply to that kind of criti-
cism. For them logical analysis readily brings to light a group of
presuppositions behind the loose meaning of "reality" which involve
a whole philosophical system. This system, moreover, embodies a
number of propositions which, if not absurd, are at all events in-
compatible with a host of every-day facts. Furthermore, out of
those same propositions there springs logically, if not genetically
the so-called mechanistic theory of the world, a theory false at once
to mechanics and to the world in its basic contention that both the
past and the future efficiencies of all things are summed up in the
absolute present.
Inasmuch as many scientists assume frankly that this pseudo-
mechanistic hypothesis alone can serve as postulate to their special
interpretations in physics, chemistry, biology, etc. ; and inasmuch as
these latter are shaping more and more decisively men 's views of the
world and of human conduct, would logical analysis seem an alto-
gether futile enterprise, if it were able to expose half as much as is
above claimed? I think not, and I shall now attempt to justify the
belief by presenting three of the most serious implications in propo-
sitions involving the erroneous meaning of "real" under discussion.
The Three Fatal Implications. Let us first repeat the original
anti-realistic argument wherein we found the erroneous connotation
of "real." The percept so it runs is not a real; for it is com-
posed, on the one hand, of memories and after-effects of earlier ex-
periences, while, on the other hand, it is also qualified somehow by
anticipations and directed efforts. Now, this opinion goes too far
toward identifying the real with the tangible and physically acces-
sible ; and it leads us into the following three difficulties :
(a) It denies the existential status to the continuum within which
all existences are to be found. For it restricts that status to entities
having a unique position in the time continuum, and denies it to
(i) all relations among those entities as well as to (ii) all entities
having other than the particular unique position called "the
present. ' '
(6) It upsets the popular and the philosophical correlation of
reality with efficiency. The result is that it forces us to regard un-
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 313
reals as efficiencies of the same sort as physical complexes and to
count as unreals all past physical events.
(c) It makes incomprehensible and even absurd the origin,
the perfecting, and the utility of the perceptive apparatus, the mem-
ory powers, and the knack of adjusting with reference to the future.
(a) The first difficulty is the least obvious. But I think it can
be discerned without prodigious effort. Time is a continuum and, as
such, has no position within itself ; for it is not a position, but rather
the class or assemblage of all positions temporal. Hence, the loose usage
of the term ' ' real ' ' which we are criticizing forces upon one the doc-
trine that time is unreal; for certainly time itself is not "really pres-
ent" and thus not presently real. How easy to transform such a
proposition into the Kantian thesis that time is only a mode of ap-
prehension ! And yet this ominous possibility is not the most objec-
tionable feature. The deadly consequence is that existents are re-
duced to mere positions within a non-existent order, and likewise
reals reduced to a species of unreal which is distinguished only by a
peculiar conspicuousness. I do not think that such a view is inter-
nally contradictory, however much it sounds so. It is conceivable
that a complex may have a complex character which is the contra-
dictory of the characters of each individual element figuring in it.
Thus, life may be a complex of lifeless entities, color may be a com-
plex of colorless factors, and the mass of a physical body may be
composed of a system of massless motions. But all this is possible
only under one condition, and that condition brings to light the full
deeps of the implication under debate. What the condition is ap-
pears from a study of the nature of complexes and their specific
characters.
A complex may derive its specific character from either its indi-
vidual elements or the relations into which these enter. Analytically,
no other source is discernible. If the complex does not get its pecul-
iar nature from the elements, it must get it from their interrela-
tions. But elements enter into relations only in so far as they subsist
in some "field" of differentiation (e. g., in a continuum). It follows,
then, that wherever interrelations constitute a complex-character,
there must be a logically prior principle of differentiation other than
that one which characterizes the elements in their intrinsic elemental
features. If, therefore, the real is merely a complex-character of
interrelated unreals whose elements are related in the time con-
tinuum, it follows that this time continuum (that is, its principle of
differentiation) is logically prior to reality. Hence, we fall into a
contradiction if we say that past and future entities and relations
are unreal because of their time positions. For this amounts to say-
ing that a proposition may have a presupposition which negates it.
314 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Beality presupposes the time continuum, and this time continuum
as such is unreal, according to the argument. Could anything be
more impossible? For it avers that a real proposition may (in this
case, at least) imply an unreal proposition.
There remains a second aspect > this same logical difficulty which
I shall here describe and, in a later passage, discuss illustratively.
The loose usage of "reality" under debate leaves us with a defec-
tive fundamentum divisionis when we come to classify entities with
respect to their reality and unreality. If the real is defined as the
absolute present, and the unreal as whatever occupies a temporal
position other than the absolute present; then we are at a loss as to
the status of non-positional time characters. 2 We can separate the
world of events into the Now and the Not-Now readily enough, but
we can not put into either class the relations of the Now to the Not-
Now. For a relation between a present event and a past one is
neither present nor past, any more than the relation between the
point A and the point B, in a space system, is at either A or B. As
James and Bertrand Russell insist, the latter relation is the line or
distance between the points; and likewise in the present instance,
I could add. No order is a position, and hence the time span from
this morning's breakfast to this evening's dinner can not be placed
at any present, past, or future. Therefore, we must say that it and
all durations are neither real nor unreal. That such an interpreta-
tion must be most unsatisfactory is quite apparent.
(&) The most natural and generally accepted difference between
the real and the unreal is the pragmatic one. The real is whatever
"makes a difference." A little reflection shows that this definition
is inadequate, in that anything and everything may make a differ-
ence to a person's conduct provided only that the person broods
over it, believes it, takes it seriously. Nightmares may drive a man
into or out of the liquor habit, and preposterous superstitions mould
his business practises. In view of such familiar facts people qualify
the broad pragmatic definition by adding that the real makes a dif-
ference, quite apart from its being thought about. A real, then, is
identified with environmental efficiency.
Now, I hold no brief at present for this familiar interpretation.
I wish only to point out that those persons who assert that a percept
is not real because it contains past factors and future bearings fall
into contradiction if they say that a plate of beans is real because it
makes a difference to a starving man, while a dreamed plate of the
same viands is unreal because it will not stay in the stomach. Noth-
ing less than a thorough separation of reality from power will do, if
2 To simplify the discussion, I shall vraive considering non-existential prop-
ositions such as the mathematical.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 315
one is to accept the meaning which is now under fire. Every signifi-
cant connection between them must be ruled out, and for the reason
that past events have present efficiencies, and present events are
often (if not always) inefficient in the absolute present. Hence the
twofold difficulty of reconciling the presence theory with the po-
tency theory. If the beans I ate an hour ago are now nourishing me,
they are real, according to one definition and unreal according to the
other. And if we insist upon telescoping the two theories, we have
to say that only a difference in some absolute present is a real dif-
ference; and therefore all differences established between two more
or less widely separated moments are not real, inasmuch as they are
not located at any instant whatsoever, any more than a relation be-
tween moments is so located. And so we come to the paradox:
Efficiency is an affair of cause and effect ; the effect is later than the
cause; hence the "difference" which the cause makes is not located
either at the instant of the cause 's occurring or at that of the eff ect 's ;
therefore no efficiency makes a real difference and for this reason
can not itself be real, under the definition. This same point may be
stated reversely thus : A difference is real only if it is located at some
moment; hence the difference-making entity (event) and the entity
(event) in which the difference is made must be absolutely simul-
taneous with respect to the factors involved in the establishing of
the difference. But no causal activity is thus instantaneous (with
the possible exception of gravitation) ; hence no cause is real (as
cause).
For the man who sees the force of this paradox there is only one
course open, provided he insists upon clinging to the presence theory.
He must boldly cast off the popular notion that there is any connec-
tion between efficiency and reality. He must be even bolder; he
must assert that all past and future physical events and all changes
of every nature are unreal. In short, he must identify the real with
the pure Immediate, denying therewith that this Immediate has any
real relation with anything past or future. All of which is a pon-
derous way of alleging that such a person must defend a ridiculous
proposition.
(c) In these days, few readers allow themselves to be swayed
perceptibly by such dialectic as has just been invoked. It is with
some relief, then, that I turn to the third difficult implication. Here
we deal with matter-of-fact and common-sense impressions. The
definition we have been criticizing makes incomprehensible the origin,
the perfecting, and the utility of the perceptive apparatus, the mem-
ory powers, and the knack of adjusting to future situations. This
objection I regard as the most serious, and I think it shows itself
316 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
off to best advantage to the eye that has learned to scorn or suspect
formal paradoxes and reductions.
Of all facts known to man, none is surer than the intimate con-
nection between structure and efficiency in organisms. The simpler
the body, the slighter its capacities and the narrower its range and
variety of successes. We may doubt evolution, we may look askance
at the survival of the fittest, and we may discard the Mendelian law
with a good show of reason ; but who would dare suggest to-day that
a man's powers rank below those of the ape, or that the difference in
efficiency between man and ape is not measured very precisely by the
difference in the elaboration of their respective nervous and muscu-
lar systems? Be one's metaphysical theory what it will, it will
freely admit as virtually axiomatic the efficient parallelism of struc-
ture and function. And yet this virtual axiom is contradicted by the
implications of the definition of "reality" which we have been criti-
cizing. The contradiction arises in the following manner.
On the side of structure, it is intricacy and integration of con-
stituent organs that are the two most conspicuous marks of high capa-
city. On the side of function, these are paralleled by dexterity (motor
and intellectual) and the interrelating of experiences. It is in this
last that the difficulty of the presence theory of reals appears. The
highly developed creature, as we say colloquially, "learns by experi-
ence," which is a very inaccurate way of describing the fact that
the creature somehow reckons with past situations in each fresh one.
The reckoning need not be genuinely computative (intellectual) ; it
may take the form of motor adjustments, as in the slack- wire walker
who is learning his tricks. What he carries over from each last im-
perfect attempt to each fresh try is some motion which helped him
keep his balance gracefully. How this is accomplished, we have not
here to inquire. Let us merely note that it is accomplished. And now
the difficulty shows itself full length: if the real world is absolutely
immediate (purely present), then it is the lowest organisms which
adjust most successfully and the highest organisms which adjust most
unsuccessfully to real conditions. This hardly calls for explanation.
In a world of pure presences, where all past and future conditions
are as unreal as chimeras, all activities and all relations and all enti-
ties of every real type are packed into the one great Now. And so
the animal which reacts most exclusively to this Now gains most accu-
rately its real bearings. Plainly that animal is the amoeba or per-
haps the bacillus, which takes thought neither of yesterday nor of to-
morrow. Man, on the contrary, is constitutionally a Jack O 'Dreams,
living in a welter of unrealities which he, poor fool, mistakes for the
most solid stuff of the world. In memories and in anticipations and
in hopes he spends the greater part of his life, sleeping and waking
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 317
alike. What is still worse for him, he regulates his behavior less by
the data of the moment than by their relation to those very unreali-
ties. Is it any wonder, then, that he finds life a troublous mystery
which all his cunning can not solve nor any prayer of his alleviate?
For he is in the same boat with those whom he calls insane ; he lives
a great fiction and deceives himself therein.
All this states the absurdity of the presence theory extremely, yet
without unfairness. And I think we may now regard it as untenable,
dialectically and empirically. But if we do, a much vaster problem
confronts us ; the problem of reinterpreting reality and the status of
percepts. Now, I shall dismiss the first half of this problem with a
reference to Montague's description of reality which accords not only
with the more careful analyses of modern logical inquiry, but likewise
with our instinctive and pragmatic estimates. 3 According to this ac-
count, the real universe consists of the space-time system of existents,
together with all that is presupposed (implied) by that system (dis-
tributively and collectively, I would add). I think that the only
serious objection which anybody can bring against this definition is
that it may be too narrow. Other than spatio-temporal implicates
may have the status of reals. But as to the accuracy of as much as is
asserted, there will be little serious doubt; for, in the light of the
above analysis, we can not deny the real status of any time moment,
if we admit that some one time moment is real, and we can not deny
that the implicates of time moments are real if we admit that the
moments are real. Not only does this double necessity appear in
logical analysis, but its tacit acceptance is visible in the ordinary
usage of the terms "real" and "existent." Men say naturally that
Socrates was a real person although he is now non-existent. The
passing away of the spatio-temporal systems in which Socrates figured
immediately does not attenuate his reality at all ; it only alters his
existential status. This popular and analytically confirmable distinc-
tion makes evident that existence is logically inferior to reality, that
is, it is analogous to a species within a genus. For it is typical of
specific variations and differences that they are independent of
generic. For instance, an ape may vary in his peculiarly simian
characteristics without varying as a vertebrate or as a mammal.
Now, in applying this distinction to the interpretation of complexes,
we discover readily that any complex of individuals belonging to
various species of the same genus has (at least) the character of that
genus (viz., with respect to the complex as a mere assemblage) . Thus,
a group of ten men, five apes, six horses, and three cows is a verte-
brate assemblage. It can not be deprived of this character by the
great specific differences among its constituents. The significance of
"'The New Realism," page 255.
318 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
this fact from elementary logic does not crop out in the illustration
given. You come upon it only when you construe in like manner
spatio-temporal complexes. You then find that every complex of
spatio-temporal existents, non-existents, and combined existents and
non-existent s, is a real complex, at least with respect to its assemblage
character. For existential differences are, with respect to reality,
only specific, and not generic.
Armed with this fact, the reader may return with fresh vigor to
the attack upon the anti-realistic theory of the percept which the first
paragraphs of this essay report. He is now in a position to accept
the following proposition about the status of the percept : In so far as
the percept is a complex containing non-existents of the spatio-tem-
poral order (past data, or memories, and future relations, or anticipa-
tions) , it is a real assemblage. If it is unreal in any respect, this char-
acter can not be inferred either from the presence of non-existents in
the complex or from the complex's relation to non-existents* Let us
look briefly to the consequences of this fact. Does it not quite over-
turn nearly all recent restrictive interpretations of the percept?
And does it not square neatly with the biologist's view of the rank of
perceptive activities ? I think it does both. In the first place, if the
purely immediate is only one species of real, and if past and future
entities are other species, then in perceiving we reach not less of
reality, but more of it than any pure intuition of the fleeting instant
could ever give us. (At the same time, we might consistently admit
that perception, by virtue of its selective operations, cuts us off from
some reals which perhaps may be attained through some less selective
function, such as that of pure introspection.) It is not a punctiform
selecting and cognizing of the exclusively punctiform features of
events and conditions. On the contrary, it discloses extents, masses,
and magnitudes of real times. To say the same thing in language
not altogether metaphorical, the percept is not a mere point in a real
curve whose equation we seek and, knowing, can deal adequately
with; it is rather a segment. The only ultimate difference between
things as we perceive them and things as they are revealed through
microscopes and spectroscopes and electrometers and other scientific
instruments of precision is this : the former are big chunks and blocks
of events, while the latter are the little pieces out of which the chunks
perceived are made. It is the mass or extent in tima and space which
we perceive ; it is the constituent of the mass which we find by experi-
* The last part of this statement deserves more extensive treatment than can
here be allowed. It means that, in general, no implication can be drawn con-
cerning the generic status of an entity from that entity's relation to another
within a given gernis. For instance, from the particular relation of a cow to a
horse no inference can be drawn as to the status of either animal as a verte-
brate.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 319
ment and analysis. Is it any wonder, then, that, in the color we see
directly, we can not find any single ether wa^ve which, the physicist
says, is the element of light? ("Element," in the analytical sense,
of course.) It is not the business of the perceiving instrument to de-
liver these goods. In the perfecting of the life functions, eye and
ear and the agencies of recall and anticipation have arisen late ; and
they have arisen because whatever organs preceded them were incom-
petent to deal with entities much exceeding the immediate spatio-
temporal present in magnitude. The sense of touch, for instance,
gives us but little more than the initial pulse of the stimulus. We
get through it the establishment of contact, but almost nothing of the
continuance of the same contact. This fact it is to which the psycholo-
gist refers when he says that the adaptation rate of the touch sense is
very high. In lower animals, this momentariness is even more
marked, not alone in the touch sense, but in all others and, most con-
spicuously in recognition and expectation processes. I shall not
adduce the hundred and odd illustrations which anybody might think
of, to sharpen this point. I shall end with the remark that extents
and patterns of time-things are the entities to which the more highly
developed perceptive organs are sensitized ; and the least perceptible
difference and the phenomena of the "threshold" clearly demonstrate
this. And to return once more to the question which gave rise to
this essay the fact that a percept is pervaded with things past and
things future proves nothing at all against its full reality. The only
way to convert this interpenetration into such destructive evidence
is to define the real as the merely immediate. But this definition is,
as we have seen, an impossible one, doing violence at once to logic and
to biological testimony and to civilized man's distinction between
reality and existence.
WALTER B. PITKIN.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
SOCIETIES
THE THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE WESTERN
PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
rpHE Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Western Philosophical
Association was held at Northwestern University March 21
and 22, 1913. A good proportion of the membership was present,
and the sustained attendance at the different sessions, along with the
lively interest manifested in the papers, showed the association to be
a healthy and vigorous condition. The majority of papers read
320 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
on Friday bore more or less directly upon the subject of Objectivity
or the Criterion of Truth, and led up to a prolonged discussion in
the afternoon, in which the standpoints of realism, idealism, and
pragmatism were represented. At the invitation of the local mem-
bers, all in attendance assembled in the evening for dinner at the
University Club of Evanston, where, owing to the skillful arrange-
ments made by the hosts, an hour of exceptional enjoyment was
furnished to all. At the evening session the President's Address
was given by J. E. Boodin on "The Existence of Social Minds."
The smoker which followed gave the opportunity always desired for
rest and conversation.
On Saturday morning a joint session was held with the Western
Branch of the American Psychological Association. At this meeting
five papers were presented, all dealing with aspects of the problem
of the Social Consciousness. The central feature of this programme
was perhaps the very able presentation and defense by Warner Fite
of his views upon the subject, which elicited much comment and
criticism in the general discussion which followed. At the business
meeting in the afternoon the Secretary and Treasurer, H. W. Wright,
reported receipts for the year of $60.93, with expenses of $56.34,
which left, along with the balance carried over from the preceding
year, the sum of $102.86 in the treasury. A. W. Mitchell, E. L.
Schaub, Milton Bennion, and G. T. Hartman were elected to mem-
bership. Officers for the coming year were elected as follows:
President, B. H. Bode; Vice-President, Norman Wilde; Secretary
and Treasurer, H. W. Wright; Executive Committee, A. K. Rogers,
H. C. Longwell, G. H. Mead, Warner Fite. The place and date of
the next meeting were left to the decision of the Executive Committee.
The following are abstracts of papers read at this meeting :
Objectivity in Mill's Logic: J. FORSYTH CRAWFORD.
To mediate between associationism and naturalism, Mill con-
structed a scheme of things and events in nature the objectivity of
which is in certain respects similar to Kant's objectivity of the
phenomenal world. Mill's permanent potentialities of sensation,
laws of nature, and complete predictability of the universe corre-
spond closely in their use to the three analogies of Kant. As used
to organize the content of mental states into objective nature they
are as absolute as the categories. The oscillations in Mill's logical
theory have the same source as Kant's antinomies. Mill, starting
with the assumption of ultimately fixed data, is compelled, in spite
of his empirical intentions, to match it with the assumption of ulti-
mately fixed forms ; and he strives vainly to find a criterion of selec-
tion of relatively appropriate matter and form, such that inference
shall be neither tautologous nor invalid.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 321
Subjectivism and the Doctrine of Coherence: E. L. SCHAUB.
For the idealism born of German thought, the real object is iden-
tical with the object revealed within experience. Reality is signifi-
cant for thought because its constituent elements are determined in
their reciprocal relations by principles that are capable of being
grasped by reason. Such an idealism is left untouched by criticisms
directed against the doctrine of esse est percipi. Its fortunes are
bound up with the doctrine of coherence. Its representatives, how-
ever, have frequently proved unfaithful to the doctrine. Bradley
tends to divorce meaning from, existence. But when the realm of
the ideal is separated from that of the real, we must either fall back
on the abstract, rationalistic logic of consistency, or, remembering
that facts are stubborn, we must say that, to be true, ideas must be
faithful to reality (the copy theory). Both of these views being
clearly untenable, it seems necessary to restrict truth to the field of
an absolute experience and thus to condemn our own experience as
hopelessly subjective. The doctrine of coherence is violated whether,
with McTaggart, we conceive thought as a movement within an
ethereal realm of pure ideas (or even, with Green, regard the world
as primarily an intellectual construction) ; or whether, to avoid an
' ' unearthly ballet of bloodless categories, ' ' we insist that in the rap-
port of feeling the knower must become merged with the reality that
is known. Facts and meanings proceed pari passu every move-
ment of thought involves at once a growing knowledge of facts and a
reinterpretation of the categories in terms of which we construe
experience; and, on the other hand, truth means not the abandon-
ment, but the labor of thinking. Thus interpreted, it is not clear
that the doctrine of coherence necessitates that of "pure truth," or
"absolute truth," or "truth," or that of the essentially timeless
character of reality.
An Objective Criterion for Judging Conduct: E. B. CROOKS.
Our generation has with courage thrown off well-nigh all alle-
giance to doctrines of authority, but we live in a world that demands
action, and therefore direction, i. e., a criterion of conduct. Gabriel
Tarde's book, "Penal Philosophy," attempts to supply concrete bases
for fixing responsibility in actual instances of conduct. Tarde was
for twenty-five years judge of a criminal court, and is interested to
find practically workable tests for responsibility. He proposes two
such tests, social similarity and individual identity. Social sim-
ilarity depends not on physical similarity, as color, but on agreement
in natural inclinations, as sexual desires. But individual identity is
a much more fundamental test of responsibility in fact, the only
one that needs to be used in the highly civilized level. It amounts
to asking if the accused is normal, can he identify his present self-
322 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
consciousness with his past states of consciousness. Degrees of self-
identity are recognized, so we are really asking how much of a per-
son the one to be judged may be.
These criteria of Tarde are not fully satisfactory, because his
application of them proves too individualistic. Even individual
identity, if it is to be an objective and not a subjective test, must
be socially applied, for the individual can only be judged in rela-
tion to the social surrounding to which he reacts. The really ob-
jective question to ask about responsibility is what does the great
person think society, the only person who is thoroughly self-
conscious ?
But the process of fixing responsibility is only half done when
the tests of social similarity and individual identity are applied to
the individual, for they must be applied with equal rigor to the
inclusive social person, if justice is to be done to any case of con-
duct. "With each culprit society must be brought into court to be
judged.
But in applying these criteria to the social person we are led from
the small group social person to more and more inclusive social per-
sons, and thus get a hint that back of all may be an all-inclusive and
fully self-conscious person the Absolute.
Bergson's Intellect and Matter:* C. E. CORY.
The Bent Stick: W. L. RAUB.
The epistemologieal problem involving the question of the decep-
tion of the senses may be illustrated by the stick that apparently
bends in the water. To the physicist, who explains this by the
refraction of light, it is a straight stick appearing bent. This view
involves the distinction between appearance and reality, between
percept and object. Epistemology, however, must recognize that the
senses do not deceive. The ' ' contradiction ' ' is between the percepts
and what we believe to be true. The bent stick is a perceptual fact,
while the straight stick that appears to bend is conceptual, a con-
struction of thought. The latter can not be used as the basis of a
theory of objectivity because it is the result of such a theory.
A Realistic Criterion of Truth: EVANDER BRADLEY MCGILVARY.
A criterion of truth is something that gives to an idea an as-
surance or conviction it has hitherto lacked. In the last resort it is
absurd to require of a criterion its credentials. It either produces
conviction, and then it needs no endorsement, or it does not, and
then endorsement is useless. The question is simply, What is the
criterion of truth? It is not, What ought to be the criterion of
truth ? As a matter of fact, in science and in common life the ordi-
1 Abstract not furnished.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 323
nary test of truth is found in the experience of something that points
indubitably to the existence of something not experienced. Ordinary
evidence is circumstantial evidence. If circumstantial evidence be
accepted as good evidence, then realism is so far forth a tenable
theory. If not, then realism is unwarranted.
Voluntarism and the Criterion of Truth: H. W. WRIGHT.
If definite meaning is to be imparted to practical success as a
criterion of truth, it must be illuminated by the discovery of the end
whose attainment, either as a whole or in part, makes conduct suc-
cessful. The end required to satisfy volition can be discovered only
by finding out what are the demands of volition itself. Volition
shows itself upon study to be an agency of organization whose aim
is to increase the unity and coherence of personal life under the
actual conditions of human existence. This supreme end of self-
organization it seeks through three coordinate activities: that of
thought, or the power of ideating objects regarded as possible of
realization ; of action, or the power of adapting actual conditions to
the ends of intelligence ; of feeling, or the power of appreciating the
effect upon the self of the pursuit and attainment of objects. Each
of these activities has its special end which, in the degree of its attain-
ment, measures -the progress of self -organization and hence serves as
a criterion of truth in its own field. Thus we derive three criteria
of truth : intellectual consistency, technical efficiency, and emotional
harmony. Each criterion has its own field to which it is specially
applicable ; frequently it is possible to use either one or the other at
pleasure ; occasionally the employment of all three is desirable.
Objectivity and Truth and Error: A. W. MOORE.
The neo-realistic account of truth and error in Professor Mon-
tague's interesting paper takes the position that "true and false"
are attributes of the objects, not of the act of "belief or judgment."
The objections urged against "true and false" as attributes of a
contentless, "subjective," "psychological" action are convincing.
But does not their transference tif an actionless and merely ' ' exist-
ent" or "subsistent" object make the same assumption and en-
counter the same difficulties as the other view the difficulties,
namely, that^row out of the assumption that "belief or judgment"
can be dissected into a contentless act on the one side and an
"existent" or "subsistent" object on the other?
Some of these difficulties appear at once in the relation between
the definitions of belief and of the distinction between truth and
error. "Truth and error are respectively belief in the real and the
unreal." But belief "is the attitude we take toward any proposi-
tion that appears to be true and real and carries with it a tendency
to act on that proposition."
324 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
But (1) if the object of belief must always "appear true and
real" (italics mine), how is belief in the unreal and untrue pos-
sible? (2) If, on the other hand, the phrase, "What "appears true
and real means that, from the believer's standpoint, the object only
appears (i. e., may or may not be) true and real, then the object of
every "belief or judgment" must always be an "appearance" and
never the ' ' real and true. ' '
The only escape from this dilemma is via the assumption, which
the account seems to make, that these definitions are made not from
the standpoint of the believer or judger, but from the standpoint of
what Professor Bode calls an "innocent bystander."
The Existence of Social Minds: 2 J. E. BOODIN.
The Basis of Internationalism: G. L. TALBERT.
From a genetic point of view the sentiment of internationalism
is made of the same stuff as that first developed in primary groups.
The transition from the family and the play-group consciousness to
nationalism and internationalism is due to crises springing from
specific antecedents and stimulating a direct response. In opposi-
tion to a mystical view of brotherhood and the rationalistic concept
of humanity as such, generated because of the inherent universaliz-
ing nature of consciousness, the position is that whatever interna-
tional consciousness exists is a consciousness arising out of problems
felt to be vital. Some of the problems which are actually operating
are: the necessity of mutual aid among immigrants in large cities;
the standardizing brought by inventions, the machine industry, and
international trade; the sameness of economic forces affecting work-
ing men in all industrially advanced nations, giving rise to interna-
tional associations whose ideal is justice; the recent interest in the
welfare of the child without reference to national hostilities. Recent
studies of the genesis of language and art from the angle of social
psychology corroborate the view that international consciousness is
a genuine growth, not something to be deduced from an introspective
analysis of the unity of consciousness as an achieved reality.
The Social Implications of Consciousness: 3 WARNER FITE.
The Social Self: 4 G. H. MEAD.
The question which this article undertakes to answer is the fol-
lowing: What is involved in the self being an object? The subject
is only a presupposition, since the self always appears as an object
in experience. We are, however, aware of addressing ourselves.
Under these . conditions, there appears both a subject and an object.
This subject, however, is itself the object of an observation. It is
2 Abstract not furnished.
* To be published in full in a forthcoming number of this JOURNAL.
* To be published in full in a forthcoming number of this JOURNAL.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 325
the same self that we recall as responding or as acting with refer-
ence to others, not the self that observes. The self which one ad-
dresses is also the self which is acted upon by others. The memory,
therefore, if one has self both as subject and object, does not bring
a subject into the field, but only selves which must be present in the
objective case. The possibility of this is found in the fact that our
social stimulation of others affects ourselves so that we tend to re-
spond thereto in the same fashion in which another responds.
There is thus a "me" in the back of the head that is continually
affected by our conduct toward other persons. The self of self-con-
sciousness is a combination of this self and the self that acts with
reference to other persons. Our conscious awareness of our own con-
duct is due to this relation between the conscious and self-conscious
selves.
Application of this doctrine is made to the psychology of ethics.
It is pointed out that the ethical problem involves a reconstruction
in which a new social object arises before the new self appears.
Reality and the New Realism: H. M. KALLEN.
Neo-realism offers itself as a true and unprejudiced account of
reality. It insists, in this offer, on the validity of analysis and the
objectivity of secondary qualities, etc. But with respect to the first
point it begs the question: for (in Mr. Spaulding's case) it decides
on the results of its analysis before it undertakes to make it. In
point of fact it offers a synthesis, and not an analysis. "With respect
to the second point, it exhibits (in Mr. Holt's case) the causes or
ground of secondary qualities, but not their objectivity. It attributes
the objectivity of this ground to the qualities themselves. This is a
non-sequitur and a confusion.
Euler's Circles and Inversion: ARTHUR MITCHELL.
The Euler figures represent the four specific varieties of cate-
gorical relationship, which are completely determinate, as judgments
(except E) are not. Hence, reasoning from a single diagram to the
implications of a judgment (except E) is invalid, while such reason-
ing from integral sets of diagrams, by abstraction of common fea-
tures, is valid.
Quantity and quality are aspects of meaning essentially implying
each other and expressing each other and existentially equivalent to
each other, all in the same sense as that of the relation between the
poles of a current. The quantitative co-implication of negatives,
represented by "annexing" space circumjacent to Euler circles, is
the quantitative aspect of discrimination, and therefore logically
valid and necessary.
Co-implication of S and non-$, resting on discrimination, is inde-
326 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
pendent of any distinction between logical subject and predicate.
The essential matter of discourse, in any proposition, is neither
term, singly, but their relationship, integrally, of which subject and
predicate are correlative (and therefore logically coordinate) terms.
The existence of the negative is of the same warrant as that of
its correlative, the posited term. The universe of discourse includes
certain negative, as well as affirmative, implicates.
The inverse of I. is valid, together with its converse, the contra-
positive of I. Eductiveness is not a criterion of validity. Inversion
is not essentially depressive.
Epistemology from the Angle of Physiological Psychology : 5 GREGORY
D. WALCOTT.
Knowledge and reality are not identical. The former, however,
may be regarded as a part or phase of the latter, since consciousness,
which is involved in the knowing process, is real, in the sense of
actual, and the starting-point for all theories, whether idealistic,
realistic, or what you will.
From the solipsistic quagmire thus suggested, one may extricate
oneself by assuming, in a scientific way, the reality of the seeming
internality and externality of one's stream of consciousness, and
then, by explaining hypothetically the relation of another's stream
of consciousness to objects in his field of vision, one has the basis for
the explanation of one's own knowing process, even though in oppo-
sition to one's introspection. The sun seems to move from east to
west, but we reject this seeming in favor of scientific theory. "We
need to do the same with many other phases of our stream of con-
sciousness.
A dual series, then, of subjective symbols, on the one hand, stand-
ing for objects, on the other, would seem to meet the exigencies of
our epistemological problem, in view of the comparative meagerness
of our race experiences to date and the presumed fluidity of the uni-
verse as a whole.
HENRY W. WRIGHT,
Secretary.
LAKE FOREST COLLEGE.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
A Psychological Study of Religion: Its Origin, Function, and Future.
JAMES H. LEUBA. New York : The Macmillan Company. 1912. Pp.
xiv-r-371.
When William James's " Varieties of Religious Experience " first
appeared and awakened an enthusiastic chorus of welcome, Professor
8 To be published in full in a forthcoming number of this JOURNAL.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 327
Leuba reviewed it, and in definite and convincing manner pointed out
the flimsy nature of its positive contribution. It is interesting now to
see how he rests his own positive suggestions for a valid religion of the
future upon a Bergsonian basis the push of life, impersonal, non-pur-
posive, but capitalized, crowding humanity along in comprehensive and
centripetal movement. This creative force is, however, not a mere civil-
ized counterpart to primitive " dynamism." For the psychological evolu-
tion of religion does not follow in direct line from the impersonal forces
of the savage world. There are new creations midway along the process,
bringing gods and theologies; and old concepts do not coalesce.
The drift of Professor Leuba's conclusions is as follows : " The belief
in non-personal powers is neither a derivative of animism nor a first step
leading up to it, but the two beliefs have had independent origins. . . .
Animism appeared second in order of time" (p. 77). This leads to the
position that magic and religion are distinct both in origins and content,
although similar in practises and aims contrary to Frazer's claim that
they are essentially opposed (p. 176). In developing this point of view,
the author presents an analysis of both " magic " and " religion " which
is highly interesting. After a constructive criticism of current con-
ceptions of religion, it is defined, though not formally, as "that part of
human experience in which man feels himself in relation with powers
of psychic nature, usually personal powers, and makes use of them."
But coercitative use is magic and only the anthropopathic need be consid-
ered as religious. To maintaining this distinction from the start, he cuts
off the evolution of gods from that protoplasmic base, mana, which has
so fundamentally reset the problem for recent anthropologists. The evi-
dence adduced for this divorce in the actual history of evolution of
divinities is not convincing to the reviewer. We agree that the gods
arise in various ways, and Professor Leuba's classification of origins
(p. 86) is helpful. But this is merely a distinction of varieties such as
afterwards characterize the resultant deities. But they are all deities!
What made them so ? " The need of accounting for observed phenomena "
might as well make them mere ghosts or dreams or storms, or whatever
they really were. " The needs of the heart " or of " conscience " are
needs, why? If we revert to the central theme of the book, it is because
of life itself; "the vital instinct is the source of religion" (p. 48). But
this is not a close inductive study of the actual process. It is a psy-
chological deduction from analogies. Now one can actually trace mana
becoming deities. Even the fragmentary literature of ancient Rome
reveals the process to the full, as Fowler has so clearly shown. Space is
lacking for a proper analysis of this point. There can be no two opinions
on the matter; it is not a matter for opinion.
The analysis of magic is original, although the emphasis upon " will
magic " is not entirely novel. One of the most suggestive studies of it
was an article by W. R. Halliday. 1 Professor Leuba's treatment, how-
ever, is his own, and one of the most valuable parts of the book. It is a
'"The Force of Initiative in Magical Conflict," Folk Lore, 1910.
328 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
side of magical procedure -which has not received sufficient attention,
and it is now frankly up to the psychologists to deal with it. But if, as
follows from our statements above, we are left with no real separation
genetically between the main basis of magic and that of religion, dis-
tinctions in methods of action, upon which the Frazerian analysis really
rested, are not fundamental, and the scheme of this part of the book is
involved with that of the earlier part.
What lies back of this? Professor Leuba's history of the changes
which have taken place in the religious emotions shows a pragmatic
touch in that he is in haste to be done with fear in order that the relig-
ious attitudes of the last five or ten years may shine out, and from them
a hopeful future be assured. So even awe is antiquated, and optimistic
realization of life's possibilities (an intuition of the elan) takes its place.
But religion as such must be studied in the light of its " superstitions "
rather than its rational aspects. For the " superstitions " contain the
stuff of its long past and the rationalism is characteristic only of it when
it is losing its age-long content of emotion.
The one common denominator of religion is mystery as Professor
Leuba feels himself when he proposes forms and symbols (p. 335) for the
Bergsonian-Comtist religion of the future. They have hymns in the
positivist " churches." Now all this accompaniment of the " worship " in
the religion of humanity calls up the same kind of emotional reaction as
if there were a personal deity in their doctrines. The conceptual ele-
ment in worship matters relatively little, anyhow. Rites and symbols are
just what give the psychological suggestion which lifts one out of econom-
ics into the religious setting of mystery, and awe and reverence play in a
softer key the savage old chords of fear.
It is difficult to state these elusive matters even when space permits.
When criticism has to make its own point over against that of the author
little room is left for any appreciative comments. But this is a notable
book in its field; one of the best. It is lucid in style and simple in arrange-
ment, and presents sanely an original and highly suggestive analysis of
the great problem. An appendix contains all the definitions of religion
which have had any vogue or influence, a valuable collection for com-
parative study.
J. T. SHOTWELL.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
THE following review by Professor Hocking was published in the Bryn
Mawr Alumnae Quarterly for January, 1913. It has appeared to the editors
so interesting and important as to merit reprinting.
For seventeen years the clear, concrete, and incisive articles of Pro-
fessor Leuba on various aspects of the psychology of religion have been
attracting attention. He was the first to make a careful psychological
study of religious conversion, anticipating, and no doubt stimulating,
that remarkable succession of works by Starbuck, Coe, Davenport. Wil-
liam James, and others which, with his own, have given America the
foremost place in this field. In the present volume Leuba states his most
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 329
general conclusions regarding the nature of religion and its origins, and
defends the faith, which has inspired all his work, that psychology, and
psychology alone, can give us an understanding of what religious experi-
ence means. But the book has an interest more than theoretical, for in it
the author passes judgment upon the most conspicuous of contemporary
religious movements, and even ventures a forecast as to the future of re-
ligion. Throughout the whole work there is an earnest prophetic ring
which, if it sometimes takes the direction of harsh moral judgment upon
opposing points of view, is an evidence of the priceless quality of con-
viction and of a definite positive aim. Professor Leuba will not be mis-
understood; he will not take refuge in ambiguities; he offers his reader,
whether for agreement or disagreement, the satisfaction of a position
plainly stated and strongly supported. The result is a book of distinct
value for all students of religion.
Part I. gives a preliminary survey of the nature of religion, in which
religion is shown to be a concern of the whole man, not of his intellect
alone, nor of his feelings, nor of his will. It may be best understood as a
specific sort of behavior and of rational behavior, because it has definite
practical aims having verifiable human worth. Through religion men
have endeavored, and still endeavor, to control the forces of nature, to
influence the body, to cure disease. In these matters, to be sure, the im-
portance of religion declines with the advance of science; but in compen-
sation there are other results of religion by-products, not directly sought
by the worshiper, but of great significance. For the practise of religion
quickens the intelligence and the feelings, generates confidence and
optimism, strengthens the moral ideals, and so acts as a unifying and
socializing agency. Further, it gives rise to an authority and prestige of
its own, and so gratifies desires for power and recognition. Keligion
is thus " a factor of the highest biological importance." It exists,
not because the ideas which it teaches are true, but because it is more or
less successful in reaching these useful results, in satisfying these uni-
versal human needs.
But we can not define religion by its consequences alone. Some, per-
haps all, of these goods could be otherwise obtained. The peculiarity of
religion is the method by which it seeks its ends. Its procedure is not
mechanical, measuring the cause to the effect ; nor is it " coercitive," as in
magic, treating the unseen forces as things to be compelled by secret ne-
cessities. Religion deals with its (assumed) spiritual environment as
with fellow men, making appeal to intelligence and will: religion is a
mode of " anthropopathic " behavior. " Religion is that part of human
experience in which man feels himself in relation with powers of psychic
nature, usually personal powers, and makes use of them" (p. 52). In re-
ligion, we may say, man seeks by the methods of human intercourse
superhuman aid in the struggle for existence.
Part II. contains a valuable series of chapters on the origins of re-
ligion and its relations to magic. The criticisms of Frazer's views of
magic, and of his theory that religion emerges from the decline of a dis-
credited magic, are especially keen and substantial. Leuba regards as
330 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
fallacious the usual attempt to find a single origin for our various ideas
of superhuman beings. The idea of impersonal powers, such as magic
uses, is independent of, and probably earlier than, the ideas of unseen
beings personal in character such as are necessary to religion. These
latter conceptions again, those of spirits and gods, have several distinct
sources. Some of them are due to our inquisitive, explanatory faculties
at work upon such phenomena as hallucinations and dreams, or specula-
ting on the origin of the world itself and of human existence; for in-
quiries into the mystery of creation occur early in the child, and pre-
sumably also in the race. Others of these ideas are due to the needs of
the heart and of conscience, assigning to unseen beings such qualities as
fit them to give comfort, or to support moral endeavor. It is these af-
fective and moral needs that keep alive to-day the belief in gods. " It is
truly a remarkable habit that of imagining in other beings coveted
powers and virtues, and of turning these powers by supplications and
offerings to one's own benefit, or of enriching oneself with these virtues
by means of sympathetic communion" (p. 112). Yet "this method char-
acterizes not only the relations of men with gods, but also of men with
men. We see in others the perfections which we lack." Thus the pro-
pensity to deify fellow beings which we recognize and understand in hu-
man love may illustrate the motives which perennially give life to the
god-ideas of religion.
In so far as moral needs are a source of religious ideas, it is clear that
moral consciousness must exist first, and religion afterward, in the order
of development. The proposition that morality is independent of religion
in its origin is defended at the beginning of Part III. Morality has its
origin in social relations; it is a spontaneous human product; as it de-
velops and becomes reflective it finds religion a valuable auxiliary, and
so takes part, as we have seen, in the development of religion itself. The
gods, we may say, as far as they are concerned in morals, " are either un-
conscious or conscious devices for the speedier attainment of ideals aris-
ing in the social life." " The God of Christianity continues to be an ob-
ject of worship, not because His existence is rationally established, but be-
cause He affords ethical support and effective comfort" (p. 201).
We have now before us the main theme of the book. The foundations
of religious belief are not intellectual; current beliefs exist and flourish
even in spite of the intellect, " theism having become logically impossible "
(a standpoint vital to the author's argument, but undefended taken for
granted throughout the work). Religion itself is at present inclined to
reject the support and so evade the criticism of metaphysics and of sci-
ence. To show this, Leuba cites an extremely interesting array of docu-
ments, in which various representative believers attempt to give grounds
for the faith that is in them. Distrust of the former intellectual argu-
ments for faith is everywhere evident. Faith, then, must be established
on other grounds than those of reason. What are these other grounds?
They are those human needs we were speaking of; the needs of the feel-
ings and of the moral aspirations. With the beliefs of religion, and the
behavior which these beliefs make appropriate, prayer and worship in
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 331
particular, men actually find that those needs are satisfied. Faith thus
takes on the semblance of an induction from experience inner experi-
ence, of course. Men no longer believe because their philosophy tells
them that there is a God; they believe because when they approach God
as if he existed they experience something which they can only interpret
as a response; a consciousness of relief, assurance, peace, comfort, ele-
vation, joy, conversion. Faith has nothing to do with metaphysics; it is
a determination to refer these experiences to a superhuman or divine
cause. And now Leuba contends that this determination is perverse, be-
cause these experiences can be explained, or nearly all of them, by psy-
chology. If, therefore, theology gives up its intellectual basis in meta-
physics, it ought to become a branch of psychology, and try to get these
experiences by scientific methods.
Auto-suggestiqn, for example, will explain much and can do much. If
we allow this and other resources of modern psychology their full scope,
shall we not find that we have as little need of the over-beliefs of Chris-
tian faith as Laplace had of the hypothesis of a God to explain the me-
chanics of the heavens? Let psychology explain all it can, at any rate.
If there is any inexplicable residuum, let psychology find and measure it
by procedures known to science, the " method of residues," in fact just
as the astronomer measures a perturbation which indicates an unknown
external influence on the path of his planet (pp. 242, 270).
This is a proposal to pause at. Is there perhaps a certain irony in
this suggestion that the work of God in the mind might be discovered by
the method of residues? Does the author seriously mean that we should
refer to God those mental states which psychology at any time fails to ac-
count for? Is God supposed then to do only what natural law leaves un-
done ? Are we not claiming too little for our science of psychology ? I would
rather say that when we regard our own mind as a succession of " states "
having " causes," then everything in it without exception must belong to
psychology: there is no conceivable residue which the science could hand
over to anything except to its own unfinished investigations. Give all to
psychology, and then let us be clear enough to see that the question
whether a god is at work in those natural laws, or whether these laws in
some mysterious fashion are working themselves, has not been so much as
touched on.
Nor can this question very well be answered by psychology. For
while psychology deals with the immediate causes of mental fragments
called " states of mind," such causes as arise from the connection of
mind and body, it can say nothing of total and ultimate causes. But the
mind itself leaps at once to the end of any such chain of causes and finds
itself in the presence of its terminus. While the psychologist is tracing
a sensation to the work of a ray in the retina, the mind is seeing a star.
The mind when active is never concerned with itself as a " state " having
a " cause " ; it is absorbed in its meanings, and these meanings pass be-
yond the mind into the world of objects, eluding the grasp of psychology.
Our physical sensations belong to psychology: but to the active mind
these sensations mean a world of nature, and a science not of psy-
332 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
chology, but of physics. Our moral feelings belong to psychology; but
to the active mind those feelings mean a present social environment
and a science not of psychology, but of ethics. So of these relig-
ious experiences; whatever their causes, their meaning breaks out of
the circle of consciousness and presents the mind with certain objective
facts of its spiritual environment. What are these facts? The religious
ideas of God undertake to answer. Are these ideas subject to illusion?
No doubt, just as our senses in dealing with nature are subject to illusion ;
and just as these errors of sense- judgment give rise to the science of
physics for their correction, so the errors of faith give rise to the science
of metaphysics (that is to say, the science of realities) not to the science
of psychology.
We must then agree with our author when he says that " every trans-
subjective reference falls under the criticism of the intellect " (p. 276) ;
but we can not agree that this criticism is primarily a matter of psy-
chology. We must agree with him that if we eliminate metaphysics, re-
ligious experience can give no sufficient ground for a faith in God; but
we can not eliminate metaphysics.
In truth, our author, in other parts of his book, is fully aware of this
fact. " The objective existence " of its objects of belief, he has said at the
outset " is an assumption necessary to religion " (p. 18) ; though he con-
tends that the assumption need not be true. It is enough, however, that
the religious consciousness must believe it true; must have a metaphysics
of its own (a metaphysics being nothing more than a working view re-
garding what is real and what is not real). Hence, when Professor Leuba
undertakes, in Part IV., to outline a basis for future religion, he be-
comes himself a metaphysician. He indicates a world-view which he re-
gards as psychologically sufficient while at the same time philosophically
tenable. He shows that naturalism is insufficient; and that the religion
of humanity in its older forms is insufficient. We must have at least so
much of a philosophical background as will preserve for us " the idea of
righteousness, the idea that justice will gain the ascendent, and that
there is a sublime purpose in things " (p. 328, quoted from Adler), we
need, in short, a measure of idealism. For metaphysical reasons, he
thinks that " the religion of the future will have to rest content with the
idea of a non-purposive Creative Force " (p. 334) ; yet this religion
should be " centered about Humanity, conceived as the manifestation of
a Force tending to the creation of an ideal society" (p. 336).
Here we have the foundations at least of a working creed, in harmony
with the Weltanschauung of our author, and, as he believes, generally
acceptable to the intellect of the future. Further details of this creed
might be gathered from the vigorous and highly interesting critique of
contemporary religious movements. But we must forgo this for our
own part, recommending it to the reader. Neither shall we here record
any criticism of the creed itself, since its philosophic defense has not
come within the scope of our author's purpose. I remark only that be-
tween such a " non-purposive " force as exhibits the ideal tendencies
attributed to it, and the purposive Being dimly imagined in our common
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 333
religious belief, the gulf is not so great as Leuba's hearty rejection of
theism had at first led me to anticipate; though it is not quite clear to
me what, with such a belief, would become of the " anthropopathic be-
havior " of men toward their creator, and therewith of religion, as our
author has defined it.
A more positive and consistent recognition throughout the book of
this sturdy metaphysical background would much enhance, I believe, not
alone its clarity and unity, but also the effectiveness of its many fine
passages. How much it contributes, for example, to such an admirable
bit of psychology as the following, to know that behind the psychology
there is a conviction of reality : " The value of awe to religion is not
only its disinterestedness a purely negative virtue; it has a direct
ennobling effect. To be impressed by the great, the powerful, the mys-
terious, and still be unafraid, is to evince one's partial kinship with these
forces. Fear reveals antagonism, enmity, isolation; awe, involving as it
does the recognition of greatness without actual fear, gives the first sense
of a not unfriendly relation with the cosmos. . . . The sympathetic vibra-
tions of awe are the first organic sign of a friendship with the cosmic
forces, the first step toward that ultimate union with the Great Whole,
achieved in certain forms of practical mysticism" (p. 147).
Kinship with the forces of the world implies much: friendship and
union with them are the essential achievements of religion. The religion
of the future must, like that of the past, provide (and we hope as success-
fully) for the literal accomplishment of these great ends. Without theism
"friendship" here is meaningless.
A review of this sort must confess at the end its failure to suggest
some of the chief merits of the book, its wealth of detail, its wide com-
mand of sources, its Sachlichkeit, its power of discrimination (which
prevents at times the just estimate of resemblances), and its insistence
on the fundamental truth that religion must be a matter of experience
and will not of metaphysics alone.
WILLIAM ERNEST HOCKING.
YALE UNIVERSITY.
JOURNALS AND NEW BOOKS
MIND. October, 1912. Shadworth Hallway Hodgson (pp. 473-
485) : H. WILDON CARR. - Contains, relative to the death of Shadworth
Hodgson, the founder and first President of the Aristotelian Society, an
outline of the general features of his philosophy. The main task of phi-
losophy, the pure science of metaphysics, consists in a thorough analysis
of experience, the sole evidence of existence, an account of which analysis
is here given., The Reign of Science in the History of a Race (pp. 486-
507) : ALFRED H. LLOYD. - A chapter of what is eventually to constitute a
history provisionally entitled The History of the Humani. The Reign of
Science, the third in the series of law, art, science, philosophy, and relig-
ion, is openly rationalistic. The central fact is the alliance of science and
334 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
commerce, of candor with utility; the scientific spirit representing the in-
tellectual, the commercial the practical life. Perception and Intersubjec-
tive Intercourse (pp. 508-521) : WILLIAM W. CARLILE. -" We find the world
of individual experience conceived of as transformed through the exigen-
cies of intercourse into the world of common experience which we call the
world of reality." Implication and the Algebra of Logic (pp. 522-531) :
C. I. LEWIS. -From the standpoint of an analysis of the meaning of im-
plication, objection is made against the present form of the calculus of
propositions. The meaning of " implies " in' algebraic logic, its character-
istics, its limitations, its divergence from the " implies " of ordinary rea-
soning, are considered. Alternative methods are suggested. Discussions:
The " Working " of " Truths " (pp. 532-535) : F. C. S. SCHILLER. - Critical
Notes: A. Aliotta, La Reazione Idealistica Contro la Scienza: A. E.
TAYLOR. J. C. Meredith, Kant's Critique of Esthetic Judgment: J. M.
O'SULLIVAN. E. J. Urwick, A Philosophy of Social Progress: J. S. MAC-
KENZIE. B. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy: B. BOSANQUET. A. H.
Stirling, James Hutchinson Stirling : His Life and Work : J. B. B. Wil-
liam James, Essays in Radical Empiricism: B. RUSSELL. New Books.
Philosophical Periodicals. Notes.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. January, 1913. La morale en fonc-
tion de la realite (pp. 1-28) : J. DE GAULTIER. - Reality has usually been
conceived as a function of a moral idea. The author tries to state the
ethical problem avoiding the implied impropriety of conceiving the whole
as a function of a part. Spiritisme et cryptopsychie (pp. 29-50) : E.
BOIRAC. - A discussion of the relative probability of the cryptopsychie and
spirit hypotheses in explaining the phenomena made indubitable by Wal-
lace, Crookes, Richet, Flournoy, and others. Signes et symboles (pp. 51-
70) : L. ARREAT. - The universality of symbolic language signifies a con-
dition of expression. Thus art is also a " knowledge." While " abstract
minds extend truth, concrete (artistic) minds preserve it." Revue
generale. Le deuxieme congres international a" 'education morale: BEN-
RUBI. Analyses et comptes rendus. A. Joussain, Esquisse d'une philos-
ophic de la nature: FR. PAULHAN. C. Baires, Teoria del amor: J. PERES.
G. Palante, Les antinomies entre I'individu et la societe: A. BAUER.
Urtin, Le fondament de la responsibility penale: G. RICHARD. Revue des
periodiques.
Bechterew, W. La Psychologic Objective. Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan.
1913. Pp. iii + 478. 7.50 F.
Dumesnil, Georges. La Sophistique Contemporaine ; Petit Examen de
la philosophie demon temps, Metaphysique, Science, Morale, Relig-
ion. Paris: Beauchesne. 1912. Pp. 116.
Field, G. C. Socrates and Plato: A Criticism of A. E. Taylor's Yaria
Socratica. Oxford: Parker and Company. London: Simpkin, Mar-
shall. 1913. Pp. 40.
Frank, Henry. Modern Light on Immortality. Second Edition. Bos-
ton: Sherman, French, and Company. 1909. Pp. 467. $1.85.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 335
Guerard, Albert. French Prophets of Yesterday. New York: D. Apple-
ton and Company. 1913. Pp. 288.
Hantsch, K. Johann Friedrich Herbarts Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in
die Philosophic. Leipzig : Felix Meiner. 1912. Pp. Ixxviii + 388.
Hunter, Walter S. The Delayed Reaction in Animals and Children.
Behavior Monographs, Vol. II., No. 1. Henry Holt and Company.
1913. Pp. 86.
Kiilpe, Oswald. Die Realisierung, Ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung der
Realwissenschaften. Leipzig: S. Hirzel. 1912. Pp. x + 257.
Le Roy, Edouard. The New Philosophy of Henri Bergson. Translated
by Vincent Benson. New York : Henry Holt and Company. London :
Williams and Norgate. 1913. Pp. x +235.
Macmillan, R. A. C. The Crowning Phase of the Critical Philosophy:
A Study in Kant's Critique of Judgment. London: Macmillan Com-
pany. 1912. Pp. xxv + 347.
NOTES AND NEWS
SUBJECT OF DISCUSSION FOB THE JOINT MEETING OF THE AMERICAN PHILO-
SOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATIONS
THE Subject of "The Standpoint and Method of Psychology" has
been selected as the topic for the joint discussion of the American Psy-
chological Association and the American Philosophical Association at its
next meeting at New Haven. Professors Edward G. Spaulding and
Howard C. Warren, of Princeton University, suggest the following for-
mulation of the problem, which, it is hoped, will serve as a starting point
for further formulations and discussions:
Data of Psychology. Should psychology study unit-beings (selves,
mind, consciousness), or inner states (e. g., sensations, feelings), or inner
processes (e. g., sensibility, affectivity, association), or certain relations
between unit-beings and their environment (e. g., reflexes, instincts), or
several of these.
Method of Research. Should the psychologist obtain his data mainly
by self -study (introspection by himself and others), or by studying the
motor reactions of organisms? If both methods be admitted, what is
their relative importance?
Philosophy of Psychology. Does a systematic psychology depend upon
a specific world-view, or can it be developed, as are physics and biology,
without a definite philosophical basis? In the latter case, do the results
of empirical psychology compel us to adopt some specific philosophy?
Note. The question of the nature of consciousness, sensation, intro-
spection, etc., should be discussed only in its relation to the standpoint
that is taken concerning the above positions.
336 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
THE Reverend August Karl Reischauer, professor of philosophy in
Meiji Gakuin, Tokyo, Japan, has recently given at Xew York Univer-
sity a series of lectures on " Buddhism's Challenge to Christianity in
Japan." The subjects of the individual lectures were as follows : " Budd-
hist Origins " ; " The Development of Primitive Buddhism into Mahayana
Buddhism " ; " Historical Development of Japanese Buddhism " ; " The
Buddhist Canon"; "The Japanese Sects and Their Chief Tenets";
" The Strength of Christianity in Japan."
AT Leland Stanford University, Professor Henry W. Stuart has been
granted Sabbatical leave for the year 1913-14, Professor Sabine has been
advanced to the rank of associate professor, and Professor Warner Fite,
of Indiana University, will conduct courses in the department during the
first semester.
THE Librairie Marcel Riviere announces the publication of a new
magazine, Revue des Sciences Psychologiques, under the editorial guid-
ance of MM. J. Tastevin and P.-L. Couchaud. The review will appear
every three months, each number being composed of 90 pages.
A CONGRESS for esthetics and general philosophy of art (Kunstwissen-
schaft) is planned for October 7-9, 1913, in Berlin. Those who contem-
plate active participation are requested to write immediately to Professor
Dessoir, Berlin W., Speyererstrasse, 9.
JAPANESE graduates of Harvard University have subscribed a fund of
$20,000 as the foundation for a lectureship in the department of philos-
ophy to provide for the teaching of Japanese and other Oriental systems
of philosophy.
THE International Association of Medical Psychology and Psycho-
therapy will hold its annual meeting at Vienna on September 18 and 19,
immediately before the opening of the Congress of German Men of Sci-
ence and Physicians.
DR. FREDERICK LYMAN WELLS, assistant in pathological psychology at
the McLean Hospital, has been conducting a course of lectures and dis-
cussions on " Pathological Psychology " at Harvard University.
SIR OLIVER LODGE has been elected president of the British Associa-
tion, in succession to the late Sir William White, for the meeting to be
held in Birmingham next September.
PROFESSOR C. E. FERREE, of Bryn Mawr College, read a paper before
the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia on April 4, entitled,
" The Problem of Lighting in Its Relation to the Eye."
THE French Academy of Moral and Political Science has elected M.
Pierre Janet, professor of experimental psychology at the College de
France, to the chair left vacant by the death of M. Fouillee.
PROFESSOR HARRY A. OVERSTREET, of the College of the City of Xew
York, will give two courses in philosophy at the Summer Session of Co-
lumbia University.
331
VOL. X. No. 13. JUNE 19, 1913
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD;:
THE CASE METHOD IN THE STUDY AND TEACHING OF
ETHICS 1
study of ethics often seems to be looked upon as an elegant
J- accomplishment rather than as a necessary preparation for life.
Last year, in a large New England college, there were presented to
the faculty programmes of study leading to many different profes-
sions. In but one of these, the ministry of the church, was ethics
looked upon as essential. The study of ethics does not apparently
lead any one to pursue a more moral life ; and there is a wide differ-
ence between teaching a man ethics and teaching him to be ethical.
It may be doubted whether anything but the inspiration of a great
leadership ever influences men to any kind of righteousness.
I hold that every teaching of ethics should be adapted to make
men ethical. Any other advertisement of it is itself most unethical.
There are as many moral standards as there are men united in a
common purpose. Any one of these is admirable in some respects.
Have they any points in common? And is there such a thing as
an objective ethics which could command the adherence of all intelli-
gent and instructed men in the same way that the teachings of the
physical sciences to-day are accepted by the same class?
An experience of concrete ethical situations which I may claim
to be both wide and deep has given me a respect for the fundamental
agreements of different systems. Christian, Buddhistic, Moham-
medan, common sense, utilitarian, intuitional ethics, yes, even the
no ethics of Nietzsche, give, if I may venture the paronomasia, a
pragmatic sanction to the admonitions of our spiritual and secular
p;iMors and masters, which is striking; and I have come to think that
the principles of morality must be of a certain robustness to with-
stand the interpretations put upon them by men of such varied
temper, training, and tradition.
I believe that all who study the subject agree with me that there
are these fundamental likenesses. The natural inference would be
that there is an ethics which could be generalized from them, giving
us a rule of conduct binding, not from without, but in the very na-
1 Read at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, December,
1912.
338 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
ture of conduct itself. To find such a rule one must pursue the path
of the physical sciences without more ado, leaving all metaphysical
questions regarding the ground of moral obligation aside, to be
settled, if at all, in their proper place.
It must not be assumed at the start that we know what right con-
duct is. There must be an unprejudiced search with no arriere
pensee.
Meditation upon this has led me to consider the possibility and
advisability of employing in the study of ethics the case method or
system, now in use in the Harvard and other important law schools.
I propose, therefore, to put and try to answer four questions, after
which I shall endeavor to present the results of a two years' trial of
the method at Dartmouth College, the only place, so far as I know,
where it has been employed in ethics. If I am wrong in this, I shall
be glad to be corrected, and I would rejoice to know that others had
tried it, that I might profit by their experience. 2
I. What is the case method in law?
II. Why adopt it for ethics?
III. What is its value for the study of ethics?
IV. What is its value for the teaching of ethics?
I
The ease method, as applied to the teaching of law, I find at-
tacked in an article by Dr. J. P. Bishop. 3 He says of the authorities
of the Harvard Law School, ' ' They have swept the whole line of te
books away ; ' ' but he acknowledges that ' ' the use of decided cases
elementary instruction has always been common and [he believ
universal. ' '
President Eliot, upon being introduced to explain the formal
adoption of the method, said: 4 "He [Professor Langdell] told me
that law was a science: I was quite prepared to believe it. He told
me that the way to study a science was to go to the original sources.
I knew that was true, for I had been brought up in the science of
chemistry myself; and one of the first rules of a conscientious stu-
dent of science is never to take a fact or a principle out of second-
hand treatises, but to go to the original memoir of the discoverer of
that fact or principle. Out of these two fundamental propositions
that law is a science, and that a science is to be studied in its sources
there gradually grew, first, a new method of teaching law; and.
secondly, a reconstruction of the curriculum of the school. ' '
2 My attention has been called to the work of Professor Frank Chapman
Sharp, of the University of Wisconsin, "The Influence of Custom on the Moral
Judgment." Madison, Wis., 1908. As I shall show later in connection with a
mention of casuistry, Professor Sharp 's method bears no resemblance to mine.
3 American Law Review, 1888.
4 American Law Review, Vol. XXII., page 18.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 339
Professor J. C. Gray, writing later in the same Review* (in re-
ply to Dr. Bishop's attacks), says that "no system will work of
itself" and that law treatises may be necessary, though not for
teaching. "The best material for a legal education would be real
cases." Cases, not text-books, are the basis of instruction, sup-
plemented, of course, by lectures. "The method of study by cases
is the best form of legal education that has yet been discovered. It
is the best because it is most in accordance with the constitution
of the human mind; because the only way to learn to do a thing is
to do it. No man ever yet learned to dance or to swim by reading
treatises upon saltation or natation. No man ever learned chem-
istry except by retort and crucible. No man ever learned mathe-
matics without paper and pencil."
It should be added that the cases cited are always actual cases,
highly condensed, but with all essentials given, including the reasons
for the judicial decision. Many case books have been published, and
more are constantly being prepared.
II
Why adopt this system for ethics? Well, in part, because other
methods seem to me to be ineffective, but chiefly because I am con-
vinced that ethics, too, is a science and must be studied in its sources,
viz.: actual human conduct with the judgments passed upon it by
I In' authorities of whatever group the agent 'belonged to, for the pur-
pose of the judgment. In this way we may possibly arrive at an ob-
jective ethics whose authority over all men would be equal and im-
perative. There is a respect paid by all intelligent and instructed
adults to the laws of the physical sciences far beyond that ever paid
by any but the most conscientious to the pronouncements of any
ethical code. If there should be found, upon investigation, laws as
absolute for man 's successful continuance in society as there are now
for his successful resistance to the forces of nature, exhortation of
every sort would give place to instruction. The ideal of Socrates
would have been attained. Plato's ironical remark that horse-breed-
ing must be taught, but that statecraft "comes by nature," would no
longer be pertinent. Definite laws and principles of behavior would
have the approval of men of all schools. There would be no Catholic,
Protestant, Buddhist ethics any more than there is now a Catholic,
Protestant, or Buddhist chemistry, physics, or economics.
And the great value of the experimental method is that it never
fails. The hypothesis which led to the making of the experiment
may prove inadequate or incorrect: but that is a matter of indif-
ference. One learns as much from such a failure as from success.
These are what Bacon called experimenta lucifera.
' Ibid., pages 756 ff.
340 TEE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Now, what if it should appear, after wide experimentation by
many observers, that there is no universal -basis for ethical teaching ?
The result, for all except the morally feeble-minded, would still be
valuable. There might be, indeed, for a time, a condition of things
comparable to that of Greece under the Sophists. Men might reject
laws imposed by external authority on the ground that they are con-
ventional, not natural. Indeed that seems to me to be increasingly
the temper of the men of this day. Old standards have lost their
value, not only for the flippant multitude, but also for many who are
far from flippant.
After the Sophists came Socrates, reducing the chaotic interpre-
tations of life to a rule. The concept in its practical working con-
vinced those who knew it that there was some objective order in
worlds mental and moral. But, let us suppose for the sake of the
argument that no Socratic concept for morals may now be found.
Would it not be better for us to know this than to languish in igno-
rance? There is a state of mind which I am wont to call the igno-
rance of Miss. Surely no philosopher desires it. As Professor Perry
has said, ''No man wants to be even a blessed fool!"
If there be an objective morality which no intelligent man can
disregard, its value will be incalculable. We shall know what to
teach at least. If there be no such objective morality, then it will
be wise for men to choose their standards according to temperament
and tradition. They will know frankly where they stand, where
other men stand, and what may be done in the premises.
Such a conclusion can be reached, one way or the other, onl
through a scientific study of actual human conduct.' It can never be
reached through a theoretic ethics based upon a metaphysical system.
But let me say now that I do not propose the case method as the only
way of teaching ethics. It must be supplemented later in a course
by theory ; for there are certain questions which can not be met at all
by the case method. 6 Note that the case method is not casuistry ; for
casuistry always presupposes an established moral law. The applica-
tion of the law to the particular case is sought, but there is never a
doubt about the law. 7 The case method seeks to know what the law
* It is unjust and undiscriminating to condemn it on the ground that there
is no recognition given to the non-empirical character of the moral imperative.
Professor Patten's strictures upon the method, when he discussed it at the meet-
ing of the American Philosophical Association, in December last, were based
upon an entire misconception of its claims. Professor Patten discussed rather
what he knew to be my own deductions from this study than the contents of this
paper or the value of the case method.
' Professor Patten seems to me simply to have denied this assertion. I invite
him to bring proof that it is not so. In this connection, too, I must notice the
very interesting and valuable modern casuistry of Professor Sharp in the work
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 341
is : and nothing is presupposed unless it be that the cases considered
are known in common speech to come under the general heading,
moral.
One must frankly face a very great difficulty in the practical
employment of this method in teaching ethics. Law students have
great masses of cases carefully arranged and coordinated, each one
properly adjudicated, and that unmistakably. There are few such
cases for ethics except when we take law cases over bodily a thing
which I very often do. One of the immediate and imperative needs,
if the method is to be more than a local experiment, is an association
of those interested in studying, teaching, and practising ethics to
prepare, criticize, and publish cases properly arranged and coordi-
nated for the use of classes. No one man is competent to do this. It
requires many minds and much time in order that the whole field
may adequately be covered.
Ill
What is the value of this method as applied to the study of
ethics? Some will say, This is not ethics at all it is sociology.
Ethics is a normative science. It has to do with what ought to be,
and can never be illumined by the study of what is. I challenge
this traditional and conventional point of view. Governor S. E.
Baldwin, I think, commenting upon the case method in law, scorn-
fully compares the study of cases to the study of multitudes of apples
in order to arrive at the law of gravitation. His criticism is more
witty than pertinent. The observation of falling bodies under many
different conditions by many observers may well lead to enlighten-
ment upon the law of gravitation.
It is just a wide patient observation which has made that law a
synonym for all that is valid and permanent in our knowledge.
Where is such solidity, permanence, or agreement in ethical law?
Honesty, truthfulness, temperance, honor, integrity, magnanimity,
and the rest, change their minds when they cross the sea into alien
territory.
One of the most notable and valuable books upon ethics of recent
before mentioned and in other writings, which has been thought by some to be
a prior discussion of this method: but a very slight review of these writings will
convince any one that our methods have nothing in common except the inductive
principle. His book is based upon replies received to a questionnaire addressed
to some hundreds of students at Wisconsin. The questions are all casuistical.
He seeks to know the ground of individual judgments of moral conduct and to
discover if possible the sources of such judgments. I seek- to know what has
happened: and to discover, if possible, a law running through the judgments
which society has made through its duly appointed officials. I do not, in any
case, study opinions, but seek the established facts.
342 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
years is the text-book of Dewey and Tufts. Not the least valuable
part is Part I., wherein are brought together the various standards
of many peoples and religions for purposes of comparison. I do not
criticize that admirable book when I say that we need to have a mass
of cases drawn from the original sources for each of the groups,
clans, nations, religions. The interesting and valuable books of
Spencer, Westermarck, Tylor, McLennan, Lang, Spencer and Gillen,
Hobhouse, Sutherland, and many others, contain material which is
corroborative of many theories; but this material is not in the form
needed by us. One of the most valuable of authors for this study is
Sir Henry Maine, who presents fully the customs and judgments of
society in some of its most primtive forms.
The study of cases brings us into direct and vivid contact with
reality. We meet men in concrete situations being judged favorably
or unfavorably by the authorities of the group to which they belong;
and we realize pragmatically the exact value of conduct. Its value
is no longer of the closet, theoretic, but demonstrated. That there is
need in the study of cases for some heuristic is apparent otherwise
we should be lost in the contemplation of things and never find the
Divine Idea. That heuristic, however, should never be the par-
ticular ethical theory in which the investigator has been chiefly
trained; though it is unavoidable that this theory should color his
conclusions somewhat. It should be determined by the nature of the
problem considered; and we can have no better example to follow
than Socrates in his search for the concept.
I have called the course at Dartmouth cases of conduct a phrase
suggested to me by Professor G. H. Palmer when he was told the
nature of the proposed experiment. It is not emphatically cases
of conscience, and all material should be historical. For this reason
cases taken from fiction are not considered. They represent some
one man's ideal. Historical cases, properly attested, alone give us
the means of objective judgment.
The abundance of material is bewildering, and the outlook for
the attainment of order apparently hopeless but sociology, eco-
nomics, psychology, and history have had similar difficulties to
grapple with and their success is encouraging. I believe that if a
small number of earnest investigators shall initiate this method of
study, they will find valuable material, not only in the publications
of anthropologists, but, also, and most significantly, in the investiga-
tions of contemporary sociologists, enlightened prison officials, social
workers, and others. The field is ripe for the harvest.
Whether this method may prove more advantageous for the study
than for the teaching of ethics, I am not sure. The time of my
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 343
experiment two years is very short; and the small number in
classes an average of nine members leaves results as to teaching
uncertain; but I feel confident that in the study of ethics, at least,
this method will be found fruitful.
IV
What is its value for teaching ? First, its concreteness. Theory
is strictly relegated to a later part of the course and men are shown
the actual penalties inflicted for transgression of group standards,
customary morality. Of necessity we can consider penalties only;
for there are no courts for the awarding of rewards for action, if
we except the Nobel Prize Committee and the Carnegie Hero Com-
mittee, which cover a very restricted field.
Secondly, the opportunity to use the Socratic midwifery. In
considering a case of murder, theft, arson, adultery, or other, the
student gives testimony himself as to the unmistakable judgment of
society not his own opinion or the opinion of a judge, but the
imposition of a penalty which has been enforced. There is not even
a question whether it should be enforced. It has been- voild tout!
But I am far from saying that there are no obstacles in the way
of its successful use in teaching. Some of them are here given.
1. The unfamiliarity of the young with ethical situations.
2. The extreme conservatism and conventionality of the young.
3. Their inexpertness in abstraction and generalization.
4. The lack of a case book.
5. The apparently discursive character of the course, which often
makes the student lose the thread of the discussion.
6. The amount of time needed is greatly in excess of that needed
for dogmatic instruction.
Most students, I find, prefer to be taught by the lazy and ineffi-
cient lecture method, and as a part of good teaching must always be
to lead the student to think it good, some concession must be made
to their prejudices. It may easily be that the truest method of
teaching and I hold that this is the Socratic will be, for a time at
least, unpopular. In such case one must choose between being
thought a good teacher and being one in reality.
The chief value of the case method as an introduction to ethical
study and this is all that I claim for it is that students may and
do become deeply interested in, not personal morals only, but also
and more significantly, in large social movements and questions of
public policy.
A few words about the exact method used in the class-room.
Some preliminary discussion of the aims and methods of the
344 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
course is followed by (a) dogmatic instruction in the nature of scien-
tific method; (6) by study of the text of Dewey and Tufts on "Early
Group Morality"; (c) by a direct study of several primitive cases of
group morality in the first chapter of Dewey and Tufts; (d) by a
careful consideration of the four methods of judging conduct in
Spencer's "Principles of Ethics," the student being required to
present a written digest of each of these chapters which are also
discussed in class.
After this much preparation an attempt is made to educe from
the class a provisional classification of all possible forms of conduct
which meet with social judgment. It was found that all cases could
be considered under four heads. Cases relating to :
I. The preservation of life and limb.
II. The preservation of property.
III. The preservation of security in the first two.
IV. The preservation of liberty, bodily and mental, culminating
in the preservation of the power to hold and express indi-
vidual opinion.
While this classification was avowedly tentative and subject to
change, it was interestingly confirmed by my colleague, Professor W.
H. Lyon, of the Tuck School, Dartmouth College, and a member of
the New York bar. He said that the first two classes covered com-
mercial and criminal procedure at law and the last two taken to-
gether would correspond roughly to actions in tort. The statement
of this fact to the class by Professor Lyon made a visible impression.
At this point the class was invited to discover and bring to the
class-room cases under the four divisions taken in order. These were
then analyzed according to a formula again educed from the class by
suggestion on my part, though no undue pressure was brought
to bear.
This is the formula:
In order properly to use any case it is necessary
(a) To have it stated in all its essential characteristics and in
these alone following the analogy of law cases.
(&) One must decide which aspect of the case is to be considered,
that of the agent or that of society reacting upon his act.
(c) If one shall choose to consider the aspect of social retribution
(positive or negative) one must carefully distinguish the object
sought to be attained. Sub-headings for this division are
1. Punishment (as a general answer).
2. Example.
3. Prevention of further transgression.
4. Reform of the offender.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 345
5. Restitution to the injured.
6. Revenge (vengeance, "getting even," atonement).
(d) Whether the object sought was actually attained.
(e) Whether the action of society was the cause or only a cause
or perhaps not a cause at all, of the resulting change in conduct.
This analysis, while in principle the same, varies in form with
different types of cases. 8
Hundreds of cases, some trivial, some important, were brought in
by students and treated objectively. The word ought is rigorously
excluded. One seeks simply to find out the results of the action;
and I have applied the term the physics of ethics or ethical physics
to our procedure. This seems to me equally characteristic of the
text-book used in the second semester, Perry's "Moral Economy."
Most of the cases considered were taken from contemporary life.
They included all kinds of killing from accidental killing to delib-
erate murder and an effort was made to grade all killings according
to the severity of the judgments made upon them. Killing of
enemies in war, killing in self-defense, in defense of women and
children attacked, etc., was contrasted with killing for revenge,
avarice, brutality, and the like. The killing brought about by care-
lessness in the use of machinery, neglect of sanitary precautions,
recklessness in running railroads, etc., where many lives are lost and
much suffering is incident, yet little or no punishment is inflicted,
was contrasted with cases of manslaughter where a relatively severe
penalty is inflicted, to bring out the principles, tentatively assumed,
that
1. The group punishes severely anything which threatens group
continuance.
2. It is indifferent to killing where such does not appear to en-
danger the idea of society, as in railroad accident cases.
3. Lack of attention and old custom alone are responsible for
society's neglect of things more directly subversive of its principle
than some which are severely reprobated.
Ideally, for such a study, the judgments of society in all stages
should be collated. It is manifestly impossible to do this in the class-
room. It is the work of future advanced students and teachers to
bring together as many varieties as possible of each of these classes
relating to life, property, security, and liberty that material may
not be wanting for a sound induction. Meantime, sufficient "cases
were produced by the class to make a very impressive exhibit. I pro-
* Mill 's methods of proof should, theoretically, be used. It can not be done
with a class perhaps quite untrained in logic. The most one can do is to guide
the class in the spirit of these rules.
346 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
pose next year to prepare the cases myself, not to depend upon the
students, who are sometimes very blind to excellent cases.
Let me insist that this study of cases, however vague it may seem
to some from this brief and necesarily imperfect presentation, is
always an objective study of what has happened, not in the least of
what ought to happen or of individual opinions. It is essentially a
legal study. If objection be made that it ought not to be called
ethics, I must insist that we need first to find out what is being done
before we can with any confidence say what ought to be done ; and
that which is done will probably enlighten us very much regarding
possibilities.
A social group qua group will always act in certain specific ways
regardless of moral imperatives, so called, regardless of exhortation
to mercy. If the group is to survive, treason in any form, when
known, must be visited with death, at least during times of stress.
It has been so visited.
Cases under the other three great categories, property, security,
liberty, culminating in liberty of opinion and speech, must all be
taken to be but shadings away from cases of life. In the end all
ethics is a question of survival of personality, linked to the survival
of the body. All that a man hath will he give for his life, but that
life may mean the death of the body. The apex of my pyramid I
have called liberty of propaganda, for if a man may not express
himself, he might as well be dead !
In conclusion, I give brief indications of the tentative results
derived from this study. They invite and welcome the frankest
but, I hope, understanding criticism.
The locus of all moral situations is the conflict of interests.
Ultimate decisions rest with the individual.
There is no morality where there is coercion.
The individual may do as he will so long as he does not deny his
own nature and purpose in life.
Individuality is the goal of social progress, the satisfaction of all
interests, hence, development of all personalities, the only ultimate,
but this is hardly probable in an evolving society.
The place of intention is clearly defined in social practise, but
conflicting interests often bring about the punishment of uninten-
tional offenders.
No universal law has been found except that each organism or
organization applauds its upholder and condemns its threatener.
TREASON is NEVER FORGIVEN IF KNOWN TO EXIST.
The only ought is the intelligent recognition of the place of all
\ interests and consequent prudent adaptation to them.
: PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 347
Men get their moral impulsive power through loyalty to some
group, however small or large. Intelligence alone is not sufficient
to make men moral.
This is the merest sketch of a method which has been interesting
and fruitful to me individually. Should there be shown sufficient
interest in it, I hope to elaborate later on. This is submitted in real
humility as an effort toward solving a difficult problem, and criticism
is eagerly awaited.
GEORGE CLARKE Cox.
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE.
THEORY OF INDEPENDENCE
AMONG the several elements constituting the philosophical
theory now known and vigorously defended as the new
realism, the doctrine of independence occupies a central place. The
authors of the recent publication bearing the title of this modern
school 1 have not failed to realize this, and Professor Perry, of Har-
vard University, devotes his contribution in the ' ' cooperative ' ' effort
to a thorough discussion of the object's independence of conscious-
ness. Stated in its simplest terms, the theory of independence is the
view that a real object does not owe its existence or its qualities to
the fact of its being cognized. To this is added the belief that the
real object is nevertheless such as may be known. In fact all the
physical objects of experience are real objects and they are capable
of being cognized in toto. There is no residuum which is from its
nature unknowable. It is clear that such a view commits us to a
definite type of viewing consciousness on the one hand and reality on
the other. In opposition to Berkeley it is claimed that no object is
real if it can be shown that its existence is identical with its being
perceived. In opposition to Locke and to Kant it is just as stoutly
maintained that it is foolish to look for, or to believe in, without
looking for it, some thing at the basis of the qualities perceived,
which itself can never be an object of perception. The identical
thing which is at one moment an object of perception is at the next
moment, if I shut my eyes and cease thinking of it, an object un-
perceived, but none the less (and equally none the more) a real
object. As far as the object and its reality is concerned, my perceiv-
ing it or your perceiving it is not merely an unimportant accident;
it is even less than that. It does not affect the nature of the object
in the least. The object passes in and out of consciousness unscathed.
*"The New Eealism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy." New York:
Macmillan, 1912.
348 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
What, then, is consciousness ? It may be an activity, it may be a
receptacle, it may be a relation. Its activity may be selective or
organizing. But whichever of these it be, it is purely external to the
object, and in no sense constitutive of any element therein.
Is there any way in which we can show that this account of the
object and its relation to consciousness is true? Clearly the only
direct way would be to get hold of a real object when not in any con-
sciousness and see what it looks like. And it is just as clear that
this can never be done. To "get hold" of an object is to spoil its
purity, and it becomes useless. And so long as we do not "get hold"
of it there is no object to examine and we are baffled. This is what
Perry- calls the ' ' ego-centric predicament. ' '
Stated in these bald terms we have merely a predicament which
proves nothing, as Perry rightly concludes, except that it gives us a
gentle hint to look around for other ways, even if less direct, of
solving the problem. But, after all, it seems to me that the ' ' predica-
ment" has some other connotation besides. Why is it, we may ask,
to take a specific case, that I can not have a green color unless I see
it? For it is not merely true in general that I must attend to an
object if it is to be an object for me. I can not have a green color
unless I attend to it in a specific manner ; I must look at it. And if
I try ever so hard to make clear to myself what green is, I have no
way of doing it except by saying that it is the kind of thing I see
when I see green. Is this impossibility of explaining green to a
blind man simply an accident, without essential connection with the
nature of green? Does it not rather lead us to think that the very
essence of green is that it is seen? And does not this circumstance
color the ego-centric predicament in a way that is extremely signifi-
cant? It seems to suggest that the predicament in question is not
an accident, but is conditioned by the nature of things. If what was
said of color may be generalized in its application, then there may be
some warrant in saying that it is because it is the essential nature of
objects as such to be in consciousness that we find ourselves unable to
attach any meaning to an object out of consciousness, and hence the
two varieties of Idealism, the one believing in an unknowable Ding
an sick, to escape utter subjectivism; the other refusing to admit
what can in no case make any practical difference, and hence, identi-
fying the object as experienced with the real object, and claiming
that an object must be experienced or it is nothing.
However, the argument from the ego-centric predicament for
realism is purely negative. It is intended in the use Perry makes of
it to invalidate it as an argument for idealism. It can not, of course,
prove realism or even create a presumption in its favor. If I am not
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 349
a competent judge of the nature of objects in themselves because I
am always in my own light when I wish to deal with them, I must
give up the problem, and so must every, conceivable investigator, be
he man or God, do the same. For whoever the subject be, he can not
at the same time eat the cake and have it too. He can not at the same
time perceive his object and not perceive it. The predicament is
universal.
But is there not an indirect method of attacking the same prob-
lem of the relation of object to consciousness? Is it possible by
analyzing the various modes of dependence as visible in nature to
determine whether the relation of object and consciousness is iden-
tical with any of them ? If it is, then our problem is solved in favor
of dependence, of course, and against the realist contention. But
suppose the relation in question is not identical with any of the
modes of dependence of one thing upon another as revealed in
scientific analysis what then? Have we a right to conclude that
objects are not dependent on consciousness ? Who is to warrant that
the modes of dependence as observable among objects exhausts the
possible kinds of dependence, and what right have we to infer from
one kind of relation one totally different? The assumption that
objects in their interdependence can throw light on our problem is
a begging of the question. If the relation of object to consciousness,
which is admittedly baffling, must find its counterpart in the rela-
tions among objects themselves, it is not the unique relation which
the ego-centric predicament shows it to be.
Let us take an instance of an analogous predicament in a different
sphere. A given individual is operated on for appendicitis and dies
as a result of the operation. The surgeon maintains that the patient
would have died in any case, and that the operation was a safe risk,
for it might have saved him. The relatives of the patient may
entertain a legitimate doubt and speculate on what might have been
if their father or brother had not submitted to an operation. His
case was not exactly like the others in the surgeon's experience.
Every case is, after all, unique, and what does the surgeon know of
the many cases of appendicitis that were operated on and either sur-
vived or succumbed as to whether they would have survived without
an operation ? Clearly there is nothing but probability, and the only
direct experiment, namely, to see whether the person who died under
the knife can live without an operation, is made impossible from the
nature of the case. Here we have a predicament, and clearly there
is no way out of it. No amount of experimentation on any number
of patients can prove anything for the individual in question, so long
as we maintain that an individual as such has something unique
about him, no matter how similar he may be in special aspects to
350 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
other individuals of the same species. Besides, every case constitutes
a one-sided experiment only, whether it is a case of an operation
performed or of one who refused to submit to the surgeon's knife.
It is possible, of course, to take a hundred cases, say, of operation,
and, comparing them with an equal number of cases of those who
refused to submit to an operation, to see the relative percentage of
survivals of the disease. This would prove of value on the assump-
tion of uniformity of the disease if we take a large number of cases.
Or it is possible by an actual examination of the progress of the
disease in a given case to make up one 's mind with a high degree of
probability as to the condition of the diseased organ and its prob-
able development. But all this is possible because we are dealing
here with an individual of a class, and legitimate comparison is in
order. Whereas in the problem under discussion it is quite illegiti-
mate to assume that there is a similarity between the relation of an
object to consciousness and the various relations among objects them-
selves. To be sure, the contrary assumption that the conscious rela-
tion is unique might be just as gratuitous, and the matter must be
solved, if at all, empirically. But so long as we do not know what
the nature of the conscious relation is, how can analysis of other
relations ever make us wise on the matter? Assuming even that
among the relations of objects among themselves there is one in which
the dependence or absence of dependence is like that of object on
consciousness, we should never know it.
From the aforegoing considerations, if they are not altogether
beside the mark, it would seem that an attempt to analyze the various
modes of dependence in nature as a basis for solving our problem was
foredoomed to failure. But we are not left to a priori considerations.
An attempt has actually been made to solve the problem in this way.
Professor Perry enumerates nine classes of dependence as follows:
(1) Relation, (2) Whole-part, (3) Part- whole, (4) Thing-attribute,
(5) Attribute-thing, (6) Causation, (7) Reciprocity, (8) Implying,
(9) Being implied. He describes each class, and adds that while they
may not be logically ultimate or coordinate, they are at least intelli-
gible, and so far as our main problem is concerned, complete. Note
that in enumerating the kinds of dependence we actually find whose
nature is clear to us, we are naturally precluded from counting the
consciousness-object relation as one of them, because that is the ques-
tion to be decided. In calling our enumeration complete we can
therefore mean only that, the conscious relation deliberately set aside
for the moment, the enumeration is complete, but not otherwise.
And, as a matter of fact, abstracting from our ignorance of the
matter, the enumeration is complete if the conscious relation is iden-
tical with one of the nine in the list, or if not being identical with any
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 351
of them it is not a relation of dependence. There is yet a third pos-
sibility, namely, that it is not identical with any of the nine laid
down by Perry and is yet a relation of dependence of a new kind. In
this case Professor Perry's list is incomplete. But Professor Perry,
it seems to me, absolutely igpores this last possibility, and does not do
full justice to the first. For be it noted, if it is true that the con-
scious relation is identical with any one of the nine in the list, the
latter is complete, to be sure, but the conscious relation is then one
of dependence and not of independence. To show that my criticism
is justified let us follow Professor Perry further in his argument.
To prove independence, he says, it is sufficient to show that a
given relation of two terms does not show dependence, for indepen-
dence simply means non-dependence. So far so good. But when he
adds that independence signifies ' ' the total absence of dependence in
the senses enumerated above," we are forced to reply, We have no
objection to your defining independence as you see fit, but pray bear
in mind that if such is your definition of independence, it means
independence as between objects. What independence (or depen-
dence for that matter) in the consciousness-object relation may mean,
is still an open question.
To proceed. Having explained what dependence and indepen-
dence are, Professor Perry next lays down a number of propositions
concerning the kind of entities that are or are not dependent on each
other. Among them is the theorem that "All simple entities are
mutually independent." This is proved by showing that simple
entities can not be dependent in the whole-part sense, nor causally,
nor in the sense of implying or being implied. In a similar way it is
shown that "simple entities are independent of the complexes of
which they are members." In view of the considerations we have
adduced, this can only mean that simple entities as objects, or a
simple entity and a complex, both of which are objects, can not be
dependent in the manner in which one object may be dependent on
another, and hence are independent.
The last step in Perry's argument is to apply the general propo-
sitions just mentioned to the consciousness-object relation. "Simple
entities," he says, "are not dependent on consciousness, because, as
we have seen, there is no sense in which simple entities can be said to
be dependent at all. ' ' Have we really seen this ? The reader who has
followed me thus far will, I trust, agree with me when I say that all
we have really seen is that a simple entity as object can not be depend-
ent on another simple or complex entity which is likewise object in
a given number of dependent relations. As between a simple entity
and consciousness there are three possibilities. The object may be
dependent on consciousness in one of the ways of dependence
352 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
enumerated above, it may be dependent in a totally new way, or it
may be independent. Only the last possibility speaks for Perry's
conclusion, the two others speak against him.
The first possibility just mentioned requires further justification.
How, it may be urged, can a simple entity be dependent on con-
sciousness as a whole on a part, since as simple it can not be a whole
composed of parts ? Again, as relations of implication are found only
in propositions or combinations of propositions, how can a simple
entity be dependent in this way on consciousness? I grant the
justice of this criticism and admit that while we do not know the
exact nature of the conscious relation, which is the matter in dispute,
we do know some things that it is not, and we may conclude without
detriment to our argument that the conscious relation is not one of
part-whole or of implication, or of thing-attribute. There still re-
mains to be considered the causal relation.
Perry says "simple entities can not be causally related because
they can not be values of variables, since this would belie their
simplicity. ' ' He is enabled to say this because in defining causation
he deliberately declared out of court the theory "that causation is
creation ex nihilo by an 'activity.' ' In justification of this he
"appeals to the fact that the 'creation' theory has long since been
discredited in science and all other exact discourse." He accord-
ingly defines cause in its narrowest sense to mean ' ' those other values
which together with time determine the value of a future complex. ' '
It follows from this that a simple entity can not be the effect of a
cause ' ' since it can not be the value of a variable. ' '
Once more we agree with him as far as he goes. If in science,
i. e. } in our dealings with the relation of objects among themselves, the
causal theory of "creation" is discredited, then one object which is
a simple entity can not be dependent as an effect on another object.
But the consciousness-object relation may be a type of causal "crea-
tion," as is indeed claimed by the subjective idealists. This is the
very matter in dispute, and no amount of discredit on the part of
science is relevant for our discussion.
But there is still another way in which Professor Perry proves
that an object, even if it be complex, is not dependent on conscious-
ness if we can account for it in another way. It is thus not exclu-
sively determined by its relation to consciousness, and hence not
causally dependent on it. Thus ' ' the proposition c 2 = a 2 -f- 6 2 -
2ab . cos y, where y is the angle of a triangle, c the opposite side, and
a, b, the adjacent sides" is not dependent on the cognitive relation,
since even if it were determined by it, it is not so exclusively. For
we can derive it, as in fact every mathematician does, from the logical
and mathematical systems to which it belongs.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 353
Will the reader think me too severe if I charge this argument with
a confusion of ideas, or else with a begging of the question ? If the
idealist opponent maintained that the conscious relation is but an-
other type of object-object relation, the above argument would be
correct and relevant. But the whole point of the idealist contention
is that while all objective causal determination is longitudinal, the
conscious relation is transversal and ultimate and all-inclusive, deter-
mining the cause as well as the effect absolutely and not merely rela-
tively. The objective cause determines one out of many possible
effects; it explains to us why this particular effect rather than an-
other has taken place ; it explains, in other words, the essence of the
effect, to use Scholastic terminology. The subjective causality of
consciousness determines that there shall be cause as well as effect,
it determines the existence of the cause as well as of the effect. The
reason the mathematician has nothing to say about the cognitive rela-
tion of his theorems and formulae is because as mathematician he
deliberately ignores this aspect of things, or if he happens also to be
a philosopher, he assumes it to be there, though without affecting
his results in any manner.
We see now that our original suspicions, as to the success of an
empirical method like the above enabling us to solve the problem of
independence, were more than justified by an analysis of an actual
attempt in that direction. We are thus as far as ever from a solu-
tion of the problem.
An obvious stricture on my criticism is that it throughout is based
on the assumption that the consciousness-object relation is unique. I
am willing to admit this. But not until I have protested that the
realist discussion is similarly based on the contrary assumption that
the consciousness-object relation is only another type of object-object
relation. Assumption for assumption, the former seems to me to
have more in its favor whether realism or idealism be the true
doctrine. ISAAC HUSIK.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE
Modern Science and the Illusions of Professor Bergson. HUGH S. R.
ELLIOT. With a preface by Sir E. RAY LANKESTER. New York : Long-
mans, Green, and Company. 1912. Pp. xix -+- 257.
A discussion of the same set of problems by Elliot and Bergson pre-
sents a study in contrasts. Elliot is interested mainly in what we already
know; feels that the way to learn more is to continue the established
methods; and is not afflicted with doubts as to whether our knowledge and
354 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
methods are adequate to reality. Bergson is impressed mainly with the
extent and depth of the unknown; by the fact that our concepts and defi-
nitions, our language and thought, by no means fully express reality.
He tries his hand at expressing some of this unexpressed material, and
can do so only by using words quite out of their usual meanings, by em-
ploying them sometimes in one sense, sometimes in another, and by
adopting figures of speech. He thus becomes obscure, and apparently, if
not actually, self-contradictory. Further, he feels that our established
method of getting knowledge not only has not grasped the inner nature
of reality, but is inadequate to the task of doing so, and must be supple-
mented or replaced by another. All this is intensely repugnant to the
man of set, positive, dogmatic scientific views. Elliot, with his close-to-
the-ground turn of mind, sets out to interpret the soaring Bergson in an
absolutely literal fashion, giving to all of his words their dictionary
meanings. It is not surprising that he can make nothing of Bergson but
foolishness, for it must be admitted that the task is sometimes a difficult
one even for him who takes up Bergson with the best of wills to search
for truth under all sorts of deceptive disguises.
The relation of Bergson to science, the criticisms which he makes of
scientific method, and his proposal to supplement il> by the use of intui-
tion, are matters worthy of serious examination; and an exposition of
the actual content of Bergson's metaphors is required before the real value
of his work can be judged. These are the useful tasks to which Elliot ad-
dresses himself. But his extreme literalness, together with his unshakable
conviction that nothing good can come out of metaphysics, are bound to
prevent his grasping any original ideas of value in Bergson, if such
there be.
The author and his prefacer begin by arousing the antagonism of such
readers as are not already partisans of their point of view, by violent and
sweeping condemnation of all metaphysics. " The attitude maintained
throughout this book is that metaphysics is a maze of sesquipedalian
verbiage, beyond the reach of science to defend or refute" (p. 6). There
is a good brief presentation of the grounds for this attitude, but the
scoffing, triumphing tone maintained throughout the book will repel many
readers.
After an exposition of Bergson's doctrines, the real burden of the book
is reached in the chapter entitled " Reasons for Dissenting from the
Philosophy of Professor Bergson." This contains a useful criticism of
Bergson's methods of argumentation. Four diverse fallacious methods
of drawing conclusions are set forth as common throughout his works.
(1) Bergson passes in review the various theories set forth to explain a
given matter, rejects each (often on good grounds), then commits the
fallacy of assuming that this rejection establishes his own theory. Every
careful reader of Bergson will recall with Elliot innumerable cases in
which he has been astonished at finding a doctrine treated as established
when not a single positive argument for it has been set forth. (2) The
second fallacy to which Bergson is prone is the abuse of the argument
from analogy the author choosing carefully such an analogy as will
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 355
permit him to draw the desired conclusion. Unless we are to hold that
all Bergson's apparent arguments from analogy are mere illustrations,
to make clear, without argument, the author's conception of the relation
in question, the unprejudiced reader can here hardly fail to agree with
Elliot. (3) Bergson makes, without evidence, many positive statements
as to matters of fact, that are extremely doubtful or worse; he then uses
these as data for deduction. On this count again it appears to the
reviewer that a verdict of guilty must be given; one can not avoid the
impression that Bergson, having a conclusion in mind, chooses premises
to support it. Indeed, we may go farther; one is continually astounded
by Bergson's setting forth, after an elaborate argument, a conclusion that
does not in the least follow from the facts adduced under the appearance
of premises, the argumentation being purely a form. (4) Elliot cites
Bergson's "hopeless and irremediable misuse of language; throughout
large sections of his work the words are mere forms or sounds without
significance behind them" (p. 59). Here we may well be cautious.
Bergson appears in many cases to be attempting to express by existing
words ideas for which no words are in use. Often, in order to grasp his
meaning, it appears almost necessary to have had independent glimpses
of the same thought. The reviewer can not claim to fulfill this condition
in many cases, but there are perhaps enough such to set the reader on
his guard lest some one else might grasp a meaning where he perceives
only a waste of words. I shall attempt to show later that Elliot's method
of interpretation has led him to miss points of real interest.
The reviewer can but feel that Elliot's arraignment of Bergson's
method of argumentation is on the whole just. Doubtless, as Elliot
remarks, every possible form of fallacy can be illustrated from his works,
Yet it is commonly admitted also that every literary fault can be illus-
trated from the works of Shakespeare. So far as the work of Bergson is
of any value, this lies in its bringing into prominence certain large ideas,
inducing men to consider them, as a poet might do. The presentation
and argument in Bergson appear to stand logical and scientific analysis
to about the same extent that the poems of Ossian might. A reading of
" Creative Evolution " in a seminary of which the reviewer was a member
convinced all, I believe, that to read the book for profit one should neg-
lect the reasoning and the details, and attempt to seize only the main
conceptions; otherwise the latter are lost sight of in the dust of the fal-
lacies, contradictions, and errors of fact that are beaten up.
But since Bergson presents his ideas in logical forms, such a criticism
as Elliot makes is well in place. It is in missing some of the large ideas
that Elliot fails.
One of Bergson's general ideas, however, Elliot does not miss; the
doctrine that instinct or intuition is the best guide to truth in dealing
with living things. Upon this Elliot centers his main attack; to the
reviewer this appears a valuable part of the book. The argument against
intuition as a revelation of truth may be summarized as follows (follow-
ing Elliot mainly, but not absolutely) :
356 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
1. Bergson presents no positive argument to show that intuition gives
truth; he merely assumes this from his argument that intellect does not
an example of the first form of fallacy above cited. To this might well
be added the point that the argument against the intellect, namely, that
it serves practical ends, holds equally against instinct; the latter is as
much the slave of practical ends as the former. Bergson's argument from
practical use, if it has any validity at all (which is certainly not clear),
logically leads only to the conclusion that mankind can not know reality,
there being not the least ground for making an exception for instinct.
2. In the field of verifiable fact intuition is wrong in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred; no one would seriously think of making it a test of
truth; it requires verification.
3. Where no test is possible, there is no reason to suppose intuition
more reliable.
4. The only ground which could be urged against the conclusion last
stated would be that intuition leads to unanimity in all persons that
employ it. But this is notoriously the reverse of the fact.
In a chapter on the " Progress of Philosophy," Elliot attacks this
question in another way, attempting to show by tracing the history of
knowledge that progress has consisted precisely in getting rid of instinct
or intuition as a criterion of truth. And in a final chapter he attempts
to show that the positive function of philosophy, so far as distinguishable
from science, is just to clear from the human mind the burden of ideas
arising from the natural instincts. The exposition here is one well
worthy of consideration; one with whose general tenor men of science, at
least, are likely to agree; it is therefore unfortunate that the intolerant
tone pervading it, along with the rest of the book, is likely to prevent its
receiving a fair hearing. Certainly a reversion to instinct as a test of
truth would be one of the most serious backward steps conceivable. In
defense of Bergson it may be urged that he does not (or at least in some
passages he does not) propose to substitute intuition where other methods
are applicable, 1 but the limitations, which would exclude intuition from
perhaps all cases where most votaries of Bergson would be tempted to
employ it, seem so incompatible with the great role that Bergson other-
wise gives it, that a setting forth of the positive dangers of the intuitive
method is quite in place.
Elliot further takes up a number of Bergson's positive scientific doc-
trines, controverting them, often successfully. Where he fails is, we may
repeat, in grasping certain leading ideas, which must form the justifica-
tion of Bergson's work, if there is such justification. We may cite as a
characteristic example one of the main ideas in the book on " Creative
Evolution." One of the scientific dogmas which Elliot defends is the
doctrine of mechanism, asserted as the theoretical possibility of proph-
esying all that may occur in the future from a knowledge of all that has
occurred hitherto. In connection with Huxley's statement of this doc-
trine, Bergson notes that we can not, as a matter of fact, predict what
1 Compare "Creative Evolution," transl., page 177.
PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS 357
t
will happen, and believing as he does that this betrays the essential nature
of reality, he remarks " we can not sacrifice experience to the require-
ments of a system." This touches off a characteristic explosion in Elliot.
" He [Bergson] suggests that Huxley has done so, being apparently
unaware that no man on earth would have been so little likely to make
such a mistake. What experience is sacrificed? What system compelled
him to sacrifice it? The habit of using words without any significance
is almost a disease with Bergson," etc., etc. (p. 70). Now it is evident
that Bergson's remark is a clear and excellent way of expressing the
patent fact that the statement as to prophesying all future conditions
leaves aside our every-day experience, in deference to our belief in a
mechanistic system. Elliot's dogmatic intolerance prevents his seeing
this; but worse, it prevents his grasping the underlying idea. To the
reviewer there appears to be absolutely nothing in science or scientific
method that commits one to this theoretical possibility of prophesying the
future from the past. It appears possible to remain scientific and yet
to defend a view such as is outlined in the following :
What happens in matter and energy depends on the conditions. The
only way to determine what will happen under given conditions is by
observation and experiment proceeding on the basis that under the same
conditions the same thing will happen. When new conditions arise, only
experience can deterrnine what will happen. Among the conditions to be
considered are the configurations of the particles of matter. Under new
configurations, it can not be predicted what will happen till this has been
observed. Now, in the infinite number of particles of which the universe
is composed, it is not i 
